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canmom · 9 months

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Das Abenteuer der Canmom in Köln (zur Gamescom)

It's time for canmom to have another adventure! What will that wacky lil porygon do next?

[you may be wondering, whatever happened to the plan to transfer l'aventure de canmom à Annecy to the main site for easier reading? that's still planned to happen, hopefully pretty soon! I've just been very busy.]

So: I work for a small VR games company called Holonautic. I've been working for them for around four months now (time flies)! This week some of us were in Cologne, Germany, attending Gamescom. Until this trip I hadn't met any of them in person, and indeed only had a vague idea what they looked like, because the modern world is wacky that way.

What's Gamescom? It's a major industry expo where game devs show off their games to the public and journalists, and otherwise have various industrial sorts of chats. The event fills a massive convention centre (the Kölnmesse), similar to the Excel Centre in London. Thousands and thousands of gamers enter in massive queues, and once inside, they queue up some more to get a chance to play some work in progress games at massive display booths.

Or maybe they go to the indie room, where there are hundreds of tiny desks just wide enough for a dev to set up a computer with a demo... or the retro games area, where various old consoles were set up for people to play... or one of the zones set up for laser tag or something like that. There was a lot going on!

Even Cthulhu came down to check out the games.

My own experience of Gamescom involved very little of that. With my Trade Visitor badge I could skip the queues, but most of my time was spent in a corner of the Business Area demoing our game to influencers, other devs and members of Meta and Unity, and then heading out to restaurants to have dinner with other VR devs in the evening. I had a good time though! It was great to meet the rest of Holonautic in person, and get to see the sights of Köln a tiny bit. And it was a very rewarding feeling to see other people enjoy the game I'd been working so hard on.

So in this post I'm going to talk about my trip, do a bit of amateur sociology, think about the place of videogames in the world and all that - and also talk a little about how the game sausage gets made - at least as far as I can without breaking NDA. Sadly, the game I spent most of the weekend demonstrating remains under wraps, so I'll have to tell you about that another day. I didn't get to see a ton of games but I'll also talk about the handful of indies I did see!

This time I travelled by train (non-transport nerds, feel free to skip this paragraph), taking the Eurostar from St. Pancras to Brussels, and then the ICE 19 to Cologne. Although it was slower and a bit more expensive than flying, once you factor in the time it takes to travel out to the airport, and the security generally being much more straightforward, I think I much prefer the trains. I spent my journeys drawing other passengers (coming soon to @canmom-art) and reading Osamu Tezuka's manga Ayako (which will be its own post). It was all told very straightforward and comfortable.

[minutiae: I thought I was clever by getting an Interrail pass instead of just buying tickets the usual way, but I didn't realise that you also have to pay for seat reservations, so in the end the Interrail probably cost about as much for a 'there and back again' type of trip.]

By far the most expensive part of the trip was the hotel room. We stayed in a hotel pretty close to the centre of Cologne, but it turned out that its proximity to be about 15 minutes walk from public transport, so we didn't end up saving that much travel time. Since I ultimately spent almost no time in my hotel room, I think if I go next year, the call will be to stay at a hostel. But anyway, let's talk games.

How a game gets released on the Quest

So, Holonautic specialises in VR games. I wrote about our previous games in this very nerdy post, but in brief, there are broadly two major types of VR game: PC VR and standalone VR. For PC VR, the game runs on a computer, and the headset just contains a screen and something that can be tracked. For standalone VR, the headset is essentially a powerful Android smartphone with a custom OS; it uses the headset's cameras for tracking and does all the computing on the headset.

With the success of the Oculus/Meta Quest series, standalone VR became really, really popular - much more so than PCVR ever was. It makes sense: for native games you don't need a powerful gaming PC and there are no cables to trip over or expensive base stations, but you can still play PCVR games if you want to. Almost all of Holonautic's games are Quest-native.

For PCVR games, you can use one of various APIs, such as OpenXR, to wire up your game to VR tracking and input. Moreover, Valve built pretty good VR support into Steam, and since Steam is pretty much anything-goes, it's pretty easy to release a PCVR game in a way people can get it - but marketing is all on you, as with any Steam game.

The Quest is a different story. Compared to other consoles, Meta (which absorbed Oculus a few years ago) occupies a bit of a strange position in this industry, simultaneously the hardware manufacturer, the only publisher, and also a developer of first-party titles.

I don't have any good pictures for this part so here's me in a massive cathedral. Metaphors? No no. It's just a holiday photo...

There are two ways that games can get released on the Quest. There's the store, which is heavily curated: here, Meta acts as a publisher, releasing only games they think will sell, but they also put games through months of QA and handle all the marketing for you (i.e. putting it in front of people when they boot up the Quest). To get on the store, you basically need to have an in at Meta - there's a whole process, I'll talk about that in a moment. There's also 'App Lab', which is much less heavily vetted - but also it's a lot harder to get an audience on App Lab. If a game is particularly successful on App Lab, Meta may end up promoting it to the store. But a lot of games just languish there.

Of course, just because you have a liaison at Meta does not mean you have a free pass onto the store. There's a whole series of stages you have to go through: first you write up a detailed pitch, then if approved (based on what else may be in the works, Meta won't approve two overly similar games), you have a few months to make a 'Minimum Viable Product' prototype of your game and show it to Meta. I joined the company about a month before the MVP was due on our game.

Assuming your contact at Meta likes the MVP, you get a few more months to make a 'Vertical Slice', which is essentially a small portion of your game that's more or less complete. (For example, a single level.) Then, you show this to Meta again. If you make a good impression, they'll give you the go-ahead to finish the game and release it on the store.

Here's another random picture of Köln from the famous Hohenzollern Bridge. Are you saying this wall covered in padlocks is symbolic of something? Overactive imagination, I tell you.

So if yo uwere wondering, the last few weeks of intense work were all about making that vertical slice be as good as possible (and it got pretty clutch at the end). Since we were all going to be at Gamescom, we agreed with our guy at Meta that we'd demo the game in person.

The upshot of all this is that selling a VR game is heavily heavily shaped by Meta, and specifically the individual at Meta who makes the call. Holonautic has a longstanding contact with a laid-back American guy I'll call W.; he has in the past championed some of our games like Hand Physics Lab that left other Meta staff unconvinced. (As it turns out, W. was right and Hand Physics Lab was successful.) But he's not shy about saying that a game doesn't make the cut and should go to AppLab instead. Our game would live or die based on W.'s opinion.

But not just W.; Meta itself as an organisation is also looking for certain things, shaped by its internal politics. They have new features they want to tout - so if you can come up with a game that uses mixed reality, hand tracking and shared anchors that's probably going to count in your favour. And they have certain directions they are keen to push: sporty exercise games are in favour at the moment.

What does this mean for the evolution of the medium? Well, of course people will make the games they want to make, and just because Meta likes an idea doesn't mean it will sell. But Meta does have a lot of power to dictate the general direction of VR games - and if the Apple Vision Pro takes off in a few years, Apple will no doubt end up with a similar role.

It's been interesting to see the forces that shape a game up close: our ideological desire to make things that are new and different and meet our personal tastes, balanced against the need to have successful games to keep the company afloat (good old M-C-M'), and the need to satisfy Meta; all of this leaves its fingerprints on the game.

To not keep you in suspense, I think the demo to W. went pretty well; I can't really say more than that. It was also a good chance to tell the Meta guys about the parts of their APIs that are jank and hard to use - and to their credit they were apparently rather desperate to get feedback and I feel hopeful that they'll make it better.

It's hard to talk about Meta, because it's just such a massive organisation. We can talk about massive erosion of privacy, enabling genocide in Myanmar, and so on - but we're dealing with a small sub-corner of this huge beast, which is less a social media company and more of a games publisher and console manufacturer. But I definitely understand why someone wouldn't want to let a Facebook device loaded with cameras into their house! I could go more into privacy and the Quest 2 but it would be way too long a tangent. Ultimately this is probably a 'no ethical consumption'/'we live in a society' type of deal - one day Meta's domination will erode and we'll have to deal with a different superpower.

Whatever happens, we can continue to explore what's possible in this medium! I think of all the ethical bargains that must be made with the tech industry, I have done OK.

What Cologne is like

On Tuesday, I arrived in Cologne Central Station (Köln Hauptbahnhof) and walked over to my hotel, where I met my colleagues. Most of them looked fairly similar to how they'd set up their VR avatars... but none of them had realised I'm super tall. surprise, bitches ;p

We went out to an Indian restaurant where we all ended up ordering biryani. This being Germany, the portions were massive, so I asked for mine to be in a box to finish later, forgetting that my hotel room had no fridge or microwave and I'd have zero time to eat it (rip). Overall I think I hit it off pretty well, and we chatted for a while about games we liked, the mess that happened at Za/um, movies and the like - it was good to get a chance to interact more casually in person instead of only ever talking about work stuff. Everyone was exhausted from travel so we turned in pretty early, though probably not as early as the restaurant would have liked...

The thing that surprised me most about Cologne is how much it didn't feel strange or unfamiliar. If not for all the signs in German and cars driving on the right, you could drop me in an area of Cologne and tell me it's an unfamiliar part of London and I'd easily believe you. The parts of the city that are filled with business parks and glass-fronted chain stores could exist almost anywhere on Earth.

That said, there are some ways the Germans do things differently! One is restaurants. I visited three different restaurants and two of them worked on a 'self-service' model. Essentially, you order your food at the bar, and they give you a little buzzer device. When it buzzes, you go back up to the bar and collect your food. Nobody would wait tables, there would just be one person behind the bar taking orders and such (though someone would still have to clean your table).

Restaurants also close very early in Cologne. I think a couple of times we put staff in an awkward position of wanting to go home but having to sit around until our party was done. That said, at one point I walked through a riverside area with a few dozen steakhouses, and that seemed to stay open a lot later.

Köln has a decent amount of graffiti, a surprisingly large portion of it in English. Under most bridges there's usually a good number of tags. I didn't manage to get any good photos but shout out to the person who wrote something like 'this world is too damn loud', which is a big mood for autistic girl walking away from a convention centre lmao.

Wednesday: in which our heroine finds out what an influencer is

The next morning we all went down to a German bakery (pictured above). According to my colleagues, the thing to get is a Bienenstich, or 'Bee Sting', a kind of cake with crispy honeyed almond flakes on top and cream in the middle. Here's a really bad photo:

It was pretty tasty!

We scooted over to the convention centre on the metro, and made our way in. I started getting used to navigating the Messe. Our company didn't get our own booth this year, but XR game devs are pretty tight-knit, and Niantic, creators of Ingress and Pokémon Go, there to promote their new phone-based AR Monster Hunter game - lent us some space in their booth to do a demo to the popular VR influencers Cas and Chary.

We headed over to Hall 8 and none of us could find the Niantic booth. Eventually we figured out why: the Niantic booth was outdoors. On a very bright summer day.

The Quest 2 has a bit of a finicky relationship to light. If it's too dark, the cameras can't pick up anything and tracking can fail - hand tracking is especially susceptible. But bright sunlight is also a problem. Essentially, the controllers on the Quest 2 contain small infrared LEDs, which are tracked by the headset's cameras. This works very well, in general - but in the sun, the background infrared radiation can completely overwhelm these LEDs and the controllers become essentially unusable. You also have to be very careful never to let the sun shine through the lenses inside the headset when you take it off, or the focused sunlight can destroy the screen.

So, an outdoor demo was a problem. Luckily, Niantic had an air-conditioned tent in their little zone. We all filed into the tent and started testing the headsets. Even inside a tent, it was too bright for the Quest 2 hand tracking... but we managed to figure out the Quest Pro still worked (since it uses cameras in the controllers for tracking), and rushed to test everything would work. Before long, Cas and Chary arrived, and we demoed the game. Look mum, I'm in a tweet:

Before this convention I had very little knowledge of the whole world of VR influencers, and honestly I still don't, but it seems to be a big thing - a good word from an influencer is a massive boost to a game's chances. I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between an influencer and a journalist; both are in the business of reviewing new tech and games and rely on a reputation of unbiased analysis for credibility, and both are courted by devs hoping to promote their games. I guess an influencer is like a fully independent journalist? In any case, Cas and Chary were really sweet in our extremely brief meeting, and it was amazing to see the first people from outside the company having fun with our game.

We got word that bHaptics, a Korean company which makes haptic suits and gloves for use with VR devices, had some space in their booth and were willing to let us do some demos there. So we set off back down the entire length of the convention centre to go into the secret Business Area.

Wednesday at Gamescom is restricted to trade visitors, meaning it's much less crowded than the later days. On those later days, that restriction only applies to the three halls designated as the Business Area. Like regular Gamescom, these halls are divided into flashy booths trying to sell you stuff, but in this case it's mostly companies trying to sell services and tools to developers: backend services, special 3D pens, anti-cheat... also a bunch of stands selling merch and figurines for some reason (maybe because they want to manufacture tie-in merch for your game), as well a bunch of national organisations promoting the game development scene in xyz country.

The Belgian stand functioned as a meeting spot, and they were also handing out vouchers for free beer. A strategy that seemed to be quite effective, judging by how crowded their booth became that evening.

We tested our headsets in the bHaptics zone, and discovered DOTS Netcode's prediction/rollback is good enough to make the game feel smooth even on public convention centre wifi, which was rather satisfying - so you know, good job Unity! Unfortunately the Shared Anchors continued to be a pain. We briefly ran into the head of DOTS at Unity and arranged a demo, scooted off to meet W. from Meta who bought us drinks, scooted over to Niantic again to meet some members of XR Bootcamp (a training course in XR game dev, whose cofounders Ferhan and Rahel seem to be the glue that holds the whole XR dev scene together), and at last wandered back to the Belgian zone...

...and then I went back to bHaptics to have a go at their gear. I didn't take a photo (rip) so here's a photo by CNet showing the full bHaptics getup, which in combination looks... kind of like you're the member of the SWAT team on washing up detail...

(source: Scott Stein/CNet)

I had never gotten to try any sort of haptic suit before this, so it was quite novel. Essentially the vest contains 40 (or 16) vibration motors; the gloves contain further motors on the tips of each finger, and there's another motorised ring between you and the headset. There are also motorised wrist bands, motorised ankle bands...

The first demo was designed to showcase the features of the suit and wristbands, so you could try out various actions like shooting guns or putting stuff in a backpack with and without haptics. A second demo focused on manipulating objects: no wristbands, just the glove and hand tracking.

Of the various devices, the most convincing was probably shooting with the haptic suit. Vibration motors are well-suited for brief, intense pulses, and firing guns definitely felt more impactful with the suit on - not a perfect simulation of impact, but a strong effect. The backpack demo was especially impressive: it really felt like dropping heavy objects into a backpack. You also got to shoot at your own mirror image and feel the bullet/laser impacts, which felt like a rather roundabout way to give myself a back massage, but I could see it being effective in the right game.

The hand demo convinced me less. The problem is that vibration is a poor simulacrum of pressing against a solid surface, so it just felt distracting to have a vibration pulse when i grabbed an object - and you still had the usual physics jank associated with manipulating objects in VR using hand tracking. The final section of the hand tracking demo was social interaction: you were faced with rotated clone avatar, and you could shake your hand, punch or slap yourself, or give yourself a hug. As someone who lives half a world away from most people I love, I think giving someone a hug in VR would be a fantastic use of the technology, but sadly this hug was... not entirely convincing. It is very hard to simulate a steady touch with vibration motors.

Ultimately I think the best use for this haptic gear may not be simulation fidelity, but more abstract: similar to the haptic suit used in certain public demos of Rez Infinite, pulsing in time to music. Such uses are mentioned on the bHaptics site, and I'd love to have been able to try that kind of demo. (And yeah, I'm sure you could hook it up to the other kind of remote-controlled vibrating devices if you so desired, though you'd probably have to do a bit of work to wire everything up.)

It was really cool to finally get to experience haptics, and I was very grateful to the bHaptics members for taking the time to show me their gear.

After I'd satisfied myself, I caught up with the gang; we went out to dinner with other XR devs at a Turkish restaurant called Bona'me near the river. (The food was tasty and had a decent amount of vege options, once again in huge portions but this time we split them between the table. ...and once again we were the last table to leave by a long way, and I feel bad for the staff who had to sit around waiting for us.)

There, I met a solo dev called Ben Outram, who's spent the last three years working on a game called Squingle, a fascinating psychedelic game about manipulating bubbles in a world of DMT-core abstract visuals. (Honestly, check this game out, it's nuts. Meta are sleeping on it, it should absolutely have a full store release.)

Thursday: chaos reigns

On Thursday it somehow ended up that in the space of an hour, we would be demoing our game to the head of DOTS development at Unity (whose name I somehow never managed to catch), demoing our other game Cybrix to Cas and Chary, and then doing the big important demo for meta. Then it turned out that our metro line was blocked by an accident up ahead. We hurried out to get an Uber, and our driver gave us a rather... exciting ride; he rolled down the window to argue with another driver and dropped us off in the middle of the road while we waited in traffic. Rather harried, we arrived back at the bHaptics corner and set up for the demos in an unused area of floor nearby.

I'm not sure if I can say too much about how our demos went, but unfortunately we ran into some versioning issues and were not able to show Cybrix to Cas and Chary before they had to rush off (we weren't the only one to face transport issues that morning). Lesson learned: test everything, not just the part you're worried about. It's not the end of the world, though, and we all headed over to W.'s hotel, into a swanky suite with a nicely laid table for the most important demo of the week. We had the room for maybe 20 minutes, then we were out the door again to the lobby of another hotel to talk it over.

After that... suddenly the afternoon was free, ish. We went back into Gamescom and ate some very expensive ramen. Then, word came that some more influencers wanted to try out our games, so it was back to bHaptics and well, the story gets a little repetitive at this point :p I can't say much more than that without talking about our game, so I will just have to say that the demos went well.

This was my view for most of Gamescom.

At the end of the day, I had a couple of free hours to scoot over to the indie games area and try out some games before everyone went home. At this point my social batteries had run very dry indeed so I was glad to get some time to just play games.

The indie zone was divided into lots and lots of small booths, typically just wide enough for one computer. And even late in the evening, it was very, very busy...

This is just one small corner of the indie area.

Not really knowing almost any of these games, my 1337 MLG Pro Gamescom strat was to wander around until I spotted an empty chair and then play whatever game was going and chat with the dev if they were around. This worked out pretty well! I'll write up the games I played in a moment, but first I'm overdue to wax philosophical.

What was really striking about walking around the indie area is just how many games there are. Wandering around you can pretty quickly spot patterns and influences just by glimpsing at screens (here's a combat tutorial, there's a crafting/survival game, and yonder a narrative game that's borrowed the entire interface of Disco Elysium).

I've seen, up close and personal now, just how much fiddly effort and dedication it takes to make a game. There's something kind of strange and alienating to me about encountering all this creative output in a massive aggregate, where you can only give it maybe half an hour in a noisy room, surrounded by a dozen more or less similar games, in a way that kind of demands you rapidly assign it into a broad, combinatoric category: x art style, y core mechanic, z emotional register. Presenting this game this way really seems to file them all down to Content, which can be boxed and tagged and matched to a consumer with the appropriate set of subculture flags.

One thing that is distinctive about games as a medium to me is the very strong separation between 'mechanics' and 'presentation'. To produce a game you don't just need a system to manipulate, but also associate it with a narrative to make it comprehensible and lend it some sort of affective impact.

So you could theoretically make a game with the exact same mechanics as, say, Half-Life 2 - the same movement, the same enemy hitboxes, the same collision geometry and shooting mechanics and progression - but a completely different presentation style and telling a completely different story. Indeed, a typical early stage of game development has placeholder 'programmer art' and 'greybox' levels.

Equally, you could lift the iconography of a game and drape it over a completely different mechanical substrate - and indeed, it isn't at all uncommon for major franchises to launch spinoffs in different genres.

So games as a medium consist of all these different pieces which you can attach in various ways to define a game which you can name. And once this is done, that game becomes in a sense 'concrete': we act as if Half-Life 2 is an object with a distinct existence. It's a powerful social construct. Then, a successful game is then one which manages to unify all these disparate elements into some sort of whole that feels coherent. Game development sees all the possible elements of a game gradually collapse into whatever gets released. It's highly stochastic: an arbitrary decision by a tired dev, or even a glitch, might later become fixed as one of the core icons of the great 'Franchise'.

When there were less games around, and it was a lot harder for people to get their hands on dev tools, it made sense to think of games as solid, discrete things. Whatever you got on the cartridge or disc was pretty much immutable. Now, though, most major games operate as a 'service' that is constantly modified, and it is not uncommon either for players to mod a game, on a continuum from small changes like injecting shaders or changing music, to total conversion mods that are a 'whole new game'.

And indie games, then... you've got a subculture which heavily emphasise sharing techniques, and it's just as beholden to genre as AAA games. The existence of all these games side by side, even though each one has its own name and identity, seems to further break up "games" into combinations of pieces. When I encounter a new third-person action game, it's as a variation on a kind of broader, abstracted super-game. My first task is to discover the particular quirks of this manifestation of the third person action game. The days when we had a shared culture of 'games everyone has played' are basically already gone, but we still have a certain degree of shared context, because each game is a probe into that constantly evolving game-space, which someone has gone to the trouble to fish out and decorate...

I suppose this is all coming back around to the otaku database thing, isn't it? Or just semiotics in general...

Anyway, here's what I found on Thursday:

I played an FPS called Serum, in which the core conceit is that you inject big syringes into your arm to give yourself powerups. Otherwise, it seems to be a game about gathering and crafting. Sadly the demo computer didn't have headphones, so I was missing sound, and seemed to be a bit underpowered for the game. Nevertheless, I walked around a bit, manufactured a healing serum, and shot some wolf and rabbit monsters with a bow and arrow.

I feel like I was rather ruder than I intended to be, because in talking to the dev afterwards, the first thing I mentioned was the performance issues and he had to apologise like, yeah, we're running it on a laptop (it sounded like he said with a 3070? but I must have misheard him, unless he has very high standards for underpowered), it does run better on a proper computer. The environment design in this game was definitely really strong. Not quite sure how the serum mechanic would work in practice - it sounds quite like Bioshock's plasmids, but the demo didn't really give the opportunity to try out the different options.

I played Dead Pets Unleashed, an adventure game about a demon girl in a struggling punk band. One of the devs was hanging out with this one and generally had a great vibe, joking about how almost nobody picked a certain option and suggesting the route that would get the most out of the demo.

The game uses a sidescrolling perspective with hand-drawn sprites. The art style is very consciously flat, its population of monster people allowing an impressive variety of colours. It broadly alternates between conversations with choices that adjust stats (e.g. +punk, -social) and a variety of minigames - there was a music minigame of course (the conceit being chasing away intrusive thoughts), but I also washed a dildo, constructed a hot dog, and waited tables. Generally it oozed style, absolutely nailing the punk vibe, and had a bunch of cute features like changing your character's outfit. You can play the same demo on Steam. I think this is one I might well get when the full release comes.

And then I played... a game I can't even find now! I really should have made a note or taken a picture or something. It was a kind of Amanita-like point and click game in which you play a tin can person, manipulating objects as you try to rescue your can dog, descending into a city made of cardboard boxes. The puzzles were occasionally a bit obtuse, but the cute style really carried it. The devs weren't on hand for this one, but they did have a wall where you could leave postit notes with your comments on the game, including one with a fairly essential hint for the first puzzle. It was called something like 'can world' or 'box world', but at this point, I can't find it anywhere. It's a shame because I thought it was neat.

That was all I had time for on Thursday: I zoomed off to another restaurant by the river to eat some more falafels. Someone let off some fireworks for some reason.

We started to make our way back, across the famous Hohenzollern Bridge, which is one of those bridges with a tradition that lovers will attach a padlock to the fence to symbolise how long their relationship will last.

At this point the padlocks have started to resemble kudzu, hanging down in strands of linked padlocks, or even growing up onto the superstructure of the bridge on chains. Questionable symbolism or not, it all makes for a fantastic textural effect, especially since it maintains the sheer density of padlocks for the entire length of the bridge.

While we were crossing, a boat passed under the bridge carrying some kind of a party. From a distance, all you could really see was a mass of glowsticks, and all you could hear was the ghost of the beat. It was a cool sight.

At this point I was pretty much completely exhausted so while there was some kind of industry party I definitely could not handle the crowds and walked home past the cathedral for an early night, eager to head in early to Gamescom tomorrow with a good night's sleep...

Friday: just like in my Bloodbornes, amirite gamers?

Predictably I overslept. Since I'd only get a few hours at Gamescom, I decided to visit the famous cathedral. I took that photo that I posted earlier, where somehow my little phone camera absolutely nailed the lighting, even if the cathedral is severely out of focus...

I headed inside the building too.

Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is a bit of an oddball, historically. While it wasn't uncommon for cathedral-building projects to last a century, after working on this thing from 1248–1560 they downed tools, leaving the city with a half-finished cathedral for about 300 years.

They had the front and back of a cathedral, with a big crane on the front part.

In the 1800s, the middle ages were in and the state decided it would be a good idea to have a big cathedral - both to make their new Catholic subjects happy and a symbol of THE NATION. After raising a stonking amount of money with one of the world's first NGOs, they built the rest of this thing, which briefly became the tallest building in the world. Hooray, said Emperor Wilhelm I. I love being a big strong nation with a big cathedral dick.

The cathedral survived the first world war, but got hit by a lot of bombs in the second - though the towers remained standing. After the war, they put it back up again. Now, it's a tourist attraction. Transsexual atheists can walk in and turn their phone to funny angles to try and capture the ceiling...

You can call this a Deutsch angle, because... ok whatever guys they can't all be winners.

They've got some old school Christian-style guro in here.

The interior is pretty cool: huge vaulted ceiling, massive stained glass. The stained glass unfortunately photographs really poorly on a phone, the colours washed out pretty much no matter what. They did have this funky ladder contraption, which I assume is probably used for maintaining/washing the windows...

After a little while in there I decided this was pretty neat but I'd go to Gamescom, to say goodbye to everyone and maybe get a glance at some of the mainstream game zones. As it turned out we had another demo lined up, so we went back to The Corner Near BHaptics and did the routine. This time the audience was mostly other VR devs so I got to have some nice technical discussion.

At last, I had about an hour before my train. I thought about exploring the indie game zone some more, but decided I should really at least take a glance through the other halls. What I discovered was... queues! Many many queues. And various elaborate dioramas.

Sometimes they had actors to go with them. I decided to include the people taking the photo because... I don't even know what I was going for with this one to be honest, it seems kind of banal.

Here's a queue of people waiting to play Rogue Trader, which boldly tells you it's the first(!) CRPG in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, hopefully not also the last. 'Warhammer CRPG' is a concept that 16-year-old Bryn would have gone completely insane about. 31-year-old Bryn was still a bit curious, but not enough to wait for a sitting down queue with less than an hour left at the con.

I didn't take a lot of photos of the Extremely Gamer Shit, but for a taster, this lady was DJing a set on something called the 'Leet Desk', which appears to be a desk with built in RGB lighting, billed as 'the desk for gamers', because we can no longer contain the rainbow puke. When I walked past, she was playing an EDM remix of a tune that I vaguely recognised from a movie or a game but couldn't place specifically, which felt about right. Maybe it was Skyrim?

A lot of people walked around with the Hoyoverse bag, Hoyoverse being the collective term for the games of Chinese developer miHoYo such as Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact. Their slogan was 'tech otakus save the world', which thanks to their cunning move of handing out large bags, was soon paraded all over the convention. I feel like the jury is still out on the impact (ha ha) of tech otakus on the world...

In the end, the last hour was spent briefly walking around to see the halls and then I left to say my goodbyes and hop back on the train. The journey back was totally straightforward. I finished reading my manga and drew some more train passengers, who were generally pretty happy to be drawn.

Cosplay

It's a con, there's gotta be cosplayers right? Sure enough, the crowd was peppered with stormtroopers, kitsune, army men, luffies and various spooky skull guys... I didn't get many photos but here's a couple.

Obligatory stormtroopers. Luckily, the inside of the con was airconditioned, those suits look toasty.

These three kindly stopped to pose for me. I don't know what game they're doing, Dead by Daylight maybe? DbD girls, tell me ^^'

This robot-girl cosplayer's costume is neat: when you look close you see it's made of old PC parts. Or at least the casings of them. I spotted a graphics card and an old VR headset. She also has built-in stilts so she towered over everyone, big respect. She was hanging out in the hall on Wednesday, so she might have been there in an official capacity, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her.

Observations of demographics and stuff

It's been a good long while since I've been to any sort of nerd convention. Mostly I've been to scifi/media fandom cons like Nine Worlds and Worldcon, or general nerd-shit cons like MCM Expo, and in the old old days, Warhammer cons like Game Day. But this event being specifically a gaming expo was pretty new to me.

Predictably the demographics skewed male (but not overwhelmingly) and white/East Asian (almost without exception). The various national organisations present were primarily European (which tracks for an event in Germany) but there were large stands e.g. promoting Korean game dev or the Guangzhao region of China. In the indie zone, there were a good handful of Japanese devs, and I spotted one game that was fully in JP. Here and there, you'd spot banners promoted other gaming expos - a lot in Europe, but also there is apparently a Gamescom Asia in Singapore, and a Tokyo Indie Games Summit which sounds pretty fun. By contrast, while I don't have any real stats to substantiate, I would say I saw very few organisations were promoting game devs from South America, Africa or Oceania.

Beyond that... this is very definitely a place for nerds, but there's a lot of different varieties of nerd you can be now. So sure, T-shirts with slogans and cargo shorts for many, but equally you could dress super goth, you could show off all your tattoos, you could go in your colourful coordinated kitsune cosplay or just wear some bright hair die. I'm confident I saw a few other girls from the isle of 🏳️‍⚧️, but 'hello I clocked you let's be friends' is not the best introduction even from another trans girl lmao - in general I didn't really talk to people besides the group I had arrived with. I think if I'd gone alone, it would not be the sort of con where you make a lot of friends, but who knows?

All in all, a solid adventure. I'll probably go again next year, if I can find somewhere cheaper to stay. I never did get to see the chocolate museum.

ok, story over - thanks for reading, nerd ;p

#gamescom #computer games #adventures of canmom

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pokemongoloresociety · 1 year

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This Reeks Of...

I read the Hoenn quest leaks, and had some thoughts! Feel free to share you own with me by tagging this tumblr or quoting. Spoilers ahead!

I'm going to try my best to keep my perspectives and speculations surface-level. Yes, there is a lot here; but having a year between story updates gives you too much time to think.

GO Rocket Leaders In General:

I genuinely feel sorry for them. I've always felt sorry for them, and I've always thought the three of them were in a boiling frog situation given the brand of Giovanni they're working under. These lines cement those feelings. If anything, they're worse off than I thought and are extremely vulnerable but talented people brimming with potential under the right form of guidance.

All of them are riding on a facade of confidence in various flavors. It's an interesting take on its own. They're acting like how they think they should act while how they genuinely feel still comes through. This might be one of those 'fake it til you make it' tales, which would be cool, if not a little meta.

The theme of the three of them running away from themselves becomes more obvious. We saw the GO Leaders overcome their weaknesses; we're witnessing little fragments of the GO Rocket leaders being consumed by them.

Cliff cites Arlo and gives him proper credit for where his knowledge comes from. Sierra doesn't care much, but she does take credit for telling you the info. Arlo uses it as a moment to dunk on Candela AND Willow. (I might have to make an entire post just unpacking Arlo's details alone.)

Arlo and Cliff start out aggressive, with Cliff becoming more personable and Arlo going a bit more resistant. Not entirely tsundere, as he's still very resistant and insistent on keeping a status quo. Despite being appointed leaders (or at least execs/admins), you see parts that would turn potential followers away.

I'm appreciating the level of psychology and nuance they're introducing in such a simple format, and exploring the aspects of what being a leader can take. Self-care, self-forgiveness, and facing your shortcomings are pillars. If I had to say: Cliff lacks self-care (all his care is on Giovanni); Sierra lacks self-forgiveness, and Arlo lacks the courage to face his fears.

I'm also appreciating the fact that all six of them are embodiments of certain core traits, mirroring the positive and negative sides of them. The GO Rocket leaders show a new potential: that their negative sides aren't something they need to overcome, but to utilize in a better light. Pokemon has always shown us that the world is more complicated than good vs bad; that "good" fairy types can be some of the most dangerous; and that scarier types like dark (called "evil" in Japan) and ghost can be misunderstood saviors.

Based on these details, I will write another post later on exploring how each Rocket Leader could potentially contribute to the GO Leaders, and vice-versa.

Cliff:

Cliff's backstory as a rancher fills my prior suspicions about him relying on calculation. Running farms and ranches takes a lot of work and cannot be done alone; not only do you have books to balance and resources to juggle, but you have to develop extra senses for your animals (or, in this case, Pokemon) and the seasons. I wonder what made him lose it?

Combined with the prior themes of abandonment, I'd suspect that some parts of Cliff's demeanor is what pushed people away. You can't run a ranch by yourself, and we see it decaying in his intro video. You can see how he'd be a great and encouraging leader, and he presents his wisdom in a way that's easy to follow. But, there are cracks in his line of thought and personality.

What stood out to me was how he thought Willow was your leader, and was surprised to hear otherwise. Even with all the time that's passed, Cliff has holed himself into a line of thought. Even Arlo presents himself as being observant enough to refer to Willow properly.

I'm now under the impression that Cliff may not be as well-liked as I thought in GOR. I've known people like Cliff. Very loyal, but this loyalty is steeped in sadness, fear, and insecurity. He's happy to be around the grunts and play with them, like when they invaded the 2020 festival and he was eager to get back to hanging out with them after beating you up. But, you also see in his intro where he's losing his absolute shit at the grunts sitting around; presumably without even asking what they were doing (for all we know, they could have been on a break or avoiding overexerting themselves). While most of the grunts love Giovanni, Cliff has made Giovanni into his religion.

Sierra:

Sierra gave me whiplash. When you beat her normally, she assures you that it's not going to happen again. In this text, she's more obviously self-deprecating. I would not be surprised if she blamed herself for all of her loss and situations; like her own Absol (And misappropriated to misery, just like an Absol).

For context to #1, I'm still not sure if she was just an orphan; or if she was an orphan who ALSO lost her own husband and child when she got the chance to start her own family, which would add another layer to her reclusive nature and lone lioness motif. The intro shows two sets of images and it's easy to interpret it as two different bad outcomes. Her being in charge of the Rocket eggs says a lot about her hidden nature as it is. She definitely wants a family or a place to belong to, but she keeps telling herself otherwise.

She acknowledges loss as a lesson, but she also still treats it like something that could warrant punishment. I get the impression that her fear of failure isn't an ego thing, but acknowledging the price of her security. If she fucks up too much, she may lose the last sanctuary that she's known under Giovanni. It needed to be noted that this Giovanni comes off as less forgiving and on par with the Rainbow Rocket version than the one defeated by Red.

This brings me back to her same-differences with Spark. Both are willing to take their chances, but Spark is ready to gamble. His lapel pins are a pair of die that, together, make "88", a good luck symbol. If one could assume that both she and Spark had the exact same experiences up to a point, Spark took his losses as lessons, and learned to trust his instincts in order to take those gambles. It's as if he says: "I've been through worse, I can take it because the prize at the end might be worth it!" Sierra took them as punishments, and she's afraid of losing her safety net.

I think it hits me harder because she's witty. It's rare you see a female character who's both hot AND funny, and is clearly in on the joke if she isn't the one who's leading it. It makes me want to see her have a happy ending. Definitely Bayonetta and Fujiko Mine energy.

Arlo (Holy shit, this guy is baggage incarnate despite having the least revealed backstory how is that even possib):

Starts out aggressive like Cliff. He does become more tsundere, but it needs to be noted that his level of resistance towards receiving any affability is beyond the moe trope. I found it unsettling and well-written.

He's more focused on resisting his feelings, unless they involve his play for power.

He has absolutely no love for Giovanni. I can't recall a Pokemon character like this who's worked for Rocket. I've seen admins show greed and cynicism to some things, but they've largely been respectful to Giovanni (or at least pretended to be). Arlo does nothing of the such, and even corrects himself to imply that the glory will be his, and not Team Rocket's.

I'll admit; it is interesting to see Rocket being used as a tool from within. If Arlo had his shit together, he could be one of the few named Poke G-Men (Could he still be?) Candela said Arlo didn't even like Team Rocket, and he still doesn't, even after all of this. I had a headcanon that Arlo is a double agent. And he's... still kind of is. At least for himself.

He's reminding me more and more of Lear from Pokemon Masters before his character evolution. I'm pretty sure Lear was inspired by Arlo, likely a mashup of both Candela and Arlo. Lear and Arlo are both nobles, and it's safe to assume, considering the things Arlo has said, that they were expected to play into a harsh game of life, and that any kind of softness/sweetness was seen as weakness. Both of them go pants-on-head crazy when they get a blow to their ego and do something big. Though, I'd say Pasio is a somewhat more positive thing (the ethics of making an artificial island aside) than, uh, what's involved in making Shadow Pokemon and being a dimensional/space terrorist.

Arlo cannot proverbially get off of Candela. The fact that he's actually an engaging orator and capable of having some clarity on a situation makes his obsession with her more jarring. Even though it's just some quest text, I could tell he could be a good teacher. He has the underpinnings of some of the most well-loved rivals in the franchise. He's also very much a mad scientist.

Even with Arlo's insanity, it's hard NOT to feel bad for him. His shit goes way deeper than just BAWW CANDELA MEEN uWu; We need to remember that he's still an adult carrying on like this with a lot of power, battle skill, and authority (rather the facade of it) in his hands. There's a lot to unpack here. I'll dig more into that in the future.

Because of this, Candela is Arlo's strawman. Flowing with the theme of the GOR leaders running away from themselves, it's easier for him to blame her than it is for him to look deeper within and fix himself or question his presumed upbringing or personal beliefs. If I had to guess, this is likely a factor as to why Candela was crying when she gave Willow her part of the Mysterious Scraps to Willow one week later. There is no sane reason to go as far as Arlo did to get revenge against one person for merely 'beating' him. It's bad enough that he was, presumably, gunning to become Valor leader. But I think it goes beyond that. People who act like Arlo have a hard-set narrative in their heads, and lose it when people don't play to their fantasy. This actually reminds me of some of Giovanni and how he seems to surround himself with the competent, but insecure, so that he can control his little world. He's just blunt about it.

With the new dialogue, the fact that his uniform resembles a fireman's outfit and his intro quote: "Remember, fire is a fickle thing. When controlled, it provides warmth, but in the wrong hands, it burns." enforces that Arlo is afraid of enduring pain in order to become stronger, as well as unable to comprehend that some elements must be embraced as they are, and not tamed. It also (and likely mostly) shows that Arlo goes into unknown situations with the expectation that trust won't be granted, so he has to shield himself. This makes more sense when we understand that many Pokemon, especially fire types, will work hard to avoid hurting the humans they come to love in trust. He's trying to compete against someone who's been shown to hug the soul-eating Litwick. I'm beginning to assume Arlo didn't become a leader because he wasn't ready to endure and only wanted to aggressively dominate. The catch is that Candela's or (presumably) Moltres' fires weren't his fear, but his own inner flame that's dying to thrive.

Pretty crazy for Giovanni to run an entire campaign presumably spearheaded by the grudge of your newest member and admin who is only loyal to his own reflection and his personal vendetta; isn't it? Gio really is a devil-figure. He knows what he's doing and he doesn't care. I am under the impression that Gio's plan is to take everything once Arlo has failed.

So, what DOES this reek of?

A redemption plot! No idea if I'm right. I guess we'll see! But, I've heard this story too many times from too many different angles not to see the potential makings of one. I expect at least one of them to pull a 180, if not all three.

What would it take for these three to leave Rocket?

Cliff and Sierra would have to get the boot from Giovanni to leave Team GO Rocket. This would be a devastating blow to both of them, as they've found refuge within Team Rocket.

I imagine Cliff would be the only one who really begs to come back, while Sierra would blame herself, try to move on, and likely become more isolated.

Of the three, Arlo might be the one in the most danger and may not simply be sacked; he may even use the chance to usurp Giovanni. He's sly and manipulative; so is Giovanni. I came to suspect that the target of Arlo's manipulations might be Giovanni, and it looks as if that's the possibility. I do think Giovanni may be one step ahead of Arlo; well-aware that they're both using one another, and milking Arlo of his knowledge and insight until it becomes too inconvenient to play into his shenanigans.

I'll add that it seems as if I may have bias towards Arlo and Candela, but they've had the most loaded story in GO that shows a lot and still has its own mysteries behind it. Arlo also feels more like the game's antagonist than Giovanni does, at times.

I'll follow up in the future with my thoughts regarding how each pair of foils balance off of one another.

#pokemon go #spoilers #giovanni pokemon #leader arlo #leader cliff #leader sierra #team go rocket #hoenn tour

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danpuff-ao3 · 7 months

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20 Questions for Fic Writers!

Thanks for the tag, @givereadersahug [x]!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Normally I like to specify "HP Fics" since that's my current mode, but altogether (with other fandoms and meta across other pseuds) I'm at 112! (101 for HP Fics, though! 😂)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

689,993 so far!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently just Harry Potter, but I have a few Marvel fics still on my account, under my danvers pseud!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Ooh interesting! Let's see...

Daddy's Boy (Snarry, E, 2k)

Daddy Knows Best (Snarry, E, 2k)

Obscene (Snarry, E, 1k)

Breed Me, Daddy (Snarry, E, 2k)

Contempt (Snarry, E, 20k)

0% surprised that 3/5 are Daddy fics LOL. Though lowkey offended that Contempt is only #5. My proudest work but boy oh boy do people love their weird porn!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Heck yes! Though I need to catch up now. It means the world to me that people take the time to leave me their love, so the least I can do is give my gratitude. You have no idea how much a comment makes my day!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Aha hands down this one is so easy: A Matter of Time. I am stupidly happy with how that one turned out, and just how well executed that angst was. Not to toot my own horn or anything!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

idk why but my first thought was Orange Blossoms...which is pretty angsty-fluff all told and the ending is hopeful at best. My brain just goes: "that's a happy fic, right?" 😂 But actually I think probably The Curse of Anteros. That one's properly happy, I think, with plenty of angst beforehand to make that happy ending feel well worth it! Though someone is free to correct me, with over 100 fics maybe I lost a happier ending somewhere in there! 😂

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not often. I did go on a delete-a-spree late 2020 due to some rudeness. One person bookmarked a fic calling my writing "mediocre" and I sorta spiraled. Also I get the odd person leaving weird comments on Collateral Damage for the surprise (background) ship in there. Also the odd person who doesn't read tags on fics that are especially angsty or especially dead dove...idk for all the weird and problematic stuff I write I could get more hate I guess, though I'd rather not!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Who me? Nah. 👀 idk, I write whatever tickles my fancy! Oftentimes it's virginity loss cuz that's my favorite. I love big passion and bits of violence thrown in. Idk "what kind" actually means so hopefully that was a good explanation! A bit rough, a bit mean, a lot of passion, and it's probably someone's first time doing something.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

No, but I want to! I have a HP + PJO crossover I swear I'm going to get to one day!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of and I really hope no one out there steals my fics. I work really hard on them and they mean a lot to me.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

A few!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No but again: I want to! I've had fanart made, and podfics, and translations...the closest I've come is for Snarry Bang and collaborating with an artist, which was The Curse of Anteros with @mrviran!

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

SNARRY!!!! OTP for 20 years and counting!

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Geez. Probably old fics long abandoned on ffnet, but I won't get into those. (Though I'd really like to rewrite and continue/finish Resistance.)

16. What are your writing strengths?

...causing pain? Idk I don't feel I have strengths, but I'm told I hurt people's feelings 😂 I write intensity pretty well I think? I like to think my characterization is okay. idk!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

All of it. Writing in general. AHEM. Um....fluff? I'm almost curious enough to ask but no please don't tell me my weaknesses, it'll hurt my feelings 🤣

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I like it! Adds a bit of flavor imo! But to each their own, y'know?

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter! I've only ever written for HP, Marvel (of which a few still exist online), and Stormlight Archive (of which none still exist online). Weird I never wrote for Supernatural, considering how mega into that fandom I was for a while...

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Hands down Contempt. I'm still the proudest of that fic. I'm starting to think The Curse of Anteros is better, but Contempt will always have my heart.

I really poured my whole heart and soul into that work. And I still get way too emotional talking about it or thinking about it! And it still blows me away how many people have loved it. I really wanna relisten to the podfic @mrviran did of it and just sob through it! 😂 God I really, really love that fic. I truly do not have the words to express just what that story is to me.

Tagging (no pressure): @perverse-idyll, @writcraft, @lizzy0305, @arrisha-ao3, @babygray, @fleetingdesires, @ripeteeth, @loneamaryllis, @wolfpants, @sweet-s0rr0w, @greenmegsnoham, @lqtraintracks, @serenaew, @indigo-scarf, @maesterchill, aaaand anyone else who wants to play!

#danpuff writes #tag game #fic writers questions #20 questions

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bettsfic · 1 year

Text

so i finished rebels and i have some Thoughts and Feelings i need to process so they are going here on my blog. (spoilers ahead)

for three seasons i hated ezra bridger. i thought he was such a boring protagonist and poorly written and i was so bummed to find out he was the main character

but THEN

sometime during season 3 my hatred came full circle. i started hating him so much i began to devise interpretations of his character i would not despise.

at first my initial attempt was that he made a great side character and an awful protagonist

i love that everyone loves him and it's completely illogical but the writing seems to be aware of that and how funny it is? kanan, hondo, and maul are all ready to throw down for him immediately

but what really worked was

into the nothingness, apropos nothing, i said aloud, "puppyboy ezra?"

i informed my roommate that i could bear ezra as long as i interpreted him solely as a puppyboy

*sensible chuckle* how ooc, i thought

my roommate was like, uh strange you should say that.......

i thought, haha i bet there's a dog in an episode or something

i proceeded to outline a very long puppyboy ezra fic (which i definitely plan to write; whether or not i post it remains to be seen)

((i ship ezra with a certain character that is so obvious to me but there are only 5 fics on ao3 and i'm devastated. i guess there will just be 5 drabbles and one 60k psychologically fraught modern au in the tag))

and i am simply knocked DEAD to discover that the series ends with GIANT SPACE WOLVES

listen

i love wolves

love them

specifically i love giant

space

wolves

in fact i have purchased every piece of artwork i can find on the internet depicting giant space wolves and they are all hanging on my wall as we speak

and so i felt deeply eerily called out when ezra's conclusion involves being spiritually connected to a wolfpack

i'm mostly shocked that rebels seems to be that bizarre mix of amazing but falls steeply short of its own promise, a la sherlock and early supernatural. the stuff that pings my "gotta fix this gotta fix it gotta add porn" lizard brain and i end up writing 100k

actually if i get out of this fandom under 100k i'll be shocked

hellcheer have one scene together in a show i don't even like and i wrote 100k about it in a few months

i have nearly 4 years of graduate education in creative writing and i Cannot Determine if rebels is good or if i'm just so personally fucked up by giant space wolves that i can no longer see it clearly

also

i wrote 7k of organic chemistry today and i'm hoping to get ahead by a couple chapters so it'll still be a while before i post (wednesday maybe?)

and then i'll focus on office au bdsm rexsoka

and then maybe (?) my post-apocalypse au

and then the puppyboy ezra fic no one will read but that's okay because i am writing it for me

i have more thoughts on rebels and clone wars and i'd love to write some metas but right now i need to face the treacherous mountain climb of fic-writing ahead of me and make peace with it

#physically i am in ohio #but spiritually i am on moraband watching ahsoka fight darth vader to the death #and refusing to leave him #willing to die with him #and then gets abruptly ripped out of time #i'm sorry for all the personal posts lately #and i'm sorry in advance for the queue i plan to fill soon with fanart and gifsets #but i've been avoiding the tag for so long #it will be my little treat #rebels #tcw

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gracestone · 2 years

Text

I got an anon ask on the 31st of January that I've been meaning to answer for ages, but it's really long and I don't wanna clog up the tags that much, especially since it mostly goes into fandom discourse rather than character meta or speculation. So I decided to make a new post about it and answer it that way, because I could put it under a read more.

ANON: Ok something I noticed is that people love to bring up the part where Ashlyn words her relationship with Gina and Ej weirdly and how Jamie considered Ej a big brother figure to Gina and that’s why they wouldn’t work out because many people see them as a brother and sister but here is my thing on it. Since when do people care so much about how OTHER people see their relationship.

We're talking about antis here, anon. With antis, you gotta look behind the words that they're saying, cause those words are generally meaningless and mostly a result of their willful delusion. Willful being the key word here. They don't actually care about what other characters think of Portwell. They're just grasping for any kind of validation for wanting Portwell to break up and for Gicky to happen. Because Portwell isn't giving them any actual canon reasons to root against them. So they have to come up with reasons.

I'd like to believe that none of them actually misunderstood what Ashlyn meant. They understood perfectly fine that the show was making a joke by having Ashlyn awkwardly word that she loves both EJ and Gina and just wants what makes them happy. Just like they understood that Jamie has barely seen EJ and Gina together and that he simply misunderstood what they are to each other, especially since last he saw Gina she was way too young for dating. But that doesn't help their agenda, so they twist canon to make themselves feel better about their ship.

ANON: Why are OTHER peoples opinions on their relationship more important then how the ACTUAL couple feels about each other? They are basically saying the opinions of friends is more important than how Ej and Gina actually see each other. I’ve gotten responses from friends saying that me and my bf look like we could be siblings and it’s happened more than once. Does that mean I just give up because they see me like that? I got those type of responses even before I got together with him but I didn’t let that stop me and now I’m going three years strong because I knew what I wanted regardless of what other people thought. Do people really let the opinions of other people stop them from loving who they want to love? Are they really putting other peoples opinions before their own happiness.

Again, it's just antis being antis. It has nothing to do with common sense and I don't think it's how they actually feel about relationships either. It's just to further their Gicky agenda. That's all. All antis are transparent that way. Once you find a way to instantly see that when reading their takes, you won't feel the need to defend your own ship anymore. Because you'll know they're just saying meaningless words while they're throwing a temper tantrum over not being able to have what they want.

Also for people who do see them as siblings…if you’re looking at your siblings like that then…idk what to tell you but that’s weird. You asking your sibling to kiss you, you asking them out on romantic dates? Is that what we’re doing in this world now?

Antis don't genuinely see them as siblings. They just wanted Portwell to have no possibility of ever becoming romantic, so they started labelling them as siblings. But obviously that didn't stop the show from going there. When antis start calling ships that the story frames as romantic or on their way to becoming romantic "platonic besties" or "siblings", that just means they're super threatened by that ship. So if anything, that's a sign that they can see that ship coming from a mile away and that they know the ship will be important.

ANON: And even though Ashlyn considers Gina a sister do people still forget THEY AREN’T ACTUALLY RELATED AND NEVER WILL BE (unless future PW happens) BUT WE WON’T SEE THAT SO BESIDES THE POINT! Being called a sister doesn’t make her automatically related to Ashlyn so it shouldn’t even be wrong. Gina may be an honorary Caswell but she isn’t an official Caswell so she has no relations with them at all so nothing should be weird even if she is living with Ash.

Again: it's just antis saying words. I think they all understand perfectly fine that Gina and Ashlyn are in no way related and that Ashlyn seeing Gina as a sister on reflects on their closeness and has no influence on how Gina sees EJ. But that doesn't help their agenda, so they try and twist it.

Try to just see it as the hilarious nonsense that it is, instead of feeling the need to defend your ship. Don't get me wrong, I get that defensive reaction, but it's much healthier for you to change your mindset about all of this. Being in fandoms will become much more relaxing that way 😊

ANON: And honestly something else I notified is that even though people pointed out him going to graduating and going college and her living with Ashlyn, those weren’t the reasons that were worrying him about Gina while tells me he has some type of plan and doesn’t care about those obstacles because he really wants to make it work with Gina and I find that beautiful. Relationships like this can in fact work, just because Ricky and Nini spiraled during long distance doesn’t mean that Ej and Gina will do the same cause I still feel like that is once again bad writing. I mean if you think about it people think that Ej and Gina won’t do good because they are in two different parts in their lives but with Gina going into her junior year, she’s going to be thinking about colleges and if anything that’s something that Ej can help her with if she needs it. I’ve been long distance for three years, it’s hard but if you really like/love the person you’ll make it work.

I totally agree. Long distance was hard for Rini for various reasons, but I think it mainly came down to their different relationships with change and how Lynne also moved away from Mike before the divorce, which had a great negative impact on Ricky. All of that made long distance incredibly hard for him, and in turn for Nini too. Not to mention that Nini wasn't enjoying YAC as much as she hoped. But both of them worked super hard on making it work and still finding ways to be there for each other. Which they managed to do in some ways, even if it didn't always go perfectly smooth.

That was just my long way of saying that Rini's situation was totally different than Portwell's will likely be post-S3. Personally, I think that Tim plans on keeping EJ on the show in the same capacity as he has in S1-3, which means that EJ will have to stick around at East High in some way. It's a show about the Wildcats, after all. A long distance plotline with EJ in a different location just isn't sustainable long term. It'd require different sets, new characters (with actors who need to get paid), separate storylines, etc. It's just too expensive to do that for multiple seasons. So EJ will most likely go to a college near East High and help out Miss Jenn and/or Mazzara in some capacity, giving him a reason to be at East High.

I don't see EJ trying out a college out of state for about half a season before transferring to one closer to East High. The writers already did the long distance storyline with Rini and had Nini figure out that YAC wasn't for her, so I don't think they'll repeat that with EJ. And that would mean that Portwell don't need to do long distance.

You make a good point about how Gina will likely start thinking about college in her junior year. It will still be early, but it could be a good time for her to start thinking about where she imagines her future going and what she wants for herself. She's never had that luxury, so I can imagine that this would take her some time. And who better to help her than EJ, who understands not having thought about what you want for yourself and needing time to figure that out?

ANON: Ok super sorry a long one it kinda just kept coming. You’re amazing💜

No need to apologise! I get needing to vent sometimes. And thank you so much 🥺❤️ I hope I was able to help a little. I'd love nothing more than to help this fandom find better ways to deal with antis and to not feel any negative emotions anymore when reading their willfully delusional takes.

#hsmtmts #hsmtmts fandom discourse #portwell #ej caswell #gina porter #portwell meta #portwell speculation #hsmtmts speculation #ask

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terramythos · 3 years

Text

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 2 of 26

Title: Authority (The Southern Reach #2) (2014) - REREAD

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre/Tags: Horror, Science Fiction, Ecological Horror, Cosmic Horror, Mystery, Weird, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 1/05/2021

Date Finished: 1/10/2021

John "Control" Rodriguez, a disgraced former spy, is given an opportunity to redeem himself at the Southern Reach, the clandestine organization that oversees the mysterious and horrifying Area X. The director has gone missing following the disastrous "twelfth" expedition in Annihilation. Control is brought in to take over her job and fix the Southern Reach... and perhaps find a way to combat the insidious, paranormal effects of Area X.

But Control soon discovers just how deep Area X's corruption infects the place. Even worse, failures of the past-- both his own and those of the Southern Reach-- return to haunt him in disturbing ways. Badly outmatched within and without, Control will need to do everything he can to save not only the organization, but himself.

The last fragment of video remained in its own category: "Unassigned." Everyone was dead by then, except for an injured Lowry, already halfway back to the border.

Yet for a good twenty seconds the camera flew above the glimmering marsh reeds, the deep blue lakes, the ragged white cusp of the sea, toward the lighthouse.

Dipped and rose, fell again and soared again.

With what seemed like a horrifying enthusiasm.

An all-consuming joy.

Full review, some spoilers, and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: some body horror but way toned down compared to Annihilation. Mind control/hypnotic suggestion is still a thing. Non graphic sexual content. Disturbing images. Without spoiling the entire book, there are several scenes that come off as gaslighting, but do have an alternate explanation. As before, a pervasive sense of unreality.

While Annihilation is a deep dive into the horrors of Area X, Authority takes a step back. It examines the situation from the perspective of the Southern Reach, the organization that oversees the expeditions we got to know so intimately in the last book. Control is a newcomer, so he functions as a natural outsider perspective. However, he's far from naïve due to his past experience in what I have to assume is the CIA (just called "Central" in the book). It's clear from the get-go that the Southern Reach is falling apart with its ancient buildings, circular and helpless theories, dwindling funding, and bizarre office politics. While Annihilation frames the Southern Reach as shady and possibly complicit in Area X's existence, Authority demonstrates the government would be predictably bad at handling an unknowable cosmic horror zone over any length of time.

Though I noted in my Annihilation review that most of the mystery surrounding Area X remains just that, Authority casually drops two major revelations in the first few chapters. First is... it's definitely aliens, right? Like, that's the only explanation that tracks-- why everything about the place is anathema to humanity, why it's impossible for characters to fully understand it, why mimicry is such a major aspect, etc. If you didn't suspect this already, it explains a lot. In particular, the "colonization" terminology and imagery in Annihilation hits different in that context. I have a lot of feelings about how this series approaches the extraterrestrial, but I'll save that for my Acceptance review.

The second reveal is that Control is taking over for the former director of the Southern Reach, who is MIA following Annihilation's "twelfth" expedition. Who is the director? The psychologist-- the pseudo antagonist of the last book, who we know got Super Killed Off. Turns out she's important and probably not actually evil? The biologist is also inexplicably back, but something is off about her, and she insists on being called Ghost Bird now. Did the biologist truly return (counter to the ending of the last book) or is this one of the shells Area X sometimes spits back out into the real world? If she's the latter, Ghost Bird seems to have much more personality and self awareness than the others. It is interesting to consider an entity of Area X would willingly name herself.

So, Authority is a weird book. The horror element is still present, but toned down. Instead, there's a lot of focus on the new character Control, his past, and the workings of the Southern Reach. In some ways this is refreshing. Annihilation (and the finale Acceptance) are so deeply entwined with Area X it's hard to see what "normal" looks like, and Authority brings that perspective. Relatively speaking. Second, and this is a spoiler, much of that normalcy is a facade. Control is basically mind controlled (heh) by a faction in Central, and is unaware of it for most of the book. It comes across in little ways, like the anachronistic storytelling and Control's confusion/disorientation at times.

We also learn that Area X doesn't just contaminate things inside it, but things outside it as well... and it's been doing this for some time. As a result, there's always a sense of Area X lurking in the periphery, manifesting in strange and unexpected ways. Something I like is the background chatter Control overhears being lines from Annihilation, which he isn't aware of, but the reader sure is.

I've read this book a few times, and while there are things I really like about it, it's probably my least favorite of the trilogy. I think the slower pacing and different narrative approach have merits, but just aren't as interesting to me as the rest of the series. It's noteworthy that my favorite bits in Authority are the disturbing video of the first expedition and the sudden End of Evangelion-esque return of Area X near the end-- not the espionage and philosophical tangents that comprise most of the book. There are several ideas that seem interesting but don't go anywhere, and those feel like a waste of space. I think Authority could be pared down to half its page count and still get across the same feelings and general concept.

Control is also not the most interesting protagonist, especially compared to previous and later characters. He's not terrible, but he spends most of his time just thinking in circles and observing mundane office politics. While this is fine at first it starts to drag as the story goes on. As I said, a lot of tangents go nowhere, and there's not much going on beyond those until well over halfway into the book. Control does have a hidden tragic backstory, and it's interesting enough, but it barely factors into the overarching Area X storyline outside some symbolic comparisons. He feels out of place, perhaps intentionally.

I do like the dry humor and observations Control brings and how they contrast with the intense tone of Annihilation. I can also see the appeal of having a more ordinary character, if only to bring context to the extraordinary. But the problem is Control isn't ordinary. He's the youngest member of a dynasty of professional spies! Yet somehow I just don't find him exciting compared to an antisocial biologist. I dunno. Ultimately Control is a pawn in the story, used and manipulated by other people, and (spoilers) this doesn't change in Acceptance.

I had similar dilemmas with VanderMeer's Ambergris books, particularly book two, so perhaps it's a fact about his writing. When it's good it's GOOD, but sometimes the things I like get lost in rambling narrative fluff. The question is whether getting through the less interesting parts is worth it for the really good parts. With The Southern Reach trilogy, I'd argue the latter. I have no issues with the style or pacing in Annihilation or Acceptance, and the overarching story is fascinating.

I've mentioned many times before that I usually struggle with book twos in trilogies, and this one isn't an exception. However, I do appreciate what Authority is going for on a meta and lore level when viewing the series as a whole. It does establish a lot of things that either explain earlier stuff or pay off later; it just takes a while to get to them. The context of everything else bumps this to an 8.

#taylor reads #8/10 #2021 reading challenge #google why was this image so crisp yet i couldn't find anything good for annihilation. biphobia at its finest #i like how this review turned out :>

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vampycat237 · 2 years

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I love your art style, it's so cute! Can you tell us anything about Becca Cake? They have such an interesting design, and I'd love to know more about them-- especially how it got its vampire form!

thank you!! the becca cake art is my attempt to mimic the sparklecare style actually - though i appreciate the compliment regardless!!

I'm so glad you like their design! I have a bunch of variants on Starr (Becca is one of them) because they're one of my main sonas and i love their design so much haha!

oh boy now for the Lore Dive (tm), ill put this under a cut because it is LONG

So, Becca's story isn't extremely fleshed out at the moment, but the gist of it is that they were living a pretty normal life, probably attending college (not sure what they are studying, i have a few ideas but haven't settled on any!) and one of their friends invites them to this party. Not 100% on the details but somebody they don't know at the party turns them into a vampire (unwillingly). (this is what the "worst party ever" bit on their ref is about!)

They then have to deal with, well, Being A Vampire. Becca doesn't want to hurt anybody, and feels generally Awful about the whole vampire situation.

I think maybe they would start like, trying to go to doctors or something, looking for a way to reverse what has happened, but if they do, any doctors they see flat out don't believe them. (something along the vein of "vampires aren't real, it seems like you're just really sensitive to food", "you being attacked has nothing to do with your symptoms", "did you look this up on boogle or something?" general dismissiveness :( ) That, or they don't get a chance to visit other doctors before things start getting bad.

(disordered eating cw below? maybe? i don't know? it's not meant to reference eating disorders but it could be read that way potentially and i don't really want to risk making folks uncomfortable by Not tagging it? okay anyway)

Normal food is just not cutting it - and is frankly uncomfortable to eat now that their body is designed to digest blood (how? magic i guess?? idk vampirism being contagious has never made sense to me but it's Interesting) - and once the thirst is unbearable they start lashing out, brand new vampire instincts taking over and causing them to try to feed on the nearest anthry they can find. This uh. Does not go well in public. Unsure if the police get called first or Sparklecare, but either way they end up at the hospital and well... it doesn't help at all of course.

(end disordered eating cw)

Whether or not Sparklecare believes Becca being a vampire or not, i doubt they would be all that willing to provide blood for them to drink hgslkdjf. and i'd think they probably are roomed alone at least initially, though this depends on whether one of my friend's OCs arrives before or after Becca - some friends and i have a shared fanon(?) and those two are supposed to be roommates.

they pretty much just isolate themself to the best of their ability until they uh, establish a regular blood source. At that point they probably feel comfortable enough to actually socialize with other patients, maybe even make a few friends...

though then my friend's OC's arc kicks in and things get screwed up again lmao. but that's it! that's what i have for Becca so far! hope you enjoyed it!

Also not lore related but thought I'd mention while I'm here, Becca's design also has lots of meta ties to other versions of Starr - there's a good handful of alternate Starr versions now haha. the concept of a starr version being a vampire comes from vampire!Starr, pretty self explanatory. their more pastel colors in the "before it all went wrong" and "worst party ever" palettes come from Starr's feral/warriors form Strawberry, and the idea of their wings being brown and blue come from a doodle i did of Starr as a bat once lol (vampire!Starr's wings are dark brown). Also, the premise of their character arc is pretty similar to a human/vampire version of Starr I cooked up for a dnd campaign one of my friends runs, though the execution is different.

#becca cake #starr variant #ask #oc lore

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softnorwegians · 6 years

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hi there! i've loved your blog and skam insights for so long, and was really intrigued about what you wrote in your tags about how the use of cherry wine re even's pov was masterful. if you were interested, i'd love to here more about your thoughts in relation to even and cherry wine. no pressure though! sending lots of love, esp after your recent car accident - i've been in one before and they really are so scary and traumatic. i hope you're okay xxx

Aww, thank you, that’s so sweet~ I’m sorry to hear you’ve been through it too but yeah, it shakes you up even when everyone is okay. I think it’s one of those moments that just makes you remember how much is out of your control. I’m honored to have been a go-to blog for so long, it’s hard to believe someone could still be interested in more over a year later! hahaha, I keep thinking I’ve meta-ed all I possibly can… yet somehow, there’s still a little more to scratch? I don’t think I have too much to say except the obvious but I’ll say that for you! 💕

Okay, so, at that point, we’d already established a lot: song lyrics as a mode of communication from Even, his love of Nas, and more than that, the music in Skam s3 had already been very meta, it’s almost a larger-than-life part of the show. The use of Cherry Wine stands out for me because it came at this heightened moment; there probably wasn’t a time in the season when viewers more wanted an update than after that Friday when everything fell apart. So, we wound up in this interesting place, where we were more ready and anxious to hear from Even than Isak was. The lyrics of Cherry Wine are moving in and of themselves but I think they were even more so because… we immediately get it. That Even doesn’t feel like he can reach out more than indirectly and his meaning with this one is really transparent. It starts here:

The noise in my head, the curse of the talented

Which pings right away as him acknowledging his bipolar, an emotional moment in itself because it’s really the first time we get to see him do that. It’s the first time that Isak and Even and the audience are all on the same page here. In the same text we get:

Strong communicator,vagabondI gallivant around the equator, And that would get me off the radar

Less direct but there’s this sense of owned unreliability (vagabond, gallivant) and also not wanting to be seen (get me off the radar, though I like the other copy of the lyrics that he didn’t use better “if that would get me off the radar”) that really clicks with Even as we’ve seen him; seemingly confident, unpredictable, and in this place of not wanting to tell Isak (before it came out on its own).

Then there’s a break and next:

It’s so intense, I’m on my Lilo and StitchPour my Pino Grigio with some lime what is this?

Again, it’s an easy read to see him relating this to being bipolar with “It’s so intense, I’m on my Lilo and Stitch”. There’s even a sense of being in a usual state (with on marking it as not always something happening but my marking it something reoccurring and personal) of being pulled in two directions (Lilo and Stitch) there.

An immaculate version of me and my babyWith all respect ‘cause you the only one that gets me

This keys in perfectly with us just having established ‘baby’ as their petname of choice in the scene the night before. And “an immaculate version” fits really well with that night too, with the white sheets and “uendelig” and the purity of that moment, as well as all the different ‘versions’ of Isak-and-Even being their thing. (This is especially notable as a lyrical pick Even would have had to make himself, because that’s the clean version of the lyrics and not the original ones.) And obviously “With all respect ‘cause you the only one that gets me”… my heart. 😭😭😭 That line really hurts because Even is putting it all out there, how much being with Isak has meant to him, how real it’s been for him and how he’s felt like Isak really gets him… but it’s only coming after Isak is thinking he doesn’t really know him at all. Which Even would be well aware was likely to be happening right now.

Where is he? The man who was just like meI heard he was hiding somewhere I can’t seeWhere is he? The man who was just like meHeard he was hiding somewhere I can’t see

And then obviously this hurtssss too because you know it’s a question Even probably asked in more than one way, he probably did ask where Isak was when he was coming down from the episode and now he’s more figurative asking it. And once again reinforcing the connection and similarity between them, right as he’s aware it might be breaking… ouch.

And I’m alone and I realize that when I get homeI wanna go through my red and my cherryYes, I’m alone and I realize when I get homeI wanna go through my red and my cherry

“And I’m alone and I realize that when I get home” just… it makes me think Julie Andem had this song in mind all along when structuring the end of ep 8. This is why it feels so masterful, it’s speaking for Even without requiring him to actually speak. We couldn’t really get anymore from Even at this point because Isak is our pov character and he isn’t ready to talk to him again but Cherry Wine brings us through exactly what Even must have gone through post 15:15-1:01 himself. On one hand, there’s an underlying unease you get from the resignation of “And I’m alone” moving to “Yes, I’m alone”. It fits into how he feels alone in his brain and also how he was talking the night before about losing what they had, anticipating it before it happened. The melancholy and yearning feeling of this section, the reaching out with “I wanna go through my red and my cherry” is perfect to bring you from Even last night to Even now. It’s especially poignant, how much the lyrics are about searching and calling out. As he’s showing by sending these lyrics in the first place, Even might have been telling himself that losing Isak was inevitable but he doesn’t want to. He’s still reaching out with this, it’s just in a very heartbreaking way.

Yeah, yeah, let’s pour some cherry wineEverything’s good, everything’s fineYeah, yeah, we bring it every timeYeah, pour a little cherry wine

Yeah, hey yo, salaam, yeah, I think they know the timeEverything’s good, everything’s fineYeah, pour a little cherry wine, yeahLife is good, life is good, yeah

Life is good, no matter whatLife is good, life is goodLife if [sic] good, yeah, no matter whatLife is good

And then the lyrics end with this repetition of both “Everything’s good, everything’s fine” and “Life is good” that here reads like an attempt at self-reassurance, an attempt to keep things together when things clearly aren’t fine and Even isn’t able to see that “life is good” at all. The staccato repetition of the end is something that becomes a good split between Even and Isak’s perspectives too: for Even, it feels like he needs to keep repeating this to himself, keep trying to tell himself this and for Isak, it emphasizes how all of this is speeding past as he reads, not really getting through and seeming an incomprehensible stream of words.

That’s the other real point of genius with this, it’s well established to us that Isak isn’t getting all this from the lyrics. The clip opens with this tense, ominous guitar riff and Isak reading about bipolar disorder and the sound of all these texts coming in close together that he’s ignoring. So of course we get it, that he doesn’t get it. That it seems like maybe another inexplicable thing Even is doing because he’s manic, that it reminds Isak too much of the incoherent strings of biblical texts that he gets from his mother and ignores. It also opens with this already in progress (the first thing we hear is a text arriving) and since the lyrics we get are the end of the song, it’s very likely Even has been sending him the whole thing. Which makes it easier for us to do a targeted reading on what Even means by this but harder for Isak.

And then there’s this really nice other layer that comes with Skam being very grounded in the real world, that you can go read about the song and any meta about it does exist for them too. So this time, it was such a punch in the gut to have someone point out after this clip:

Annnnnnd know that Even would most likely know that as a fan of Nas. You can even go back and pick through the rest of the lyrics we didn’t see him send and do a deep read on them too, like “I want some who like the champagne I like / My a-alike, someone to talk me off the bridge any day or night” and know Even is over there connected to this too. So now we get to go into this week hearing about what Even is feeling from Even himself… and yet we kind of got this message under Isak’s nose. He was there, he read it too but only we fully got the message. This was just such a smart way to make use of his limited perspective.

Cherry Wine is more vital than it might seem because it’s really our one window into Even’s thoughts before we get his text in at the end of ep 9. I think it serves to get us there, to see just how deeply this could have effected him, when we have an idea of how much Even much is trying to say and the response being “Hi Even. I don’t understand shit right now. Stop texting me.” It allows us to be more in Even’s head with the depth of the loss he feels, which is important when he’s about to go to such a low place after this.

#anon #replies #skam #even bech næsheim #isak x even #9.10 part 1 #nas's cherry wine #music #my posts #I... had more to say than I thought #this is like my FAVORITE though #it's such a payoff of the way they've been using music all season #btw anon #if you ever want to come talk personally feel free!#I feel like I want to reciprocate your investment in me here!#❤❤❤

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