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totiredtowrite · 3 years

Note

Nonononono hear me out right? Imagine Oikawa, one of the most powerful demons around, snags a reader who wants to be a hero and just kind of says 'aight this ones mine now'

Powerless

Warnings - Mentions of killing, the word blade, a religious joke here or there, cursing, referenced nsfw, the req was short but I managed to make this long af, sorry if the ending is trash :(, might do a part 2

Note: I have one mood and this is it

Male Reader - Fem Readers DNI, Respect The Boundaries of the Writers. ✨This isn't about you✨

Demon King Oikawa Tooru.

Infamous for a...multitude of things. For one, his power. Two, the astounding number of people who lust after him. Cults and chapels have been erected in his favour, solely because of his attraction. Nobodies even sure if he's a demon of lust at this point, or if he's just naturally handsome.

And lastly, of course, his ego. His power gives him a big head, though that isn't undeserved. He's just as cocky as he's allowed to be. While it may seem like overkill to some people, they'll quickly find that all of his self conceit is well earned.

Of course, that makes him a big target. Any heroes career would be made if they could kill the demon king. Hell, some get publicity just by returning alive. Young, naive, aspiring heroes want to get his head on a platter more than anything.

And, of course, you were no exception.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ 🃑 ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"I just don't think you're cut out for this, son."

At first you'd scoffed. Chalked it up to your mentor being crazy. After all, he was the one who trained you for this!

Nearing the end of the dead forest though, you were starting to wish that you'd listened to him. The energy, the atmosphere, felt like it was wrapping around your neck. You could almost see the dark tendrils around your throat.

The whispers of the forest- prominent, though unintelligible- faded the farther you got from the tree line. Anyone with eyes, ears, or even a nose could tell how corrupt the land was here. Dead birds, ravens to be exact, littered the grounds. Every few yards, you had to step over or around a carcass.

Your torch, near burnt out, clattered to the ground.

There wasn't any need for it anymore, the dim sunset illuminating the deathly area. A small shudder tore through your body. It's like you could feel eyes on you, even in the obviously vacated expanse.

The castle wasn't any better.

Cracked and broken cobblestone lined the pathway up to the doors, travelling up a rather steep hill. From where you stood, you could see the different layers. True to it's unholy resident, the castle was make of dark brick and stone. Sharp, jagged pillars jutted up at the tips of towers, pyres in small heaps littering the area. Some looked as if they were already burnt.

Your hand drifted to your side. There your sword hung, sheathed tightly in a leather casing. The sword was all you really needed, though a couple extra daggers and limited magic items were helpful. After all, it was the demon king. Just a sword wasn't going to kill him off.

You smiled at the thought of your sword being framed when you became a well-known hero, famous for being the blade to deliver the finishing blow.

Those thoughts were quickly disrupted as a bird fell to the ground at your feet.

You grimaced, gently kicking the corpse out of the way and continuing on the rocky cobblestone path. There hasn't been any sign of people for the last two miles. You knew that there was an immensely powerful demon king not even twenty minutes away from you, but it felt like there was nobody for miles on end.

Obviously though, no sane person would get as close to this place as you were.

With one final, (and tentative) step, you arrived at the front door. It felt like any and all sound was swallowed by the walls, all of your senses instantly on edge. Nothing felt right here. It almost made you want to turn around, but you've already made it this far. It would make no sense.

Drawing in another shaky breath, your hand made its way to the door handle. Not much skin touched it through your gloves, yet you could just sense how wrong it felt.

You could only hope that the next time you see these doors, you'd still have your head.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ 🃑 ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Nobody told Oikawa that being the demon king would be so...boring.

As opposed to what everyone thinks, it's actually rather monotonous. Wake up, go seduce some townspeople, maybe burn a village or two, kill some heroes who come by, and repeat. Nothing happened that he didn't expect anymore.

Hell, it's gotten to the point where he just smites heroes before they even finish their little speech!

In his defense though, their speeches were starting to sound the same. All the "you are an ungodly creature of darkness"s and "I must avenge my family"s just felt the exact same. They only wanted to kill him for the publicity, the bounty, or some stupid thing about their families legacy. He's so bored.

His thoughts were quickly interrupted, (thank god), by the sound of footsteps pounding on the floor. All at once the door to the throne room swung open, a sweating and panting Kuroo standing there. His black hair was wind tousled, sweat glinting on his forehead.

"Wow," Oikawa scoffed. "Somethings got you running."

Kuroo stood up straight, shrugging and attempting to appear collected. "What do you mean?"

Oikawa raised his brows.

"Right, there's a hero in the castle." Kuroo chuckled awkwardly. "Want us to take care of him?"

Oikawa perked up. Another hero? Really? He wasn't looking forward to doing the same dance again, though maybe this time it would be slightly different. "Let him in," he grinned. "Maybe this one will have something for me." He was never one to turn down opportunity.

Kuroo, plagued by a bit of disbelief, nodded and left the throne room. Presumably it was to tell the fox twins.

Another wicked smile split the Demon King's face, brown hair shifting as he tilted his head to the side. Somehow, he got the feeling that this time, something interesting would happen.

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You figured that the castle would be partly deserted, but this was just weird.

No sign of any living beings. Demons, animals, humans, nothing. Was it an ambush? Quite possibly. Still though, you continued on through the halls.

The inside, just like the outside, was made of dark stone and brick. The floors were marbled and grey, veins of gold running through it. It was actually relatively pretty. You thought that there would be skulls and bones everywhere, bodies even. The castle was well taken care of.

Your eyes narrowed suspiciously. Seriously, there was no one. You thought that the all powerful Demon King would at least have some guards stationed around. You were grateful for it though, the lack of protection making it easier for you to get into the castle.

In truth you weren't exactly sure where you were headed. You believed the demon king to be in his throne room, though where exactly that was remained a mystery.

Using your limited knowledge of how castles are built, you slowly tried to make your way to the center of the castle. The back center, specifically. You hoped that you'd find the throne room there, plus you were following the remnants of magic.

Even not being a magic user yourself, it would be hard not to feel the weird fluctuations of energy in these halls. Demons always left some kind of trail behind. Which, of course, made this weirder. Nobody was stopping you, but it was clear that there were being in the castle aside from the king himself.

A thought struck you as you reached two huge double doors. (They no doubt led to the throne room). Was it possible that the demons were letting you get this close? Of course, there had to be some kind of second meaning behind it, right?

Drawing in a breath, you flung the doors open.

The throne room was different than the rest of the castle, if only slightly. Grey marble and gold veins staying the same of course, the walls slightly lighter than before. If you had the time to look closely, you'd notice the oxidized bloodstains on the walls.

"Well well, look who's finally showed up!"

Your breath hitched in your throat, barely registering the door creaking closed behind you the moment you stepped forward. He was just as...no, more terrifying up close. The horns jutting out from the sides of his head, twisted upward, held a muted purple colour that shined in the equally muted light. His tone of voice was teasing, almost whiny.

You couldn't tell if his eyes were brown or red, but either way they glowed dangerously. "Well, boy?" He tilted his head, soft brown hair bouncing slightly. "You are here to kill me...aren't you?" His tone shifted. Deeper, more serious.

Your hand quickly made its way to your sword, eyes darting from his horns to his eyes.

He laughed. "Why do you keep looking at my horns like that? You are here for my head, are you not?" You wanted to nod, though he spoke before you could get an answer out.

"Wait a minute. You're here for something more...carnal, aren't you?"

Your eyes widened. "What- no! I'm here for your head!" Your grip on the swords hilt tightened. The rumors about his looks were true, (maybe even understating them), however that is not what you're here to do.

The teasing smirk dropped off of his face. "Oh. Lame."

Your brows knitted together. "Lame?" What was that supposed to mean?

"Oh nothing," he rolled his eyes. "So if you're going to deliver a speech, best do it now. Before I, you know, kill you real bad."

You only looked more confused.

Oikawa scoffed at your lack of response. "Jeez, come on, you know what a soliloquy is right?"

"Well yes but I don't think that really applies here-"

"Tomato whatever, get on with it!" He'd turned around, hands firmly gripping your shoulders.

Your breath stopped short for a second.

"Oh come one," his face moved closer. "Is a little proximity all it takes for you to freeze up? Maybe you aren't cut out to be a hero, boy," he snickered. His nose was brushing yours, breath minty and cold.

Without thinking, your sword was at his side in a flash of silver. Maybe it was just out of reflex, the need to defend yourself. The blank, shocked look on your face morphing into one of confusion. Why wasn't your sword moving further? "Was that the best you could do?" The king whispered.

Looking down, you realize just why he was so revered. He'd caught the blade in his hand, a trickle of black blood visible on his palm. No grimace, no noise of pain, nothing. "Hey, eyes up here sweetheart," one of his clawed hands was on your chin now. The wound, one that would cut almost anyone's hand off, didn't seem to throw him off his rhythm at all.

Horror and realization befell you as your eyes met his. You weren't ready. You didn't know what to do, except relax and let instinct take over. So that's what you did.

You let the sword fall out of your hand, causing him to have to catch it at an awkward angle. Using his moment of distraction, you reached into a bag at your hip. Sand. Sure, he was a demon, though it's not like his eyes were impervious to sand.

The dust hit him in the eyes, a startled, strangled noise leaving him. You turned, darting to the only open window as fast as possible. Jumping was not a good idea by any means, though maybe you could use the little magic you knew to your own advantage. You hesitated. You didn't mean to, but really it was just in your nature to be a little cautious.

Oikawa's eyes cleared just in time to see you fall out the window, hands darting back and forth and lips moving. Magic. "You clever little thing," he snarled, at the window in only a few seconds flat. He almost jumped out after you, but then he stopped. Sure he could follow you, but what would be the point? It makes more sense to simply leave you to come back on your own.

"Hey!"

You didn't look back at the sound of his voice, though you did catch the next words to fall from his mouth. "The names Tooru, by the way!"

You didn't say a word, focused on the cold burn of your heart pounding and your legs moving. You'd failed far faster than you thought you would, but you'd be back. You didn't even bother to step around the birds, only focused on getting out. After all, he'd let you leave. There wasn't any way you were taking that for granted.

Back at the castle, Oikawa's hands were still gripping the window's edge. He'd watched your form run until he could hardly see you, still gazing off in that direction. The twins were hovering behind him, wondering when the right time would be to speak. The bloodied sword on the ground, (and the grains of sand), were clear signs that you'd done something.

After elbowing one another for a minute, Osamu spoke up. "Would you like us to take care of it, Lord?" He pushed Atsumu back in an attempt to seem more dignified.

They got silence for a second before he responded. "No. That one is mine. Leave him be." The twins nodded in unison, leaving the room like they were never there.

You didn't do much. There were other heroes who'd done far more to him then you had, though still, something stuck with him. Maybe it was the utterly useless conversation you'd shared before anything actually happened. Maybe it was the vague potential he saw.

In any case, he was going to see you once more. Somewhere you'd least expect him.

Oikawa never was fond of leaving unfinished business.

#hq x male reader #m!reader #anime x male reader #x male reader #male reader #haikyuu x male reader #tooru oikawa x male reader #oikawa x male reader #tooru x male reader

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thoughts-on-bangtan · 4 years

Text

Let’s talk: Blue & Grey - analysis?

by Admin 1 & 2

From anon: I know it sounds like Delulu, so I write anonymously because I’m ashamed. The “blue & gray” lyrics sound like something Tae writes about Jimin to me. The words “my angel” (Jimin is an angel), “someone save me” (we saved each other many times), someone will call in the evening (after work in the evening we meet face to face) “I am blue and gray” (when I’m blue, Jimin’s smile is enough). To me it sounds a bit like lovesick ??? “I want to be happy” (Tae is happiest when he’s with me)

This is an interesting ask, and I don’t necessarily think it’s delulu of you to think this way, even if there are some who would claim otherwise. We know what Blue & Grey is about thanks to everything Tae, as well as some of the other members, said about it at the BE press con as well as Tae’s BE Weverse comeback interview, that it’s lyrics and music born out of Tae’s own feeling of burnout, of being blue and grey, and also is meant as this song to bring comfort to those who might currently be feeling the same way. It’s a song that feels authentic in its sincerity, especially because it was written with a raw honestly and introspective by someone who knows that feeling, as well as additional lyrics added to it to make it OT7 by others who have gone through/felt similar things as well.

We know Yoongi felt it, since we read his lyrics for his tracks on Agust D; we know Namjoon felt it, since that’s the feeling out of which mono. was born; we know Seokjin felt it, because that’s how Abyss came to be; and we know Hoseok felt it, because the members have mentioned how he used to be blue & grey before their debut since he’d been a trainee for so long and felt helpless/hopeless at times, like they would never debut; we also know that Jungkook felt it, since it was brought up in connection to the year that almost had them disband, Seokjin mentioning how Jungkook had retreated into himself, barely spoke about his feelings and thoughts, if at all, and they weren’t sure how to reach him; and I’m sure Jimin felt it as well.

So, since we know the backstory of Blue & Grey you might argue there isn’t really anything there to analyze, and in a way, I agree, but just because we know the main point/theme of the song, that doesn’t necessarily meant there can’t be more to it, especially when you consider how originally Blue & Grey was intended for Tae’s mixtape, and how the lyrics used to not only be different than the ones we have on the album, but they also used to be completely in English. In a way you could argue that while the basis of the song was always the same—a song about Tae’s feeling of being blue and grey—the underlying meaning/connections might’ve changed, or simply been modified to fit OT7 more instead of just him.

Before we get into it, one thing I’d like to say is that I’m in no way trying to twist this to say that the only reason for Tae to write songs is to make them about Jimin, I’m not that kind of person and I think his artistry has far more to it and holds so much deep meaning, but looking at the lyrics and things Tae has said about Jimin over the years, it isn’t that farfetched of a connection to make. It can just as well be complete nonsense, of course, but I see no harm in considering the possibility. I respect Tae and his music tremendously and I’d never want to belittle it in any kind of way, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’s written a song with Jimin in mind or referencing things that connect to him, so let’s just entertain the possibility, maybe even put our delulu hats on if that’ll make us feel a bit better, and treat this as something fun and not to be taken so extremely seriously or as facts, yes? Okay. Let’s go below the cut.

First let’s have a look at the original lyrics we first heard for Blue & Grey during In the SOOP, the version that was intended for Tae’s mixtape:

Where's my angel I'm sick and tired of everything Someone come and save myself Cause I can't take it anymore Everywhere I go, everywhere I see Can you look at me cause I'm going free Every time I cry, every time I smile Can you look at me cause I'm blue and grey I just wanna be happier Baby don't let me go.

Even just based on that it’s easy to see how much they have changed between this and the BE OT7 version. For reference, this is how the album version starts, more specifically Tae’s opening verse:

Where is my angel 하루의 끝을 드리운 At the end of the day, casting its shadow Someone come and save me, please 지친 하루의 한숨뿐 is only the sigh of the exhausting day

Like anon pointed out angel could be a reference to Jimin, or literal angels since we know that while Tae isn’t religious (as far as I’m aware) he does believe in angels and calls upon them to help him. But, as recently as his April 2020 vlive where he spoke about Friends, or rather the dumpling incident, he said that afterward when he and Jimin made up and Jimin told him he wants to support him and be his source of strength/energy Tae thought “my gosh, Jimin is such an angel like this. How could I have been in a fight with him?” (though I could swear the subs used to be a little different from this, that he said “how could I fight with an angel like Jiminie?” or something to that effect, (or that maybe our wonderful translators worded it differently during their live translations and I’m just getting confused), but that would mean for some reason at some point the vlive subs were changed thus raises the question why?). But even in previous years there were moments in which Tae called Jimin an angel.

In his letter to Jimin during BV2 in Hawaii, Tae spoke about how whenever he’s in the bathroom to cry, Jimin would cry with him (we also know that Jimin is the only one who truly knew why Tae cried when reading the letter, as well as that during BV3 the staff specifically called for Jimin when they noticed that Tae was crying), or laugh with him, is there for him. That could fit with “Every time I cry, every time I smile” and also make sense in connection with the next line “Can you look at me cause I'm blue and grey” since, in a moment where you feel blue and grey and yet find the strength to look for someone to help you, to reach out to, you’d want a person who’s very close to you to be the one to look at you/approach you, and he said it himself, in his Hawaii letter, how Jimin is his dearest friend, as well as during FESTA 2019, that Jimin is his one and only true best friend. So, what better person to seek solace with than him?

Furthermore, Tae also once said this (notice the mention of feeling blue):

Then the line “I just wanna be happier”, though I can’t really find a specific connection to Jimin in it, it does still fit with something Tae said last year after the release of Dynamite when they were guests on the radio. In it Tae mentioned how he is happy these days (he played the original version of Blue & Grey during ITS recorded some time end of May beginning of June 2020 while the MBC radio appearance was mid-September 2020, so 3-4 months later), how it took him a lot of time to achieve it since he always worried about things, but that he focused on finding happiness and it seems like he did manage to find it. When comparing Tae in the first half of 2020 to Tae in the second half, I think we can all agree that he seemed much, much happier in the second half, so his efforts paid off.

Also, if you remember, Jimin once (or more times) mentioned how Tae is happiest when he’s with Jimin (he could’ve just meant it in a teasing way, of course, but it could’ve also been just played off as such while being true anyway). So, if he’s happiest with Jimin, supposedly, it would make sense to look for him, mention him even if only through references people may or may not pick up on, and in a way it could also work with this line “Baby don't let me go.” because, once you found someone that can help you, that makes you happy and (among other things) keeps the blue and grey away, you’d want them to stay, right?

We don’t really have any details of what helped Tae finding that happiness, be it working on BE and getting to be the visual director, be it working on his mixtape and being able to put all these emotions he hasn’t shared before into his music and finding catharsis through that, or be it something in some shape or form connected to Jimin, all I can really do is speculate, and really, that isn’t really the point, is it? What matters is that he did find his happiness in the end, and found his way out of his blue and grey feeling.

So, we can say that at least the original version of the lyrics did potentially have some connections to Jimin, especially because I’m unwilling to think it’s all just a coincidence since with something as meaningful and personal as a song like this, there are no coincidences. Also, when comparing the ITS version and the BE version, the former seems to be directed at someone, a specific someone, like the latter more toward themselves, an introspective look (thanks to Admin 2 and romanticdrift for pointing that out). It’d be interesting to know how the rest of the song went, how the lyrics continued, and surely that would help a lot in seeing if there were more connections or not, but I guess we’ll simply never know. While the main point/theme of the song was and is, indeed, that blue and grey feeling and basically verbalizing it through lyrics, it isn’t too out there of an idea to think that Tae made those connection to Jimin deliberately as a way of perhaps pointing out a person or something that he looked for while he felt blue and grey, a person/things that helped him or he thought could do so. Though, again, that’s just speculations and theories, not facts, and I could totally be wrong.

One last thing I’d like to mention, and maybe I’m seeing a connection where there isn’t actually one and reading way too much into it, but I’ll share it anyway. In the BE version of Blue & Grey Jimin and Tae sing the following lines together:

괜찮다고 하지 마 Don’t say you’re okay 괜찮지 않으니까 because you aren’t 제발 혼자 두지 말아 줘 너무 아파 Please don’t leave yourself alone, it hurts so much

This, for me, is quite significant, even if doolset interpreted it as them talking to themselves and not someone else/each other, it still reminded me of the following lines from Jimin’s Promise:

아무렇지 않은데 “I’m alright” 그렇게 말하는데 Though I say so, 사실은 내가 그게 아닌가봐 maybe the truth is that I’m not

And I delulu and reading too much into it? I don’t know, but it was one of the first things I thought of when I read the translation of that particular moment in Blue & Grey.

#BE Blue & Grey #Taehyung #Jimin #vmin #an analysis but not really maybe kinda #song commentary #Blue & Grey commentary #is all of this complete nonsense #possible but who knows #answered ask

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iatethepomegranate · 3 years

Text

We are not alone in the dark with our demons, Chapter 17

In which Caleb buys a house in Rexxentrum with Beau and Yasha, becomes a professor, learns to be a person separate from the trauma that shaped his life for so long, and begins the arduous process of preventing what happened to him from happening to anyone else. It gets far more personal than even he could have anticipated.

Content warnings: Caleb's backstory (especially references to abuse and grooming), referenced deaths of family members, near-dissociation, near-panic attacks

Chapter summary: Caleb tries to make some positive decisions for himself and reaches out to Felix to teach him a spell (and help him cope).

Chapter notes: Chapter title is from Silhouette by Sleeping At Last

*****

Chapter 17: It must be so hard, in the mess you’re always cleaning up, to believe in the ghost of unbroken love.

Caleb and Essek dropped Caduceus at the Grove after breakfast the next morning. They would be picking him up again the day after next, along with the rest of the Nein, but any time he could spend with his family was to be treasured.

They then teleported into Beau and Yasha’s side of the house in Rexxentrum. Caleb had begun the process of putting a new teleportation circle in his laboratory, but it would take time, even with Essek’s help.

Yasha peered out from the kitchen. “Hello! You just missed Beau.” She looked at Caleb, who had slept poorly until he had given in and polymorphed himself into a cat, and swept both him and Essek into a tight hug. He liked this side of her, less concerned about making a social fuckup and just doing what felt right.

Essek awkwardly patted her back. “Hello, Yasha.”

She let them go. “Oh, Caleb! I’ll get the note. Give me a moment.” She ran upstairs, thundering around the upper floor.

Essek set a pouch of Xhorhassian spices and fried bugs from the region on the kitchen table; he had gotten lucky at the market yesterday. The peaceful conclusion of the war had freed up trade, allowing a better variety of goods to be found, especially in port cities such as Nicodranas. This also meant Essek had been able to stock up on a few hair and skincare products that were hard to find outside Rosohna. He had insisted on picking up a few products for Caleb as well. Caleb was still a little unused to being clean, let alone having a skincare routine.

Yasha pelted back downstairs and passed Caleb a little scrap of paper. “Here.”

“Danke.” Feeling the high quality of the paper between his fingers, Caleb suspected Nico had torn this piece from his own spellbook. Caleb made plans to leave some paper and ink lying around downstairs in case Nico came again while everyone was out. For now, he committed Nico’s handwriting to memory and stashed the note between the pages of his new journal. Then, he reached into his pocket and handed Yasha its twin. “For you. I thought… maybe it was time we collect happier memories.”

Yasha accepted the leather-bound journal, slightly smaller than her old one so she could keep it on her person with ease. His was identical. “Thank you, Caleb. This is a lovely gift.” She held the leather to her nose and inhaled deeply. She chuckled. “It smells like the ocean.”

“Ja, for now.” He hadn’t told the Nein what his old journal had held. But, if nothing else, the soft look on Yasha’s face confirmed she understood it was tied to his past, much like hers had been. He wasn’t sure he would ever tell the Nein, aside from Essek, what he had truly planned with the letters and the T-Dock. He was sure Beauregard suspected, and possibly Veth, and he was certain the rest, especially Caduceus, had caught on that he was headed down a self-destructive path. But Caleb had made the decision not to pursue it. Unveiling that now would upset them, and he had upset them enough. And Caleb preferred to keep that chapter of his life shut, lest he fall into temptation again.

It was time to look forward, as much as he was capable. As much as the current circumstances would allow him. The past would always have a hold on him, but he could choose to let it guide him towards making things better instead of breaking the world to undo what had already been done.

On that front, he had promised to pay Felix a visit, and Essek had burned his teleportation spells so Caleb still had his free for the day.

***

Caleb landed alone in Blumenthal. His breath still seized in his chest at the sight. He pressed a hand to his sternum and gulped down air until the world stopped spinning. He wondered, a little frantically, whether this would ever get easier. And then the panic passed, and he could breathe again.

He checked in with the gravekeeper, who confirmed they were holding off on the Baumanns’ funeral for a few more days in case Nico was willing and able to attend. He passed on the news that Nico had made a small amount of contact, and Caleb willed himself to exude what quiet optimism he could manage.

The gravekeeper was an elderly widow who had been tending the Blumenthal graves for as long as Caleb could remember. She knew him, of course, and that was unnerving as always. But he was trying to stay calm about the people of Blumenthal knowing the professor visiting Felix had once been Bren, son of Una and Leofric Ermundrud. It was hard, though, knowing there were at least a few neighbourhoods who could make the connection between what happened to the Baumanns, and what happened to the Ermendruds. They had not stated outright at any point that Nico had killed his parents, but the more people who knew about what happened, the more people were likely to suspect the truth. And, of course, the Schneiders knew. Caleb didn’t want the townspeople to think of Nico that way; he was going through enough. Caleb wasn’t sure how he felt about himself, only that there was a weight in his guts that intensified whenever he thought about it too much.

Caleb made one last stop before meeting Felix. He was here anyway, and he had not visited his parents since he had buried the letters with them. So he picked his way through the winding cemetery. It was easy to find his parents again, now that he had been here once.

“Hallo,” he said quietly, kneeling in the grass before their paired gravestones. His last visit hadn’t been that long ago, really, but he had been so swaddled in his grief that it had been hard to think straight. He pulled out the new book and rested it on his knee. “A lot has happened since I last came. I have a house now, in Rexxentrum, and a job teaching at Soltryce Academy. I’m going to stop what happened to me, and the both of you, from happening to anyone else. Best I can, anyway. Mixed success so far.” An inappropriate chuckle escaped him. “It’s… strange. Seeing these young boys, Felix and Nico, who had been set on the same path I had walked. We stopped Felix before he could… but I wasn’t fast enough to save Nico’s parents. I am… doing what I can now. They are both so young. Children, really. And, well, you know children that age rarely feel like children. I didn’t. I think Trent exploited that.”

He let the quiet wash over him. A light, fresh breeze played against his face. Most residents of Blumenthal were probably hard at work right now. This was a farming town, after all.

He remembered the journal on his knee. “Oh, and I have a new book now. This one is for happy memories. Nico left me a thank you note; I suppose that’s the first one. He’s not… he needs time. But I am starting to believe we can help him. I’m… I think that scares me. I understand what he’s going through better than most, but… this is a huge responsibility. I hope I don’t fuck it up. Sorry, mother. I would blame my new friends, but, in truth, I’ve always had a mouth on me. My friends are very cool, though. I think you would have liked them. Well, jury’s out on Beauregard, but she grows on you. Maybe I’ll tell you about our adventures next time I visit. Well, some of them. From Trostenwald, to Xhorhas, to a floating flesh city, to a Rexxentrum courtroom... we had a big year. And it’s because of them that I can bear talking to you like this.”

A tiny thought, right at the back of Caleb’s head, suggested he should bring the Nein next time. Or maybe one or two of them. Nine people clustered around a pair of graves sounded like a lot.

Caleb wanted to stay longer, but he had to check on Felix. He sighed, and pushed himself to his feet. “I will return, I promise. I will not leave you for as long as I did the first time. I love you both.”

He stepped away while he still had the will to do so. The grief was there, but he felt in control of it. For now, at least. And there was a family that needed him.

***

Louise Schneider was tending the vegetable patch in front of the house, while Friedrich knelt by a wooden cart, replacing a damaged wheel. Caleb fought off nausea at the sight of the cart; it looked just like the one his parents had owned. That… was fine. He was fine. Blumenthal-standard cart. The things were everywhere.

Louse set her trowel aside, sitting back on her heels. “Hallo… Caleb?” She was, evidently, struggling a bit to figure out what she was supposed to call him.

“Ja, hallo.” His voice was a little rough, but steady.

“Felix is in his room.” Louise wiped her brow with the back of her glove. “He’s been a little… reclusive.”

Sensing this conversation was going to take more than a few seconds, Caleb sat in the grass with her. “Okay, talk to me. How is he? And how are the two of you?”

Louise huffed a short, rueful laugh. “It is hard to tell how your child is feeling when he barely talks to you.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Caleb said, as gently as he sensed she would tolerate. “My situation was not like Felix’s, but I can understand a little. It’s… not a comfortable feeling to know that all the love in the world is not enough to… to…” He breathed. “All I know is that I have grappled with the guilt of my actions for a long time, and the fact we were able to get to him before it went that far… it does not erase the shame. It is an ugly thing, to face yourself, to face the person you have become, even if you were manipulated and abused and brainwashed to become that person.”

“What the fuck are we supposed to do?” she whispered.

“Love him. Show him you are there for him, in whatever way he can bear.”

Louise gazed back at the house. “But if love wasn’t enough…”

“It takes time,” Caleb told her. “You can’t measure it, or count it. Time looks different for all of us. But with your support, it will be easier for him to come to terms with what happened to him, and to understand he is not a bad person for the things he was persuaded to do, and almost did… easier than it is for me. You have to remember, Frau Schneider, that those of us in the Volstrucker program thought we were serving our country, and we were honoured to do it.”

“We thought the same,” Louise murmured. “When Felix was chosen for the program…” She sighed. “I told Master Ikithon to do whatever it took to help him be what the Empire needed.”

The ground was unsteady beneath Caleb, and he was relieved to be sitting down. “My mother and father felt the same, if Ikithon spoke true. He usually does.” A wave of pettiness overcame him, and he chuckled. “Did. That is why it is so difficult to process. He rarely lied to us outright. And we thought we had a choice. We did, to a degree. We chose to serve, and we thought we had to endure what he put us through and what he asked us to do… so we could serve our country.”

“What do you now believe?”

“I believe there are good people in the Empire,” said Caleb. “There are things worth preserving. The child abuse and murder of innocent Empire citizens are not among of them.” He was getting distracted, so he steered his thoughts back in their original direction. “Now is the time Felix needs you most. The biggest thing that has helped me is knowing there are people who care about me and value me, even when I don’t care about myself.”

“We’re trying,” said Louise. “Thank you. He should be in his room, if you’d like to talk to him.”

“Ja, I will. He has been working on a Transmutation spell, which happens to be my specialty.” Caleb pushed himself to his feet, straightening his coat. “And, Louise?”

“Ja?”

“We were children a long time ago,” he said. “And my memories of Blumenthal are too… complicated to linger on, but I remember your kindness. And I have seen your love for your son. You are a good mother. Remember that, and extend that same kindness to yourself, ja?”

Louise picked up her trowel, her movements slow as if through water. “Danke.”

Caleb moved towards the house, exchanging a wave with Friedrich. The front door was open, so he stepped through. The house only had one storey, so he moved past the living area to a short, thin hallway. One door was open, revealing a wide bed for two people. He knocked on the other door.

“What?” said Felix, voice tinged with adolescent irritation that brought back a fuckton of memories for Caleb, of studying in his bedroom until his mother interrupted to coax him down for a meal. It ached, but bearably so.

“It’s Caleb. May I come in?”

“Ja, I guess.”

Caleb turned the knob and slowly pushed, poking his head through first. Felix was sitting on the wooden floor, beside a low bed made from a rough timber frame. His spellbook lay on the floor in front of him, but it was seemingly open to a random page, and Felix’s hair was mussed as if he had just been lying down. On the floor, if Caleb were to guess.

“Would you like some good news?” Caleb said, stepping inside. He shut the door, leaning against it while he awaited Felix’s response.

“That would make a nice change,” Felix said flatly.

Caleb sat on the floor in front of him and pulled out his new book, removing Nico’s note and handing it to Felix. “Nico visited my home while it was empty the other day. He left this.”

Felix scanned the note with careful, controlled slowness. He passed it back, staring sightlessly at the pages of his book.

“He also responded to a Sending,” Caleb continued. “Only to tell me he did not wish to talk, but that is progress. Has he spoken to you?”

“Nein,” Felix said quietly. There was a heaviness to his posture, and he seemed to lack the energy to express himself with his face or voice. Aside from that singular spike of irritation when Caleb had knocked.

“Well, it appears he is listening. If you can bear it, I would suggest you keep talking to him.”

“Ja, okay.” The Felix in front of him was a far cry from the Felix in his messages. Exhausted, flattened… defeated, in some ways. Beaten down and ready to give up. Caleb knew the feeling well. It was why he had been messaging Felix so frequently, knowing that he had no one else who could understand what he had been through. What he had almost done.

It would have been easy enough to talk about the Fly spell and let him have a distraction, but they had things to discuss first. It was better to end their meeting today on a positive note, rather than give him a reprieve now and drag him back to earth later.

“I spoke to your mother,” Caleb said, sitting with the guilt of not giving Felix the distraction he sorely needed. Not yet.

Felix huffed quietly. “Was it a useful conversation? Mine haven’t been.”

“I have the luxury of not being family,” Caleb replied. “I can tell her things that you never would.”

Felix snorted. “Right.”

“She says you’re becoming a recluse.”

Felix shrugged.

“Why is that?”

“What am I supposed to say?” Felix muttered, and Caleb got the sense he probably would have snapped at him, had he the energy. “I know they’re afraid of me.”

“I don’t think they are, Felix.”

“Doesn’t matter. I was going to kill them, and I would’ve succeeded. I know that. They know that.”

“I don’t think they’re worried about that right now.”

“Then they’re stupid.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say about your parents, Felix.”

“Murder also isn’t nice, but I was going to do that anyway.” Felix flipped through the pages of his spellbook until he landed on one Caleb recognised: the formula for Fireball. “Push the cart in front of the door, throw one of these fuckers into the house, or maybe a Lightning Bolt would’ve looked like a freak accident.” Having not expected this, Caleb had to fight a wave of nausea and grasp tightly to the present, and hoped it didn’t show on his face; this wasn’t about him or his bullshit. “Hadn’t decided. Whatever. If I aimed right, it would be over quickly. If not… it would be over eventually. Nico had similar plans, which apparently worked.” Felix’s fingers spasmed on the page, as if resisting the urge to tear it. “If my mother and father do not fear me, they have deluded themselves into thinking I’m innocent. Makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose. I never could tell them what Trent had us do. I have nothing to say to them. I see no point trying to comfort them when they should be afraid of me. They should not want me here.”

Felix was spiralling. Badly. Caleb was out of his depth, and his brain was not turning as efficiently as it usually did, on a knife’s edge of whether to stay present or dissociate entirely. But he had to do something.

“Would you like to guess where I have been today?” Caleb asked. “It’s here in Blumenthal.”

Felix shrugged. “I hate guessing games.”

“I visited my mother and father. Spoke to them for a while.”

Confusion furrowed Felix’s brow for a moment, before he looked up, understanding. “Can’t imagine they were very talkative.”

Caleb’s laugh surprised both of them. “You’re not wrong. Rather one-sided. But maybe they can hear me.”

Felix continued to take the bait. “Fine. I’ll bite. What did you talk about?”

“Life updates. I have only visited once before, a few months ago, and that was more… intense. And, well, since then, I’ve hit several personal milestones I wanted to tell them about.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I am about to guilt-trip you into speaking to your living parents.”

“Oh, fuck you.” There was no aggression behind it, merely exhausted resignation, as if Felix already knew Caleb had the upper hand.

“I am not expecting you to bare your soul to them,” Caleb said. “I understand the impulse to hold back and I do not wish to deny you your privacy. But, it is very easy for people like us to get caught in our heads, and it can be difficult to pull ourselves out of it without help.”

“And if I don’t want to have to look at them and remember I was going to fucking kill them?”

“You seem to remember that well enough without seeing their faces.”

Felix shoved his face into his hands, sighing loudly. “I don’t know what I would even talk about. We have nothing in common anymore.”

“I’ve always found admitting I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing is very helpful.”

Felix snorted.

“And I do not agree that you have nothing in common.” Caleb didn’t try to make Felix look at him. If this were one of the Nein, he probably would have gotten obnoxiously in the way until they couldn’t ignore him, like Jester, Veth and even sometimes Essek had been known to do for him. But, with Felix, his words would have to be enough. “You have told me you love them, and they clearly love you. There is a lot of common ground there.”

“What common ground?” Felix curled more deeply inward with the gravity of defeat. “I cared more about some bullshit Trent put in my head than how much I love my parents.”

This was far more familiar territory to Caleb. “You are not alone in that, Felix. I loved my mother and father. And I killed them just the same. Trent exploited our patriotism to isolate us from our families and tie our worth to serving the empire, to serving him. And by having us kill our families based on a lie, one of the only lies he ever told us, he could ensure we had no one else to support us. That we would not believe we deserved better, even if we learned he had modified our memories. He wanted us to have nothing else but him. Did he pull that ‘we are family’ bullshit with you?”

Felix dropped his hands, snickering bitterly. “Ja. All the time.”

“Creepy, ja?”

Felix kept laughing quietly.

“He invited me to a ‘family reunion’ with him, Astrid and Eadwulf a few months ago,” said Caleb. “My friends came with me. Do you remember Caduceus?” Felix nodded. “He told Trent he was a fool, and that no one loves him.”

Felix scoffed. “You’re lying.”

“I am paraphrasing. He did call Trent a fool, but what he said about love was… wait, let me quote this exactly. I have this burned into my memory forever.” Caleb cleared his throat, and did not attempt to mimic Caduceus’s voice because he was awful at accents, but he quoted: “He said, ‘I think it has been a long time since anyone has pointed out to you that you're a fool. Pain doesn't make people, it's love that makes people. The pain is inconsequential. It's love that saves them. And you would know that, but you have none around you. You said so yourself, you surround yourself with lies and deceptions. And I wish for you, in the future, to find someone who will mourn you when you are gone. Respectfully.’ And then Trent left.”

“Okay, two things,” said Felix. “First of all, Caduceus is cooler than you. Second, your memory is terrifying and I am rethinking every word I have ever said to you.”

“Caduceus is very cool, ja. And the memory is a blessing and a curse for me and everyone around me. I also have a very good sense of time, and I have used it to annoy the shit out of my friends.”

“Nerd.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Fuck off.”

Caleb chuckled. “Back to my original point. Trent is a piece of shit. He wanted us to believe we chose to follow him, ja, but the choice was false. He wanted us to believe we did not deserve better. Even now that we are free from him, it is not easy to break that conditioning. Our minds are more fragile than we like to think, ja?”

“Ja, I guess.” The momentary brightness faded from Felix’s expression, and the heaviness returned.

“And an important step in countering that is to reach out to the people who care about you.”

Felix slammed his spellbook shut, hiding the Fireball spell from view. “And if I don’t want to?”

“Let me ask a question in return. What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you so sure you do not want to repair your relationship with your parents?”

Felix groaned softly. “Did you have to word it like that? Of course I…” His voice dropped to a murmur. “Arschloch.”

“Then, is the problem less about what you want, or don’t want, and more about what you think you deserve?” Caleb had far too much experience in feeling that way.

“Fuck you, Caleb.” Felix scrambled to his feet, hugging the spellbook to his chest. “Are you going to teach me this spell, or did you just plan on lecturing me all day?”

Ah. There was the limit. “All right, I’ve said my piece.” Caleb got up. “You said you’ve transcribed the spell?”

“Ja. I just… it’s not an easy spell to practice.”

“I know. Shall we go outside? We will need space for this.”

#shadowgast #caleb widogast #critical role #cr2 #fanfiction #my fics #the pomegranate's professor widogast fic

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aer-in-wanderland · 4 years

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구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - Lost in Translation EP02

Back by, possibly not popular, but certainly very enthusiastic demand: my sister’s and my continued adventures in mistranslation and cultural subtext. You can find EP01 here. Buckle up and settle in for another monster post because, wow, a lot happened in this episode. Contains spoilers.

Prologue

We open with a sweeping view of Baekdudaegan as Yeon narrates about his past as the god who presided over it. For context, Baekdudaegan is the biggest and most famous mountain range in Korea, taking up an enormous swath of the Korean peninsula (to the extent that it’s often referred to as its ‘spine’ or ‘backbone’). So Yeon wasn’t lying when he said he was a ‘major’ mountain god. ;)

Yeon: You could say these were my Leeds Days. I was the master of Baekdudaegan, a mountain god who controlled the wind and rain,* and a gumiho who was, from the start, of a different caliber than the mongrel foxes you see in Hometown of Legends. ...Or, I was.”

[*Note: Can also be taken to mean ‘the natural elements’ in general.]

When Yeon refers to his ‘glory days,’ the term he uses is ‘Leeds Era’ (리즈시절). Originally a sporting term for the height of a footballer’s career, in Korean, the expression has come to be used to describe a person’s bygone glory days. The modern figure of speech (complete with English loan word) makes for a funny counterpoint to the Yeon we see on screen and recalls the mint-chocolate loving American TV show enthusiast we’ve known him as so far.

The other modern reference he makes is to Hometown of Legends (전설의 고향), which has been the title of numerous dramas and movies (1977-2018) centered around Korean myths and legends. This is basically the equivalent of an alien referencing the X-files. Overall, the narration serves to remind us just how modern our gumiho has become and clashes humorously with the visual onscreen.

Yeon’s above narration concludes with the first appearance of little Ah Eum, who immediately proceeds to pet the mighty master of Baekdudaegan as if he were her pet dog pfft (thus the ‘....or I was.’)

As an aside, tvN released some backstory information revealing that Ah Eum had gone to find Yeon in order to pray for rain. Which means she pet him in spite of that lol We also know from the past-life sequence in episode 10 that she had actually been warned never to venture anywhere near his mountain because a 1000 year old gumiho lived there. It’s almost as if her guardians don’t know her at all...

For anyone keeping track, Ah Eum uses banmal with Yeon from the very beginning. We find out why later. As a princess (even one who had been discarded), she’s used to outranking everyone around her and therefore speaking almost exclusively in banmal. To be fair, with her temperament, Yeon being a 1000+ year old mountain god probably just wasn’t enough to get him an automatic pass from her. Point for Ah Eum/Ji Ah character continuity.

Yeon: If I could rewrite* my past just once, I would return to this moment without hesitation. So that that child could never find me.

[*Note: Literally, ‘A/S my past,’ which I’m pretty sure has its roots in computer usage. So again, thoroughly modern vocabulary from the former master of Baekdudaegan.]

We transition from young to grown Ah Eum with a sweep of the Red Umbrella. According to tvN again, this umbrella was actually a gift from Ah Eum to Yeon, and it’s also the same umbrella Yeon still carries everywhere. It’s somewhat poetic, then, that it was this umbrella that lead Ji Ah to him. So, a meaningful item on multiple fronts.

Yeon: Some called it, ‘the scandal of the age that shook Baekdudaegan.’ To think, a mountain god who had given his heart to a human... Nowadays, it would have felt like a disciplinary hearing, but I didn’t care a whit. I liked her [presence] permeating my woods.

As you might have guessed, this love story ends in tragedy. Someone stole her life. Once she crossed the River of Three Crossings, I would never be able to see her again. I couldn’t hold on to her, but nor could I bear to let her go...so I resorted to abusing my power.

The BGM playing as Yeon narrates the ending of his tragic story is ‘The Parting at the River of Three Crossings,’ which I think of as the epic love theme of TotNT alongside ‘Sad Fate.’ Why do I keep mentioning the BGM? No reason, other than that it interests me. ;)

On a linguistic note, Yeon’s line, ‘Someone stole her life’ caught my attention from the first time I watched this due to his unusual usage of the word ‘life.’ Korean has multiple words for ‘life.’ The one that would typically be used in this context is ‘moksoom’ (목숨), which I think of as having the nuance of one’s life force. So to steal one’s ‘moksoom’ would mean to kill them. Instead, he uses ‘insaeng’ (인생), which is more like the life one leads. To steal someone’s ‘insaeng’ sounds more like a case of identity theft. As we find out later, that actually is what Imoogi did, and this hinted at that linguistically.

I’m not sure how well this translated, but the gesture of Yeon kneeling is both epic and heartbreaking. Kneeling is a very weighty gesture in Korea, so for Yeon to use his godly powers to freeze the very River to the Afterlife only to kneel and beg for one last moment with Ah Eum is just... It’s a momentous enough gesture for Taluipa, the ultimate stickler for rules, to make an exception and grant his request.

The fox bead: In Japanese lore, a fox’s bead is often akin to its life force, but that’s clearly not the case for Yeon. In Korean lore, fox beads are sometimes called ‘the treasure of a fox’s lips,’ since the bead is supposedly located within the fox’s mouth (and can thus be stolen/gifted with a kiss). Some tellings claim that someone who swallows a fox’s bead gains understanding of all things and phenomena in the universe, while others say they grant the bearer’s wishes.

Yeon continues his narration, describing how he’s encountered women with Ah Eum’s face over the centuries, but that none of them were her. For anyone interested, you can find my hot take on that here.

Okay, can we please have a spin-off of Yeon hunting down folklore monsters in Japanese-occupied Korea Gaksital (2012)-style?

Fun fact: Based on some of the still cuts they released, there was actually a deleted scene in which Yeon pulled the late-Joseon era Ah Eum look-alike aside, checked her for the fox bead, and then erased her memories. (And by ‘fun’ I mean, ‘why would you delete that??’)

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Iconic.

Fun fact: Lee Dong Wook picked this as the most memorable line of the drama due to it’s thematic echoing across multiple episodes.

On the topic of the tranquilizer, there was a deleted scene in episode 1 in which Ji Ah very openly 'borrowed’ it from Shin Joo’s vet clinic because she already suspected Yeon was a fox: fox fur, Fox Ridge... She was taking a pretty big gamble though since he’s not exactly your average fox.

It’s worth noting that Ji Ah doesn’t say she was ‘looking’ for Yeon (although she was, because she’s a go-get-‘em kind of girl); she says she was ‘waiting’ for him. I took this to mean she was waiting for him to return and make good on his threat to kill her (since, not only had she not forgotten, she’d been actively sticking her nose into anything remotely supernatural or unexplainable), at which point, presumably, she planned to turn the tables on him.

Episode 02 Title Card: I’ve Been Waiting for You

For anyone wondering how Ji Ah managed to get Yeon back up to his penthouse, apparently she told the security desk her boyfriend was drunk and boldly took him back up in the elevator (presumably with help) haha

Possibly coincidentally, Yeon’s first line to Ji Ah when he regains consciousness is the same as his first line to little Ah Eum: ‘Do you want to die?’ (minus the sageuk speak)

Ji Ah’s line, “I wouldn’t be sipping tea here if I was worried about that,” would more literally be: “If I valued my life, would I be sitting here drinking flower tea?”

Lol Ji Ah. “Want a cup?” is such a classy power play.

Sub: “After the stunt you pulled, you’re actually offering me tea?” Ha. Also, what Yeon literally says is: “You pulled that variety-esque stunt, and your next line is what? ‘A cup of tea’?” ‘Variety’ here is an English loan word meant in the sense of ‘variety shows’ (ex. Running Man or 1 Night 2 Days), though to my knowledge, no one has ever been tranquilized on one.

The following exchange was littered with enough small things I would have changed that I’ll just translate the whole thing here for reference:

Ji Ah: When a man and a woman have that level of physical contact, don’t they usually also drink tea or eat meals together, too? These days, the whole pure and noble act doesn’t go far.

Yeon: Whether it does or not, when you’re at a disadvantage, isn’t it considered common courtesy to come [to the table] having put aside either your pride or your self-esteem [i.e. at least one of the two]?

Ji Ah: Listen until the end before you determine who’s at a disadvantage.

Yeon: (Nodding) In exchange, if my thinking still doesn’t change, you’ll pay the price for having tested me.

Ji Ah: Price?

Yeon: Your sight (literally ‘eyes’). I’ll be taking your eyes that have seen what they shouldn’t have.

Ji Ah: Deal. (literally, ‘call’ as in poker)

Rang & Yoo Ri Crash a Funeral

In the off chance you were wondering why this is basically the only time we see Rang driving Yoo Ri and not the other way around, it’s because Yoo Ri is ‘in character’ as the daughter of a major conglomerate and wouldn’t be expected to drive herself if there was another person in the car. In Korea, there’s a whole code of etiquette around who sits where in the car.

Instead of ‘Lee Rang-nim’ the subs have Yoo Ri addressing Rang as ‘sir.’ That just strikes me as so distant and cold...

To my thinking, this scene was peak ‘Hoket-dan.’ It was nearly the same level of over-the-top campy as some of the old supervillains. If I’m being perfectly honest, I was worried at this point that Rang’s character would turn out to be equally 2D. Joke’s on me though, ‘cause this later became a hilarious character quirk when Sajang says to Rang, “It can’t be that you came to enjoy watching me die?” and Rang responds, “I love doing that! Look, I even brought popcorn. I even go about visiting funeral homes and stuff on purpose.” lol

Ji Ah’s Gamble

Okay, but Yeon actually took her up on tea haha I love it.

Subs: “So you’re a fox that’s pretending to be human.” The word they use here (and throughout the drama) is ‘doongap’ (둔갑), which is literally ‘to assume the form of.’ Unfortunately, there’s no verb in English that neatly conveys that, so this gets subbed a lot of ways. I’ve mostly been translating it as ‘transform,’ but that’s more properly ‘byeonshin’ (변신). Sometimes with translation, the best option still isn’t great.

It’s also worth noting that this is actually not what Yeon is doing here, since he sees those sorts of tricks as beneath him. Yeon is a cheon’ho; his human form is his own.

Sub: “What a lame reaction. A normal human being would scream...” More literally: “What kind of reaction is so lacking in sincerity? Generally, if [you’re] a human, I should at least get a scream...” Again, both ‘reaction’ and ‘scream’ are in English, and, somewhat humorously, Yeon uses the verb + juda (주다) form, implying he was hoping to elicit a scream with his reveal pfft

Sub: “No. I knew something like you would exist somewhere out in this world. I started directing a TV show about urban legends so I could catch you myself.” This is mostly fine, but what she says more literally is: “No. I knew something like you would exist somewhere in this world. In order to catch [one] myself, I buried my bones in a TV show about urban legends.” To ‘bury ones bones’ means ‘to devote oneself entirely to’ and implies more drive and dedication than in the sub. The subject is once again omitted, so she could mean Yeon, but I think she actually means ‘things like Yeon’ more generally.

Yeon’s line to Ji Ah when she asks him about their long ago encounter was subbed as: “I followed the smell of blood, and I ended up saving a little kid. But I can see that she’s very ungrateful.” I would translate this as:

Yeon: I smelled blood and followed it, and ended up saving some little girl (lit. young child), but now I see that that child is trying to repay a favor with enmity.

The expression Yeon uses here, to ‘repay a favor (eunhye) with enmity (wonsoo),’ is a common turn of phrase. It’s the Korean equivalent of ‘biting the hand that feeds you,’ or ‘repaying good with ill.’ Considering eunhye has actual consequences for Yeon, he doesn’t seem all that put out.

Lol Something about Lee Dong Wook’s delivery of Yeon’s line, “So you lost your parents...” reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote: ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’

Sub: “I’m not threatening you. I’m taking my chances.” This should be: “You’re mistaken. I’m not threatening; I’m gambling.” This turn of phrase is rather clever in Korean since ‘threat’ (협박) and ‘gamble’ (도박) are only one syllable off. In terms of the subs, while ‘gambling’ and ‘taking my chances’ are similar on the surface, they’re different enough in nuance that I would consider this a mistranslation. ‘Gambling’ implies an informed, calculated risk, whereas ‘taking my chances’ gives the impression of improvisation and leaving everything up to luck.

The Funeral Parlour

This scene is Rang in a nutshell. I actually don’t have much to comment on linguistically, but it was definitely an important scene for establishing Rang’s MO and motivations.

Shin Joo & Yeon

Yeon and Shin Joo meet up at the ice cream parlour to debrief on the situation with Ji Ah, and it’s cute how Shin Joo is more indignant over what went down than Yeon.

Subs: “It’s like we exist to repay people for their kindness.” This has been grossly paraphrased due to lack of cultural context. His line is literally:

Shin Joo: It’s not as if we’re magpies meticulously repaying our eunhye! Geez, how long do we have to be bound by that sort of premodern contractual relationship?”

This is another Korean folktale reference, this time to the story of The Grateful Magpies. I elaborated on it a bit here.

Yeon: “It’s old-fashioned but romantic. And it's also a fox’s dignity.” ‘Romantic’ here is the French loan word ‘romang’ (로망). In contrast to the English ‘romantic’ (which is also used), ‘romang’ is used to refer to ‘anything marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.’ ‘Dignity’ could also be translated as ‘grace of character.’ Yeon’s preoccupation with style/swagger/dignity is enough of a recurring theme (and occasional joke) that it features in his character profile.

For anyone keeping track, Shin Joo refers to Ah Eum as ‘Ah Eum agasshi.’ ‘Agasshi’ meaning ‘miss’ or ‘lady.’

Shin Joo’s line is subbed, “Does she bother you?” but it should be: ‘Does it bother you?’ where ‘it’ refers to the fact that Ji Ah so closely resembles Ah Eum.

Sub: “I’ve seen tons of people who looked like her for hundreds of years.” It’s actually not ‘tons of people,’ but ‘a couple’/‘several’ over the course of hundreds of years. Let’s be honest, people as pretty as Jo Bo Ah just aren’t born every day. ;)

Yeon’s line may be overly blunt, but it’s sweet that he calls Shin Joo, ‘Shin Joo-ya.’

Back over to Ji Ah. The way this scene suddenly switches from sentimental to horrifying is great. I also like that it’s unclear when she fell asleep. The boundary between reality and unreality is as blurred for the viewers as it is for Ji Ah, and it leaves us with a similar sense of disquiet.

In case it wasn’t already clear, it’s the tooth on this skull that leads Ji Ah to Eohwa Island. She sees a skull with an identical tooth in the news and goes to investigate.

Afterlife Immigration Office

LOL Hyeonuiong briefing the newly departed on death via powerpoint is hilarious. The powerpoint reads: ‘A Guide to Hell for the Dead, Presenter: Hyeonuiong.’ The red sigil on the right bears the characters ‘十王’ (the Ten Kings), so I guess this is an official, Afterlife-approved slideshow. heh

Side note: I’m impressed with the way this show seamlessly shifts between genres. We went from emotional to creepy to funny without it feeling forced or jarring (or at least, it didn’t to me).

The powerpoint (complete with webtoon) continues cheerily: “Hell! What is the Afterlife?” / “The 10 Types of Hell.” pfft Who made these slides? Whoever they are, point to them.

Subs: “You know King Hades, right?” WOW This is bordering on cultural whitewashing if you ask me. This should be King Yeomra (aka King Enma). He’s one of the Ten Kings of the Afterlife, and quite arguably the most famous.

The sub here says Taluipa is Yeomra’s older sister, which is understandable since the antiquated word Hyeonuiong uses (누이), doesn’t specify older or younger. We find out in the final episode, though, that Taluipa is actually Yeomra’s younger sister. As far as I’m aware, this is not part of the original lore.

Lol Yeon being a drama king: “I’m going to take revenge! Thanks to her, my obligatory military service has already gone on for 600 years~!” (You’re not fooling anyone, sir)

“No way! A man’s hair is his life! My red-brown...” Fun fact: It was actually Lee Dong Wook’s idea to make Yeon’s hair red-brown, both as a nod to him being a fox, and to give him a more otherworldly look.

Why do the gods keep saying reincarnation is random when everyone we see reincarnated kept their face??

‘Oh my god” lol Watching kdrama characters react in English never gets old. Possibly because there’s something exaggerated or overdramatic in the conscious decision to use English instead of Korean.

A++ response from Yeon. I saw something going around to the effect of, ‘this show really just said love is love,’ and I love that. Point to the writer.

The BGM here is once again ‘Thread Rings.’ Given where it keeps being used, I’m fairly certain they’re somehow related to Ji Ah/Ah Eum... (So I guess there actually is a reason I’m paying attention to the BGM ;p). Lee Dong Wook just disclosed the behind the scenes scoop on the rings in his latest VLIVE.

This bulgasari is such a mild-mannered person. Like Shin Joo, he calls Ji Ah ‘PD-nim’ and speaks politely and deferentially.

Not for anything, but I really liked Jo Bo Ah’s delivery of Ji Ah’s line, ‘I saw a corpse.’ Her little mannerisms really sold Ji Ah to me as a person and not just a character.

Bulgasari: “That dream, can you sell it to me? I want to play the lottery.” In addition to the concept of symbolism in dreams, Koreans also have a common notion that dreams can be bought and sold. It’s funny, though, when you consider he’s probably just planning to eat the dream.

I love whenever Taluipa calls Yeon, ‘Yeon-ah.’ She’s normally so prickly that it’s notable when she's affectionate. Also, seeing as Yeon is older than 95% of our characters, there aren’t many who might address him like this with the affectionate diminutive.

Heh, Yeon refers to Ji Ah’s favor as a ‘civil complaint.’

When Yeon asks Ji Ah for her parent’s times and dates of birth, what he’s actually asking for is their ‘saju’ (literally, ‘four pillars’). You can find my explanation here.

The Snail Bride

Bok Hye Ja: “It’s the first time he’s brought someone (literally ‘a person’).” Normally this would mean, ‘it’s the first time he’s brought a guest,’ but in this case, I’m fairly certain she means, ‘it’s the first time he’s brought a human.’ ;)

“I won’t ask you to understand.” This was another exchange that made me love Ji Ah. I found her frank and sincere apology refreshing.

On a personal note, I loved watching Yeon recalibrate his estimation of Ji Ah in this scene. And it was also a scene in which viewers got to recalibrate their impressions of Yeon. Yeon is feigning indifference, but he makes a point of asking after Ji Ah’s feelings, which is not insignificant. It’s also in sharp contrast to what we’ve seen of Rang so far.

Oh my gosh, THAT PUFFBALL DOG (and it’s name is Bean-ie) XD

Minor detail, but where did Shin Joo get his necklace? Wait. OH MY GOD. Shin Joo is the Aquaman of TotNT. Yeon gets to be Batman and Superman rolled into one and Shin Joo’s power is that he ‘talks to fish animals.’ Dead.

Lol Ji Ah watching Yeon eat. I feel like this is a running joke. In the tales, gumiho notoriously eat people’s livers, so seeing him eat normal food must be a bit eye-opening.

The text description for Shin Don was left untranslated in the version we’re watching but it reads: In A History of Goryeo, there’s record of Shin Don, a monk from the time of King Gongmin’s reign (1351-1374 C.E.), having been an old fox.

Subs: “Is it true that the monk of Goryeo Dynasty was a fox?” Us: ‘Yes, the one monk in all of Goryeo and for all of Goryeo. Guess he’d have to have been a fox in that case.’ This should probably have been translated as: "So then, Shin Don...is it a fact that the Goryeo monk Shin Don was a fox?”

Ji Ah: “Oh my god.” heh

Do You Really Want to See It?

Wait, they walked all the way from Insadong to Digital Media City? Okay, this is one of the (few) pitfalls of being fairly familiar with Seoul. Sometimes it’s really obvious when two locations don’t connect and then it pulls me out of the drama. I think we’re supposed to believe that the Snail Bride is in the vicinity of Ji Ah’s broadcast station, seeing as her team are lunchtime regulars, but the the two neighborhoods are nowhere near each other.

Yeon’s line in the subs here is: “A. I’m a busy man. B. We may currently be living in the same world, but there is a big difference between where we come from.” Personally, I would have translated this as: “Firstly, I haven’t got that much free time. Secondly, we may be unavoidably living mingled together, but the world I belong to and the world you belong to are incontrovertibly different.”

Subs: “Those who got a peek at my world ended up going crazy or dying young.” More literally: “In the past, there have been those who got a glimpse of the world’s secrets. Well, most of them either went mad or had their lives cut short.”

Minor detail, but Ji Ah’s response subbed as: “I don’t care. I’ll stay out of your way. Just don’t disappear.” should more literally be: “Just don’t disappear from my sight (lit. ‘from before me’).”

The sub on Ji Ah’s line here reads: “She (Sae Rom) and I both had nightmares.” What she actually says is: “Me and my hubae also had nightmares,” meaning that she (Ji Ah) and Jae Hwan had nightmares in addition to Sae Rom. Which is why Yeon refers to them as ‘contagious’.

Okay, is it just me, or does LDW look exceptionally unreal in this scene?

Bulgasari

I’m not familiar with the actor who plays the bulgasari (pretty sure he’s a new face), but he did a great job making his movements uncanny here. The firey CG effects are fun too.

Heck yeah! Yeon sure knows how to make an entrance. Seeing as how he instructed Ji Ah on what to do, I’m pretty sure he was there the whole time......show-off.

Once again, I’m digging the fight scene underscored by ‘The Uninvited.’ I would happily watch an entire series that’s just Yeon and Ji Ah solving supernatural cases and hunting down baddies who disturb the peace.

The Smirk™ XD I’m 90% sure this was another LDW ad lib.

Lol Yeon. Subs: “Really? Then am I the jerk here?” More literally: “Really? Then I guess I’m the only bad guy, huh?”

On a linguistic note, the bulgasari speaks to Yeon in old-timey speech, once again playing up their mutual identity as creatures of lore.

It’s only at this point that, prompted by Ji Ah, Yeon finally reveals the bulgasari’s identity. This is accompanied by a brief chyron telling us that they appear when the world is in disorder, and Ji Ah supplies that they eat nightmares.

To elaborate a bit, bulgasari are one of the better known Korean creatures of lore. There are two different sets of hanja for them: (bulgasari 不可殺伊 ‘can-not-kill’) and (bulgasari 火可殺伊 ‘fire-can-kill’), which explains why, depending on the telling, they’re either un-killable or only die by fire. In traditional lore, feeding them metal makes them grow larger and stronger, which, while not the case in TotNT, is probably what inspired the coin-gobbling.

Subs: “Yes they are especially fond of broadcasting studios, which are packed with people. Eating metal reveals their true identities.” That subtitle went a bit sideways. It’s not that they like broadcast stations in particular, but crowded places like broadcast stations. So it should read: “They like places with lots of people, like the broadcast station, and if you feed them metal, they reveal their true colors.”

Okay, Yeon’s line that’s subtitled as, “The hostage will answer,” is more literally: “Hey, hostage. Try answering me.” It’s worth noting that, while he calls her ‘injil-bun’ (injil = hostage + bun = the polite word for a person), he’s still speaking to her in banmal, so he’s once again being cheeky.

It’s taking some license, but I would translate Yeon’s question to Ji Ah here as: “In this moment,* what exactly can you do other than rely on me to save you?” which is essentially what he means. [*Note: literally, ‘at this timing,’ and once again, ‘timing’ is in English.]

We get a series of short scenes lining up some of the side characters who will become our key players on the island: the fisherman find the severed head, Ji Ah grills Detective Baek about the case, and Rang approaches Pyung Hee with his usual devil’s bargain pitch. I didn’t really notice anything here that I think is important enough to the central plot or characters that it’s worth commenting on (especially given how massively long this post is already), so I’m just going to call it good and move right along. ;)

Pfft I definitely wasn’t expecting the bulgasari to be literally chilling in Yeon’s freezer (not that he had a choice). This is somewhat interesting given they’re typically thought to be weak to fire, not ice.

Subs: “I’ll die even if I tell you where he is.” More literally: “Whether I die in this way [by Yeon’s hand], or that [by Rang’s], it is all the same.”

Brother Complex

Sub: “Don’t even think of hurting her.” More literally: “Just try touching one hair on her head.”

Oh my gosh Rang’s face ㅠㅠ This was the first time I felt Kim Beom really got to display his acting chops in this role, and boy, was I glad to see it. This was also when I knew Rang was going to make me cry.

Yeon: “You’re acting like this because you lack affection.” The expression Yeon uses is ‘aejeong gyeolpip,’ which literally does mean ‘affection lack/want/absence,’ but I would have translated it as ‘affection-starved,’ since saying Rang ‘lacks affection’ could also be interpreted to mean Rang is incapable of expressing affection.

Yeon: “Why’s that?” Lol Lee Dong Wook. Also, this one line is cheekily in polite speech.

Subs: “Just because of a woman you gave up your position as a mountain spirit, left the mountain, and you even...” More literally: “Just because of one mere human woman you gave up your position as a mountain god, turned your back on the mountain, and..!!”

Yeon: “Yes, I know. I even abandoned you.” Rang-ah~ ㅠㅠ I recently received an ask as to whether or not I believed Yeon had truly abandoned Rang, which I answered here.

Oof, Yeon giving Rang advice as an older brother. In Korea, nagging is seen as a sign of affection. You may recall Ji Ah was very excited for her dad to nag her about her boyfriend in episode 12.

Sub: “You crazy fool.” Rang literally calls his brother a ‘michin nom,’ ‘michin’ meaning ‘crazy.’ ‘Nom’ is a pronoun that, depending on how it’s used, can mean anything from ‘guy,’ to ‘jerk,’ to ‘bastard.’

Sub: “I don’t need to know.” Actually: “There’s no need [for you to tell me].” The two are subtly different. Yeon’s saying he’ll find out on his own, not that he doesn’t want to know.

Fun fact: Kim Beom said in his script reading interview (before they started filming) that he was a bit worried about his onscreen dynamic with Lee Dong Wook because, while Rang has to hate Yeon, LDW is a hyung that KB likes so much in real life. What a cutie.

We cut briefly over to Ji Ah on the phone with Jae Hwan, asking him to look after Sae Rom while she chases down the skull lead.

As an aside here, Ji Ah calls Sae Rom, ‘Kim-jak’ (short for ‘jakga,’ meaning ‘writer’). In Korea, it’s common to refer to someone by their role or title. This might indicate distance, but Ji Ah’s shortening it makes the term familiar and speaks of their camaraderie. In the subtitles, this has become, ‘Ms. Kim,’ which is oddly distant given their frenemyship.

The Island

Is it just me, or does it feel like there should have been a scene here explaining how and why Yeon came to be on the boat? I’m assuming it got deleted due to time constraints, but I feel like it was needed.

Pfft The way Ji Ah pops up from behind Yeon, cutting comically into the dramatic shot of Lee Dong Wook’s windswept profile + BGM was great.

In case it wasn’t already apparent, Kimite patches are used to alleviate sea sickness, so this is further undermining the mood of a second ago haha

Yeon’s line is subbed: “I’d like to keep it to myself,” but this should more literally be: ‘Let’s each work individually/play it solo.’

Sub: “No, thank you.” What Yeon actually says: “Hard pass.” hahaha (Literally: ‘I’ll immediately/urgently decline,’ but tonally, ‘hard pass’ is closer).

The subs have Yeon’s line as: “You need to be careful what you pay attention to.” I would have translated this as: “If that’s the reason [you’ve come], go back. You mustn’t recklessly lend an ear [to such things].” His tone and phrasing are both surprisingly gentle.

Subs: “My guts keep telling me, that this is a very suspicious combination.” Well, my guts keep telling me, that this is a very suspicious sub haha I would have translated Yeon’s voiceover as:

Yeon: The same boat...the same island...a woman with the same face as that girl. My instincts speak to me relentlessly, telling me there’s something amiss about this combination.

Pfft The contrast between Ji Ah's dismount from the boat and Yeon’s.

Lol Yeon’s ‘excuse me’ was totally rude

For the record, from the moment Yeon sets foot on the island, he speaks to everyone in banmal. That’s bad form towards any stranger, but it’s especially rude considering their age. Sure, Yeon’s way older, but they don’t know that.

Ji Ah mouthing “What?” in English haha

Yeon clocking the effectively creepy villagers. Turns out the right BGM and camerawork can make anything creepy. Point to the director.

Settling in on the Island

Ji Ah’s line subbed as, “I thought you didn’t want to be involved,” should more properly be: “I thought you just said we should each play it solo?”

Yeon’s line is similarly mis-subbed as: “I changed my mind. Don’t let it bother you.” What he actually says is much ruder: “I’ll do what I want! Butt out.” Which explains Ji Ah’s affront heh

Lol Yeon walking right in front of the camera. Anyone who has ever had a pet recognized this moment.

I love how Yeon is being completely tactless and insensitive but then grudgingly course-corrects when Ji Ah glares daggers at him.

Fisherman (subs): “It gives me a bad feeling in my mouth.” Excuse me, what? haha The line is: “The more I think about it, the more it bothers me.”

Lol Ji Ah: “In the documentaries I watched, they say digging holes is your speciality” (complete with digging gesture).

Fun fact: Ji Ah blocking the way with her leg and Yeon burrowing under it was something Jo Bo Ah and Lee Dong Wook came up with themselves. Ji Ah’s line was scripted, but I’m nearly positive Yeon’s comeback of, “Burrowing is my speciality,” was an ad lib by Lee Dong Wook. Once again, casting Lee Dong Wook is the gift that keeps on giving.

WAIT. Subs: “You can’t go.” / “Borrowing is my specialty.” Hahaha What even? Cheon’ho Lee Yeon: professional mooch.

The way we then cut to Yeon ‘burrowing’ into a freezer of ice cream is just perfect. Point to the director.

Once again, Yeon is talking to all the village elders in banmal.

“You have a terrible service mentality.” pfft

OH. Ji Ah’s response to the misogynistic fisherman is just A++

Her line here is literally: “Oops, I’m afraid I’m overflowing with ‘jeong.’” ‘Jeong’ (情) can be a little hard to translate. It literally means ‘emotion’ or ‘affection,’ but the way it’s used linguistically can be a bit complex. The sub here was: “I’m afraid I was too generous,” which I actually think is pretty decent. The turn of phrase in Korean though, using the word ‘overflowing’ while over-pouring on the man, made her response doubly witty.

Hah. I love the way Yeon just raises his eyebrows when he comes out of the market and spots her.

Subs: “How dare a witch from outside come here and...” He actually calls her a ‘michin nyeon’ meaning ‘crazy bitch,’ so the line is: “Crazy bitch, where do you think this is that you dare...”

Ji Ah’s line that begins, “If you’re going to hit me...” is just SO great. We stan (1) queen.

Subs: “Nice. You’re tough.” This is a bit hard to translate. Yeon’s line is literally: “Oh~ What ggang is like this?” ‘Ggang’ can be translated as ‘guts,’ ‘tenacity,’ or ‘persistence.’ Naver dictionary describes it as: ‘a personal trait found in one who never gives in, when put in whatever difficulties,’ which is so spot on for Ji Ah. I might approximate this as: “Woah~ Just how gutsy are you?”

The way he's just like, ‘I approve. Here, have a shikhye~’ is mildly adorable. Did you buy that for her, Yeon, or were you planning on having two but decided she’d earned one? haha

Ji Ah’s response is equally great. The sub says: “That was nothing.” which isn’t a bad option for a subtitle, but what she literally says is ‘saesam-seureopge’ (새삼스럽게), where ‘saesam’ means ‘now? at this point? after all this time?’ So she’s basically saying, ‘You’re bothering with that observation, over that little stunt, after everything else you’ve seen me do?’ haha

“I plan to mooch off of you as much as possible.” Pfft I love how Yeon actually moves to stand behind her just to underscore the point. That’ll be Lee Dong Wook again.

Wow, these are some sketchy old people.

Subs: “People aren’t the only ones with eyes and mouths.” What he actually says is, “Are people the only ones with eyes and ears?”

The Forest Spirit

Wow, the lighting in this scene is just A++ Point to the lighting team (or is that just natural? It feels almost too pretty to have just been natural).

I was too distracted by Lee Dong Wook to notice the first time, but Ji Ah’s face when Yeon shushes her is great haha

On a linguistic note, this scene is one of the few in which Yeon code switches to archaic speech as he’s addressing the tree spirit. It’s the linguistic equivalent of him putting on his ‘mountain god’ hat. (He still speaks to Ji Ah normally, though).

We cut briefly to the mudang (shamaness), and I’m sorry, I know this is a traditional way of speaking, but it always makes me laugh because it’s so over-the-top.

The spirit addresses Ji Ah as ‘agasshi,’ which would be strange if she was actually a modern young girl, but makes sense for a spirit who’s at least 600. Overall, it helps to remind viewers of her supernatural-ness.

Yeon telling Ji Ah she did a good job is so cute. I feel like they’re rapidly becoming a quirky tag-team duo and I’m 100% here for it.

Mudang: “His body returned to shore before his head did! Your father!” This line was explained in the backstory collection.

Okay, the mudang needs to dial it back like 10 levels here.

Possibly just me, but Yeon swatting the air with his hand as he peers into the cave struck me as vaguely fox-like.

Minor detail again, but the chyron here is subbed as ‘Jangsansa Cave.’ It’s actually ‘Jangsan sagool,’ not ‘Jangsansa gool.’ ‘Sagool’ is written with the characters 蛇窟 meaning ‘snake hole.’

Lol Yeon freezing mid-motion when Ji Ah tells him to stay put. That is 110% Lee Dong Wook’s sense of humour. Praise the drama gods for Lee Dong Wook - this show wouldn’t have been half as fun without him.

Fun fact: This cave is actually intimately tied to Ah Eum’s past with Imoogi and the story of how she came to be his ‘bride’ (read: sacrifice). I translated the tvN description here. I actually think this was fairly important information, so it’s a shame it wasn’t covered in the drama.

Sleepover with a Gumiho

When Ji Ah asks Yeon why he’s insisting on staying at Pyung Hee’s, his response is subbed as: “I have my reasons.” This is more properly: “You don’t need to know.”

Sub: “We don’t eat that crap!” Yeon’s line doesn’t have a subject, but this should properly be: “I don’t eat that crap!” We know from Yeou Nui that some gumiho in this world actually do eat liver.

“Heard of the Chinese liver fluke?” Ha. Yeon literally says ‘kan distoma,’ i.e. ‘liver distomiasis’ or ‘liver fluke’. While there was a well-known outbreak in China, it isn’t inherently Chinese. There’s a Korean word for it too (간흡충), but once again, Yeon opts for the loan word, adding further humour to the gumiho disavowing liver consumption - for health reasons, no less pffft

The BGM playing as Yeon sees Ah Eum in Ji Ah is once again ‘Parting at the River of Three Crossings.’

Bok Hye Ja’s line to Shin Joo is subbed as: “He went to the island to find this reincarnated girl?” The word she uses is actually ‘gakshi,’ which is an antiquated word generally meaning ‘bride’ (as in ‘the Snail Bride’), but it can also just mean ‘young woman.’

For the record, the Snail Bride speaks to Shin Joo in banmal, who speaks to her in jondaetmal

Shin Joo: “Contrary to how he looks, he’s the devoted type, after all.” Et tu, Shin Joo?

Shin Joo’s line is subbed: “As if that’s a good thing,” but I would have translated it as: “Romantic, my foot!”

Sub: “At least once in our lives we come across that one person we want to give our lives to.” This should be: ‘risk our lives for.’

Sub: “I won’t ever devote myself to love. My goal will be to protect Mr. Lee.” Actually: “I won’t ever risk my life for love. I’m going to protect Lee Yeon-nim!”

“Well that can also be called love, can’t it?” Thank you for this, Show. I know some people think TotNT champions romantic love above all else, but I simply don’t agree.

When Yeon checks Ji Ah again for his fox bead, the BGM playing is once again ‘Thread Rings’

I love how they did the CG on whatever is happening with Yeon’s powers here. I would have loved to have gotten more of an explanation of the fox bead and its powers (and Yeon’s, for that matter), but alas.

I love that Yeon tucks Ji Ah in even after re-confirming (or so he thinks) that she isn’t Ah Eum. It was important to me that he came to like and appreciate her for herself before learning that she was, in fact, his lost love.

Morning on the Island

Ji Ah wakes to find Yeon gone, the blanket tucked around her, and her expression tells us she’s onto him: sure, Yeon can be a grump, but he’s also a complete softie. heh

Yeon is, once again, talking to the elders in banmal. Why do I keep mentioning it? Because no matter how many times I see it it’s still funny.

Okay, Lee Dong Wook has this way of pointing at things with his entire arm that I find ticklish. Yeon ends up coming across like a petulant child. On a cultural note, in Korea, pointing at people like this is considered impolite.

Yeon dangling the ginseng behind Ji Ah as extra incentive pfft Wild ginseng can be massively expensive in Korea (on the order of hundreds of dollars), so this is actually a very effective bribe.

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that Yeon woke up before dawn, and, instead of going back to sleep, went into the mountains to hunt for wild ginseng, then set about using it to bribe the elders into answering Ji Ah’s questions for her. Entirely of his own accord. Like I said: softie.

Side note: Lee Dong Wook’s eyebrows are working overtime in this scene and I’m honestly a little jealous.

The newspaper Jae Hwan finds at the library is dated August 13, 1954, which Ji Ah immediately recognizes as having been just after the Korean War (if you’ll recall, this is when the forest spirit told them something ominous had come to the island).

This newspaper is actually really cool. You can see how, in the past, Korean newspapers used a lot of hanja in addition to the phonetic hangeul, similar to modern Japanese. The headline reads, “Headless Corpse, Discovered on Eohwa Island, Investigation Hits Dead End.” (頭 없는 屍身, 漁花島에서 發見, 捜査迷宮으로).

Okay, to be honest, this final scene - absent the extra context given in the next episode - made me question Ji Ah’s smarts again. I wondered why she was chasing down the clearly unstable guy just to question him, but it makes sense once you know she meant to warn him his life was in danger.

As usual, Yeon knows how to make an entrance. Cue ‘Gumiho’ theme.

Yeon stopping when Ji Ah tells him to never stops being satisfying.

The BGM playing as we cut over to Rang is ‘The House of Ghosts.’

Okay, those shots of Thirsty and Hungry were full-on horror movie and I actually kind of like it? I never watch horror as a genre, but for some reason, I found I missed this spooky element when it dropped out of the later episodes.

Oh, I like that Yeon went and made her a poultice. Very ex-mountain god of you, sir.

“Long time no see, Lee Yeon.” Iconic. And creepy. I love the attention to detail Jo Bo Ah displays in the difference between how she acts Ji Ah vs. Imoogi. Imoogi’s voice is higher pitched, and gives off more of a loose-cannon feel compared to Ji Ah, who speaks in a lower, more grounded tone.

Sub: “It’s me. The person you’ve been waiting for.” Imoogi literally says: “It’s me. That thing you’ve been waiting for.” This is obviously a big clue since normally one wouldn’t refer to oneself in such a way. It also reflects the fact that, unlike Terry-Imoogi, Jimoogi perceives no value in Ji Ah herself. (Yes, I call Ji Ah-Imoogi ‘Jimoogi,’ and sadly, no, I didn’t come up with it).

Yikes, Jimoogi tracing Yeon’s face was all menace and zero cute. Point to Jo Bo Ah.

Boy, this show really knows how to make an exit.

Blue Mooooooooon!! The guitar (bass?) riff is just so catchy.

And that concludes Episode 2. Thank you to everyone who commented on the first one. If not for your encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have continued. I also genuinely enjoy hearing from people, so send me your thoughts! This is a weird, unprecedented mashup of a live reaction post, behind the scenes info, and detailed language and culture notes, and I’m still learning how to balance the three. Your feedback is always welcome.

I’d also like to take a moment to credit my sister, who, in addition to weighing in on a lot of the translations, is also the chief researcher and fact checker for these. I, meanwhile, am in charge of bad jokes and snark. I mentioned before that these take longer than you might expect, but it’s really true. The time we spend watching the episode is actually the least of it, and as much as I enjoy them, they are a huge time suck.

So. This is what I’m going to do. If you’d like to see more of these, or if you enjoyed this, or if you’ve enjoyed any of the translations or commentary or whatnot I’ve been posting recently, please consider buying me a coffee. If you follow the link, you can buy me a $2 cup of virtual coffee. I’ve never done this before, but I’ve decided to give it a try. It’ll help me to gauge how much interest there is, and, possibly more importantly, it will help me to justify all the time haha. If and when I’ve established there’s enough interest, I’ll proceed with Episode 3. ;)

#tale of the nine tailed #totnt #lost in translation #구미호뎐 #kdrama #korean language #korean culture

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dahniwitchoflight · 4 years

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Homesquared Chapter 16

Alrighty, that was a fun tangent, now back to John it seems?

Oh, no, Narration of John (So Actually Dirk, speak of the devil and he shall appear and all that etc etc)

“ leaving John with one final touch on the shoulder. John leans into it in response, though he’s a bit ashamed of chasing down a sliver of physical affection so soon after obliterating Karkat’s evening like he had. “

pfft lol so Im not the only one that thought it would be funny if that scene was interpreted in a Pale Romantic light, even though that really wasn’t what was happening

OIh! but we still get Roxy, just the other version of Roxy

Roxy subtly being like “hey!! shit has apparently gone down, were not exactly close atm but I feel bad about you dying to want to know if youre still alive so im gonna message you while trying to make it look like i dont care about it as much as I do”

JOHN: trying to align my memories of my youth with whatever is happening right now so

and the wonderful question is, what IS going be happening with you now John?

Roxy looking nice and casual, but also yeah narration, why are you making this ominous, its not like Roxy’s out here to double spy on behalf of Jane, I don’t think Roxys on her side THAT much

ROXY: may have to do a smidge more if my old bff decides im next on the list for bombing out

ROXY: but so far so good

ROXY: just a coupla exploded cars in the yard from some shenanigans our dear son and his friends were in but u kno it is what it is!!!

Roxy once again being a master of hiding how shes feeling, even when trying to open up, feeling pretty stressed about whats happening with Jane, understandable, the exclamation points give it away lol

The narration is really trying to make John nervous though

OH lol that was the implication haha no lol John it obviously wasn’t that

“John feels his shoulders unbunch. Of course. Yeah. He’s almost embarrassed by how relieved he feels. So what if his ex wife wanted to hook up? Shouldn’t that be a situation he could navigate? Don’t people like to find solace in human physical connection during dire times? Why did the idea of it make his mind white out in panic more than, say, any number of the traumas he just experienced? He doesn’t know, but he believes Roxy that he must look pretty haggard. He probably feels haggard? Maybe sitting down will feel better.“

lol once again, Dirk has no idea how to read Roxy at all and just trips over himself and his assumptions XD

Yeah, looks like Roxy not on the Jane train and is doing some takesies backsies, shes glossing over her feelings on the matter still though, I know thats par for the course of how Roxy tends to handle stuff too but I wish shed open up a bit more, but maybe shes playing the smart game, yknow, knowing that Dirk has a hard time reading her, so glossing over stuff is how you protect yourself against the narrative force, confusion and vaguery in the narrative and her actions only helps her to keep control over it, because at any point, you can decide to “clear up” any narrative “miscommunication” or “confusion” and lay down what is it thats actually happening with you any time you want

Void working in the behind the scenes to do what they want

JOHN: like it’s my HOUSE.

JOHN: but mostly it always felt like my dad’s house?

JOHN: and when i started living there after i moved out of here, it was like i crammed myself back into whatever was left of my kid self?

JOHN: and it didn’t feel good, but it at least was familiar, you know?

JOHN: like living there let me feel closer to my dad, trying to be like the way i remember him, or like how i remember him wanting me to be, or something?

JOHN: and i didn’t realize how much i hated doing that until i saw it all go up in flames.

JOHN: so i guess i could have used my powers to stop the fire and save whatever was left of the place, but i couldn’t bring myself to do it.

JOHN: like some fucked up part of me was glad i got there too late?

JOHN: so i just sat there, watching, trying to figure out why watching my house burn down felt like i was being released from prison.

JOHN: and even now i keep trying to explain it away, as though it’s because of how fucked up everything else is that it made me feel good.

JOHN: but that’s just bullshit.

JOHN: it DID feel good.

JOHN: i DO feel free.

JOHN: sorry.

ROXY: no need 2 apologize

ROXY: we just delved in2 my whole gender thing last time so it seems fine for u to have a turn

JOHN: i didn’t say it was a gender thing.

Im pretty sure you’re talking about a gender thing John, like, very 100% sure now this is what’s happening

because if you were actually a girl, of course you’re dad leaving all these notes about how one day hes gonna be so proud of the man youll become, yeah, that can feel a little pressuring, even if your dad didnt mean it like that, since he was unfailingly the kind of dad just bumbling around trying to understand their kid as best they could and leave encouragements everywhere, thats what his intent was, but all his notes come off a bit wrong in particular issues

remember the note under the fridge that was all like “SON. IF YOURE READING THIS NOTE, YOUVE FINALLY BECOME STRONG ENOUGH OF A MAN TO PICK UP THE FRIDGE.” not exactly that but that was always the vibe Dad’s little notes always had

Yeah, i can see how John would view it as a bit off, but if he hadnt the self awareness to realize it was a gender thing at the time, hed be understandly confused as to why such a thing would bother him

now though, he’s realizing, maybe, he doesn’t exactly want to be the man his dad always encouraged him to be

John does seem a lot happier here in his convo with Roxy than he did on his own when the house was burning, that conversation with karkat left me wondering if John was about to start dissociating he was so down, but here he says he feels freeing and happy about it?

ROXY: but like now that u mention it

ROXY: *meaningful pause*

JOHN: …

JOHN: i

JOHN:

John’s beginning to question stuff, or acknowledge that he’s questioning stuff, cuz it’s true, and hes feeling happy about it, in a way that he wasnt before, but he hasnt quite connected the dots here between the happy feeling and what exactly he has to be happy about

ROXY: aight then no wind bending just use your mangrit

Roxy flexes, the corner of her mouth pulled up into a familiar grin. John feels his guts, so recently calmed, twist up into knots again. Her eyebrows shoot up and the smile loosens. He must have shown something on his face.

ROXY: ok or just like push when i push

ROXY: we both got sick muscles

ROXY: no other adjectives necessary

JOHN: yeah ok.

Yeah Roxy’s 100% picked up on it, and maybe Dirk has as well if the narration is commenting on it

Alrighty then, to the secret lair under the bed!

oh I just noticed how kind of cute and interesting Roxy’s nickname for Harry is, “Lil H A” Harry Anderson shortens to Ha like laughter haha

and if Harry had Roxy’s last name, it’d be Harry Anderson Lalonde

Lil HAL

lol what is Callie doing under Roxy’s secret bedchamber XD

This whole secret bedchamber thing is turning into one big metaphor isn’t it?

That thing behind the curtain kind of looks like the Attic Portal shape from Hiveswap though

that’d be neat if that was it, like obviously we knew one of the cherubs had to have something to do with that portal just going by the design of it alone

Honestly it makes sense that Callie is doing it under the curtain of Roxy’s Void, it’s honestly the safest place to do something like that

lol Calliope has grown past writing fanfic about shipping and being in love, now the drama of broken relationships and divorce is all the rage XD character growth? haha

CALLIOPE: besides, hUman divorces are even more fascinating than i had ever imagined, and being able to witness yoUrs in motion was an honoUr.

CALLIOPE: so i consider Us aboUt even at this point.

Calliope just burned him harder than his childhood home’s destruction

CALLIOPE: ah right, right. yoU're probably a little cUrioUs as to where the dickens we are.

have you been talking to Jake lol (I mean, probably Original Grandpa Jake tbh if that portal is actually the portal)

Alright so John is getting caught up on the major plot points, Earth C is indeed in the large black hole, his choice didn’t matter since both choices happened anyway yadda yadda

CALLIOPE: think of it like a coin flip.

CALLIOPE: the series of events that led to Us being trapped beyond the event horizon of an Ubermassive black hole could be considered "tails", while the events which would have occUrred otherwise could be considered "heads".

CALLIOPE: since both were possible, and paradox space is the way it is, they actUally both happened. and we jUst "happened" (hee hee) to get tails instead of heads.

yup yup yup pretty par for the course of timesplits in homestuck so far

CALLIOPE: not at all! since both possibilities depend on one another's existence, it really doesn't make sense to call them "right" or "wrong". they both just "are".

yup, this is true, the ending’s of both referenced the others, so it’s disingenuous to say one is “canon” while the other isn’t

one is simply in the realm of actual possibility, the other is in the realm of unlikely possibility

More than likely, John would have chosen to leave and go die and be the hero like in Meat, but there was still the possibility that he would stay, even if it was unlikelier than the other, but since both were possible choices for him to realistically make, both actually happened for real

CALLIOPE: anyway, the reason i went on this tangent in the first place was to explain that the space we are standing in right now has a special significance, in that it is the location which corresponds to the black hole's singUlarity

that’s interesting, so there’s the original meteor that crashed into the surface of Earth C, and it’s in here that the singularity of what I don’t wanna call the Green Hole to match the Green Sun when I wanna talk about this specific Black Hole lolol

but yeah, here in this meteor lies the crux of the paradox it seems, interesting, also interesting again, this is where that Hiveswap Portal is

Hiveswap does have a plot point of “Joey must do thing in 11 days otherwise Earth and Alternia will be destroyed” and the only known destruction event of Earth and Alternia so far in canon is the Green Sun’s Creation from the destruction of both universes (and then later Callie’s destruction of the green sun into the black hole) so is Hiveswap gonna be a factor in the green sun’s destruction/creation as well? (Joey has the symbol of the Green Sun for a reason, I’m super curious as to what factor Joey has in relation to the Green Sun’s Existence, We still don’t know what the fact those black monsters are too, they’re like nega-first guardians, the kind of things that look like would come out of a Black Hole that came from the Green Sun tbh)

It’s all inter-related I tells ya

ROXY: ur not gonna enter a weird time vortex and change the trajectory of a little girls life with the power of love

JOHN: aw.

You say that now but

CALLIOPE: it's not strictly speaking "bad" for Us to be inside of a black hole, mUch thoUgh that contradicts most of what anyone knows about them.

CALLIOPE: of coUrse, if we had fallen into it, that woUld be a whole other kettle of fish.

CALLIOPE: the tidal forces woUld have stretched Us all into spaghetti and then ripped us apart!

CALLIOPE: bUt the natUre of oUr arrival was more akin to simply "being" here, sUddenly. one moment we were not, and the next moment we were, and somehow always had been.

yeah that’s basically how this multiverse’s reality works, the future is a thing that already physically exists, just in a different location in the universe somewhere else

time travel and spacial teleportation could be said to be the same thing all along

that’s why violating the events of the future has actual consequences, because its like asking to go somewhere that doesn’t exist but how has to exist because it’s the future, too much of that and reality starts cracking at the seams to make room

same thing happens with sessions and playing sburb

the planets and dreaming moons and all that simultaneously have always existed here, and started existing only because the player played the game and the planets were generated upon entering a session, but to the player involved, it looks and feels like you are just being teleported to a different location in the universe, because you also kind of are

CALLIOPE: i mean, the natUre of space and time is a little finicky in here, bUt for the most part it doesn't seem to be anything too oUt of the ordinary.

CALLIOPE: bUt beyond that, it means that we are sealed away from the rest of existence.

CALLIOPE: oUr sphere of inflUence is limited to the sphere of the black hole's bounding horizon.

CALLIOPE: as far as everyone else is concerned, we might as well not even exist!

So you’re just in a little seperated bubble, that’s not connect temporally to any other place of existence, you aren’t anywhere in the past or the future of anywhere else

nowhere leads here, and here can not lead outwards either, theoretically, and yes it exists, so it must also

JOHN: is there no way we could let anyone know that we're in here...?

CALLIOPE: almost certainly not!

CALLIOPE: there are very few ways for anything to escape the kind of predicament that we are in right now. one of them is to be an all-powerfUl being with control over the very fabric of space, with the energy of two Universes at yoUr disposal.

CALLIOPE: in which case, escape woUld become rather trivial, if a little Unscientific.

JOHN: ok. i am going to assume that we can't just do that.

CALLIOPE: yoU've hit the nail on the head, UnfortUnately. U_U

CALLIOPE: the method i described was the one employed by my alternate self, who yoU may recall crashed through the event horizon in the body that once belonged to jade harley.

CALLIOPE: she departed through a pUnctUre she created in the black hole's surface shortly after consUming my brother, a deed which provided her with the necessary "oomph", and which was frankly rather breathtaking to watch. =u=

CALLIOPE: bUt Upon her departUre, the rift closed for good. as far as i can see, there's simply no way for Us to commUnicate with the world oUtside the black hole.

CALLIOPE: i woUld certainly be very sUrprised to find oUt that anyone had managed sUch a thing!

So someone else definitely has managed to do such a thing

JOHN: knowing that we're inside of a black hole... does that actually change anything?

JOHN: like, can't we just go on living like normal?

CALLIOPE: oh absolUtely not.

CALLIOPE: i don't know if yoU've noticed john bUt this world is on the brink of a total cataclysm.

JOHN: oh.

CALLIOPE: oUr exclUsion from the overarching coUrse of events which governs all reality means that oUr existence here is liable to dramatic and violent Upheaval.

CALLIOPE: to pUt it another way, becaUse nothing in here "matters", we are likely to be sUbjected to things which are a bit bats in the belfry, for no reason other than it's totally insignificant to the wider canon of reality.

CALLIOPE: and mUch thoUgh i am personally titillated by some of the conseqUences of this predicament, it is a degrading way for Us to live. u_u

JOHN: that's... certainly one way to put it, yeah...

yeah, so because here in the black hole neither affects the past or the future of anywhere else, being so disconnected, they are technically free of the reigns of the Alpha Timeline that exists elsewhere in the multiverse

the Alpha Timeline now being understood to simply mean, The Narrative

Things are the way they are because they are thus written to be so

CALLIOPE: at first, i believed that this was simply necessary. Us playing tails to oUr coUnterparts' heads, the black to their white, and so forth.

CALLIOPE: bUt over the years i have come to the conclUsion that this is simply not kosher.

ROXY: its total bs is what it is

CALLIOPE: right, yes.

CALLIOPE: a steaming pile of bUllshite.

CALLIOPE: and so we have decided that something needs to be done aboUt it.

Hmmm. It’s a dangerous idea to be playing with for sure, to decide all the black pieces in the game of chess suddenly become white, it is a very flip turning of reality upside down to be sure

To be honest, I’d think you’d need a powerful Doom player at your disposal to even try something like this

or actually, a powerful Doom user would be most likely to shut this entire thing down, knowing how bad of an idea it’d be, maybe it’s more you need a powerful Life player to do something like this instead

is that also why Dirk viewed Jane as an ally then? She would technically have the kind of power to upend the black and white doomy laws of reality if driven to her full potential, i mean obviously yes, we know this already because of the candy colored I-can-do-whatever-I-want-with-no-consequences lollipop

Is this what Calliope hopes to achieve with the Hiveswap Portal then? her goals for Joey and friends are to be the ones to prevent their universe’s twin destructions, and thus the Green Sun’s initial existence and then also the destruction into the Black Hole after the fact? that would be one way to prevent the Black Hole from existing, making it so the thing that creates the black hole never exists either

and that's certainly a canon event that would be difficult to tear asunder without major consequences

That would be a “Re-writing Homestuck from the very beginning” level of canon event

And if I’m correct, Joey is theorized by me to be a Mage of Life, if any classpect at their full potential was gonna do something like that, or have the impossible knowledge to something impossibly paradoxical like that, well..

ROXY: but u dont need to worry abt busting us outta space jail tbh

ROXY: thats not ur problem to fix

JOHN: oh.

JOHN: i'm... not sure i follow, then.

ROXY: i mean yeah ur gonna obvs facilitate it in a sense

ROXY: but only by going and busting the person who can actually help us outta normal earth jail

CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity.

ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point

CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan.

CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more.

CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it.

CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.

CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself?

I mean yeah! makes sense! Johns major factor here is Freedom, Vriska’s is Importance

and yeah, I can think of no other wholly dramatic event that to mess with stuff with the Green Sun, everyone will have eyes on that, they have to, their whole existence the way it is relies on it

But, they could also mean something else, its only condition is that it has to be something so imflappably impossible, something so not-canon and so outrageous that it basically horse-shoes around to the other end of the canon spectrum to being something that truly exists again

and that could be literally anything and it’s nerve wracking and exciting to see what thing theyre gonna come up with to just directly kneecap Homestuck itself

ROXY: thx babe

ROXY: oh is it 2 soon for that joke or

JOHN: no, weirdly enough, that one’s fine.

(yeah that’s because Babe can be construed as feminine June)

so, I’m basically convinced they’re doing June Egbert now

that to me was like, pretty severely on the nose

John: Hey Roxy, what it does mean when you find a sense of freedom when all of the symbolism of the masculinity surrounding your childhood burns down around you

Roxy: idk It’s probably a gender thing man

John: I didn’t say the word gender-

Roxy: It’s ok babe no pressure, we can hash it out later

John: Hmm, later then. :)

Roxy: (Turns and looks towards the camera with a knowing smile)

shit all that imagery makes me think of Roxy as that picture of the small kid smirking at the camera while a house burns in the distance XD

#Homesquared #june egbert #john egbert #yeah theres no way there not gonna bring up June Egbert as a apossibility now #Roxy couldn't have quirked her eyebrows harder at the fourth wall if they had tried #Homestuck #I'm basically convinced now lol #that plus my reaction to chapter 14

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shlabam · 4 years

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TOP TEN COMICS BOOK VILLAINS WE PROBABLY WON’T SEE IN THE MOVIES

Superhero media is the hottest thing going right now. It was true ten years ago when the MCU was in its adolescence, and it’s even truer now. Even with film production on lockdown, Marvel and DC are still planning on literally dozens of their characters entering their respective cinematic universes. However, for the fans of the source material, things can be contentious. For every memorable Tony Stark quip, there’s Superman destroying an entire city because he’s, frankly, kind of dumb now. A major point of contention is how the various popular villains are utilized. Making an intimidating and potent villain in a comic book is very different than in a film. In comics, you have months to establish motive, powers, and backstory before the villain even makes their first move. In films, that all has to be compressed and spilled out in the scarce few minutes when Captain America and Bucky aren’t making bambi eyes at each other. To be concise, some villains adapt perfectly, and some, no matter how good they are in the comics, just don’t. And to be clear, this list is of popular villains who have the possibility of appearing in a big-budget film, so no, you won’t be seeing Ten Eyed Man or Big Wheel in there. Their powers are, respectively, having ten eyes, and being very good in business. (That’s a lie, he’s just a huge wheel who chases Spider-Man.)

10: Mr. Mxyzptlk:

Cool, let’s get this one out of the way. Despite being one of Superman’s oldest, longest-lasting, and most popular enemies from all the way back in the Golden Age, there’s no way in hell he will be in a movie. For the uninformed. Mr. Mxyzptlk is a 5th dimensional wizard-genie who appears every ninety days to torment Superman with his reality-altering antics, and can only be sent back to his home dimension if Superman tricks him into saying his own name backwards. Yes, it would be very dazzling, as Mr. Mxyzptlk’s powers in a movie would basically look like if Christopher Nolan directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but he’s a little too silly to fit in with the current “everything is gloomy and also a bummer” tone of the Superman films. This silly tone has lent itself perfectly to the Supergirl series, where he’s made a handful of appearances. Besides, if we get Mxyzptlk in a Superman movie before Brainiac, I’ll lose my entire freaking mind.

9: Hobgoblin:

There have been eight Spider-Man movies so far, and of those eight, four of them have, in some capacity, featured the Green Goblin. And that makes sense, right? The Green Goblin is easily Spider-Man’s most memorable and reoccurring nemesis, with Doctor Octopus and Venom close behind, and Peter Parker’s link with Norman and Harry Osbourn makes their tragic story perfect for film adaptation. On the other hand, we have the Hobgoblin, who is essentially Green Goblin with all the gimmicks, none of the Parker-adjacent backstory, and an orange and blue color scheme, likely tying him to the Denver Broncos [citation needed]. Still, in those four cinematic attempts at tackling the Goblin, none of them have quite gotten him right, and I can’t imagine this character, who is, even in canon, an intentional Green Goblin rip-off, would fare any better.

8: Starro:

Brave and the Bold #28 from 1960 featured the first story with the Justice League, and this story put them up against a very unique new villain: Starro the Conqueror, a giant telepathic starfish who can release tiny versions of himself. If these tiny starfish latch onto your head, you’re under his control and obey his commands. The Justice League have battled him fairly regularly over the last fifty years, and he’s a distinct and powerful enemy that the fans generally appreciate, leading to him being referenced occasionally in Smallville, Arrow, and Flash. Why won’t he ever be in a movie? Because if you’re a Hollywood producer, you stopped paying attention at “giant telepathic starfish”. Sorry. Maybe Shuma-Gorath will pop up in the next Doctor Strange movie, and he’ll set off a Twilight-esque wave of starfish monster movies! Then again, almost absolutely not.

7: Puppet Master:

Speaking of mind control, what’s scarier than that? For my money, nothing. Having your body and will taken away from you by an unseen force is a terror greater than death. How could you possibly make a villain based around such a chilling concept and have him not be scary? Well, maybe if it’s an old bald man in an apron playing with dolls. The Puppet Master is an ongoing threat for the Fantastic Four who is just that: he makes models of his foes out of radioactive clay, and makes them punch themselves and dance around and kiss each other, because he’s, y’know, a weird old man. Why is he such a consistent threat who hasn’t fallen into obscurity like other dumb gimmick-based villains? His stepdaughter, Alicia Masters, is the Thing’s longtime girlfriend. As long as she keeps appearing in movies (including being played by… Kerry Washington? That can’t be right), there’s always a chance he’ll pop up, but I don’t think any movie studio is that stupid, despite the quality of every Fantastic Four movie blatantly defying that prediction.

6: Bizarro:

Superman has always suffered in the villains department. When you’re essentially a god, what can they throw at you? As it turns out, Lex Luthor, almost always. But why not another Superman? Bizarro is essentially that, an imperfect clone of Superman who speaks in opposite speak - “Bizarro am good! Me not punch you until you live!” - and features the same abilities as the Man of Steel. Sounds great, right? Putting a hero against a villain with their same powers has worked for nearly every Marvel movie (shots fired). So why won’t we see him grace our silver screens any time soon? Because they’ve never really figured him out. Is he funny? Is he lethal? Does Kryptonite work on him? If he does everything the opposite of Superman, why does he wear clothes? Isn’t being naked the opposite of being clothed? Bizarro is a major Superman side-character and has made appearances in Smallville and Supergirl, but the idea of him being the Big Bad going toe-to-toe with Henry Cavill doesn’t sound like it would generate a lot of views.

5: Impossible Man:

You remember what I said about Mr. Mxyzptlk? Remember? So take that bit, but everywhere I say Superman, have it say Fantastic Four instead… yeah, that should do it.

4: The Wrecking Crew:

Thor has a unique quirk of having a very cinematic rogues gallery. Sure, most of the movies have pitted him against Loki, but if they were to run him up against the Enchantress, or the Absorbing Man, or Ulik the Troll, or Kurse, or even the Stone Men from Saturn, that’s not a bad movie! However, in one of the attempts to give Thor more of a mortal nemesis, they put him up against the Wrecker, who has an… enchanted… indestructible… crowbar. Yeah. Incredibly, the Wrecker and his Wrecking Crew have become very present characters throughout the Marvel Universe, essentially serving as “jobbers”, being rolled out to get beaten up by the new top hero or villain, but that may not work in a movie, where villains have to be seen as having some level of potency before being struck down. That means we’d need at least a short scene where it seems like Thor might lose to a guy whose power is “crowbar”, and that’s about as likely as an Edward Norton cameo in the next Avengers. Ho boy, they did NOT part on good terms!

3: Clayface:

When the movie-going public goes to see a Batman movie, they generally want something a bit more grounded than your typical superhero fare. After all, Batman has no powers, and therefore the most supernatural thing that should happen in these movies is a gas that makes you smile, or a different gas that makes you think your dead parents are back and disappointed in you. Might wanna put a mouth covering on that mask, Bruce! The one and only they’ve made a movie where Batman fights people with real, off-the-wall super powers (Batman and Robin), it did not go great. And those guys pale in comparison to Clayface, who is, yes, made of clay. In the comics and cartoons, Clayface looks awesome, turning his limbs into weapons and being very challenging to incapacitate, but in a live-action, realistic Batman adventure, we wouldn’t want to see the Dark Knight fight a poop-colored version of the T-1000, especially if it’s got the same chemical composition of a little dreidel that I made.

2: Red Hood:

A relative newcomer to the Batman universe, Red Hood is the revived body of Jason Todd, the second Robin, who was brutally killed by the Joker in one of the most controversial storylines DC Comics ever produced. Literally, fans called a 900 number to tell the writers to kill him off. A 900 number. That’s how much they hated the little turd. Anyway, Jason Todd, whom Batman and the rest of the world believed was dead, was revived by Ra’s al Ghul and became a ruthless villain. Since then, he’s gravitated more to the side of the hero, though one a bit more willing to spill blood than his mentors. Why won’t we see him in the darker, edgier Batman films? Because… that’s Bucky. It’s the same thing that happened in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Teen sidekick killed in controversial manner, revived by super villain to be a thorn in said hero’s side, later changes his mind and becomes a good guy again, though with enough PTSD to fill a PTSD super store. The two storylines even occurred in the comics in the same year, 2005, to much fanfare and across-the-board declarations of one company ripping off the other, reminding the world of the great Aquaman-Namor debates of the 1940s. Considering that DC’s films have criminally underperformed compared to Marvel’s, the last thing they want to do is be accused of lazy plagiarism, so Jason Todd will likely remain a permanent fixture in the afterlife, hanging out with Batman’s parents and, at the rate that people are coming back from the dead, literally no one else. (Plus, if they can’t even get Robin right, how are they gonna do this?)

1: Mister Sinister:

Yes, he was teased at the end of X-Men Apocalypse, but ignoring that the film underperformed both critically and commercially, Mister Sinister is never going to be in a movie. It would make sense for him to appear, though, right? He’s one of the most present and potent X-Men villains, he’s played crucial roles in many memorable storylines, he’s got a sick cape, but… something a lot of comic book fans tend to overlook is his murky backstory, powers, and motivations. He was a biologist in Victorian London who did genetic experiments on homeless people in the hopes of finding clues about the oncoming threat of mutants. In this time, he unearthed the long-dormant En Sabah Nur, whom you plebeians may know as Apocalypse, and Apocalypse gifted him with great abilities. What abilities you ask? HA HA, good question! At various times, Sinister has displayed: telepathy, telekinesis, energy projection, shape-shifting, regeneration, and teleportation, but these powers will mysteriously disappear whenever they want him to get sliced up real good by Wolverine. Additionally, it has never been made very clear what Sinister wants. Does he seek perfect mastery of the human genome? Does he live to torment Cyclops? Is he a blind follower of Apocalypse? Is he just running through all the different kinds of goatee? Of course, in adaptation, the writers would pick and choose the aspects they’d want to use, but I doubt they’d want to untangle the Christmas lights mess that is Mister Sinister, especially when they’ve got a perfectly good villain whose power is just “magnets”.

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nezumiismissing · 4 years

Text

Authoritarianism Without Leadership and the Formation of Spatial Identity

I think at this point I have probably brought this up in every single one of my analyses, so it’s about time that this topic gets its own breakdown in a full length post (or 2 or 3). There’s a lot to cover and it’s going to get way out there, but hopefully you can find something useful here. And if not, maybe it can at least be entertaining. More exploration of this topic to come at an unspecified time after the convention when my brain decides to enter the No.6 zone again. (and yes it is over 3000 words so, you know, plan for that)

So if you couldn’t tell, the No.6 anime does not have an antagonist, at least not in any traditional sense of the word. The opponent our characters are facing off against, it turns out, is not an evil scientist or an organization or a military, but instead it is the city and its systems that must be either destroyed or reformed by the end of the story. And while those other characters exist within the world of No.6, and all take actions that go directly against the desires of our main characters, they are not fought against especially directly and within the anime have no real identity, instead only existing as part of the whole. But what is the whole exactly? I think the easy answer here is to say that the whole is society, the culture we live within that shapes everything we do in life and that must have some amount of force placed upon it to change in any significant way. But when we say that “society is the whole”, and therefore the antagonist of No.6, what do we mean by that? And how does our perception and interpretation of what it means to be a society impact how we read and understand the story of No.6?

Now, having society be the antagonist of a young adult dystopian series is not something that No.6 came up with, obviously. It's basically a necessity of the genre. But within that structure, although not always apparent at first, there is a lot of variance. These worlds are almost always authoritarian and hierarchical, the result of some massive war or natural disaster that we have been unable to fully heal from, but outside of that, the way in which these worlds are built and understood are vastly different. Some are pretending to be utopias while others give us no image of what it means to be at the “top” and only show suffering. Some take place in over-crowded cities and others have sparse populations of people constantly searching for each other. There are social (and human) experiments, revolutions of all shapes and sizes, monsters and aliens and governments that are all in one way or another trying to reflect the very real events that are taking place in the real world in a way that is perhaps more comprehensible, or at least entertaining. Society as it currently exists is very much the antagonist of these stories, and at the center (and everywhere else) of a society are individual people making decisions that may or may not be good and may or may not have good intentions. So it is easy to see how, when it comes down to it, while society is implicitly understood to be the antagonist, most of these stories focus their energy on the removal of a tangible threat, usually a person or group of people who are determined to be “in charge” of the society and therefore responsible for much of the misery of a dystopia. The No.6 novels also fall into this group, as does the manga. But the No.6 anime, for whatever reason, decided to do something completely different, and something that is arguably much more terrifying.

From here on out I will just refer to the anime as No.6 and will specify if I am mentioning the novels/manga.

In No.6 things do not happen because someone says they need to happen, but they instead happen for…. what reason exactly? We see the mayor referenced briefly in the first episode, so we can assume that he is the one in charge of decision-making, but he makes no actual appearances. The military is clearly shown demolishing the West Block, but who is giving orders? Who is watching over the scientists at the Correctional Facility? Deciding where the wall will expand next if at all? In most stories you would see questions like these answered either near the beginning of the story or revealed at the end, and if it's neither of those then they’ll probably still show up at some point in the middle. But in No.6 there is none of that. There is no one or no group clearly “in charge” of what is happening at any time in regards to the city and its surroundings. Instead, it seems, the city has reached a point in which the details of how these things are occurring are unimportant, and that for the most part, things will unfold with or without the input of an individual or group. The implication of this being that No.6 is somehow separate from its people and government, and is, in a sense, alive.

I think this is largely why the anime is able to be so effective, despite its many other issues. On a surface level, the story lacks any kind of antagonist, making it unclear where exactly it's going. But the existence of the city as an independent entity fills in these odd gaps, creating the image of a society that has, quite literally, lost control of itself. It also makes more concrete the theme of “society vs nature” that is kind of hinted at for most of the story and then kind of shoved in your face at the end with Elyurias and Nezumi’s backstory. But with Elyurias being the physical embodiment of nature, what exactly is it that she is opposing? But before we get into that, some framing and questions (or maybe just one very big question).

What does it mean for a city to be “alive”? Not in the sense that things are happening in it and people are living there, but in the sense that it thinks and feels on its own and makes choices about itself that are not the direct result of human or other external input? Clearly people were responsible for its creation, and took care to create systems that would hold it together. But those systems were not created for the city itself, but rather the survival of the people living within it, with the city and society simply being a result of our need to be social. The city, if we are to see it as a living thing, doesn’t really gain anything from this arrangement so long as we are in control of it, and so will seek out ways to separate itself from us. It does need us to continue existing, however, and so it can’t truly create anything new on its own, and will instead make use of what we have already created. It will warp itself in unexpected ways, or cement systems that otherwise would change or disappear over time, so that it will better serve itself and maintain continuity while still appearing as though run by people. Different people will have varying amounts of control over how this all unfolds, but at a certain point there will be things that can no longer be changed through “traditional” means, at which point people will have to create and impose systems on a large scale that do not fit into the current form the city is in. And this is the point at which No.6 finds itself.

Now, there is a lot of my thinking that I’m skipping over here, especially in regards to how this applies to the real world and the implications that has, but for the purposes of No.6, this is a good starting point. The city that existed before No.6 was “killed”, restructured, and brought back to life as the result of a world war, and at the beginning of the story, we are already at a stage in which this new city has separated itself from its people and become a conscious entity. We see this process from a different perspective in the novels, with characters questioning how everything got to this point as they come to realize that the things they thought they were doing were never in their control in the first place, and that something else had made the city what it was. By omitting these characters entirely though, the anime makes their point clear, “it doesn’t matter who thinks they’re in charge of things, the city will function just fine with or without them”. I would argue that much of this is made possible through the advanced technology available in No.6, making it possible to automate systems in a way that keeps people entirely out of the process of dealing with massive amounts of vital information. You could probably even say that the “essence” of No.6, its identity as a sentient being, is mostly made up of these computerized systems and algorithms that determine everything about how a citizen will live their life.

This is, of course, similar to the way in which Elyurias is understood to operate, the main difference being that she is made up of natural, rather than man-made and technological systems. As sentient, omnipresent beings, they make use of small parts of their greater existence in order to convince different components to act in ways that are beneficial to their continued survival, reproduction, and expansion, with the survival of the individual components being far less of a concern as they are perceived as being easy to replace. Elyurias uses the parasitic bees to infinitely self-replicate, allowing her to endlessly alter and maintain the natural world as she sees fit. No.6, on the other hand, makes use of social and technological systems to convince its citizens to keep things as they are, or expand the limits of the city, or any number of other things it cannot do on its own, but are seen as crucial to its continued existence. Within the context of the story, there is no one person that needs to be “in control” of these actions, since the city is acting in what it sees as its own benefit, but it is also aware that in order to maintain itself, someone must appear in charge, and may even be influenced to believe that that is the case.

The problem with No.6, of course, arises from its desire to continue expanding while otherwise maintaining society as it currently exists. A static city is one that is destined to fall apart, or else have control returned to the people until a new form of stability can be achieved. So in order for No.6 to maintain its identity as an independent entity, it must change in other ways, and thus views expansion and increased complexity as a path forward. When it comes into contact with Elyurias as a result of this expansion though, it is clear that their goals as entities are incompatible and cannot occupy the same space. For Elyurias this necessitates the destruction of No.6, since the city has already been responsible for the damage and destruction of large areas of her “realm”, while No.6 sees her as an opportunity to improve its own systems through the assimilation of her powers into its “realm”. This assimilation, as the city sees it, both expands its power through the elimination and subsequent exploitation of a competing entity, as well as further automates its own processes through the combination of technological and natural systems. None of these benefits are seen by the citizens, of course, and in fact the result would instead be an almost complete removal of their free will, but for No.6’s purposes those effects are inconsequential so long as the people continue existing.

This formatting can also be extrapolated to describe Shion and Nezumi’s roles and understanding of the world, which clearly play a much more prominent role in the outward text of the series. Shion has a difficult time understanding and accepting No.6’s absolute corruption not because he has no experience with the suffering it has caused or or the inherent problems with hierarchy. Clearly he has been subjected to both of those things quite early on in the series. Instead the issue arises from the fact that while Nezumi, who learned about Elyurias in his childhood and has an understanding of “sentient” non-human systems, Shion has no basis for comprehending this, and is therefore unable to see how No.6 could have become so awful without anyone noticing or intervening, and cannot understand the true nature of the issue without first passing it through the filter of human decision-making processes. Nezumi falls into this as well on several occasions when he claims that the citizens are the ones at fault for the city’s problems. But unlike Shion, this comes from a lack of understanding of the specific systems that make up the city and a need to have a concrete place of blame rather than a belief in complete human control over society. Through this lens, the story of the human characters of No.6 in the anime is one of coming to understand the nature of both human and non-human systems, where they may intersect and overlap, and then determining how change can be brought about when we do not have control, or even meaningful access, to those systems.

So when a city has separated itself from its citizens, when it has become functionally “alive” and begins to behave in ways that no longer benefit or sustain our conception of humanity, what can be done to regain control? Can a city that has become independent be brought back under human control, or must it be destroyed and rebuilt, its structure completely altered so that little if any of what was originally there remains intact? The answer that No.6 seems to give is much more in line with the latter idea (at least in this fictional instance). Because of No.6’s rapid development, there was never a chance for people to fully grasp what they were really doing, and if anyone did realize what had happened, it was far too late to alter the city in a way that took away its power. The city is authoritarian to the point of self-inflicted genocide in an instance of internal social destabilization, and the faulty addition of Elyurias’ power makes this self-destruction incredibly easy. The fact that her assimilation into No.6’s system is incomplete only exacerbates the issue, and is ultimately what leads to its destruction.

The destruction of the wall as a physical presence has any number of meanings, some of which I have written about before and others that I may or may not write about in the future. But within this reading of No.6 as “alive”, what stands out the most is the fact that what ultimately gave the city its independent status was its refusal to even interact with other systems. Its purpose, its role, as an entity was entirely one of self-preservation, born from the paranoia that inevitably followed the war responsible for its creation. By destroying the wall, and allowing people access to “others”, the city cannot remain isolated and reinforce a singular concept of society, therefore losing almost the entirety of its power over people. Without the wall, there is no No.6, and without No.6, people are once again free to build something new.

Just to bring this all back around to where we started, and maybe simplify all that down to something manageable, what does it mean to have an antagonist that is alive, but not human or otherwise sentient in a way that we understand? In No.6’s case, I don’t think it is enough to say that society is the problem, or that by removing a government and installing new leadership, all of the problems can be solved. Unlike in the novels and manga, the anime does not even give us the second option, since there functionally is no government to oppose for the most part. Instead, we are given a city that people have not had influence over for a significant amount of time, one in which “society” is not a single thing shaped by the people that make it up, but is also a social system that is imposed upon people by a non-human force. No.6, as an entity, needs its citizens only to the extent that they are useful to it, namely as a mechanism for expansion and self-defense, but exists as such that the people living within it are completely reliant upon it in every aspect of their lives. Something so simple as putting someone else in the arbitrary position of “leadership” is meaningless when that person has no real power, and so in order to reclaim human control over the entirety of society, an inaccessible entity must be destroyed. In this sense, Nezumi is not wrong to say that No.6 needs to be destroyed completely, and is instead only misled as to what that actually means, mistaking the people living within the confines of the city for the city itself. The defining feature of the city, the wall, also acts as the source of its power and independence, and thus its destruction is functionally equivalent to its death, leaving behind only a loose collection of systems and beliefs that are no longer upheld in any physical or tangible way.

Society is made up of people, that is clear, but what is less obvious is that people are also made up of society. We can recognize that society impacts us and shapes who we are and how we think, but it is perhaps the case that to an even stronger degree, society is operating outside of our own individual or even collective input, and is, in a sense, self-sustaining. Rather than our own beliefs being imposed upon an ever-changing society, it is a preexisting society that imposes itself upon us, deciding when, how, and if things will change. It does change over time, and that of course is due to people’s existence within it, but what No.6 makes clear, to me at least, is that while people are unable to survive without the construction of a society, even if that society is destructive, the society at a certain point will no longer need people to maintain itself outside of the basic definition of its existence, and it is at that point that it becomes much more difficult, and dangerous, to change.

#no.6 zine #no. 6 shion #no.6 meta #not sure how i ended up feeling about this one!#on one hand im in love with the concepts introduced!#on the other hand i sound almost entirely unhinged for half of this!#my brain processes do not translate well to the written word sometimes and thats just how it is!#anyways i watched the entirety of an anime today that i think i may be falling in love with the more i get into its themes #so im going to get back to daydreaming about all the ideas for writing i want to do for that!#edit #forgot to add this in the original tags #but this whole concept was inspired by a very specific youtuber and a couple specific videos of his #so thats fun!#gonna try and keep being a bit experimental with these in the future!#originals

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spiiderwiick · 4 years

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Compared to the first day, in which they had a clown chomp on their hand, today had gone much smoother. They’d had the idea to set up a little blanket fort for her and later made many home-made circus tent jokes to themself. Patches had taken well to it and mostly remained in there, much like a cat hiding under a bed in a new home.

Wick had learned quickly that Patches had a thing about the idea of magic. She seemed genuinely unsettled by it. They found that odd given how clearly magic she was with her rainbow clown jelly, unnatural healing ability, not to mention the ability to get anywhere she pleased. They’d made a point to let anyone interacting with her know not to bring it up. At all. No magic allowed.

Patches had rediscovered her phone today and Wick had to very quickly come up with a mundane, non-magical reason that it works. They weren’t sure how old she was or what her current worldly perspective was, but they figured carrier pigeons and mailmen were a close enough analogy. She called it a birdbox. They nodded in agreement, it’s a birdbox.

Soon after, someone introduced her to cat videos, which thankfully took up most of the day, except for the parts where she ended up on a rabbit hole that took her to food videos and she started demanding fish and other tasty things. That was fine, they’d been wanting sushi lately anyway.

The day was winding down, the sun was setting and nothing had exploded. Wick wouldn’t ever truly let their guard down, not around Patches, but from the other side of the room, they were confident they could move quickly enough to outrun a baby.

They take a seat across from the blanket fort, leaning their back against the wall, “hey patches? you mind if i ask you a couple questions?”

Patches lifts the blanket curtain blocking the entrance to her lair. She doesn’t look terribly thrilled to be bothered, but since Wick has been feeding her, she’s willing to humor them, “What?”

Ah. They decide they need to tread carefully, “how uh.. how old are you? you seem kinda young to be out on your own.”

The clown narrows her eyes at them, “Dunno.”

Wick isn’t sure if she’s being difficult on purpose or if she genuinely doesn’t know. Even the Patches they knew was always vague with her age. They decide to try a different approach, “do you remember how many winters you’ve seen?”

“Winters..?” Her eyes drop to the floor in thought, “I think... Seven? I don’t like winter. It’s cold and there’s less food.”

Wick nods. Seven was a good ballpark, depending on the sort of critter Patches is, she might not remember her first year or two, most seemed to lose those early on. They’d hazard a guess at her being eight or nine. Still absolutely a baby, even if not a literal toddler, “yeah? yeah.. it’s not so bad here at least. what was.. what is your home like?”

“I don’t have one.” Her frown returns, “I never had one.”

They can feel their heart breaking with every little detail Patches reveals, and have to keep reminding themself about who she is when she grows up. Regardless of how they try to help her now, she’s almost assuredly going to return to her usual awful self later. They already knew the answer to their question, “really? what about family?”

Patches shakes her head, “I came outta an egg but I never saw another monster like me. I am all by myself.”

“then where.. where in the world have you been living?”

She crawls a little further out of her fort to sit on the floor, “Everywhere. I sleep in trees and in alleys and sometimes hide out in people’s houses when it’s too cold or rainy. Sometimes I can even get away with taking their food before they can catch me!”

Wick is only mildly perturbed by her sense of pride at that. They’ve read enough novels about kids on the run, on their own, “you just scavenge for food wherever you can get it, huh?”

“Or I hunt.” Patches lifts her head and those round pupils thin a bit into predatory slits at the thought, “I’m really good at hunting!”

“heh.. i bet you’ve got lots of practice.” Wick does not like the way they’re being watched all of a sudden, “you just hunt whatever you can catch, yeah?”

Patches nods, “I’m really good at catching rabbits and squirrels and birds and people and fish and stuff.”

Wick’s expression falls, “...people?”

“Uh-huh!” Patches doesn’t see anything wrong with this and hops up onto her feet in her excitement, “They try to hurt me sometimes, cause I stole food or something from them! They wanna do bad things but I don’t let ‘em! Sometimes.. They try to catch me cause they think I’m just a weak little kid but I show ‘em! And then I’m not hungry for a lil bit either!!”

Somehow, the news that she’s killing and eating people in self defense doesn’t seem to make Wick any less anxious, “w-well, that’s. not very nice of them at all, is it?” Oh they want to abort this conversation so badly. How can they leave?

“They say they’re good people cause I’m evil.” Patches is staring right at them with those glowing red eyes of hers, “Cause I’m a monster.. But you said I’m not evil.”

Goddamnit they did say that. Or something close enough to it. They choose their next words very, very carefully and slowly, “being evil is.. a choice. it’s something you choose with your actions, not something you inherently are.” They pause, “plenty of people who say they’re good and think they’re the purest person on earth do evil things.” And you Patches, have been choosing to do many evil things, even as a baby, apparently.

The clown seems confused by this, it looks like she’s thinking hard about things. After what feels like an eternity to Wick, she speaks, “You think I’m evil, don’t you?”

Yes, yes they do, but they shake their head in response, “i- don’t think.... i don’t think i know enough about your situation to judge whether or not you're evil.” They are growing increasingly anxious with the way she’s staring at them, “i think.. killing and eating people is wrong.. even if you are doing it in self defense, two wrongs don’t make a right. it’d be better to just.. you know. do something to get ‘em to let you go like bite them really good?”

Patches ears flatten defensively, “I’ve tried that!! They just get madder and try to hurt me worse!!!”

Of course she had, Wick thinks, she’d bit them pretty good when she was feeling threatened. She already had a concept of warning people to leave her alone. That last sentence did remind them of a question they’d wanted to know, and.. Maybe it would be a way to steer the conversation away from eating people, “hurt you? i’d heard a rumor you couldn’t feel pain.. which is kinda silly sounding to say out loud, it can’t be true, right?”

A rumor? Maybe this place wasn’t as far from “home” as she thought, if they knew things about her that she hadn’t told them. That did explain why the man the other night knew her given name, “That’s stupid. You’re stupid. Being hurt hurts. Who told you that?”

That was interesting news. Wick shrugs, thankful for their years of acting training to lean on as they improvise and try not to look too freaked, “some rando from the birdbox. guess they were full of it though. why would someone think you don’t feel pain?”

Patches steps back a bit and her long tail curls close as if she’s worried someone might try to grab it, “Cause... I’m a monster.. And when I get hurt it goes away... But it still hurts until it goes away.”

“you can.. heal yourself? that’s pretty cool.” Hm.. Maybe they should show her a certain movie, one they know she’s referenced in regards to her healing before.

“Cool..? You think that’s cool?” She sounds hopeful, like this is some of the first validation she’s received in her life. For all they know, maybe it actually is.

“yeah? i think all that magic stuff is pretty neat.” Oh. They said the M word. They are full of regret before she can even react.

At first, she doesn’t react, she just freezes up. Patches.exe has encountered a problem, would you like to end the program? When she does speak it’s quiet, barely above a whisper. Wick is afraid to ask for her to speak up because they don’t know if they want to know what she said. They don’t get a choice, “I’m. Not. Magic. I’m a monster. I’m a scary evil monster. I’m not magic.”

“hey- hey it’s- it’s okay. i’m probably wrong. it just- sounds like- something magical. it’s-” They’re at a loss for words. They don’t get it. Why is magic such a bad thing to her? Maybe they should just ask, “is.. why are you- why don’t you like magic?”

“It’s bad.” That’s it. That’s all the reply she gives them. It’s bad. Magic bad.

Somewhere in their terror, something clicks, “and you don’t.. want people to think you’re bad? or.. treat you any worse than they already do?”

The penny drops when Patches nods. She’s a product of her times. Magic is bad and scary and they need to burn the witch. She’s just as scared of the idea of magic as anyone else would have been from her time, and she’s magic herself.

“okay.. patches, i need you to listen to me.. magic- it’s. it’s just like monsters. it’s only bad if someone chooses to use it to do bad things. it’s not some inherently evil thing on its own.” When it doesn’t look like she believes them, they continue, only fumbling a little, “there is nothing evil about healing magic, for example. healing is in the name! it’s good, it’s healthy. it makes people better! i don’t think it’s even possible to do evil with healing magic”

They know it is possible because Patches uses her magic for evil things all the time. Or at least uses the knowledge that she can rely on it as an excuse to take normally life-threatening risks when it comes to ruining other people’s lives. None of that matters in this moment, talking to a kid scared of.. Apparently herself.

Said kid doesn’t look convinced, but Wick is opening new doors as they try to liken it to the monster conversation, “Then why does everyone say it’s bad? Why does it hurt more?”

What?

“hurt.. more?” Another nod from Patches. Wick is not an expert in magic, they didn’t even think magic was real in their world. Assuming Patches is from their world and didn’t hop over here one day on a whim, it would mean magic was real and secret and probably a lot easier to abuse that way.

“that.. sounds like.. someone really wanted to hurt you. maybe that someone was evil, or thought they were doing good by trying to hurt you. people.. don’t always like things they don’t understand. magic ‘n monsters both. it’s easier for them to call those things bad and be afraid of ‘em than to take the time to learn about them.”

While that doesn’t make Patches look any happier, some of the confusion and worry seems to fade, “Why aren’t you afraid?”

Because they’ve lived most of the past year in constant fear of murder clowns and baby murder clowns are a lot less scary, “i think.. if i’d met you a year ago, i’d probably be pretty freaked out, honestly, but i’ve met a lot of nice monsters recently, learned magic was real and not scary. it’s.. actually incredible. some of it really beautiful to watch.”

Wick can tell at a glance how full of doubt she still is, “why don’t you give it a chance? maybe you’ll be surprised.” They glance at their bandaged hand, “i have an idea.. why don’t i let someone use some healing magic on me? to show you that it’s not so scary and can be good.”

Bold of them to allow someone to use magic on them, she thinks, but better them than her. A short nod before she retreats into the safety of her fort. The red slit peeping out from the darkness is the only indication that she’s waiting for them to follow through.

With a small sigh, Wick pulls out their phone. Time to call in a friend.

#drabble #f2f #jpstandsforjustpatches #(( read more'd for length ))

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inmyarmswrappedin · 5 years

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Thoughts on each even, you don’t have to answer. You just have some of the better skam opinions on this site.

Hi 🤩💫 First off, flattery will get you absolutely everywhere with me, anon, thank you so much haha.

I took a few days to think about how best to answer this ask because most of the Evens don’t feel so different to me that I could think of many things to say about each one. But then I thought I’d approach the Evens through their art style.

I was a bit of an Even in high school— liked 90s hip hop, fell in love a lot, was a bit of a dreamer and a romantic, doodled and tried my hand at different art projects with mixed results, etc. So in talking about the Evens, I’m also going to talk a bit about myself if you don’t mind!

I’m also not going to rank them this time, let me know if you want me to rank them (or to rank anything else about Skams, idc).

Even - I like Even’s drawing style and I feel it suits him very well. He never had an insta, but Isak’s season banner features a good amount of his drawings, plus the ones we saw on the show. He’s obviously influenced by American hip hop and comic culture, what with the COOLCAT, the weed, the crown, the diamonds… and the dicks. I’m very fond of Even’s Illuminati eye surrounded by boners, lol. It really feels like the kind of things a boy like Even (who loves Romeo + Juliet and Pretty Woman and Gabrielle, but also Nas and Lars von Trier and Stjerner uden hjerner and FIFA) would draw. I like that Even felt inspired by his conversations with Isak and pushed through his own fears to make art directly referencing things Isak said. Even felt scared by the possibility of parallel universes, but in order to show Isak how much he cared, his drawings for Isak all referenced parallel universes. I also like that Even’s art style is not stereotypically cute. It reminds me of the borderline gross style of Daniel Clowes and Peter Bagge.

Niccolò - Okay, so at this point I think we’re all aware that Skam Italia didn’t even have the budget for insta content, and they clearly didn’t have the budget to hire an artist specifically to create Niccolò’s art. He does have lots of drawings in his room, but then he doesn’t really draw anything for Martino? It feels like Niccolò is more of an arts and crafts kind of person, at least to me. Anyway I like that (aside from the red string of fate, which never got a follow up of any kind) the stuff Niccolò makes for Martino all reference Last Man on Earth, the TV show they bond over, in one way or another. The show is really not what I would call epic romance material, which I feel works for them tbh!

Eliott - My thing with both Eliott’s furry thing and Polaris, is that both seem really cute, but ultimately like… they didn’t mine either thing for all it was worth, I guess I would put it. Also, in comparison to other Evens, Eliott’s thing is almost developed (Eliott is after all a fictional character, not a real person) in order to elicit maximum cooing from its audience. Like, no one would say the illuminati boners or Last Man on Earth are objectively cute, not out of context! (And I’m far from a Skam Italia fan, I’m just saying.) But the hedgehog and the raccoon and the cat are all drawn in a very cute style. It feels a little too saccharine sweet for a 18-year old. However, Maxence not looking like a 18-year old might also play a part in my hesitance, because as a 18-year old I legit drew a full on comic about me and my then crush as superheroes fighting against our teachers in order to conquer college admittance tests together. (Like I said, Even and I have some shit in common lol.) And I drew my crush as a cat because he looked like a cat to me. So where the hell do I get off criticizing Eliott, y’know? As for Polaris, it’s like… Okay, so one is afraid of the light and one is afraid of the dark, and they meet and kiss right outside the cave, what else? It’s like, it’s cute and romantic, right, but not very developed as a season long motif.

David - I mean, do I have to say it? I love David and everything about him. I love that he has different art styles and uses different tools, it’s very realistic for someone his age still trying to find what his specific thing is. I love his sketches and his collages and the fact that he has a vampire persona that he draws in thicker lines. I love that he didn’t initially have an insta, and that he only got it because Sara and Leonie needled him about it, and I love that he didn’t post selfies or pictures of himself until he went through his character development. I love that his vampire persona crap is only for Matteo and he doesn’t post those cartoons on his very serious, very aesthetic insta. I love that his vampire persona looks similar to the Magdalene Hanke-Basfeld illustrations for the Angela Sommer-Bodenburg “The Little Vampire” book series. (I have no idea whether it’s intentional/an homage or just me seeing things where I wanna see them, but I loooove it.) I love that his first posts on insta really just seem kind of random (aside from the bird taking flight ofc) and like they don’t have a connection to the s3 storyline, it’s as if David really existed and made art and had ideas and thoughts before he met Matteo. I get such a kick of David’s sense of humor, like he seems kind of angry at the cliche of being barefoot on the beach and having a good time (ZUM KOTZEN!!!). Lol he’s just so delightful. I love that he can’t post a goddamn pic or video without a filter, oh no that’s simply not him!!!!1 And let me tell you about the time he made a highlights folder and named it Nights on Earth, I almost lost it on twitter I had such a great time. Anyway, David’s art and insta really scream that he’s a bit of a pretentious snob who corrects people on proper terminology and will only make cute things for the person he cares about the mostest AND NO ONE ELSE. PERIODT!

Joana - I’m a bit torn about Joana because I’m not into her more anime-esque stuff, but at the same time, god, if that isn’t me. I learned to draw by watching anime and trying to emulate the style, and because I’ve never really taken lessons, my cartoons just scream anime. I’m a bit embarrassed about it, because weeaboos and what not, and that extends to Joana as well lol. Before I revisited the Evens’ stuff for this ask, I had this idea in my mind that Joana’s art is a bit unrealistic because it seems too polished and professional for her character, but really, that’s just the piece that she in character made for the hospital/the BDP project. The stuff on the show and on her insta is actually believable as doodles or pieces she can put a bit more effort into, but aren’t like, art gallery-ready. I like that Joana started posting black and white doodles from graph paper notebooks (ftr this is the kind of notebooks most Spanish students use, lined or blank paper notebooks not so much), and started adding colors and creating more complex pieces as her relationship with Cris progressed. I think it says so much about Joana that the cartoons that represent her are always in some kind of pain, physical or emotional, but the cartoons that represent Cris (including the toads) are always cute, always happy, always desirable. Like, be more in love pls. I love that Joana is a bit of an edgelord, and uses a lot of imagery related to arrows, knives, tears/blood drops. That’s so accurate of girls like her. I love that the season banner has an actual to god vulva on it. Compared to other Evens, Joana seems more focused on drawing than anything else, so maybe that makes her video for Cris’ birthday not plausible, but on the other hand, I feel like Croana shippers could’ve used more cuteness in week 10, so you know what? Imma take that video, copypasta of “Gutten som ikke klarte å holde pusten under vann” as it is. I hope that Joana keeps posting art in s3 and s4, and so we get to see how her style develops. ✨

Sander - I haven’t really watched wtFOCK.

#skam #druck #skam españa #skam italia #skam france #ask #Anonymous #brain vomit

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dw-thehiraethkids · 4 years

Text

Bedtime

I'm going to start off by saying uh the very base of this character came from here so please read it it's a really good story and I uhh aged 13 accidentally stole this boy so

But he's very different than the other version in this au so hopefully you can forgive me

Also there’s a part (you’ll know it) thats based on that audio with the baby McElroy (i dont know things about them sorry)

And the song referenced is a real song: Soldier, Poet, King by The Oh Hellos

It was quiet at night. Not that night was a solid force in the time vortex. But it was quiet nonetheless. The Doctor sat in the console room with his leg in an unexplainable position up on his chair, reading a book. Only at this time could he get any good reading in without any of his human friends going out on adventures, or more pressingly, making sure that Alexander was safe and well taken care of. It was exhausting taking care of a child, even with the amount of help he had between Donna and even Alex’s father.

He was distracted from his book though, by the sound of pitter pattering feet down the hall, past the console room. He didn’t stop reading though or even look up. If anyone needed anything they were more than welcome to come see him.

The footsteps came closer and closer. They were definitely Alex’s footsteps: too small and light footed to be anyone else’s. He still didn’t look up. Not for any reason, mostly because Alex had any choice in the situation and he didn’t have to interact with the Doctor if he didn’t want to. Sometimes they’d just sit together in silence enjoying each other’s company.

But instead tonight Alex pulled on his pant leg, on the leg that was oddly still perched on top of the arm of the chair. He shut the book, with a bit of a dramatic flair. He moved his leg back down to a more realistic position and perched his head in his hands, “What’s up Alexander?”

Alex’s face scrunched up in thought, clearly he’d come into the console room only to forget what his objective was somewhere between his room and there. Something must have clicked though because his face relaxed and he made his way over to the console. He was a bit too short to reach a majority of the controls and clearly didn’t know how to pilot the ship, “I wanna go.”

The Doctor laughed, “Go? Absolutely not; it’s past your bedtime.”

Alex scowled, a look he had most definitely picked up from his father. It was a bit too cute on him though with his little fists balled up and his arms over his chest. Maybe in 30 years it would look intimidating, maybe. He stopped his foot, “No. I wanna go.”

The Doctor sighed, he wasn’t getting out of a fight that easily. There was no part of him that wanted to just pick him up and drag him back to his room, honestly because he was getting bigger and he didn’t want to haul an uncooperative dead weight across the TARDIS. “Okay, let’s say I was taking you somewhere, which I’m not, where would we go?”

Alex looked up at him, still unimpressed, kids were in the business of getting what they wanted as soon as they wanted. “Home.”

Oh. Well that was an easy one, maybe he was missing his mother. The Doctor could spare a trip to Earth, maybe he’d settle back down to sleep there. “Okay. You want to see your mum?”

That, was evidently the wrong thing to say. Alex’s face went back to a scowl, and his arms back over his chest. “No. Home.”

The Doctor stared down at him confused. The TARDIS and Earth were the only two homes he had ever known. He knew for certain that his father hadn’t been taking him on any secret adventures, the TARDIS didn’t allow him to operate her except in dire circumstances. (This had nothing to do with anything the Doctor had asked for, she was just one to hold a grudge.) “What do you mean? Where do you want to go?”

He rolled his eyes and the Doctor felt himself flash forward to his teenage years and how little he was looking forward to that; he was already too much like his father in some ways. “Not my home. Your home. Yours and daddy’s.”

Oh. He wanted to go to Gallifrey.

The problem there was that there was no Gallifrey to go to. At least as far as he was aware. Ali hadn’t mentioned her or any of the others at the Collection finding any trace remnants of their planet. As far as any of them it was gone. Dead. He moved to the floor and crouched down to be eye level with Alex, “We can’t go there. It’s gone.” He definitely wasn’t one to shy away from talking about the horrors he’d seen, but he was one to shy away from traumatizing children he helped take care of, so he’d keep it vague.

But of course that wasn’t a good enough answer for the little one. “How come? Why’d they get rid of it?”

Kids' minds were unique compared to any others. To think that they simply removed a planet with billions of inhabitants for a singular reason made sense to Alex. The Doctor took a deep breath, “Well there were other aliens that didn’t like them very much and they had a war. A very big war and the only way for them to keep other people safe was to lose.”

Alex made his thinking face again, “Why didn't they like Gallifrey?”

It was honestly hard to make a convincing argument as to why anyone would actually like Gallifrey and therefore would be easier to list its benefits rather than its pitfalls, but Alex wouldn’t take that as an answer. “Well, a lot of people didn’t like the Time Lords. But these aliens in particular didn’t like it that the Time Lords kept trying to stop them from taking over everywhere in the universe.”

He really was only alternating between being a very childish version of angry and deep thought in his facial expressions that night. They were all a bit over dramatic and comical. There was a lot of emotion stored in such a little body. “I’m gonna punched it.”

“What?” He was confused, deeply confused. He hadn’t even said who the other combatants were. Or perhaps he intended on punching the Time Lords which the Doctor could only see as fair, they were kind of bastards. But assuming he was talking about the ones who fought the Time Lords, there was no way in hell he was letting this child punch a Dalek. “You want-- you want to punch them?”

“Yeah.”

“How ‘bout instead I take you to your room and I tell you about Gallifrey instead?” There was only one way to win an argument with a child, especially a nonsensical one: distraction.

He nodded and threw his arms up ready to be carried. The Doctor didn’t love this outcome but it was better than explaining to a little kid the intricacies of the Time War.

Alex’s room was never too far from the console room. Just in case. Just in case he needed something quickly, as the Doctor spent most of his time there. But just far enough away that if something managed to get into the TARDIS (which really was impossible) that he wouldn’t immediately be in harm’s way. He was also only ever a few doors away from his father, but again far enough away. Just in case.

Honestly the Doctor was happy, excited even with how much Alex’s father was improving himself after spawning a child. He definitely wasn’t winning any humanitarian awards for his behavior but it was a lot harder to enact evil plots and schemes with a little kid at your side telling you to be sure to mind your manners so you can have a cookie after dinner.

It was still a surprise that he was sitting on Alex’s bed when they returned. “Oh, he’s not dead.”

He was joking. Sort of. The Doctor rolled his eyes, “Of course--”

“Daddy!” Alex’s face lit up and he ran into his father’s arms.

The Master looked the Doctor in the eyes, a different look than he’d seen in centuries. It was nice to see it again after so long. “I was going to tell Alex bedtime stories. Have any fond memories about Gallifrey.”

The Master scoffed. The Doctor expected it, the planet had screwed them both over but specifically him in the brutality of the Time Lords. In their ever present belief they were the highest powers in the universe. “You’re really gonna ask me that?”

The Doctor was preparing whatever story came first into his mind. Something kind, Alex was still at the very black and white thinking stage. Zagreus is strictly off limits as it was disturbingly dark. Plus he was still a bit traumatized from the time he’d manifested into his head just a few regenerations ago.

“There will come a soldier who carries a mighty sword,” the Master has taken matters into his own hands.

It was an old folk song. Probably a prophecy he noted. Possibly about him, that was nothing new, clearly he had a large effect on Gallifreyan past, present, and future. Which as one of the only positive renegades in the universe that made sense.

Alex nuzzled in closer to his father’s hand as he stroked his hair to put him to sleep. “There will come a poet whose weapon is his word.”

That did sound like him didn’t it. The powerful Time Lord Victorious who could turn armies away with a single word. Not that he hadn’t been powerful in the War but honestly those myths were nothing more than that, just myths. “Night night Doctor ‘n daddy.”

Then he passed out.

The Doctor continued humming the old song. They sang it at the festival of Fate. A year end celebration honoring the old gods. He trailed off as the song ended, no need to keep it in his head for the next decade. He’d been there and it was not enjoyable.

They sat together in a comfortable silence for a while just watching Alex sleep. Eventually though, the Doctor’s curiosity got the better of him, “Why’d you come in here in the first place?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, just staring at his son. “Somethings coming Thete. Something bad and I can feel it. I just—want to get in any of the time that I can.”

The Doctor put his hand over his, “I’m here to help. No matter what it is, Koschei. I’m here for both of you, no matter what. And don’t you dare try and push me out of whatever this is. Got it?”

“Okay whatever loser.”

#doctor who #doctor who fanfic #doctor who oc #alex #the doctor #the master

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mysticsparklewings · 4 years

Photo

Ziggy Crossing

Still not quite sure I'm 100% back into the swing of things (posting regularly and being more present) yet, but time will tell. For now I'm testing the waters. Anyway. In the time I've been away, I ended up talking to some friends about (to the surprise of absolutely no one) Animal Crossing, and in that conversation, the idea of drawing my cat, Ziggy, as an Animal Crossing villager came up. I'd toyed with it before after seeing some other people draw their pets as villagers, and that conversation more or less sealed the deal for me to at least try it, even if my attempt didn't pan out and see the light of day. Obviously, things went pretty well because here I am posting this. The first step, as it is 90% of the time for me, was to come up with a sketch and go from there. I primarily used Olivia and Lolly [pre-existing Animal Crossing cat villagers] as my references--Olivia for the pose and eyes, Lolly for the stripes and some details regarding the ears and face--but I also checked certain things across the various cat villager models so that details could be consistent where they needed to be. I think if I missed the mark anywhere, it's probably in the proportions. Namely the size of the head and length of the body. But I think it's close enough that unless you compare it directly to Olivia's model that I referenced for the pose, the proportions aren't so off that it's distracting or off-putting. I did originally have trouble figuring out what pattern to put on her shirt though because the real Ziggy doesn't really have anything I could pull a pattern from. These days she does wear a white and silver collar, but that's not a whole lot to work with. So I left that alone while I pondered how I wanted to go about coloring the whole thing. My plan at the beginning was to use this sketch as a test piece for some acrylic paint markers I recently acquired (which you will be seeing me talk about in the future), but once the sketch was finished and I went back to check the colors I had (you know me; gotta have a swatch chart for everything), it was pretty obvious that if I want this to be my dear Ziggy and not just a random tabby cat, I needed to figure out a different coloring method. I could have just done regular acrylic paint, but that sounded like a chore and thus I was not interested. Same with gouache. Colored pencils were on the table, but the main problem I have with those is that they can be pretty slow and personally I think their texture really lends them better to replicating the 3DS/Animal Crossing: New Leaf style, as opposed to the look of New Horizons, and that's not what I was going for here. That left me with two main options: Watercolor, which was a hard pass for this kind of art (at least for Ziggy herself), and alcohol markers, which I did use quite a bit on the last Animal Crossing artwork I made, and they had worked out fairly well. Alcohol markers it was! Of course, even after that decision was made, there was the issue of how to handle the lines of the drawing. When I was planning on using the paint pens/acrylic markers/whatever, that seemed a lot simpler because, in theory, I could just use the same pen I wanted to color with to do the outlines and then fill them in. And because that would be using mostly opaque paint, if I needed to I could just cover up any overlap with relative ease. Alcohol markers don't play by the same rules though, so I had to re-think all that. In the end, I pulled out a pale warm gray Polychromos pencil close to the main color of alcohol marker that I had picked out that I figured would also be light enough to blend in everywhere else. That way I could have the defining lines that I needed without having to worry too much about them being visible in the final product. [For clarification: I picked a Polychromos because once sharpened they tend to hold a point longer and better than the other colored pencils at my disposal and I really needed to keep a sharp point as long as possible to do the lines here.] In retrospect, I do think it might have been to my benefit to pick out a pink for doing the inner ear lines, but the end result there isn't so awful that it single-handedly (paw-ed-ly?) ruins the drawing for me. It's just something to take note of for next time if there is a "next time." Once I had my lines (including doing the eyelashes and mouth with one of my usual black fineliners), the next challenge was the actual coloring. Mostly because I had to be very careful around the edges so that the marker ink didn't feather out too far (as alcohol markers do on any paper that isn't marketed as "bleed proof" because that's what bleed proof in paper actually means--not that it won't bleed through to the other side, though that is less common with that kind of paper, but that it won't "bleed" across the page), and I also had to be a little careful and choosy about how I did any blending or shading. Again, my blending and shading plan was going to be different had I used the acrylic markers. The main thing I ended up doing here was trying to find areas that needed to be layered so that the one-color shading could act as a line/barrier between sections. Best example: Where the ears meet the head, I shaded the bottom portion of the ears. You can also see this a little bit where Ziggy's tail meets her body and where the legs intersect at a few different points. By no means did this turn out perfectly, considering that I really wanted to stick to use as few colors as possible (which means pretty much all the shading is just layers of one color to darken it) which means there isn't as much distinction or variation as there could be. And I feel it necessary to note here that I was worried when I first finished the lines that the eyes looked wonky, but after coloring pretty much everything else in that concern dissolved because 1. It's harder to tell and 2. Even if they aren't exactly the same, it makes visual sense because it looks like her head is slightly turned, meaning the eyes wouldn't be identical anyway. Never underestimate the power of coloring your work in! Speaking of which, you might be wondering about her shirt by now. Well, after toying around with some ideas I got it in my head that a good way to tackle that problem might be with washi tape, as I've used it in this manner before and worked out pretty nicely. Even though it wasn't a lot to work with, I did like the idea of the base color for her top being white like the real Ziggy's collar, and that narrowed down my tape options considerably. Of the options I had that I thought would be suitable, I ended up having a choice between one with small rainbow-colored polka dots and the decidedly less vibrant small triangles that you see here. The polka dots seemed a little too peppy for Ziggy, so I went with the triangles. And this, I must say, is one of those artistic decisions that I feel even better about the longer that I see the end product. The main issue I have with using washi tape, and thus why I don't use it in this way that often, is because cutting the washi tape to fit a specific shape is a process that doesn't get much easier even with practice. And even if it did, that wouldn't eliminate the very real possibility of cutting or indenting the paper underneath while you're cutting the tape. Of which, I have not yet figured out how to totally avoid short of forming the washi tape on a separate piece of paper, cutting it there, and then moving it to the final piece. But that method comes with its own problems too, so... Still, I made the decision to go through with it here and just accept the rough edges/lack of precision and all that. Before I put the tape down though, I did do a little shading with some light gray markers that I was counting on showing through the tape to give it a little more dimension. Seeing it now, I do think I could've stood to go a little darker, but again this isn't something that totally ruins the end result for me. Just something worth noting. After all of the above, I was left with one lingering problem: The background. Which I've noticed seems to normally be a "problem" area for me in that I don't always have a solid idea for what to do with it. I did consider what exactly I wanted to do earlier on in the process, before I started on Ziggy on the final paper, even. Briefly, I thought I might cut her out and put her on a separate background as is sort of a go-to background method for me. Something just didn't feel right about doing that here though and it feels like I've done that a lot lately (you know, when I've not been drowning in mandalas for NaPoWriMo...). So it was at this early stage that I locked in the idea of adding in the background in later, probably doing something kind of loose to give a general idea that hopefully wouldn't take too much time or effort. We've already established that I wasn't super keen on the idea of using acrylic paints or gouache for this drawing, and that remained true for the background too. Although, I don't really like using alcohol markers for backgrounds either because it can be tricky to keep things smooth and consistent. That left me with colored pencils and watercolor. Colored pencils are usually hard pass for backgrounds for me for a number of reasons. So! Watercolor, hmm... I drew Ziggy here on my darling Strathmore 400 series mixed media paper because I love how it handles markers and it has enough weight and texture to it that it handles a lot of my other go-to options with little fuss. Watercolor is really the only thing I have trouble using on it, the main problem being that sometimes (not always) the paint doesn't like to blend out super smoothly and certain watercolor techniques don't work the same on it. This doesn't mean it's useless for watercolor (at least not for me), that just means I have to be more careful about how I choose to work with watercolor on it. In this case, the blending issues lined up with the idea I had of letting the background have more texture since Ziggy came out a lot smoother by the very nature of alcohol markers. Somewhere in all this, the idea struck me to use my Gelatos to leave behind some crayon-like texture. That idea seemed fitting to me since Animal Crossing is a fairly light-hearted and child-friendly game, themes that crayons go along with. The gelatos are water-soluble but not every color dissolves completely when activated with water. This should be pretty evident here because I didn't try to hide it. I wanted quick and easy, and without a doubt just letting the texture do whatever it wants is the quick n' easiest method to use with the gelatos. Once I'd done a bit of back and forth with two greens and two blues to give me the solid suggestions of a sky and ground, it still felt like it was missing something. Ultimately, it seemed like a good idea to me to try and mimic the triangle pattern/texture that New Horizons features. (In past games you could get squares or circles for a grass pattern at random.) And while I as per usual I had to think on how to go about this, in the end, the best solution I could come up with turned out to be drawing the triangles in with alcohol markers. Truly, I'm surprised to be reporting this because I fully expected the creamy nature of the gelatos to make using alcohol markers on top feel disguising and unproductive. But not so! At least not with the limited gelato use here. The creamier areas do soften the color of the marker, but I think that worked to my advantage. Although, I did end up using a little bit of my yellow Moonlight gel pen because I felt like I needed some yellow triangles for balance and I knew transparent yellow markers wouldn't do what I wanted. But that brings us to the final product. I'm happy with it. And I do really like how the grass ties in with Ziggy's green eyes. It's just a nice little touch of visual cohesion in my book. As I always say, I'm sure it's not perfect and there are some missteps here and there or things that could be improved. Nevertheless, it was a fun experiment and serves as good encouragement for me to continue playing with the lineless look, among other things. I do have to note though that it feels super weird to just leave the eyes like this with no indication of shine on them! I made the choice not to since it's not a common trait with the official character models (at least not for eyes in this same style) but part of me still feels like it's incomplete. As I've said before recently and I'll probably say again, I can't promise I'll be getting back to a regular upload schedule now, but it's on my mind. I want to get to that point soon. I do have the acrylic markers I mentioned to talk about and another supply in the mail, and some other art in my backlog. So if you can be patient with me a while longer, there will be more from me to look forward to. In the meantime, please be kind to yourself and others. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

#animalcrossing

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blackjack-15 · 5 years

Text

The Hand(print) of Fate — Thoughts on: Secret of the Scarlet Hand (SSH)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

Unique to this game is a section in between Suspects and Favorite Things, titled “The Hardy Boys”. The content it covers should be fairly obvious.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SSH, SCK, mostly non-spoilery mention of TMB and DOG, National Treasure, very spoilery mention of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders.

The Intro:

Secret of the Scarlet Hand is the game that introduces one of Nancy’s most enduring and obvious character traits — her interest in ancient cultures. This comes up again in TMB, where Nancy once again chooses to do an internship, and once again it surrounds an ancient culture.

Given that, going forward, Nancy mostly gets “chosen” for her cases, rather than stumbling upon them and choosing to solve, the times when Nancy does make a choice are important for establishing (and re-establishing) her character.

SSH is also the game where Nancy starts being “tested”. It’s not quite as overt as some of the other games, but the culprit does call Nancy into their office at the very beginning of the game, worried that someone will steal from the Beech Hill Museum.

While we know from the tagline on the outside of the box that we’ll be catching a thief (more on that tagline below) so this isn’t a huge spoiler, it does show how the culprit is setting up Nancy to be tested — to answer their one question; can she stop them?

She can, of course, not the least of which because the culprit is obvious. However, this isn’t a negative part of the game — because for the first time, the culprit is obvious to Nancy as well as the player. Heck, everyone else in the game figures it out too — what they’re lacking is concrete evidence, not knowledge.

But this is a mystery game — this is a Nancy Drew game — so why would the devs not care that everyone knows the culprit from the very beginning?

Mostly because that’s not the main mystery in the game. Even the handprint — which should be the main mystery, because it’s on the cover and in the title, right? — is a borrowed clue, or a forged signature, if you’ll allow the pun.

The mystery isn’t who stole the Pacal carving, or who pushed (if anyone) Henrik down the temple stairs, or any other mild mystery that the game sets up. This game isn’t even technically a mystery— instead, as we’re told first thing, it’s about secrets.

This is a game about secrets, lies, and above all, the little inter-personal squabbles going on against the backdrop of a museum exhibit opening. Nancy’s puzzling out who hates who and why, who likes who and why, who each of these people really are at their core, and how this information can help her catch the culprit in the act.

This isn’t a whodunnit, or a howdunnit— it’s a howcatchem, which is fitting when your villain isn’t a murderer or mischief maker, but a smuggler. Generally, smugglers are well known to the police and other organizations; the problem lies not in identifying them, but catching them.

This is further proved by the Historical B-Plot, which once again doesn’t contain a mystery about who killed the Whisperer, but rather focuses on the relationship between the King and the Whisperer, and how secrets ultimately work to both kill (anciently) and save (in the present day).

Come to think of it, maybe this game should have been called “Secrets Can Kill”, and SCK should have been called “the one where murder is taken Lightly and Awfully and also there’s no puzzles”.

The Whisperer is an incredibly important character, not just because she also knew the value of secrets and knowledge, and was ultimately killed for it, but also because she’s one of the few examples of a theme that becomes omnipresent in the later games — she’s a shadow of Nancy. A woman who knows secrets, who is hunted and ultimately hurt by those whose secrets she knows. The game makes this comparison obvious by the end when, like the Whisperer herself, Nancy is shut inside the monolith.

Fate is the other big player in this game (though I’ll get into this later), thematically speaking. The fate of secrets, as popularized by the well-known aphorism “two can keep a secret if one of them is dead”, is to get out. The secret of the smuggling operation tries its best to get out over and over, resulting in Henrik’s fall and amnesia, Joanna’s temporary firing, Alejandro’s machinations, and, of course, ends with Nancy in the monolith.

Outside of the story, I’ll give mad props for this game being an excellent representation of an understaffed museum before a big opening. Sure, the whole thing is an ADA nightmare (all those stairs, the basement portion, etc.), but the game came out in 2002, before a lot of buildings etc. had to be ADA-compliant.

People running around, unpaid interns doing the heavy lifting, red tape everywhere — the game embraces these realities of opening a new exhibit on a shoestring staff and budget, and it’s fun to see.

I’d be remiss in not acknowledging the importance of Secret of the Scarlet Hand as the first game in what I call the “Expanded” series of Nancy Drew games, moving on from the “Classic” series that covers games 1-5. In the “Expanded” games, which runs roughly from SSH through SHA, Her Interactive pushes the envelope, relying on their now-established patterns and tropes, but also working on making the games bigger, more immersive, more detailed, and more complicated.

Here in SSH, the locations are bigger and more detailed, your list of phone contacts is longer, the amount of puzzles expands (especially compared to FIN), and the story has a bit more depth and nuance — a good option considering the game is somewhat longer than the first 5 (especially SCK and FIN).

SSH is also important because it’s the first game where the Nancy Drew Universe is really established.

We have our first mention/appearance of Prudence Rutherford, a character who appears in or is referenced in several games, establishing a canon of celebrities/socialites in the Nancy Drew Universe. There’s also Krolmeister and, perhaps most strikingly, Sonny Joon, whose escapades (and drawings) first appear here.

With the addition of these and of the Hardy Boys (much more on them later), Her Interactive shows that they’re interested in creating a universe rather than one-shot style games. This trend should hardly surprise anyone who knows that this is also the first game where Her Interactive is an independent distributor. With full creative (and distributive) license, Her became wholly free to build the kind of Universe that we know and love and associate with the Nancy Drew games — and the kind of Universe that the games needed in order to really come into their own.

The final section of this absurdly long intro is going to focus on possibly the most important thing SSH gave us: the Hardy Boys. As they’re introduced in this game (through Bess and George), the Hardy Boys are friends of Nancy who haven’t seen her for a while and show up at Bess and George’s place (or rather, one of their houses), crashing into the game with all the elegance of….well, the Hardy Boys.

This introduces the only voice actor who’s voiced their character from first appearance to present day: Rob Jones, voice of Joe Hardy. Joe’s voice is as iconic as Nancy’s herself, combining smarts with a youthful brightness and a high-energy, can do attitude. It’ll be a few games yet before Frank’s voice settles into the best-known incarnation by Jonah Von Spreecken (who debuts in Danger By Design), but the Hardy Boys’ characters are pretty well set in this game: logical, practical, and studious (though slightly anxious) Frank, and laid-back, action-oriented, and conspiracy-enthusiast Joe.

All in all, Secret of the Scarlet Hand keeps to the solid Nancy Drew formula while adding a few key new items that themselves become part of the Expanded formula.

It paves the way for the next section of Nancy Drew games and is, if you don’t have access to MHM or TRT, the single best starting point in the Nancy Drew series. Polished, engaging, and always entertaining, SSH is a fascinating and fun addition to a burgeoning series.

The Title:

The title of this game — Secret of the Scarlet Hand — is a bit of a difficult one. It begs the question what is the secret of the scarlet hand, but doesn’t do much in the way of answering it.

The game isn’t shy about showing us the titular scarlet hand; it’s displayed proudly where the Pacal carving is stolen. It’s much shyer about telling us the titular secret, building up the handprint as a Big, Symbolic Clue but never really satisfying the player’s curiosity about it.

There’s more to the handprint than that, but that’ll be covered in the section immediately below.

The other odd thing about the title is that it’s very indeterminate. In SCK, there’s a person who finds out secrets, and is killed — a rather point-blank title. STFD is an obvious pun on “stay tuned” in a television sense, and is easily understood that way. Both MHM and TRT refer to a definite noun within a location, and FIN takes us back to puns/wordplay. SSH, however, has an indefinite subject tied to another noun, and thus is far less grounded.

The indeterminate nature of the title could represent the distractions in Nancy’s way. Ostensibly, she’s just there to help the museum in its build-up to the opening of the Maya exhibit in her capacity as an intern, but that motivation gets cast aside as soon as things start going wonky — aka, beginning with the culprit’s “worry” that the museum will get robbed, and then solidified by the Pacal carving being stolen.

Along the way, Nancy is distracted by everything: taking care of the museum, solving Sonny Joon’s riddles, interrogating suspects, Henrik’s fall, provenance, Joanna’s departure, the Hardy Boys — the list goes on and on.

Perhaps the indeterminate title is to tell the players that the titular secret is supposed to stay a secret — that while Nancy works out every other secret in the game, the secret of the scarlet hand is just that — a secret.

The MysterySecret:

While there’s no real mystery at the beginning — beyond how a HS graduate from the suburbs of Chicago gets an internship with a Large museum in DC without any credentials besides “I fight crime” — there are secretsfrom the very beginning, starting with the silhouetted Nancy in the cutscene with Joanna.

HER wanted to show off what they could do, and they did it with panache, making the camera its own character rather than Nancy’s eyes, at least for a scene.

The secrets pile up, however, with the monolith in a box, Sinclair warning you about other thefts around the world, the question of if the Pacal carving/monolith are acquired legally or not, the disappearance of the carving, Sonny Joon, the smuggling ring, “Big Bunny”, Henrik’s fall…the list goes on and on.

The tagline for these games often help spell out the “big mystery” of the game. The tagline for this game is “expose buried secrets and catch a thief red-handed”, but does this actually happen?

Nancy does expose several secrets that are “buried” in some form. The mystery of the Pacal carving theft is buried in Henrik’s memories; the Whisperer is buried in the monolith; the final piece Nancy needs is buried in the painting in Sinclair’s office; the answers to the quizzes are buried in the museum. So definite props for the first half of the tagline — which pretty much spells out the first half/three-fifths of the game.

But what about “catch a thief red-handed”?

There are indeed thieves afoot, and Nancy does catch them, in all fairness. She catches the “thief” that steals the Pacal carving and the thief looking to steal the secrets of the monolith. But the phrase “red-handed” is obviously a reference to the titular “Scarlet Hand” (as well as a recognizable aphorism in English), and therein lies the trouble.

The true secret — or mystery, if you like — in this game is what the “scarlet hand” means, and to figure that out, we have to first dive into the significance of a handprint.

Handprints are usually a signature or an identifier – we fingerprint everyone from felons to teachers, and so the primary use of the word “handprint”, whether literal or figurative is to denote a signature.

The word “signature” when involved with crime, however, takes on a slightly different meaning; a “signature” here is an identifying behavior or “quirk” that a criminal has that differentiates their crimes from other criminals’. The obvious corollary that follows from a criminal’s signature and the phrase “red-handed” is the metaphor of “blood on the hands”. All of these sayings mark a specific crime performed by a specific person.

Except that’s not the case here.

When Sinclair is mentioning the other thefts that have him “worried” about thefts at Beech Hill, the red handprint comes up here as a specific signature, seemingly appearing like clockwork when the Pacal carving is “stolen”.

Except it’s not the same culprit at all.

Like the culprit in Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders committing three murders to conceal the only murder he had motive to commit, Henrik uses the red handprint as a smokescreen, trying to make it seem as if the theft is one of many (so it won’t be questioned) rather than an act of attempting to save the carving by stealing it first.

In this way, the handprint is a mask, serving to identify the culprit without actually identifying him at all. One of the greatest parts of the mystery/secret behind the game is that the handprint is a forgery, confusing the lines of proof just enough to make the player take a step back and think.

In the Introduction, I mentioned that Fate plays a big part in the overall plot of this game, and it’s here that fate really comes into its place of importance.

From the beginning, the Pacal carving is “fated” to be stolen, so much that when it happens it’s not really a surprise as much as a signal to the player that the introductory part of the game is over.

It’s a joke both in- and out-of-universe that Nancy is fated to find mystery wherever she goes, which adds another nail in the pre-determined nature of her internship.

It’s the unchanging fate of secrets that leads Sinclair to bustle around attempting to stop any hint of his smuggling operation from getting out while at the same time watching Nancy carefully as she solves the mysteries and exposes the secrets that he needs to get his hands on the secret of the monolith.

Nothing shows the hand of fate more, however, than Sinclair not actually being caught by Nancy. The Poetic Trio reciting their end-of-game lyrics simply say that the villain is stewing in his own miscalculations, and, other than giving him the wrong "treasure”, Nancy has absolutely nothing to do with Sinclair being caught.

Fate ultimately has more power than even Nancy in this game, leaving her not to “catch a thief red-handed”, but simply giving her the opportunity to “expose buried secrets”.

It’s a solid mystery from beginning to end, as Nancy tries to figure out how Sinclair could have pulled off the theft before realizing that it wasn’t Sinclair after all. Joanna and Alejandro do their best to muddy the waters and distract Nancy (and through Nancy, the player) just long enough to make the game feel like a true adventure.

The Suspects:

Joanna Riggs is the first person you meet in the game in an opening cinematic meant to show off what the game engine could do and to tease us with a silhouette shot of Nancy.

She’s also the least-impactful character in the game, which should stand as a testament to how good this game is with its inclusion of characters into the plot. Joanna’s in charge, basically, and gives Nancy her go-fer tasks until the Pacal carving is stolen.

She’s supposed to be a bit “quirky”, with her non-sensical Latin and her whining to Nancy about how the only thing worse than a highly prized and expensive carving going missing is her mom leaking her prom photos onto the internet (a v weird thing to equate, honestly), but she’s also the most innocent of the bunch, as her only crimes are over-spending on an artifact that the museum really couldn’t afford, and having the worst taste in employees/business associates ever.

As a culprit, Joanna wouldn’t have been a bad pick — it’d be a basic case of theft-for-insurance-money — but she’s certainly the most boring option, so I’m glad that she’s got nothing to do with it. That kind of a crime really wouldn’t fit the Hardy-Boys-aesthetic that’s going on in SSH anyway.

Henrik Van Der Hune is the employee in charge of glyph translation and the man who apparently was the sexual awakening of quite a few of the Clue Crew. He’s also a recent addition to the staff after he heard of their new Mayan exhibition pieces, so I can’t for the life of me figure out why he wasn’t the immediate suspect for the police, especially since it’s his handprint.

Henrik did a bit of a National Treasure-level spoof on the cops, stealing the carving first so that it wouldn’t get stolen later. He orders the cinnabar to make the handprint in Joanna’s name (really Henrik?? Like you didn’t know it was Sinclair all along?? Why??) and pulls off a moderately daring heist, considering he works 50 feet down the hallway from the carving.

Of course, if this were to come to light, the game would be over with no real bad guy nor tension, so Henrik takes a fall down the Insanely Dangerous replica stairs and winds up with a bad case of the forgetsies. At 61 years old, he’s lucky he didn’t bust his hip.

Henrik is a culprit, but he’s not the culprit, which is good, because I’m not sure that HER had the time or space to tackle the moral issue of a thief who loses their memory and can’t technically be tried for a crime that they didn’t knowingly commit.

They definitely could have tried, but I don’t think it would have worked.

As a culprit, Henrik could have worked, but there’s just not enough time to have him fake-steal and then steal for real. It would have been cool to have him be faking amnesia and sneaking out of the hospital to Burgle…but it would have taken a more advanced game engine and a much longer game to pull it off.

Alejandro Del Rio is an ambassador who works at the Mexican Consulate and is the epitome of “just because you’re technically right doesn’t mean you’re actually correct”.

While he’s right in that a ton of artifacts were stolen from Mexico (and other countries, but honestly he only cares about Mexican artifacts), but he’s incorrect in blaming Joanna and others like her, since those thefts didn’t happen in the number and scale that he’s referring to by 2002 (as opposed to, say, British archaeology in the early 20th century, as is touched on in TMB), and Joanna acquired the artifacts legally.

His cause is right, but blaming those who aren’t responsible does him no good — and can actually hurt him, as is the case in the game, where no one really takes him seriously.

He’s also an uptight, rather humorless character, but has a touch of Devilry about him (he’s not above blackmail, for example, or “trading information”) that makes him slightly different from Jeff Akers in DOG.

Alejandro’s biggest claim to fame is in fanfic, where, like in canon, he is Totally banging Joanna, and is apparently Very Physically Gifted. Good on you, Alejandro.

As a culprit, Alejandro would have been a rather hackneyed choice, as he’s the one who’d obviously steal the carving and monolith to transport it back to where it came from. It would also include giving him more to do in a game than setting up his Hate-FWB to take a call for something he, in all honesty, knew she didn’t do.

Taylor Sinclair is an art dealer with facial hair that’s sort of a grotesque work of art in and of itself, and also happens to be the culprit. He also has a CrimeFursona named “Big Bunny”, which is honestly enough to lock him up and throw away the key.

Sinclair is part of the black market and is looking to sell the carving and the secrets of the monolith in order to make it rich, which is a pretty standard motive, but is notable for including smuggling in a Nancy Drew game rather than a Hardy Boys novel, so that’s a point for him.

SSH is a howcatchem, so Sinclair’s real job in the game is to avoid leaving behind proof — and he does an excellent job. Granted, Henrik steals the Pacal carving before he can manage it, but until he shuts Nancy in the monolith and takes (what he thinks is) the treasure, there’s no piece of physical evidence to tie him to his crimes.

But, like all egotists, Sinclair’s failure comes because he just couldn’t resist being a cackling madman.

As a culprit, Sinclair’s perfect for this game. He’s slimy, untrustworthy, and pretty much everything you imagine a smuggler to be. He doesn’t really need any fleshing out beyond what he already has, because he lurks in the shadows for most of the game, only appearing when he has to in order to get information.

The Hardy Boys:

Honestly speaking, the Hardy Boys are the most important “innovation” of this game, and are the addition that really created the Nancy Drew games as we know and love them today.

Not only do the Hardy Boys establish that Nancy isn’t alone in this universe — that there are others her age out there like her, who solve mysteries and catch bad guys — but they also give the game regular phone friends who are established as capable of helping Nancy solve anything she asks for.

This makes a lot more sense than Bess/George/Ned suddenly becoming Super Sleuths, and frees up Ned/Bess/George to offer help and have dialogue more appropriate to their increasingly-fleshed-out characters.

And that’s the real benefit to the Hardy Boys: they allow for varied characterization for Nancy’s friends.

Before this game, Bess/George/Ned have all been indistinguishable from each other, possibly excepting Bess’ lame puns. From this game on, each reoccurring phone friend has their own personality, their own quirks, and their own areas of expertise.

Also, I adore the Hardy Boys (and have since I was small), so it’s great to see them semi-regularly. I love that sometimes you call them together, sometimes it’s one or the other, sometimes they appear in game…it’s really nice to have these characters to lean on and provide entertainment and freedom to the Nancy Drew world and formula.

On a final note, I don’t find it to be a coincidence that this is the first game with the Hardy Boys and that it’s also the most Hardy Boys-eque game so far (smuggling plots, false thefts, a suspect nearly dies and then decides to help out, the Hero Detective is trapped with no obvious means of escape, etc.). It’s a nice nod to the source material, and I appreciate it.

The Favorites:

I love the focus here on knowledge and on the quizzes as Nancy learns with the player. It’s one of the few games to truly be “edutainment” in the sense that it was meant back in the early 2000s, and I really do adore the pure and unbridled appreciation for learning in this game.

The puzzles in SSH are well-placed and make sense as part of the museum exhibit, allowing for the classic puzzles that Nancy Drew games (and players) know and love without having them feel kitschy or out of place.

Hands down my favorite thing in this game is how much characterization it features. Nancy’s in fine form, as are Bess and George, and the Hardy Boys, but even minor characters like Franklin Rose and Poppy Dada and Prudence Rutherford all have their own unique voices, problems, motivations, and secrets.

The four suspects are well-introduced and fleshed out, and do things simply for their own reasons rather than attempting to sound suspicious for the developers’ sake. It’s a great trend, and one that continues to grow (despite a few misses) as the series goes on.

Hat-tip to the Hardy Boys again here. I’ve said really all I want to say, but it’d be lying to not include them in the list of my favorite things about this game.

Sonny Joon is a great little easter egg (albeit a retroactive easter egg) and I thoroughly enjoy his presence in the game. “Hurricane Sonny” blows in and sticks around for the rest of the series, and it’s a joy to experience.

The best puzzle in the game…I really enjoy the audio quiz thing, but I get how it wouldn’t be other people’s cuppa. I’m gonna go ahead and say that it’s figuring out how to get the last artifact from the Poppy Dada painting, as it requires you do jump through just the right amount of hoops, and gives you some hilarious conversations while you’re figuring it out.

The best moment in this game hands-down is when Prudence Rutherford insinuates that she killed her mother-in-law for the necklace. It’s hilarious.

The Un-Favorites:

There are, however, a few things about this game that make it into the least-favorite category.

Collecting the packages with the different artifacts is almost wholly reliant on luck and patience, and it can be extremely annoying to have to go to sleep and wake up 4/5 times in a row before the final package arrives. As this would be an easy fix, it sticks out especially in my mind as being a pointlessly annoying thing.

Taylor Sinclair’s tie. No art dealer would wear that. It looks like a bottle of mustard and a placenta had a baby.

I do hate (as noted below in the Fix section) that you can only call certain people on certain phones. Phones don’t work that way — not even back in 2002 — and it is frustrating to have to travel back and forth or wait for morning to make a game-progressing phone call.

The worst puzzle in the game in my opinion is probably lugging the monolith stones around, because it really bothers me that if you take the shortest path, Nancy drops them, but if you take a slightly longer path, she’s totally fine.

While I can see how the quizzes might cause some people problems, if you take notes like the game encourages you to do (I remember taking notes in a spiral notebook for the first…10 games, about? Until we moved to sticky notes, because as me and my sister got much older, we didn’t need to write down as much), the quizzes are a walk in the park.

The worst moment in the game (which is still a great moment, just definitely my least favorite) is when the sirens go off in the museum. It’s loud, obnoxious, and Joanna just APPEARING suddenly makes me jump every time. It’s a testament to how good this game is that this is the worst moment I can think of.

The Fix:

So what fixes does SSH need?

Honestly, not many.

It’d be great to simplify the phones, so that any person you can call on one phone you can call on any phone (avoid the travel back and forth from the hotel to the museum, in other words), and to have deadlines or exact moments for package delivery so that you’re not waiting days (in-game) for the last straggler to show up.

Other than those small quibbles, however, there’s not much that needs fixing or refreshing in SSH. It’s educational, entertaining, difficult enough on the first go-around to keep you on your feet, but not so hard that replay value is lost — and there are no puzzles so bad that they make the game lose replay value, either.

SSH is a great game, both as #6 in the series and as a first game to those who can’t access the Classic Games, and is a delight to play — both the first time and in replays.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #clue crew #secret of the scarlet hand #nancy drew meta #SSH #video games #my meta

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trans-son-of-perdition · 6 years

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Why I relate the Trench album to my own personal life and struggles.

A couple things before I begin. I am aware the true meaning of this album relates to Tyler Josephs career and struggles with mental health. However, art is subjective. It’s meant to be interpreted however you want. I’m not trying to invalidate his experiences, this is just how the album helped me and how I related to it in a way that made it important to my life and my coping with realizations I had around the time Trench was being teased and released. This post is not meant to attack a specific faith, however given my own opinions and viewpoints this post could be uncomfortable for current believing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you are uncomfortable with exmormon viewpoints, this might not be the post for you, and I would like it if you didn’t try to force your views onto me as a result of this post. I will also give warnings for abuse mentions, cult mentions, mentions of suicidal thoughts, and mentions of transphobia.

In this post, I’ll go through each song in the album and explain what it relates to in my life. I’ll also go into the lore of Trench and how I relate to the Clancy letters, as well as explaining why my icon and blog banner are what they are.

If you have not heard this album, I recommend it entirely. And even if you have, I recommend listening along to this post. You do not need to be a fan of Twenty One Pilots or the album to read this, however, and you do not need to understand the deeper lore or know about the Clancy letters to read this post.

With that being said, this will be a long post, so I’ll put the rest under a read more.

Let me begin by briefly introducing myself. I am a 22, nearly 23 year old Exmormon who was born and raised in the church near the heart of Salt Lake City, Utah. I was a devout member of this church until I was 15, which was when little things started to not make sense anymore. This was when I was shown that it was okay to feel differently about my gender and sexuality, when I started to realize there were words to describe why I felt so weird about the concept of being a girl, etc. In a lot of ways, 15 was when my faith started slipping. There are journal entries from then where I’m crying about how I didnt want to feel the way I did, it was kind of the usual young mormon kid has a crisis over their sexuality and gender and tries to pray about it over and over but nothing changes. I even had a moment at 17 where I found a place to hide where my family wouldnt hear me and prayed for about an hour because I was questioning if the church even was true. I got no answer to this.

By the time I was 18, I no longer attended church. I still called myself mormon, and was actually kind of an apologist for years. It was only early last year that I started realizing something didn’t seem right, which was what led to a very long beliefs crisis and eventually me formally resigning from the church. It was also the year that repressed memories finally started to surface, and the true extent to which I had been abused and neglected started to show. Near the end of 2018, one of my best friends helped me escape Utah and get far away from my family, and currently I am living happily in Arizona far from the church’s influence.

Now enter the Trench album.

Instantly, when the Jumpsuit video was first released, something felt comforting about it. And every song since has been extremely comforting to me because of how I have related it to my life. Here is how each song ((and even the videos and extra lore)) have helped me and have related to my life as a secret exmormon who felt trapped in Utah.

Jumpsuit

This song actually came out just as I was questioning the church and realizing some things that were very long. With every little thing I found that was wrong, it was like my life crumbled a little more. I’ll admit, the “spirits in my room” lines I took much more literally, having lived in a very haunted house in a very haunted part of Utah, but the lines “Felt it in my youth, feel it when I’m old” also felt like a reassurance to me that the doubts and feelings I had in highschool when I was just beginning to question myself and my life were valid. Like they weren’t just a passing phase, this was something that had been going on my whole life. And then we have the bridge.

I'll be right there But you'll have to grab my throat and lift me in the air If you need anyone, I'll stop my plans But you'll have to tie me down and then break both my hands If you need anyone

My life up to this point had been manipulated by those around me. My parents controlled my actions, I sat there and let them abuse and disrespect me. If any of them needed anything, I jumped to help. This had spread into my other relationships as I felt the need to be there for everyone, be the personal therapist to everyone, try to fix the emotions and problems of everyone I knew because my family had made me think thats what I needed to do. Like in the video, I was very much stuck under the spell of the “smearing” of the bishops. My family knew how to manipulate my emotions into feeling like I was in the wrong, like I inevitably had to love them and follow them no matter what. Which was why the “Cover me!” screamed at the end makes my heart beat faster. In his “Cover me!” I felt my heart scream it too. I couldn’t out loud, because my family would have yelled at me and made my life hell, but I could scream inwardly with him. I could feel myself running from the bishops with him. That song felt more joyous, more releasing, and more moving to me than an LDS Hymn had in years. Even as I’m writing this, the “Cover me!” makes me feel deep and strong emotions that at one point I would have called “the spirit” or “the holy ghost” and its stronger than any feeling I attributed to those things from talks or lessons in the church.

Levitate

This song actually gave me courage to be more openly myself again. To stand up for myself and look for other options. To admit that the way my life had been was fucked up and that there were better things out there. The line referencing Car Radio was cool to me, because Car Radio was a big song for my depression and dysphoria. I wont go into it too far, since I’m focusing on Trench music, but I’ve always taken Car Radio as a good way to describe how I felt about my life, the world, and my own dysphoria and struggles with suicidal thoughts. And so having this song tied to rebellion against how my life had always been reference another song that had helped me with coping was so encouraging to me and honestly really cool!

This culture is a poacher of overexposure, not today Don't feed me to the vultures, I am a vulture who feeds on pain.

I mean. Come on. I lived in Utah. Utah culture is oversaturated in the church. Its in the politics, in the laws, in the tv shows and on the radio. There’s a ward building everywhere you go. You cant do anything without seeing it somewhere, at least not in big cities ((or at least not living as close to downtown Salt Lake City as I did.)) Admitting to being exmormon while there felt like I was risking being separated from the rest of society. While this isn’t entirely true, I grew up seeing how my family treated exmos. The way they treated them like poor misguided souls that would eventually have their “sins come crashing down on them and turn their hearts back to the church”.

The next few lines are kinda self explanatory. “Sleep in a well-lit room, don't let the shadow through,” both refers to the whole “haunted house” thing I mentioned ((a story I wont go into here tbh)) as well as me using my room as the one place I could hide and be more myself, discuss the things I believed and thought. “And sever all I knew, yeah, sever all I thought” has to do with the slow realizations of the lies I had been taught by the church my whole life. The next few lines refer to what sounds like him asking for help to keep away from the ledges, which both feels like my reaching out to online friends for support both to reassure me that I wasn’t crazy as well as their help in keeping me away from my increasing suicidal thoughts.

The video actually felt like my chosen family in general, them getting me away from these ideas and worries I had had burned into my brain at a young age, pulling me out of this DEMA and into their Trench, where we all could support each other and help each other realize that the false things of our past didnt have to shape our futures for us. And much like Tyler, I was still struggling with my parents pulling me back in by tugging at my emotions, making me feel guilty for my rebellion.

Morph

Lets be honest, in order to explain this one I need to post the whole song. It feels like a mixture of my beliefs crisis and dealing with an abusive and transphobic family, to be honest.

Can't stop thinking about if and when I die For now I see that "if" and "when" are truly different cries For "if" is purely panic and "when" is solemn sorrow And one invades today while the other spies tomorrow We're surrounded and we're hounded There's no "above", or "under", or "around" it For "above" is blind belief and "under" is sword to sleeve And "around" is scientific miracle, let's pick "above" and see For if and when we go "above", the question still remains Are we still in love and is it possible we feel the same? And that's when going "under" starts to take my wonder But until that time, I'll try to sing this

Here we have my crisis, where I was doubting my own doubts and wondering if I was wrong and truly destined to end up in a lower kingdom away from my family and if I was sinning. It led to a fear of death, a fear of the end of the world, a fear of anything related to it because what if the mormons were right? Honestly, this is an ongoing thing that causes panic attacks to this day, and this song is where I turn to when these doubts happen.

If I keep moving, they won't know I'll morph to someone else What they throw at me's too slow I'll morph to someone else I'm just a ghost I'll morph to someone else Defense mechanism mode

A lot of people in the transgender community have brought up that this is a really relateable few lines. I’d like to add on top of it being about my gender, it also can relate to how I spent years pretending to be someone else in front of a lot of people ((and still am to some extent, I’m working on that.)) in order to keep myself safe.

He'll always try to stop me, that Nicholas Bourbaki He's got no friends close but those who know him most know He goes by Nico, he told me I'm a copy When I'd hear him mock me that's almost stopped me

This part I actually relate to my younger brother, who is almost violently abusive towards me and who I have had not only threaten harm to me, but have had mock me and tell me that nobody truly cared about or loved me, along with much worse things that were so intense and awful that when my sister ((the only family member I truly trust)) heard it and told our parents what happened, they were legitimately worried about me knowing about my suicidal thoughts and were bugging me the entire time I was at work and while I walked home to make sure I was safe and okay. My brother is a horrible person, and I honestly am afraid for whoever ends up marrying him based on his treatment of everyone else in our family. My sister and I have even shared our concerns with each other that he could one day lash out and hurt/kill one of us. Hes one of the biggest reasons I and her hurried to leave the state as fast as we could.

Well we're surrounded and we're hounded There's no above or a secret door What are we here for? If not to run straight through all our tormentors? But until that time I'll try and sing this

This again relates to my family, along with the opinions of the church towards transgender and gay people. I don’t think I need to go into what the LDS church thinks of us.

The final part of the song, to me at least, feels like the loneliness of my situation, and wanting someone to be open with in real life that would understand where I was coming from. It also is about my reaching out online when I couldn’t find support in person.

My Blood

I actually don’t need to go into this too deeply. My whole chosen family relates to this song, and so hearing it reminds me of them. This song is how we are to each other and how we feel about each other. Pretty straightforward. Especially since this song likely is about Tyler’s brother, so the fact we all consider each other brothers and sisters works with this.

Chlorine

Another straightforward one. It kinda feels like I’m singing this to the people of my past. My family especially, but also the friends that were part of why I hid so much about myself. They were toxic, but I made myself stay near them out of love. And as I “decayed”, the feeling of rebellion started to grow more until I found myself running for my life away from them all.

I'm so sorry, I forgot you Let me catch you up to speed I've been tested like the ends of A weathered flag that's by the sea Can you build my house with pieces? I'm just a chemical

This final part is more towards myself, however. How I forgot the true me, how I’ve been broken and hurt by these people, and how I need to finally build my life up again away from them all.

Smithereens

Another one that makes me think of my chosen family, and makes me think of my best friend who helped me escape Utah. I’m not a violent person, I actually consider myself a pacifist. But if someone threatened my loved ones I’d do everything I could to stop them.

Neon Gravestones

Yeah, I had to get to this one eventually. This song hit me hard the first time I heard it. If you haven’t heard any songs from this album at all, THIS IS THE ONE YOU SHOULD HEAR. It speaks very bluntly about how fucked up the media’s portrayal of suicide is, among other issues around that theme. Its beautiful in my opinion.

Obviously yes, as someone who struggles with suicidal thoughts, this song obviously does resonate with me. But this is where I’ll go into the deeper lore for a moment.

In the world of Trench it’s been mentioned that the Neon Gravestones are one of the big symbols of Vialism- the religion in DEMA that is a religion that worships false light. In Vialism, those who have died in the name of Vialism are revered, respected, and glorified. Now look at the church. How many people have had their hardships and deaths be romanticized by the church? How often have I heard people say that if you die in the name of the church, you will be exalted? How many LGBTQ+ youth in Utah have killed themselves because they think that its better to die before they have sinned? How often growing up has the “Martyrdom” of Joseph Smith been romanticized and used to show how committed to the church he was? For hell’s sake there’s a song WRITTEN ABOUT HIM saying that he now will be glorified for eternity because he died for the church! He’s held with more respect than even Jesus in the church! I could go on for hours about how I feel about the way the church treats death and how fucked up it is that there have even been cases you can find online where people have been told it would be better that they killed themselves than be gay or be an apostate. I’ll get more into the Neon Gravestones symbolism later when I reach the Clancy letters.

The Hype

Yet another song about reaching out for support and community as I was realizing the truth about the church. I also had a huge falling out with a close friend around the time the album released, so having this song to cope with it helped too. It feels like the acceptance of the fact I was slowly getting out of brainwashing and programming I’d had since I was an infant, and though I didn’t know where I was going in life anymore, I knew that I would have the people I trusted there with me every step of the way as I became a normal member of society and began a new, better life.

A lot of songs in this album seem to be very chosen family oriented. This one just feels like a reminder to myself that I’ll be okay.

Nico and the Niners

This one is a little obvious. But i’ll go through it regardless.

East is up, I'm fearless when I hear this on the low East is up, I'm careless when I wear my rebel clothes East is up, when Bishops come together they will know that Dema don't control us, Dema don't control East is up

This song was released at the same time as Jumpsuit, and honestly some of the same things apply. I realized how much this really fit my life at the time as I was working on getting out. How the literal bishops and leaders of the church as well as the figurative “bishops” of my life were who I was rebelling against. DEMA is a something I have actively called Utah ((mostly Salt Lake City and all other areas in the main valley)) before, for reasons from it literally being a city surrounded in huge walls((both the mountains as well as figurative walls)) that circled around a main central part ((Temple square)) where the bishops resided and performed rituals in the name of Vialism. The next lines mention that they, the bishops, want you to make you forget. They want you to be docile. To conform to them. Follow their rules and laws and teachings without questioning. Ignore and forget the things they don’t say in the moment are truth. In the video, Tyler is seen quietly preparing to escape, hiding in his room as yet another ritual is performed elsewhere in the city. He sneaks out of his dark room, where he meets the Banditos. He seems hesitant and scared at first, but they calm him down and welcome him.

What I say when I want to be enough What a beautiful day for making a break for it We'll find a way to pay for it Maybe from all the money we made, razorblade stores Rent a race horse and force a sponsor And start a concert, a complete diversion Start a mob and you can be quite certain We'll win but not everyone will get out

During this part, Tyler is loudly rebelling in the center of a courtyard, where all the people hiding and silently judging the Banditos from their windows can see and hear them. He sings about escaping and finding ways to prepare to run away, escaping the walls of DEMA and the watchful eyes of the bishops and those devoted to them. It’s after this that his friends, the Banditos, help him escape into the night from DEMA before he can be caught by the bishops, but leaving a trace behind to hopefully inspire the children still growing up and learning inside DEMA.

I compare my chosen family to the Banditos a lot, something that will become clear when we get to a song later on. My open rebellion, being myself and leaving the church, leaving Utah and the judgmental eyes of those still devoted to the church and their teachings... This is what the song is to me. I’ll win, I’ll escape, I will do what I can to inspire my younger brothers and sister to follow me out when they can. I’ll do what I can to help anyone still stuck in their DEMA, but in the end I had to leave. I had to listen to my chosen family and run. I had to get out of those walls before the metaphorical bishops of my life, my family, dragged me back down again into them and broke me further. In that way, Nico and the Niners is both the presidency of the church, but its also my parents.

Cut my Lip

This one actually speaks to how I used to be, letting myself be abused and mistreated. The cycle of trying to escape but being dragged back in. Knowing I was being hurt but letting my programming and the thought that I had to love my family no matter what hurt me over and over. But though I’m bruised, I’ll keep moving.

Bandito

This is the big chosen family song. We have called ourselves Banditos a lot. I personally consider myself a Bandito.

This is the sound we make When in between two places Where we used to bleed And where our blood needs to be

We are all in Trench right now, to various extents. I am mostly out of my DEMA, having physically left it but still dealing with the mental battles and the pulls from the “bishops” to return. Other members of my chosen family are dealing with abuse, neglect, trauma, mental illnesses, isolation, etc. We all have our own DEMA to escape, and we all do what we can to pull each other back into Trench and support each other as a family.

In city, I feel my spirit is contained Like neon inside the glass, they form my brain

In Utah I felt trapped. Confined by what I could and could not say around my family because I was afraid of what would happen if they knew some of the things about me. About my opinions of the church. I had realized my brain had been manipulated and formed into what the church wanted, and I was starting to break free of it.

But I recently discovered it's a heatless fire Like nicknames they give themselves to uninspire

The opinions of my family and the church have begun to feel less important and the thought of rebelling against this has become easier and I have become more confidant in my beliefs.

Begin with bullet, now add fire to the proof But I'm still not sure if fear's a rival or close relative to truth Either way it helps to hear these words bounce off of you The softest echo could be enough for me to make it through

I’m still afraid though, and I still have doubts pop up. And until I can fully break free of the brainwashing I was subject to for 21 years of my life, I’ll still have those doubts and fears. But hearing my chosen family reassure me and validate those feelings I have about the church helps me get past it and grow as a person.

As far as Sahlo Folina? We use it in my chosen family. When we see each other say it, we hurry to support each other and pull each other back from the personal bishops we have. For those who don’t know, Sahlo Folina in the lore is the call the Banditos cry out when they are stuck alone in Trench and need help. It doesn’t have a canon meaning otherwise, but many people have given it the meaning of the joy or act of creating. And my chosen family and I use this phrase to warn each other of panic attacks, or of dysphoria, or of a moment when we just need a little validation. This song is so important to us, and is one of the most beautiful songs on the album in my opinion. If you haven’t heard it, take a look at imabandi.to, its an interactive music video for the song that explains some of the deeper lore of Trench and is in general visually stunning.

Pet Cheetah

Honestly this is really just a bop, but its good for when I feel angry. Not just even at the church, in general its a good anger song because of how intense it feels. It also speaks to the isolation I felt, how I tried to calm myself down from my doubts for the longest time. It helps that the song kinda has a “Fuck it” moment halfway through.

I'm done with tip-toeing, I'll stay in my room My house is the one where the vultures are perched on the roof

The song then expresses the fear of losing everything, but its too late now. The anxiety is raising again, but I’ll do what I can to relax and keep going.

Legend

This song actually makes me cry, because it reminds me of my grandparents. They were the two I was closer to than my own parents, and I was destroyed by their deaths. Even though I still feel them with me, I deeply miss them and I was scared for so long that I would never be able see them again because according to the church, I would have not been allowed to be near them again for eternity. “I look forward to having lunch with you again.” is the line that has made me break down crying before, because I know that no matter what happens, it’ll be okay. I wont go into my current beliefs here, but I know that my grandparents love me and that no matter what I’ll still get to see them again one day.

Leave the City

And now that i’m crying from legend, let me personally sob for a moment about Leave the City, because this song is what I played as I finally left Utah. On my main blog, the title comes from this song.

I'm tired Of tending to this fire I've used up all I've collected I have singed my hands It's glowing Embers barely showing Proof of life in the shadows Dancing on my plans They know that it's almost They know that it's almost over

This song expresses how I felt from my depression, the doubts, the abuse, the ongoing crisis as I realized more and more how much I had been lied to. I was being reassured by my chosen family and my other friends that it would be alright, that I’d get away and life would be better. Now that I’ve been out of that state for several months I can say they were 100% right, but while in the moment I was drained and tired and just wanted to be free. And the knowledge that one day I would leave was what kept me going and kept me alive.

But this year Though I'm far from home In TRENCH I'm not alone These faces facing me They know What I mean

Again, this feels like my chosen family, my Banditos. My real family, the people I trust most. The know who I am. They know where i’m coming from. And though I’m far from my end goals in life, and I’m still here in Trench, I am not alone. I have them with me, and for now that is what matters.

Now, onto the lore and Clancy letters. Because honestly my relating to this doesn’t just stop at the music.

The following are quotes from the many “Clancy letters” that have come out sine the album was being teased.

Note 1:

As a child, I looked upon Dema with wonder, today, I am wrought with frustration, as I spend each day squinting for a glimpse of the top of the looming wall that has kept us here. It was upon my ninth year that I learned that Dema wasn’t my home. This village, after all of this time, was my trap.

Before I became realized, I had deep affection for Dema. There was a wonderful structure to the city that put my cares to rest. Streets and locations were dependable, and the responsibilities of the day seemed to be accomplished with minimal effort. Once a task was taught and understood, we delighted in our ability to complete our obligations timely, and felt secure in knowing tomorrow's duties would be accomplished with the same efficiency. We all worked to represent our bishop with honor, and knew that each inhabitant of our region had a like-minded dedication to consistency.

Note 2:

To refer to Dema as my home has never felt accurate. Dema, to me, has simply been the place that I’ve existed, or, the 'slot' they've put me in. I've heard stories about the idea of "home," and its depiction has always seemed warm from the storyteller's description. There was a romantic ownership of the place they inhabited that I admired, but could never relate to.

Note 3:

Am I the only one who realizes that we've been lied to? Am I the only one not afraid of the notion that the nine have hijacked our trust, and extinguished the hope that once motivated our existence? We used to close our eyes and picture a better life, now this city is full of dry eyes caught in a trance of obedience, devoid of any trace of an identity.......My hope of something more is all I have in this rigid tomb, and I will not let it die.

I wanted to quote the fifth note, but the whole thing feels relatable to me as someone who left Utah. So here is the full letter:

I've made it out. I feel weightless. I know that place had always held me down, but for the first time, I can feel the unity that I had hoped for. It's been three nights now, and my breathing has changed - it's slower, and more full. It's like the air out here is actually worth taking in. I can see it back in the distance, and I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't constantly on my mind. I wish I could turn that fear off, but maybe the further I go, the less that fear will affect me. I feel betrayed by what I assumed was home. If I ever end up back there, I won't be able to look at it the same way. They are asleep. They're so sure that they know the truth, and carry on throughout their day with the same meaningless tasks. They've forgotten to look up, and to look outward, to understand that this isn't about 'in there.' This is about 'out here.' This new world surrounds me. I used to think the walls back home were massive- these green cliffs engulf me, and place me right in the middle- Trench is quite precarious at times, and it's easy to grow weary. But it's real, and it's true, and I'd much rather endure reality than to mindlessly be obedient to a life that someone else created for me. I've obsessed about this world for so long, that it feels more like home than anything I've experienced. Somehow, in this vast openness, I feel more protected than ever. The landscape feels endless, and I've found myself walking for hours without any true evidence of getting further down. But I've seen plants and colors out here that I'm not sure I've witnessed before. There's a beauty in the strangest places,- and the curiosity of what's next continues to motivate me. I wonder who else is out here. If what i assumed inside is true, there's got to be more like me. Sometimes I'll feel a presence, only to look up and see nothing. It's just another thing that I'm afraid of that also excites me. It all just confirms all of the things that I hoped to be true for all of this time. I am out here and I am very alive. I'm sometimes scared, but always discovering something new, and I will not stop. Cover me!

I’m not going to go into why these relate, it should be clear from my explanations of the songs why I can relate to these letters. If you are exmormon yourself, you might understand already anyway.

Now finally, I’ll go into the letters in the site that I mentioned earlier, imabandi.to. These are actually where my blog icon and banner come from.

Remember when I explained Vialism? One of the notes goes further into it.

The text reads “The necropolis glorifies the early graves of those who lost themselves along the way. Let us overthrow this concept as a symbol of dedication to and celebration of life.” and is accompanied by a caption that reads:

STEADFAST IN OUR REBELLION AGAINST THE TEACHINGS OF VIALISM, WE TURN THEIR FALSE DOCTRINE UPON ITS HEAD. PROTECTED MORE THAN EVER, THE DOUBLE BARS ARE A SYMBOL OF LIFE AND HOPE.

Overturning the symbol of false doctrine in order to celebrate the concept of life and being alive. This is what I want to do. Life should be enjoyed and celebrated and not controlled and given up for false teachings.

The icon for this blog is the Vulture symbol of the banditos. It comes from this note:

It reads: “The fear and pain shall not be elements that stop us, but what feeds us to persevere. The vultures above are our symbol of turning death to life.” And its caption reads:

WE ARE VULTURES. THE VULTURE SEES BOTH WORLDS, DEVOURING DEATH. A SYMBOL OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO TURN DEATH INTO LIFE. MAY WE LEARN FROM WHAT WE'VE LOST, AND COMMIT TO LIVING.

So another symbol of committing to being alive and to life itself. It is to me a symbol of rebellion against the things I was taught and becoming my own, free person.

Finally, the banner I use on my blog.

This one I have compared to being an apostate. The caption reads:

THOSE WHO SEE CORRUPTION INSIDE THE LIES OF DEMA FEEL A RESPONSIBILITY TO GET OUT, AND ATTEMPTED ESCAPE SHOULD BE HONORED. MANY ARE PUNISHED WITH THE FAILED PERIMETER ESCAPE BADGE, BUT WEAR IT PROUDLY. IT IS THEIR SYMBOL OF THE BANDITØ UNDERGROUND — THE FEW, THE PROUD, AND THE EMOTIONAL.

The label apostate is used often by people in religions as a label meant to shame, but we use it proudly. There are posts I have even seen about how “Apostate” means freed slave, and how it is a thing to be proud of. Much like how the note above says: “ We shall call our label of delinquince by a new name. This is who we are, and let us never be ashamed by the penalty placed upon us by false authorities.” I’m not ashamed to call myself an apostate anymore. I feared it at one point, but now I embrace it. It is what I am. I am freed, I am openly defying and rebelling against the false teachings of my childhood. And seeing this note was what solidified me relating this album and its lore to my life entirely. In my opinion, I escaped my DEMA. I saw the outside of the walls and was helped by those around me to escape them and find true freedom beyond them, in Trench. And although it will be a long time before I am truly free from the trauma and leftover programming that happened to me while I was in the LDS church, I have those around me who will reassure me and support me and let me know that I am never alone.

Anyway. I’m finally at the end of the post. Thank you for reading this. Cover me!

#i speak #exmormon #exmo #apostate #apostake #twenty one pilots #trench #dema #bandito

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nolongerapileofashprobably · 6 years

Text

Fates Cruelty

The soft green glow lit up Zelda’s face, pulling her from her sleep. Here eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly, though her focus was solely on the orb of light above her. A firely? No, she has seen sunset fireflies before, and this was not one of them. Her lips parted with realization, the excitement brushing off any sleep that clung to her mind. Now awake, Zelda slowly go up, careful not to wake her mother or the draw the attention of the knights protecting their camp.

Her mother turned in her sleep, causing Zelda to stop and watch her carefully. With no more movement, besides the slow rise of her mother's chest, Zelda continued her way towards the light. It had begun to move away from their camp, with Zelda not far behind. Somehow, she didn't catch anyone's attention; the thought making her heart race with excitement.

She wished she had a camera with her, so she could document this rare find. It wasn't just any day someone would find a fairy. Legend says they only appear to those who have a pure soul. The mere indication made her giddy. Then again, what harm can a six year old princess do anyway?

Distracted by the fairy, Zelda didn’t notice the movement back at the camp. She didn’t see the ambush, not while she was focused on getting the fairy to land on her outstretched hand. As the fairy slowly made its way down to her palm, her name was cried out, the voice desperate to know if she was okay.

Startled, Zelda whipped around, seeing nothing in the pale moon light. She heard grunts and screams, but never the voice that sang her lullabies at night. She never heard that voice again.

Instead, she had stood petrified as the wind blew around her. Slim figures darted around her; only one of them stopping in their paths to look at the young girl. She was lucky, since whoever it was deemed her unworthy of their time.

The fairy had rested itself on her shoulder, as though it’s presence could calm her terrified mind. She stood in that spot for hours, until she heard horses in the distance. Then, she slowly crept back towards the camp. Zelda didn’t know what was going to happen when she got there. All she knew is that something was terribly wrong.

Guards rushed to her, the familiar sign of Hyrule calming her slightly. These were friends. These were the people who she could trust.

She called out for her mother, her confusion growing as the guards hurried her over to a carriage. There was no answer, so she shouted for her mother again, this time earning looks of pity.

Zelda didn’t understand why these guards were keeping her from her mother. She didn’t know why they were talking about her father. When she arrived at the castle, it was the first time she had seen it without any of the torches lit. The sight frightened her, making her call out for her mother once more.

It was then that her father came to her, within the foyer.

It was then Zelda was told her mother was not going to come back.

—————————————————————

Ten years later, Zelda was furiously scribbling down her lastest discovery in her journal. She had finally cross referenced a traveler’s rumor with ancient texts and was able to pinpoint the possible location of a fairy fountain. Perhaps then her questions will be answered.

However, she needed the old trade route map to specify the exact coordinates, which was currently in her father’s possession. She sighed, placing the text onto the counter before getting up.

She prayed to the Goddess Hylia that her father was not in his study. Last time she tried to get something from him, he had lectured her on how she was wasting her time with pointless scholar readings. She had gotten what she wanted, but her own time was wasted with his speech about how she was wasting her time. The irony was entertaining, however.

Silence answered her knocks and shouts, letting her open the door with a breath of relief.

Zelda closed the door behind her, heading to her right once it was back in it’s frame. She knew her father kept the maps in the bottom right drawer, so she just had to hope he wasn’t using the specific one she wanted. Kneeling, Zelda pulled the handle of the desk drawer, revealing multiple scrolls and journals.

“When will you organize your research, Father?” She questioned aloud, as she pulled out multiple scrolls. “All I need is The Siela Route, or at least a map that includes the outskirts of Kankiro Village.”

She continued to mutter about her father’s messy study, when a scroll blocked her view.

“Wha-?” She began, confusion settling in as she saw who was holding the scroll.

He was a boy her age, light brown hair accompanied by startling blue eyes. He gestured for her to take the scroll, but Zelda couldn’t take her eyes off him.

How long has he been there? Why was he here? Who was he?

The questions bounced in her mind as the boy waved the parchment in front of her again. She numbly took it, with whispered questions falling from her lips.

“How...?” She managed to ask, unrolling the paper to reveal the Siela route. She spotted a distinct Circle not decorated with trees at the bottom left corner of the map. Zelda would bet her crown that that was a Great Fairy Fountain.

“It- it has the location,” She said softly, looking up at the boy. “Thank you, but I have to ask who you are. It’s not everyday I find a stranger in my father’s study, nor finding him holding the exact map I needed.”

Because Zelda was far too distracted by the boy, she didn’t notice her father coming in.

“That is Link, Zelda.” He spoke, his voice low with annoyance. Her father’s presence caused Link to kneel quickly, her attention drawn to him before she focused on her father. “Why are you in my study?”

She quickly put her arms behind her hiding the scroll from view as she stood up. “I wanted to ask you about the Ancient Hateno Lab. I read in a text about Mother’s research there and I wanted to see if I could journey there. Only because Mother always told me she put lessons in her journals for me when I grew up and started to take on a larger role in the kingdom.”

Her father’s eyes narrowed, suspicion creeping onto his features. “I know about your mother’s guides. For once I’m surprised you have a good idea that will help you in the real world, not the past one. You can journey to Hateno, so long as you take Link with you.”

“What?” She asked, bewildered. She looked at the kneeling boy then back to her father. “Why would I take him with me?”

Her father raised a brow. “Because he’s your newly appointed knight, as of ten minutes ago.”

“What?” She protested loudly, before she composed herself since he was kneeling right next to her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were assigning me a bodyguard? Didn’t you think I had a right to know? Or had a right to be at the ceremony?”

“Now, now, Zelda,” he told her calmly, holding a hand out for her to come towards him. She did so reluctantly, allowing him to place his hand on her shoulder. “We both know that a bodyguard and a knight are two different standards of duties. And this should not be a surprise to you. We both know the Yiga’s clan has increased their interference with our scouts. Your role as the heir to the throne means you must go out and interact with the citizens of Hyrule. Therefore, you must have someone with you at all times to protect you, if any of our enemies decide you are an easy target.”

“So I’ve been assigned a baby sitter.” She clarified with an eye roll. “Wonderful. Well, alright.”

Zelda turned back to Link, who was still patiently kneeling. “Come with me, Link. I have a route planned already. You’ll just have to prepare for a day or so’s journey.”

She made her way out of the study quickly, moving her arms in front of her, so the scroll was still blocked by her body. She assumed Link got up, as she heard her father dismiss him. His footsteps were slightly harder for her to hear, so when she turned to see where he was, she was startled to find him a few feet away.

She turned around quickly, avoiding his stare as she walked back towards her study. His silence was something that did not escape her notice. She wished he would speak, say something, instead of just carefully watching in the background.

“Do you know of Kakariko Village?” She asked, glancing back just in time to see him nod. “We will be stopping there on our way to Hateno Village, just to stock up on supplies and rest the horses. It’s only a half day journey, so if we leave at sunrise tomorrow we can get there before noon.”

She opened the door to her study, setting the map on her desk before she turned towards Link. He had stopped in the doorway, his gaze sweeping the room before settling on the princess in front of him.

“I want you to know that I do not need the protection my father says I do.” She told him, her tone stern so her words would stick. “I do understand you swore to protect me, but I do not need someone trailing me wherever I go. So, I’m releasing you from your oath. You can accompany me for long trips, to appease my father, but you do not need to follow me everywhere. Am I clear?”

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow and she could sense his confusion.

“I’ll take it you at least understand what I am saying,” She said harshly, turning around to pick up the map. “You are dismissed.”

Zelda didn’t turn back, instead she hoped he listened to her words. She began to switch between the three texts in front of her and confirmed that the small clearing was her best bet. It was only slightly outside of Kakariko Village’s border, so she was sure she could slip past everyone and investigate the spot by herself.

Link would probably at little more attenative than any of her previous guards, but she was sure she could find some way to have him distracted. Perhaps she could call on an old friend to talk his ear off, if she still resides in Kakariko Village.

Zelda continued to read up about Great fairy Fountains, so she could be fully prepared if she did indeed find the one in question. She had some money stashed away, so she would have to be sure to take it with her. Apparently, travelers must pay the fairy for her to help them. A small price for the fairy’s help, she guessed.

It wasn’t until late that Zelda thought it best to turn in, since she should at least get some sleep before her journey. She picked up the map, rolling it up as she walked out of her study. The cool air greeted her as she walked through its threshold with the moon illuminating the pathway.

Before she could make it across the small bridge, she saw a figure sitting on the ground by her door. Link had his back against the door frame, seemingly waiting for Zelda to come out of her study.

His presence infuriated her, and coupled with her crankiness from the late hour, she was fuming.

“Why are you here?” She questioned, her tone cruel as she crossed her arms. Unbothered by her anger, Link got up, moving to the side so he wasn’t blocking her door in any way.

I thought I made it clear that I do not need you to protect me,” She continued hotly. “Within these walls, I am well protected without you waiting for me like a dog. I know you don’t like to speak, but is listening really that hard for you?”

Zelda detected the trace of a frown growing on Link’s face, but he merely averted his eyes as he reached from something in his pack. Pulling it out, she recognized the ancient symbol that decorated most of her study texts. He held it out for her to take, something she did with a wary expression. Her anger faded into curiosity as she read the title ‘A Guide to Dealing with Fairies’.

“How did you know...?” Her words trailed off as she watched Link begin to move away. His movements were still too quiet for her to register if she wasn’t paying attention. His figure disappeared as he walked into the corridor.

All he wanted to do was to give me the book, Zelda realized. She thought about apologizing to him when they set off tomorrow, until she realized with horror that he might now even show up because of how she acted. Her father would be furious, plus Link would have even more reason to despise her.

Not only was she a princess who wanted nothing to do with ruling Hyrule, but she was rude, unforgiving, and selfish. Being a knight, Zelda knew Link had an undying loyalty to the throne and the royal family. But who would want to follow a Queen that isn’t interested in being a Queen? The answer was simple; no one.

As she finally got around to going to bed, she wondered if there was even the slightest chance she could mend the bridge she had already started to burn. Zelda wasn’t even one day in to having an appointed knight and she made him hate her already.

#zelink #zelink botw #legend of zelda #botw #loz botw #zelda #zelda botw #link #link botw #legend of zelda breath of the wild #breath of the wild

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New top story from Time: The Pandemic Closed Art Galleries’ Doors. But Who Said a Gallery Needs Four Walls and a Ceiling?

The traditional art gallery—the sterile, windowless viewing room aptly labeled the “white cube” by artist and critic Brian O’Doherty in 1976—has dominated the art world for decades as the primary way to display works. The white cube, which has been compared to an operating room as well as a burial vault, has been championed as a way to maintain neutrality while viewing artworks. “The outside world must not come in, so windows are usually sealed off. Walls are painted white. The ceiling becomes the source of light. The wooden floor is polished so that you click along clinically, or carpeted so that you pad soundlessly, resting the feet while the eyes have at the wall. The art is free, as the saying used to go, ‘to take on its own life,'” O’Doherty wrote in Artforum.

But its eerie, clinical neutrality comes at a price. The cube creates something artificial about the way the viewer interacts with art, removing both from the outside world, and from anyone who doesn’t seek out or stumble upon that room. The cube has been perceived as a symbol of elitism: if you didn’t dress the right way or frequent certain neighborhoods, the cube and its contents were not for you. And if you didn’t know the right people, the chances of your work being displayed there were even slimmer.

Now the pandemic has made the gallery even more inaccessible, at least temporarily, inspiring curators and creators to reimagine how art might be shared. But while today’s circumstances are new, artists’ efforts to think beyond such restrictions are not. In the 1960s, members of the Fluxus movement created works that blurred the distinction between art and life and denounced the gallery’s formalities. Everyday acts could be works of art, and many of the works could not be restaged or reproduced in full. Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, in which the artist sat on a stage with a pair of scissors and invited audience members to take turns cutting off her clothing, blurred the relationship between the viewer and the art, and threw into question any sort of neutrality.

The land-art movement of the ’60s and ’70s saw artists sculpt the earth to create large-scale works, like Robert Smithson’s 1,500-ft.-long Spiral Jetty made of salt crystals, water, and basalt rock on Utah’s Great Salt Lake, that inherently held their creators’ anti-commercial politics: other than in photographs, there was no way for the massive pieces to exist within four walls. The “earthworks” made during this period were the antithesis of what the white cube represented; rather than existing in a void that nullified the outside world, these works were the outside world.

As galleries have shuttered during social distancing and stay-at-home orders, this spirit of creativity, if not outright anti-establishment thinking, has informed new relationships between art and viewers. From video games to snail mail, the examples below are just a few of the ways artists and museums have seized upon this difficult moment to prove, yet again, that possibilities for interacting with art are as wide open as a room is closed.

A Miniature Gallery

Courtesy of Shelter In Place GalleryB. Chehayeb’s abstract paintings on display in the miniature Shelter in Place Gallery

On March 27, artist Eben Haines launched Shelter in Place Gallery, a miniature display room that allows artists to create small-scale works that appear larger when photographed and shared on Instagram. After reviewing artists’ submissions of sample images and proposals over email, Haines and his partner Delaney Dameron ask the selected artists to drop off or mail them their work. Then they install and photograph each tiny solo art show, which lasts for less than a week.

“The fact that the space is miniature, and that the viewer understands that it is a fabrication, means that they end up looking closely at details: the masonry and the conduit and poorly placed outlets, the water stains where the skylight has leaked,” explains Haines.

For artists who don’t have access to their studios now, creating small works is far more feasible than what their usual work might entail. They’re “able to make more ambitious work than they could ever afford to at scale, let alone have shown in a commercial gallery,” says Haines, referencing the prohibitively high cost of real estate for urban galleries that might otherwise show more large-scale works.

Exhibited artists include B. Chehayeb (whose work is shown above), who makes paintings of abstracted memories of growing up Mexican American, as well as Mary Pedicini, who created a mixed-media room installation that hung from the beams.“ Hopefully,” Haines says, “we allow people to make the work they’ve always wanted to make.”

Video-Game Curation

Courtesy of Sarah WaldorfThe Getty’s Animal Crossing Art Generator tool allows players to import works from the museum’s open-access catalog

In 2020, you can have your very own Claude Monet or Vincent van Gogh—or at least a pixelated version hanging above the stove in your virtual kitchen. With the Los Angeles–based Getty Museum’s Animal Crossing Art Generator tool, players of the highly popular Nintendo game—in which users design a whimsical island world while befriending the animals that inhabit it—can search through the museum’s open-access collection and import images into their game. Then, players can display each work however they choose: on a wall; on a piece of clothing; or even in their own galleries, which friends who are also playing the game can visit virtually.

Bringing works of art into a video game and inserting them into a fictional world changes their contexts entirely, making them playful, moldable items. Players, in a sense, become curators. “It doesn’t just give users access to our collections, but it allows them to shape the museum experience for themselves,” says Selina Chang-Yi Zawacki, a software engineer at the Getty who developed the project. “In general, the typical museum experience is very rigid. It’s set up for you; there’s a flow you have to follow—but with this tool, you can make it whatever you want.”

Some users have chosen to print out the digitized versions of their chosen works, bringing the digital back into the physical world. The Art History Undergraduate Association at the University of California, Irvine, even used the tool to add works to a virtual art show honoring the opening of a canceled campus exhibition.

Mail Art

Courtesy of Julie Sola and Jason BrownMore than 350 participants sent their works to Nashville for Brown’s “my view from home” mail-art project

The decades-old populist art practice commonly known as mail art or postal art has seen a revival in recent months. The rules are simple: all one has to do is make a small work of art of any kind (drawing, collage, poem, etc.) that can fit into an envelope and send it through the mail to another correspondent.

Dada artist Marcel Duchamp, Fluxus artist On Kawara and many others practiced the form in the late 20th century. The movement gained prominence in the 1950s, when Ray Johnson, who wanted to rebuke the gallery system, encouraged his network of acquaintances as well as strangers to share work through the mail. Johnson would send templates that had copies of his own drawings with prompts, like “Please add hair to Cher,” to correspondents, who would add their own mark to the mailings before returning them to him or forwarding them to someone else. The project eventually became known as the New York Correspondence School.

Since stay-at-home orders took effect, several mail-art projects have emerged. For one such project, Nashville-based art collector and curator Jason Brown has been holding an open call called “my view from home.” The initiative invites people everywhere to send in their works, which Brown collects and posts to the project’s website and Instagram account. After the submission period is over, Brown plans to donate the mailings to the Special Collections at Vanderbilt University Library in Nashville. According to Brown, he’s received more than 350 works from 27 countries, including India, Cuba and Germany. “It expands the notion of what an artist is. Mail artists come from all walks of life; most are not professional artists,” says Brown. “All you need is your imagination and a stamp.”

Jason Pickleman, a Chicago-based graphic designer and gallerist, held a mail-art exhibition over Instagram Live and plans on divvying up the 600 artworks he’s received in the mail into smaller groups that can be mailed out as “as a lending library to anyone interested in experiencing the collection.” The project, titled “MAILL” (Mail Art Inventory Lending Library), aims to create “a museum from your mailbox,” as Pickleman puts it, and allows for art viewing to become a more tactile and intimate experience. Plus, according to Pickleman, it’s nice to open your mail and discover artwork rather than utility bills or mail-order catalogs.

“Drive-By” Exhibits

Courtesy of Toni Ross and Sara SalawayIn a “Drive-by-Art” show in New York, Toni Ross and Sara Salaway exhibited When, a social-isolation “calendar” of jumbled chairs with date-related words

Organized by Los Angeles–based conceptual artist and theorist Warren Neidich, “Drive-by-Art” is a unique blend of the physical and digital that creates a socially distant art experience. Aimed at bringing art back to its starting place, the artist’s studio—where Neidich believes the work is in its purest and most powerful state—his shows allow spectators to use an online map to drive past works displayed on artists’ lawns, porches and mailboxes from the safety of their cars. He came up with the idea after being sequestered in a cabin at the start of the pandemic; “Drive-by-Art” was his “reaction to feelings of isolation and disconnection.”

Neidich has already completed shows in L.A. and New York’s Long Island, and plans to expand to more cities and countries. Exhibits have included Jeremy Dennis’ “Destinations,” wood silhouettes covered in photocopied images of the Eiffel Tower and Elvis’ meeting with President Nixon. Neidich worked with local artists and curators Renee Petropoulos, Michael Slenske and Anuradha Vikram to ensure a diverse range of both established and emerging voices for the expanded Los Angeles show. “I was using the car, which has many functions in the history of America, like the building of suburbia, and was trying to give it another meaning as a place of protection, a kind of solitary bubble through which you could experience art,” he explains.

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

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