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ask-runaan-anything · 6 years ago

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Spirited Moonshadow: A Moonshadow Tale

For my little shadows. Thank you from the bottom of my Moonshadow heart.

Characters/Tags: Runaan, OC Earth creature, Moonshadow spirits, monster hunter Runaan, action/adventure, snake monster’s got tentacles okay, bit of gore, slish slash, cocky young Runaan, sassy Runaan, putting the “sass” in “assassin”, did I mention the sass, teenage Runaan, beating my elf boy up a bit, nod to Tolkien, spirit realm, temporary major character death, for a given value of death, everybody relax this is the plan, Moonshadows gonna Moonshadow, they will also sass

Spirited Moonshadow

“Is this as big as your kind get, or is there anyone larger I can defeat?” Runaan drew his short swords from the narrow double sheath nestled against his spine and flicked their straight white blades out to full length. The winds of dawn swirled in the box canyon that stretched before him. Its breezy fingers tugged through his long ponytail as he stared up at the monstrosity he’d chased away from the Moonshadow village. The chieftain had promised him breakfast after battle. If he survived.

The chitinous, eyeless creature towered over him like a giant cobra, unable to escape the canyon Runaan had trapped it in. An Underhowl—the first he’d ever seen. Its slender, snakelike body sported a fleshy frill just behind its head, and the spines of it grew into a dozen tentacles, each tipped with razor-sharp mouths that could rip him in two and feed his dying halves to the scimitar-fanged, circular maw that dominated its face.

“You… are… tiny…” The larger mouth spoke slowly and sloppily, for its shape had been determined long before Xadian became a language. A three-pronged, deep purple tongue flicked out, points waving with prehensile grace, as if tasting Runaan’s scent.

Runaan drew himself up to his full height, achieved last summer—finally—and felt the taut pull of his short bow’s string across his chest. “I have been enthusiastically informed otherwise.”

“And tasty.”

The young journeyman tipped his horns to the side with a sassy grin. “That one I have heard.”

The Underhowl smiled with its mouths. All of them. So many. Such dark creatures hunted from underground, panicked their victims into freezing with terror, and then yanked them below the surface to feed in silence and safety. Three such deaths in a week had led to Runaan being assigned a hunter mission to dispatch the threat. Standard journeyman assassin work, which Runaan usually found very engaging. The fact that his target was a rare Underhowl added a new layer of interest.

The Underhowl had weaponized sound itself. Its roaring lay below the point of elven hearing, but it felt as loud as an avalanche, and it seemed to shake one’s very soul from the inside out, driving terror into its victims with terrifying hallucinations. While those were very bad things for Moonshadows, they were merely appetizers for the Underhowl’s main course—which had recently also been Moonshadows.

Runaan bounded to the top of a boulder near the box canyon’s entrance. Back straight, hands at his sides, with the wind teasing his side tails, he eyed the slick brown behemoth in the box canyon. It, in turn, focused on him with all but two of its tentacles. Most of them made idle munching motions at him, though he stood well out of range of their bony teeth.

His turquoise gaze studied the vast creature. Its coiled length was more swift than bulky. Those tentacles were whips of pure muscle, a dozen arms clasping mouthfuls of knives.

Runaan could die so very many ways today. But he’d just turned nineteen. The final stage of his assassin training wouldn’t be complete until he successfully completed several more hunter missions. He couldn’t die yet—not permanently. He had Plans.

Some of them even involved being an assassin.

“You can return to the depths below Earthblood territory on your own,” he called to the tentacled brown horror, knowing it would do no such thing. His clear voice carried easily on the swirling winds. He twirled one of his blades for emphasis and snapped it tight in his fist, aiming the sword at the beast. “Or I can kill you. Don’t make me wait for your decision.”

The Underhowl’s immediate response—How considerate—was to jam all of its tentacles against the stony ground—too stony to burrow to safety, for that had been the trap—and use the rock as an amplifier for its cry.

Its infrasound howl vibrated through the stone underfoot and rose through Runaan’s boots, invading his very bones with the cold ache of terror. His stomach twisted in sudden fear, and his chest seized. His palms grew damp inside his gloves. Every one of his instincts cried out that death was upon him, that there was no escape, that the spirits had come for him.

But Runaan was a Moonshadow assassin. He had tasted death. He had heard the spirits call for his soul. Yet here he stood, still very much alive. And very much kicking. His turquoise eyes slitted, and he bared his teeth in a silent growl. The dawn warmed his shoulders, and its rising winds tugged through his long white hair. He ground the ball of one foot against the boulder and crouched, ready to spring.

Life sang in his veins. Death keened in his bones. They met and mingled in his smile.

How I live for this.

The young journeyman launched himself off the boulder, white blades out to his sides. Half of the Underhowl’s tentacles rose and sent their unheard shrieks in various directions, trying to track him while he was airborne.

One of the wicked sound pulses caught Runaan just before his foot touched down on a stepping stone to his target. He flinched against the howling inside his head. Missed his footing. Tumbled messily across the boulder and landed hard on the stony ground with a muffled grunt of pain. Coarse sand ground against his cheek and infiltrated his left side tail. “Nngh, Moon and Shadow,” Runaan cursed, shaking the offending particles free of his hair.

The Underhowl uncoiled and began a serpentine slither toward him, using flexible dark scales on its belly to pull itself across the hard ground. It had found him, and it would keep shrieking until the horrors behind Runaan’s eyelids had their way with him.

Unless Runaan shut it up.

With a determined groan, the Moonshadow shoved himself upright, sheathed his swords onto his back, and braced his feet on the sides of two nearby boulders so that he stood off the ground. It did no good as protection from the insanity shrieks the Underhowl hurled at him, but it did allow him a good vantage point from which to loose arrows.

Runaan slipped his now-scuffed short bow off his shoulder and nocked a poison-tipped arrow from his hip quiver, drawing and firing in the space of one breath. His missile lodged itself through one of the monster’s tentacle mouths, pinning it shut, and the appendage began to flail wildly, trying to dislodge the deadly shaft.

But another was already singing its way through the flesh of a second tentacle. Followed immediately by a third. Other tentacles halted their silent shrieking—blessedly lowering the shaking in Runaan’s bones—and began trying to extract the arrows from their flailing counterparts.

“You haven’t said a word, and you still talk too much.” With a wolflike grin, Runaan leaped forward, firing more arrows as he landed on boulder after boulder, always zigzagging closer to the silently shrieking behemoth, dodging its blind attacks. His arrows pierced even more tentacles, distracting them from their arrow retrieval, enraging the Underhowl further.

The great, shiny body halted. Its toothy gyre opened toward Runaan as he stood on the nearest boulder, bow lowered. Vicious teeth that curved like scimitars dribbled with envenomed strings of saliva as it stretched its circular jaws wide and, in a voice of deepest fury, screamed.

The blast caught Runaan full in the chest and tumbled him off the boulder in a breathless tangle of white hair and bloody visions. Most of the creature’s shriek was still infrasound, but some had been horribly, painfully audible. The Moonshadow skidded on one knee and dug the fingers of his scuffed glove into the coarse sand among the boulders, feeling his whole torso clench hard from the shock of the blow. His ears rang with warring choirs of Sunfires and Skywings at a Summer’s Turn festival, and the world had gone foggy, as if he saw through a misty window. “Nngh.” He closed his eyes and managed two quick breaths before he felt as if his insides weren’t going liquefy on the spot. I never did like soup.

Runaan took a shuddering breath and braced himself with a full-body flex. Then he brought his bow to bear sideways across the top of the rock that lay between him and his target. He aimed up toward the monster’s gaping maw, poison-tipped arrow hungry to bury itself in the deep, dark, slimy flesh of its soft palate. “If you had eyes, you might see this coming,” he muttered. He nocked the arrow, yanked back on the string. He could nearly taste victory, and it was sweet.

His bow snapped.

Runaan instinctively dodged its whirring halves as its tension released with a crack. Sweet victory was suddenly far out of reach again, and his anticipation soured. That first tumble he’d taken had done more damage than he’d realized, and his choice to irritate the beast with poison arrows suddenly seemed foolhardy in the extreme.

Almost half of the Underhowl’s tentacles were out of commission, but between those that remained and its screaming maw, Runaan didn’t stand much of a chance, no matter how skilled he was with his blades. He glared coolly at the creature as it picked one of his arrows out of its tentacle. The poison wouldn’t be enough to kill it, and soon all those tiny mouths would be back at work.

If Runaan didn’t act fast, he’d be just another dead Moonshadow in a long line of victims. And some other journeyman assassin would get the glory for this kill.

Runaan squinted wryly. Well, that’s not happening.

He rose and stepped atop the boulder. Let the wind catch his hair. Felt the dawn backlight his horns and outline his silhouette. “You think I’m just another tasty Moonshadow? That I have ‘easy prey’ carved into my horns? That I will lay down and die just because you’re hungry?” Runaan let a cocky laugh bubble from his lips.

Because that was exactly what he intended to do. What could go wrong? I’ve done this before. More than once. Twice is more than once.

He hopped off the far side, keeping his eyes locked on that great toothy maw, which heaved out breaths that smelled of decaying flesh. And he strode, slowly, purposefully, hands empty out to his sides, until he stood in easy reach of the beast’s tentacles.

Between the space of one breath and the next, all of the monster’s undamaged tentacles converged on Runaan, shard-toothed jaws hissing open with angry anticipation.

His mind thrummed with a thrill of pure fear. He let it go.

The mouths cried out, and their silent shrieks drove Runaan to one knee. His body felt like it was melting. He let that go, too.

The gritty golden stone below him blurred and danced as his eyeballs shook with the sonic assault. Ethereal hands rose from the ground, and for a moment Runaan believed he was hallucinating. Until he felt their presence echo off his soul.

Spirits of the dead. Of the eaten. Moonshadow spirits, angry, seeking their own vengeance. And Runaan had let them down.

One of them seized his ankle with chill fingers, while another, more direct in its intent, grasped him by the throat. The third spirit’s hand reached into his skull through his eyes, blinding him with a starry blue dazzle and a flash of icy cold. Runaan gasp echoed in his own mouth as his spirit detached and floated free.

The world blazed white.

Runaan’s eyes struggled to comprehend what he saw at first. His vision perceived only slight variations in bright tones. The three spirits knelt around him in palest blue and lavender forms, eyes hard, the edges of their bodies wisping as if made of smoke. His own body gleamed dark with turquoise highlights—his full Moonshadow form. The box canyon stretched before him, formed of stone that gleamed like marble and glass. The sight that met his spirit eyes took him aback as he glanced up toward the spot where the great hulking monstrosity had been.

A tiny, willowy thing stood over there, all green and palest sunshine-gold, a soft swirl of nature spirit that would not have been out of place in a child’s bedtime story. Except for its eyes. It had six of them, large and angular, and they bore black sclera and red irises that throbbed with fiery hatred. It bared its teeth at Runaan, and a massive, guttural growl oozed past its lips.

In that moment, Runaan hesitated. He could see—could feel—that this Earth spirit had not been intended for destruction. It was an ancient thing, and it had been created to tend living creatures. Yet it had chosen not to follow the spirit of its purpose, but to embrace a twisted interpretation of its calling.

Something deep in Runaan’s soul wanted to call the Earth monster back to its origins. To give it another chance to start over, make amends, set things right. His mouth opened to speak.

The beast before him lunged, moving its rootlike feet as if running in a living wooden skirt. Thick ropy tendrils formed at its shoulders and shot out, trying to tangle Runaan in their grasp. The Moonshadow spirits fled with howls of frustration.

Caught flat-footed by the sudden attack, Runaan barely dodged, rolling to the side in a whirl of loose white hair that floated weightlessly around his head. Turning to face the twisted spirit, he formed a spirit dagger in each hand. Black blades bore deep moonlike crescent edges that gleamed as if kissed by Moonlight. Runaan gave each one a circular flick. “Don’t do this. You were meant for a different path.”

But the Earth spirit’s deathly smile, so sweet and gentle beneath its demonic eyes, was its only response. That, and a soft slither backward on its agile, rooty feet.

Instinct prickled the back of Runaan’s neck, and he lunged, slashing hard. His sudden thrust drove the malevolent spirit from its close proximity to his slumped body, which lay pale and wisp-edged as if in deep sleep. If the spirit could harm his physical form enough, Runaan’s spirit wouldn’t be able to return. But the tree spirit was even more flexible than he was, and it darted around him, whipping like a willow and blurring with speed. Appearing behind him, it snaked a tendril of root out and captured his body’s right wrist.

Runaan spun and dropped hard, slicing the root off with the flash of a spirit dagger. But even as he did so, he felt a cold pang in his right wrist, as if that part of him were going numb. He spun to stand between the twisted creature and his own body. “This won’t end well for you,” he growled.

But the Underhowl was not cowed in the slightest. “You cannot defend yourself and attack me at the same time, little Moonshadow.” Its voice was surprisingly airy for its tree-like appearance and blood-red eyes. “You must choose. Stay out of your body long enough to defeat me, and join the spirit world as it dies for lack of your spirit. Or accept your failure now, return to your soft and blood-filled form… and join the spirit world when I kill you. I shall not make you wait long.” A tiny green stem of a tongue licked across the spirit’s lips, twisting its sweet expression into one of foulness. “I smell pride on you, Moonshadow. Anger too, and pain. Your despairs will fill me well.”

Shoving hard memories down before they could distract him, Runaan bared his teeth and ground the ball of his foot into the bright white sand. It gave strangely, though, offering no traction. In the split-second that his focus was distracted, the Underhowl struck again.

It bypassed Runaan’s spirit, bending in an entirely inhuman manner, and slashed at his body, catching him across the back of one shoulder with a whipping root. A thick line of cold began to burn across Runaan’s back, and he grunted in sudden pain. But he shifted and stood over his own body, gesturing with his glimmering blade. “I thought you’d hit harder. Perhaps I overestimated you.”

The monster struck again, and Runaan slashed at it. He pushed himself hard, adapting to the creature’s ethereal flexibility and finding that he possessed it as well. He danced and twirled, slashing and cutting, carving his victory one cut at a time. But the tree spirit simply grew more tendrils, and time kept passing. He was going to lose the battle just as the Underhowl had predicted.

Runaan spun hard and fast as the creature slid around to his left. He could feel the warm burn of his own death creeping along his shoulders. His dagger slashed across two of the spirit’s eyes, and the thing screamed in agony. He jinked, aiming for the heart with his other dagger, but the sweet-faced beast flung its rooty arms wide in spectral rage, and a hard-tipped finger pierced Runaan’s chest just below his collarbone, running him through with a heat-stealing slither that drew a gasp of agony from Runaan’s lips.

The Underhowl felt the contact and lunged toward Runaan, eager to finish him off, growling in pain and fury. Runaan felt his balance slip as his chest started to radiate with cold from the spirit’s touch.

Out of time.

His only hope of victory—of survival—was retreat. Arching hard, Runaan kicked backward and landed in his corporeal self with a messy, hypnic jerk that sprawled his limbs.

His chest burned as he gasped hard for the sweet coolness of air. His turquoise eyes opened again, wide and straining as he drank in the endless bright colors of the physical world.

They were beautiful.

He lay in the shade of the Underhowl’s towering, chitinous body. Its remaining tentacle mouths surrounded him, just beginning to open. So many infrasound blasts at this minimal distance would fling Runaan straight back into the spirit world without hope of returning to his body.

With a single, fluid motion, he tucked into a backward roll and pushed himself airborne. In midair, he drew his white bladed swords from his back. A hard flick snapped them to their full length, and he spun his way through the two nearest tentacles, leaving their ends flopping on the coarse sand and gushing a dark ichor.

Without pausing, Runaan leaped and stabbed one sword into what remained of a shortened tentacle just as the monster yanked it back in pain. The creature’s instinctive retreat pulled the Moonshadow high into the air and momentarily out of reach of the other tentacles. The Underhowl reacted quickly and tried to bite him with its vast, circular jaw of scimitar fangs. Runaan freed his blade and arched high over the beast’s head, delivering a spinning slice to two more tentacles as they tried to snatch him out of the air.

He landed on the monster’s chitinous back scales with a smooth skid, blades out, hair flying, teeth bared. Immediately the remaining tentacles descended on him, reaching behind the blind monster’s head from their places on its neck frill, their silent shrieks blasting from several directions. His bones shook hard, and a terrifying void of moonless, empty night flickered before his vision.

He grimaced and hurled himself into another spin. Lopped off one tentacle as it struck. Then a second. Leaped high off the Underhowl’s frill and slashed hard at a third near its base, cutting off its infrasound scream. He rebounded off the flailing appendage and twisted in midair, slashing as he spun, slicing one more tentacle off at a sharp angle, sending its gnashing mouth spinning.

His trajectory took him high above the monster’s head, toward one of the two remaining tentacles. With a hard twist, he pivoted around and stabbed one white sword deep into the fleshy wall of the tentacle, anchoring himself. His other arm stretched wide, and as the other tentacle dived for him, bony teeth desperate to spill his blood, he sliced half its head off. The spurting chunk of meat tumbled to the rough sand below, taking its silent voice with it.

The Underhowl’s circular mouth roared in frustrated agony a dozen paces below his boots. Before Runaan could leap to safety, the appendage he’d stabbed his sword into coiled tightly around him, pinning his arms to his sides. He writhed and bucked against its grip, but it was nearly as thick as he was and made of pure muscle. Only one of his swords was in a useful position, but if he cut through the tentacle’s musculature—he glanced down as it swung him high, saw his fate looming, and gritted his teeth—he’d fall straight into the creature’s maw.

Might as well.

“I’ve been called salty far more often than tasty.” Runaan wrenched hard against his sword, forcing it through the sinewy tentacle. “I welcome your feedback on the matter.” The last bit of gristly muscle gave way, and Runaan felt his balance tip and plummet. As the appendage separated, he kicked free of it and arched into his fall, reducing his white blades to their shorter length and pulling them in across his chest.

He landed inside the Underhowl’s circular maw with blades spinning and white hair flying. The creature’s talon-hooked fangs spiraled shut behind him, trapping him in fetid darkness that smelled of rot and death. A cold gust of rotting breath saturated his hair and invaded his lungs, and the Underhowl’s whiplike tongue shoved him against those deadly teeth. The fang points drove into his back, and Runaan growled hard against the burning pain of their venom.

His blades lit with Moonlight in the blackness, and he hacked at the tongue and sliced off one of its three forked points, then pulled himself free of the curving fangs and leaped toward the back of the creature’s cavernous mouth. The swords threw violent shadows around the piercing glow that lit his bared teeth and shafted through his trailing ponytail. He thrust upward as he landed, and one blade sheathed itself high in the Underhowl’s soft palate. The light in the fleshy cavern dimmed by half. A swift spinning kick to the sword’s hilt activated its full length and shoved the steel shaft inexorably into the monster’s brain.

The shriek the creature let loose was mercifully short before it shuddered into death. Runaan dropped his other sword and clapped his hands over his ears as the Underhowl’s death cry blasted past him. As the beast began to topple, its neck and head plummeting toward the ground, Runaan snatched up his sword and stabbed it deep into the creature’s mouth to anchor himself. The collision with the ground was less violent than he expected, though. Dead monsters didn’t bounce.

Runaan tried to take a deep breath and settle his shaking guts, but the air in the creature’s mouth stank, and he only ended up coughing. The impact of its fall spiraled its jaws open a little, though, and fresh air and the clean light of dawn entered, caressing Runaan’s bloodied back as he knelt in the mouth of his vanquished enemy.

A high, thin keening finally reached his ringing ears. Runaan shot a wary look upward as the Underhowl’s treelike spirit wafted down through the wall of its dead mouth and hovered in the swordlight. Its slender tentacle arms were wrapped around its head in distress, its mouth open as if in pain.

Runaan stood and balanced one foot against the curve of a massive fang. “I told you. You were meant for a different path. You refused to choose it. So I have chosen for you.”

“What… right… have you…” The spirit’s thin voice rippled with rage.

No. not rage. Fear.

Runaan straightened his shoulders, though they throbbed with various hurts that were becoming harder to ignore. “I am Moonshadow. I have the only right. Now, go.”

The spirit trembled and hunched. “I do not know the way!”

“We will take it with us.” The soft voice glided past Runaan’s ear with a cool brush of wind, and a shiver rippled down Runaan’s spine. One of the Moonshadow spirits approached the tree spirit and was soon joined by the other two. They surrounded their murderer, then looked back at Runaan. Much passed between them—regrets, gratitude. Sorrow, release. Peace.

Runaan nodded soberly. “Then I will see you on the other side.”

The shortest spirit spoke up, its voice aged. “We will look for you. But not soon.”

Runaan’s mouth fell open softly at the spirit’s words, its gentle regard of him, its otherworldly prescience. But he only nodded. They were all Moonshadow. No further words were necessary.

The three Moonshadow spirits linked hands and ushered the trembling tree spirit ahead of them, wisping into nothingness before Runaan’s eyes. A small sigh escaped his lips, and he allowed himself to feel. Relief, closure. Life.

And then, rather a lot of pain.

With gritted teeth and a few too many curses, Runaan retrieved his swords, doused their moonlight spell, and gingerly leaped through the circle of curving fangs that ringed the Underhowl’s mouth. Though its ring-shaped jaws were slack in death, he had no wish to get more envenomed than he already was. He fell gratefully to his knees on the hard golden stone at the entrance to the box canyon and let his eyes caress the broad blue sky.

The morning light seemed endless, the heavens vast with possibility. Runaan’s chest heaved with a rising weightlessness, and a great smile split his face.

His ears throbbed, and a pounding headache had begun behind his eyes. His shirts clung to his back, soaked with sweat, blood, and venom, the last of which had begun singing its way through his bloodstream with an acid melody.4 The tree spirit’s ethereal attack had also done something painful to Runaan’s chest just below his left collarbone, and it throbbed in counterpoint to his heartbeat. Breathing hurt on so many levels that he didn’t even want to count them.

And I broke my bow!

At that sudden, grumpy thought, Runaan suddenly burst into quiet laughter. Despite his injuries, his shoulders shook gently, then harder, until he was wheezing for breath and had to lean forward onto a hand, side tails swaying, to steady himself. Moon and Shadow, that hurts. I suppose I can’t be dead, then. Not yet.

He breathed through his nose until he got the pain—and the laughter—under control. Then he settled back onto his heels. The Moonshadow village was only a short walk away, even in his state. Runaan’s stomach growled insistently as he realized that the rest of the day was his to live out. And the day after, and the day after that.

With a stifled groan and an eager smile, the journeyman assassin got to his feet, caught his breath, and headed toward the village. He had been promised breakfast, after all.

#runaan #runaan fanfic #tdp fanfic #moonshadow tale

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fourthwingingit · 6 years ago

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Im pissed

Everyone on tumblr under the infrasound tag is talking about how cool the hallucinations are and i cant find a single community bord about it that isnt clogged with ravers

Infrasound is ruining my life

I feel intense panic and the deep knowledge that something invisible and evil is in the room with me

It frequently sends me into panic spirals and ruins my sleep schedule because i cant afford to move away from a fucking highway

Im so sensitive to it that many things can trigger the response that would be too faint for some (but only for the ravers to hallucinate so it clearly doesn't matter) these include but are not limited to:

1) fans

2) cars, busses, trains, plains, basically any engine

3) ac units

4) water heaters

5) old ventilation systems

6) most old buildings

7) certain bass notes have undertones of it (bass heavy songs esp electronic music is really rough on me)

8) most white noise

9) certain animals

10) certain creaking noises

I was genuinely hoping to find a community of people going through the same bullshit as me with some coping mechanisms that i could try out but its all bullshit about music festivals so far

Pls feel free to enjoy your festivities and whatnot but i am really frustrated because im struggling and i cant find a single bit of advice on how to help myself.

I wake up if a 18 wheeler passes my house and i cant go amywhere because im so scared of driving And of public transportation AND i cant walk anywhere because the roads are usually clogged

Also its 100°f (30°c) and i cant use a fan or ac so that isnt improving my moox

#infrasound #infrasound problems #rant #ok to rb #long post #vent post

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thedailyfrequency · 2 years ago

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Break On Through to the Otherside With Ternion Sound’s ‘Digital Artifice’

In 2016, bass producers Apparition, Johnny Foreplay, and Nostalgia came together for an impromptu b2b2b on the beach stage at Infrasound Music Festival. After experiencing an incredible sense of chemistry from the first drop of bass, it was clear this wouldn’t be the last time they played together. Seven years later, that same group of DJs, now known as the one and only Ternion Sound, have…

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#DUBSTEP #FEATURED #LISTEN #REVIEWS

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canadian-riddler · 8 years ago

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‘Humming the Lights’

By Indiana

Characters: Edward Nygma, Jonathan Crane, Query & Echo

Synopsis: After years of gruelling work and disgruntled partnership, the DJ trio Misophonia has finally made it to a prime spot at one of the biggest EDM festivals with the help of their promoter. It’s been a hard slog, but they all get what they want: the girls to be heard, Jonathan a major demonstration of his fear-inducing music, and Edward his prestige. Or do they?

“He’s not gonna answer.”

Edward frowned and pulled the bottom of the phone away from his mouth. “I don’t recall asking.”

“Boss,” Echo said, leaning over the back of her seat as Query smiled at him from the rearview mirror, continuing with,

“When do we ever?”

He grimaced and threw the phone down into the back seat. He supposed he was well aware of that by now. It was a long drive from the hotel to the Speedway, and the closer they got the fewer bars his cellphone displayed anyway. He dropped the device onto the seat next to him, folding his arms and peering in between the front seats. “Are we only now coming up to the defense base?”

“You need to relax.” Query tapped him on the nose with her index finger and he moved back into his seat so as to avoid a similar action from Echo.

“We’re not going to be late, honey.”

“The good doctor, however…”

“Ladies,” Edward interrupted, putting up his hands, “we’ve been through this. You know why I can’t have you two on stage yourselves. Once you have the time and inclination to learn to beat match, I can put you in the booth. Until then, he’s the DJ.”

Query and Echo he had discovered in a somewhat reputable club one night about three years previous. They were terrible DJs, he had known that as soon as he’d stepped into the room. The general patronage of the club did not overly care as long as the drops kept coming, and many of them were too intoxicated to notice neither of the girls knew how to transition whatsoever. But that wasn’t why Edward had stayed. Edward had stayed because, even though most of the song changes were jarring and done without any skill whatsoever, a great deal of the productions were actually quite skillfully done. They had a flavour, of a sort, that led him to believe they were done by the same person, and he needed to know just who that was.

He had made his way up to them after the set and introduced himself as a manager seeking new talent, and as often happened when offering opportunities to female DJs they had rolled their eyes and started walking away.

“Yeah, heard that one before,” the one he came to know as Echo had said. Echo was Han Chinese, about twenty pounds overweight, and most often kept her mid-length hair in dual braids of some fashion to accentuate the fact she looked several years younger than she was. She told him later it was to sort out all the creeps from the get-go. Her partner, Query, was of Indian heritage, with dark russet skin, a strong nose, and hair that fell past her waist even when she too braided it. She had laughed over her shoulder and called him something he preferred not to repeat, and he’d nearly given up then and there. But if he didn’t get this management career going soon he was going to have to give up, and that thought spurred him to say, “Will you at least tell me who produced the last song you played?”

The girls had paused and looked behind them. “We did,” Echo had answered, after a questioning look at Query. “Why?”

Edward had folded his hands together. “I told you the truth. I’m a manager, recruiting skilled producers such as yourself. I can get you places.”

“What kinds of places?” Query had asked after a pause. Edward had smiled at her.

“Out of here, to begin with. After that, who knows? Residencies. The festival circuit. Unless you’d prefer to stay here…” He had taken a step back, which caused the girls to exchange a look quickly.

“Maybe we’ll hear you out,” Echo had said.

“No guarantees,” Query had continued.

“We don’t like where you’re going –“

“- we walk.”

“It��s a deal,” Edward had said calmly.

He had met them for coffee a few days later and they had brought their laptop, and he had looked over a variety of their productions. Most of them were outstanding, and more or less all of them leaning towards psy- and liquid trance, which puzzled him tremendously considering that was not a genre that forgave bad transitions. He had removed the headphones and stared at the monitor for a long minute.

“I’m going to have to find you a DJ,” he had finally said. They had both frowned. They had both also been wearing some quite iridescent purple lipstick, which he came to learn was not unusual.

“We’re DJs,” they had protested, in unison for once. He’d shaken his head.

“You’re producers. Not DJs. I can get you signed to a label with this. But I can’t get you booked anywhere unless either of you can learn to mix properly. And I doubt you will, because you haven’t in the five years’ worth of tracks I see here.”

Echo had made as though to stand up but Query had not moved. She had entwined her hands together and said, “It’s true.”

Echo had crossed her arms across her chest. “He doesn’t have to say it like that.” Edward had pushed the computer away in exasperation.

“If you need coddled, you’re in the wrong profession. You may just be in the wrong profession regardless. Look. I’ll do as much as I can with what I have. But being a DJ on any scale requires both quality sets and quality productions. You can’t go far with one or the other.” There was some money to be made off them, at any rate. They sounded good and looked that way most of the time as well. He’d find them a DJ, and if it went nowhere, he’d drop them. Though it had seemed equally likely they had also pre-planned to drop him.

Neither of those things had happened. Yet. He wouldn’t count out them throwing him out of the car, however.

As it had turned out, neither of them were particularly interested in the decks in the first place; Echo liked picking the songs and reading the crowd, but was not really a fan of doing anything with this information. They were mostly balking at the idea of someone else being the face of their work. He understood that. But he cared about it a lot less than he cared about getting them booked, and getting them booked required finding someone who was willing to figure out how to use Serato.

Edward had been at the end of his tether about this problem when he was sorting through his daily deluge of emails and discovered an interesting lecture at a university in Gotham City. A doctor there was giving a talk on infrasound and its applications for the study of fear. Edward hadn’t known just yet what that meant, but he flew down to the city at the appropriate date and attended the lecture. To his great surprise it was headed by a skeletal man with a swath of untended brown curls, but the most surprising part was that he demonstrated how to add his infrasound to otherwise innocuous music… using DJ software.

He had found his DJ. And a little extra to boot. People already went into clubs looking for a rush. Usually drug-induced, but a little extra push from the music itself wouldn’t hurt. Edward had already started to imagine the permutations of a high everyone got, even when they weren’t indulging in illicit substances. How easy would that be to market... trance music that undeniably and unrestrainedly put everyone into a trance! Perhaps not the one they were there for, but they would be. Oh, they would be.

After the lecture, Edward had gone up to the man and introduced himself. His answering handshake and terse, "Dr Crane" had been a little off-putting, but Edward needed this man. He was the key Edward had been searching for.

"What if I told you," Edward had said, one elbow propped on the lectern, "I knew a way for you to experiment on hundreds, even thousands, of people all at once. That all of these subjects would be fully willing to take part. That you'd even get paid to do it."

Crane had scrutinized him for a long moment from behind his thick glasses, though he had looked away when Edward attempted to catch his eye. "That sounds too good to be true."

Edward had rounded the lectern and stood directly in front of him. "I'm a manager and promoter for two young ladies. Very skilled, lots of personality. You'll love them. But they can't mix. You won’t need to produce. But if the three of you combine your strengths, we can all get what we want. You'll get to run your experiments as often as you like. You just need to come and be their DJ."

"DJ," Crane had repeated, somewhat taken aback. "You want me to abandon my work and the university to become a DJ?"

"You're not abandoning it!" Edward had protested. "How many trials do they even let you run in a semester? And all you get is reluctant college students looking for extra credit, right? I can get you people of all ages, of all experiences, from around the world. Listen. The girls know how to make music. But they can't beat match. They have no idea how to use the DJ software. We need a DJ like you." As well as his infrasound.

"And why me?" Crane had asked, unclipping the mic from his lapel. "I can't be terribly marketable. I can't say I know much about the industry, but I thought they were usually… younger."

"I need an edge," Edward had told him. "This industry is hard to break into. Skill doesn't do it alone anymore. You need a gimmick or a lot of money."

"And my infrasound is your gimmick."

"In the beginning. That's what we need to get noticed. After that, we can go in any direction."

Crane had carefully slotted a pair of folders into his briefcase. "And the young women?"

"Query and Echo. They have a few friends in clubbing circles that help them out for now, but -"

"Their names are Query and Echo?" Crane had asked incredulously, pausing in his actions. Edward had grimaced. He hadn't been looking forward to that part.

"They haven't told me their real names. They mentioned that most people can't be bothered to pronounce them correctly anyway."

Crane had given him one long, appraising look, as though in attempt to guess where he stood on the matter. "And would Edward be your real name?"

It wasn't the first time Edward had been asked that.

Edward had been subject to a lot of like observations he would rather have not heard over the course of his life. A great deal of them being from his father, who cursed often the dark skin and high cheekbones Edward had inherited from his mother. Edward had only once made the mistake of asking his father why he'd even been with a black woman if he hated them so much. Once was enough to know that wasn't the message he was supposed to be taking from the spectrum of abuse his father deemed him deserving of. Edward knew well enough by now to understand most of what his father had said over the course of his life had been lies, but he still did end up wondering from time to time just what the circumstances of his conception had been. In the end he always concluded it didn’t matter. What did matter was proving, if only to himself, that his father had been terribly, terribly wrong.

Given the context, Edward was not pleased by but did not fault the question. "It would."

Crane had then snapped closed his briefcase and placed his hand atop it. "I have Southern roots. I hold no pride in them and do my best to eschew that part of myself; however, I do not believe I can honestly say they will never influence my thoughts."

Edward hadn't liked that either, but he could respect that he had admitted it instead of listing off how progressive and culturally sensitive he was. Edward had hooked his thumbs into his pockets. "If you cross a line the girls will be more than happy to let you know." As well as tell him where to go, while they were at it.

But that he hadn't mentioned, and Crane had declared it fair, and after Edward had given the man his business card they had gone their separate ways. For a while.

"You'd think he could be on time just this once," griped Echo from the front seat. "How busy can he be with his fancy research all the way out here?"

Edward sighed and thought about how the girls had spent the entire plane ride here on their own laptop, trying to finish their own material to be played during the set, but he couldn't afford to be on one side or the other. Being the manager also meant being the referee, and he agreed with her but it wouldn't do for him to disrespect Jonathan behind his back. Edward had to be impartial, and it had been angering the girls since the first time he had had to explain to them that Jonathan was late to half the group sessions because he had the equivalent of two full-time jobs and Edward had effectively asked him to take on a third one part-time, but to be honest it angered him as well. It was disrespectful. He knew Jonathan's own research was more important to him than this DJ gig, and he tried to respect it. But it was difficult. At those times when the girls were yet again pressing him to just find another DJ he would take a long breath, remind himself of all the mornings he had walked into the studio to find Jonathan asleep on the decks again from spending the only free time he had left on familiarising himself with the girls’ music library, and tell them they were keeping him at least until they made it to a major festival. He let the girls say what they needed to say, just as he let them tell him he was taking them for granted to his face, because it was better than not knowing and having it explode at the exact wrong time. But he couldn't deny that he wanted to join them sometimes. They were right. It was disrespectful. To all three of them, and especially the girls. But they needed the edge Jonathan had. The infrasound. Edward didn't want to say he'd drop Jonathan as a client once the festival was over, since they would then have enough clout for him to find a better DJ... but he'd been considering it. He could probably have done it right then, dropped Jonathan and replaced him with a new performer and no one would have noticed, but he hadn't wanted to risk it. Not on such a major stage and not with the chance that the new DJ's technical prowess wouldn't be enough to hook the crowd they needed to be declared a success. There was also the fact that dropping Jonathan right before the goal line would be disrespectful in and of itself, and Edward could acknowledge Jonathan had put his fair share of time and effort into the group’s success. The girls had not liked him from the beginning, and he could have walked away at any time. But he hadn’t.

Jonathan and the girls had gotten in many arguments, him and Query especially. Query was a skilled producer but her real strength lay in reading the crowd. Jonathan had, depending on his mood during the set, made pains to prevent her from queuing his tracks for him, which had led to a fight between Edward and Jonathan as well as three set cancellations and a broken pair of headphones. Jonathan had refused to come to the studio that week and Query and Echo had stated they would refuse to let him in, and Edward had spent great swaths of time sitting at his desk staring at the wall where he had one day hoped to have a framed poster declaring Misophonia the headliner somewhere. They would have been lucky to get the opening act at Escapade at the rate they’d been going.

At the end of the week, Jonathan had come back and calmly stated that if the next set did not go smoothly, he was out, and the girls had been quite emphatic they really didn’t mind. Edward, in his fatigued exasperation, had told all three of them that if they did not pretend to be professionals for seventy-five minutes that night, he was out, and they could all fend for themselves. Echo was all for that too, but it seemed the stars had come into alignment in just that moment because Jonathan and Query had agreed to give it a try.

And it had gone so very well that night. Query read the crowd perfectly, and Jonathan’s mixing and infrasound combined kept more people in the room than Edward had ever seen any of his past DJs do. His search was over. He just had to keep the three tied together for a couple of years, to fuel his own personal success story. His next clients would not be so high-maintenance.

He managed to book them an increasing number of venues, both due to the secret edge the infrasound gave them and to the fact that Query and Jonathan actually worked well together when they weren’t fighting. Edward had to field a few inquiries about why there were always a few clubgoers who left Misophonia shows in an ambulance, but Edward would merely reiterate for the hundredth time that one can warn people about taking illicit substances as often as they like, but they are still inclined to do them anyway and Misophonia was not at all liable for such a thing. They ran into fewer and fewer snags over time, other than Jonathan inexplicably emailing Edward – and always a single email he never waited for a reply to – to cancel shows with little to no time to make alternate arrangements with the venues. He’d done it about four times and Edward had had to put Query and Echo on alone, which never went too well, but with the festival approaching he hadn’t had the time to find a replacement DJ. He had had to spend a great deal more time getting them on a stage at the festival at all.

And now Jonathan seemed to be cancelling. At the worst possible time.

“You didn’t reach him, then,” Query said, interrupting his reverie. Edward sighed and folded his arms.

“I did not.”

“You don’t happen to have another DJ on speed dial,” suggested Echo, craning her neck in his direction again, and Edward rolled his eyes.

“I do not.”

“If he doesn’t show up, he’s ruined all of us. You know that.”

The car was paused in the line of tour buses bringing thousands of hopped-up twenty-somethings to the festival grounds passing through the gate at the defense gate, which gave both girls time to stare back into the seat at him. Edward was only half looking. Most of his attention was on the wide arc lit of neon and smoke-shaded lights reaching into the empty desert sky. He’d waited so long for this chance. It couldn’t be ending like this.

“He’ll show,” Edward said, far too late. “He won’t pass up an experiment this big. He cares about that, if anything.”

“We hope so, boss.”

“Honestly.”

They actually sounded like they meant it. For once.

It took another twenty minutes to get through the base and onto the festival grounds, and once the technicalities were taken care of Edward stepped aside for a cigarette. Or three. He was doing his best to quell the habit but stress brought it back like nothing else. He was starting his third, watching Query and Echo consorting with the few artists and media and the like that were there, when a low voice behind him asked, “I hope you saved me one.”

He inhaled before he was ready due to surprise and had to take his cigarette out of his mouth until the coughing stopped. He turned around indignantly, accidentally dropping the damn thing. He stamped on it impatiently. “Where the hell were you?”

Jonathan sat down on the ground by one of the struts for the stage structure, folding his hands into his sleeves. Edward had borrowed a page from Gaia’s book and provided him a hooded robe so as to play the part of the mysterious, mystical DJ, but he hadn’t asked him to wear it here in the desert. Edward himself had had to eschew his usual three-piece green suit for a sweater vest, dress shirt, and khakis. The colour contrast between his skin and his favourite colour was usually something he preferred to play up, but the fact that no one could see him in the dark combined with the extreme heat spurred him to make the switch. “I didn’t know taxicabs weren’t authorised to go through the defense base. I got taken the long way around.”

Edward decided that was a semi-reasonable excuse and offered him the box of cigarettes. Jonathan took one and Edward sat down beside him, handing him a lighter as well. Edward waited for him to settle into it before admonishing, “You should have just come with us.”

“I should have,” Jonathan admitted. He did not elaborate, which Edward respected. Jonathan had a habit of not trying to justify when he’d made a mistake that Edward quite honestly should have adopted himself. He would merely acknowledge it and move on. But he was still annoyed Jonathan had elected not to come with them.

“Well, you had us all preparing for a no-show,” Edward told him, to drive the point home. Jonathan flicked the ash off the cigarette. Not that they could have actually prepared for that.

“Hm? Have you found your replacement DJ already?”

Edward snapped his head around. “What?”

“It wasn’t exactly a secret, Edward.” He pitched the end of his cigarette into the dark. His hand seemed oddly unsteady for the moment Edward saw it. “Or it seems as though you thought it was. No. That was the deal, was it not? I help you until you make it, and in return I get to do experiments on a massive scale. This is the end of the deal.”

Well, that was true. That was what Edward had been planning.

But Jonathan wasn’t supposed to know about it. Now Edward was having a rare flash of conscience. If Jonathan had already been aware Edward planned to replace him, he’d been doing a less than stellar job at being his manager. But in Edward’s defense, Jonathan did not overly act as though he cared for the job.

“So you did decide to show.”

“Welcome.”

Edward looked up to see the girls standing indignantly over them. Both were wearing a mermaid-style crop top, each slightly different, with black high-waisted shorts and some sort of platform sneakers Edward did not recognise from any store. Jonathan pushed his hands back into his sleeves and said nothing.

When the DJ onstage just then finished, Query had already made her way up there in eager anticipation. Edward did not see Jonathan follow and looked around for him to discover he hadn’t gotten up.

“Jonathan.” What was he up to now?

The other man nodded and stood slowly, making his way to the stage as though something he didn’t want to see were up there. This couldn’t just be reluctance to do the job, could it? It seemed an extreme reaction, especially when this was what they’d been working towards all this time.

Edward remained at the back end of the stage, which meant he couldn’t see past the decks. The lights were all down, as per usual at the opening of Misophonia shows, and it was so still and quiet even the hum of the speakers behind him were drowned out by the distant bass from the other six stages across the Speedway. Edward’s eye flicked to the timer. It was at thirty seconds and counting. They had sixty minutes. Edward’s hand went to the headset around his neck, the other removing his hat so he could flick the band over the top of his head.

“Query! What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, boss. Just froze right up.”

His DJ had stage fright? Now? Of all the – he ground his teeth together and was about to tell Query to just do the set herself, success be damned – nothing would be worse than having to walk off now, nothing! – but then Query picked up Jonathan’s headphones and put them into his hand. He still didn’t move for a good ten seconds after that, but then he pushed back the hood and removed his glasses, which he had to do in order to fit the headphones properly over his ears. When he finally started playing, the set had begun two and a half minutes late, but Edward didn’t care. He was too busy deciding whether he was going to tell Jonathan they were parting ways or if he was just going to conveniently leave his boarding pass someplace he couldn’t find it.

They were forty-five minutes in when everything went dark and quiet again, until the crowd began to express their… dignified disapproval. Edward pressed his hands into his face. This was a disaster. He was ruined. They were all ruined. He wasn’t just going to relocate Jonathan’s boarding pass; he was going to murder Jonathan and relocate his body.

“Boss, you need to see this.”

That made it all sound much worse.

Edward scrambled up the back of the stage and turned to look at the videoboard Query was pointing at. It was now displaying… a bat, maybe? Stylised? Jonathan was staring at it in abject horror.

“Do you know what that is?” Edward demanded, grabbing his arm. Jonathan instantly stiffened and it was so unnerving Edward let go.

“It’s Batman,” Jonathan whispered.

“Batman? The vigilante? He followed us all the way here?” How did Batman have jurisdiction in Las Vegas?

“We’re gone, boss,” Query shouted, leaping off the stage. “You got five or you find your own ride.”

“Why is he even here?” Edward asked Jonathan, seeing as he might have an answer. Jonathan’s eyes were glued to the screen.

“Not everyone leaves our sets with a stable mind.”

He’d been following the hospital admissions associated with Misophonia shows, then. Damn. He took Jonathan’s arm again. “Let’s go. We don’t want to get stuck here.”

Jonathan shook his head, finally looking at him. “No. If we all go he will merely chase us all down. I am the face of this and they will be somewhat lenient on me. You will not be so fortunate.” He was breathing incredibly hard and he looked even paler beneath the hood than usual, but his words seemed sure. Edward took a step back.

Jonathan, suddenly, reached forward and pressed a hand to Edward’s shoulder. It was so cold Edward could feel it even through the dry desert heat. Their eyes met, and Edward inexplicably knew Jonathan was afraid. Something about this Batman had terrified him to the quick, but he was staying anyway. He knew what the stakes were and he was rising to them.

He had chosen the right DJ after all.

“Good luck,” he found himself saying, though he believed in no such thing, and Jonathan seemed to nod. Edward then jumped off the stage and made his way through the throng as quickly as he could without looking too much in a hurry. He needed to get to the car before the girls took off, but getting caught along the way would not help matters.

He made it to the lot just as Query was pulling around to exit, and he considered berating them but knew that might get him tossed out entirely. Instead he slammed the car door shut and pressed himself into the backseat. Both girls looked behind them.

“We can’t wait another five –

“ – for him to show up.”

Edward swallowed despite his strain-induced dry throat. “He’s not.”

Query frowned at him via the rearview mirror. “He has something better to do?”

“We had to leave someone behind to take the fall. He volunteered.”

He didn’t think he had to explain to them what that meant.

“You know, boss,” Echo said, as they made it onto the road that wound through the desert, “we’ve been thinking.”

“We know what our next gig should be.”

“Mm,” Edward said, unsure why they were discussing that now and how on earth they were able to read each other’s minds.

“Turns out we don’t need a new DJ.”

“Ours is fine. Other than the criminal record.”

“But we don’t judge -”

“- for things like that.”

“How generous of you.” Why was he thinking so distractedly about the shoulder Jonathan had laid his hand on? About the way his eyes, so fearful and yet resolved, had set onto Edward’s? What had that even meant?

“So. Our next gig should be – “

“ – we snatch our DJ back.”

“You want to break into a police station and kidnap a criminal.” Exactly the sort of wild and outlandish thing people should do when they were trying to lay low.

“A DJ, boss.”

“Our DJ.”

“He can have the stage – “

“- we’ll keep Beatport.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“We know it’s not the first time,” they declared in unison, and he had to admit it wouldn’t be.

“Can we at least get out of sight of the festival before we start discussing jailbreak plans?”

“You got it.”

Author’s note

So a few things to talk about for this fic.

In most of my other fics I usually just describe Jonathan physically, mostly to establish he’s a cold bastard inside and out mostly, and everyone else maybe I’ll give you a hair colour and some other physical feature and let you go ham in your imagination. This one, as we can see, I got specific. I have a bit to say about that.

Query I made Indian in honour of my best friend. He’s a guy but I don’t actually put too many guys into my fics and if I’m gonna make someone related to my BFF they can’t just be a writeoff NPC. Indians have also been some of the kindest and hardest-working people I have ever met. So Query is Indian for that reason. My BFF is also pretty dark-skinned and her dark russet is an approximation of his skin. There are also very very few good Indian DJs. The best one I know of is KSHMR and I mean he’s very good but he was also born in the United States.

Echo I made Han Chinese because when you see an Asian person in the media, especially comics, they’re often ambiguously Asian, y’know, they don’t tell you what country they’re from they’re just like ‘they’re Asian!’ and that’s that. Asian women are also stereotypically very slender and young-looking, so Echo is a little overweight and she does look young but with a purpose.

I know that, in the comics, their names are Nina and Diedre, but in the comics they’re both white ladies and for this verse Query and Echo are both immigrants as adults and those are not appropriate names for them. I added the part about people not being able to pronounce their real names because I used to work in a Tim Hortons which hired a lot of Indian immigrants and there was one guy by the name of Madhav whom everyone just called whatever they wanted. I’m not joking, they made up names for him and expected him to respond. When I asked him about it he said myself and his girlfriend were the only ones who ever pronounced his name right in Canada. Which is... not cool. Where I work now we have a guy named Kaivan and we had a woman who didn’t even bother to learn his name. She just would shout ‘hey’ at him when she wanted his attention. But he’s still around and she’s gone so sometimes good things happen.

As for Edward, I had a discussion with an anonymous person on Tumblr who said the following:

“White riddler is canon, you're not going against the norm by making him a different brand of white. There is only so many people who make content for black!riddler, including writing and art and even short headcanon snippets. The POC part of the fandom has been leading it, and it really isn't much content, it's about a handful.”

To which I said:

“There are black people in Canada.

And am I, a white person, allowed to do black Riddler? Or is someone going to come into my inbox and tell me to get back in my lane? I’ve stated before I would have no problem doing Riddler as another race, other than the fact that it’s very easy to step on toes and not recover.”

I decided I would own up to what I said, and just do it. The anon implied to me that this is what some people need and if it means that much to them I’ll do it, but it also means I might need a poke back in the right direction. I tried not to go too far into how Edward experiences being black but as he is my lens here I couldn’t entirely avoid it. As in all my verses, Edward is Canadian, in this one half Caribbean-Canadian on his mother’s side. Any other backstory for anyone in this verse I haven’t worked out yet.

The title is from an Armin van Buuren song called ‘Humming the Lights’. The festival they’re at is called Electric Daisy Carnival. It’s in Las Vegas and is one of the biggest EDM festivals in the world. When I started the Misophonia AU it was about two or three years ago and I originally had them (just Jonathan and Edward) go to Ultra in Miami, but I’ve been to EDC twice and it has my heart so I changed that. Escapade is an EDM festival in Ottawa, and I live here, so that was just to amuse myself.

The difference between a producer and a DJ is that a producer makes the music and a DJ mixes it; most producers are also DJs, but not all are good at both. The top 100 DJs generally do both because to make money as a DJ you have to be able to make music and tour it while also having your own label. So Echo is really good at producing, Query is really good at reading the crowd and Jonathan is really good at beat matching so all three of them work together to be the equivalent of one really good DJ.

#Riddler #the Riddler #Scarecrow #Query and Echo #black Riddler #and I am only putting that there for the person who I was talking about it to #no other reason #fanfic #fanfic from Indy

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misc-alt · 6 years ago

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#infrasound2019 was pretty darn good. We pet squirrels, slayed the DnB stages, made friends, and realizations. I was really not impressed with the new venue #harmonypark as I watched multiple people get handcuffed and removed from the festival for doing VERY deadly things like smoking cannabis, I guess.. We were also packed like sardines, which damaged many of our tents from people having to trip over the strings. All in all, I enjoyed myself and learned a lot. I found love, played the piano, touched some hearts, drank a bunch of coffee.. I miss Highbridge Hills more than anything, though. #infrasound just isn't the same without it. . . . . . . . #festival #fest #festy #edm #edmfestival #party #community #forest #squirrel #petsquirrel #friends #misc_alt_ #miscalt #leyf #leyfleyf #edmmusic #musicfestival #music #gathering #sendit #camping #adventure #animal #animalfriends #druid #communing https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz5scITD_vQ/?igshid=ar8j21yztzsb

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chrysanss · 8 years ago

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Kebangkitan Pengabdi Setan

“Setelah sakit aneh selama tiga tahun, Ibu akhirnya meninggal dunia. Bapak lalu memutuskan untuk kerja di luar kota meninggalkan anak-anak. Tak lama kemudian anak-anak merasa bahwa Ibu kembali berada di rumah. Situasi semakin menyeramkan ketika mereka mengetahui bahwa Ibu datang lagi tidak sekedar untuk menjenguk, tapi untuk menjemput mereka.”

Salah satu adegan dalam film Pengabdi Setan 2017 (Foto: instagram.com/tarabasro)

Pada April 2017, berhembus kabar mengenai remake film Pengabdi Setan, film horor legendaris Indonesia yang rilis tiga puluh lima tahun silam. Pengabdi Setan versi remake ini disutradarai dan ditulis oleh Joko Anwar, sutradara yang sudah malang melintang dalam perfilman Indonesia. Tak hanya berada dalam tangan sutradara yang mumpuni, film ini pun diproduksi oleh Rapi Films, yakni rumah produksi film Pengabdi Setan versi orisinal. Joko Anwar pun kembali menggandeng aktor-aktor yang sebelumnya pernah bekerja sama dengannya, antara lain Tara Basro dan Fachri Albar.

Cuplikan sinopsis film ini sukses menggidikkan bulu roma. Adegan pertama dalam film yang menampilkan seorang wanita terbaring lemah di tempat tidur sembari membisikkan kalimat tak jelas pun sudah menggambarkan kesan horor. Kisah film berlatar tahun 1980-an tersebut, dimulai dengan menyorot kondisi finansial sebuah keluarga yang kehabisan uang untuk biaya berobat sang Ibu yang tengah sakit parah selama bertahun-tahun. Keluarga tersebut terdiri dari Ibu (Ayu Laksmi), Bapak (Bront Palarae), Rini (Tara Basro), Tony (Endy Arfian), Bondi (Nasar Annuz), Ian (M. Adhiyat), dan Nenek (Elly D. Luthan). Mereka tinggal di sebuah desa yang letaknya dekat dengan areal pemakaman. Anggota keluarga tersebut bersusah payah mencari uang tambahan demi mencukupi kebutuhan hidup. Rini Si Sulung menyambangi kantor label rekaman untuk meminta royalti hasil karya sang Ibu yang merupakan seorang penyanyi hits pada masanya. Sedangkan anak kedua keluarga tersebut, Tony, berkenan menjual sepeda motor beserta barang pribadinya. Namun tak lama kemudian, sang Ibu menghembuskan nafas terakhirnya dan dimulailah teror dalam rumah tua yang dihuni keluarga tersebut. Kemunculan sesosok mirip Ibu, kematian orang-orang terdekat, dan berbagai hal menakutkan yang terjadi di dalam rumah membuat mereka resah. Hingga akhirnya puzzle demi puzzle mulai terangkai ketika Rini bertemu dengan Budiman, sahabat lama sang Nenek.

Berkaca pada film terdahulunya, Pengabdi Setan versi remake ini memiliki konflik yang sangat berbeda. Film ini memfokuskan latar belakang sang Ibu sebagai dalang dibalik teror yang melanda keluarga tersebut. Sedangkan Pengabdi Setan versi orisinal memiliki jalan cerita sederhana dan sangat dekat dengan agama Islam. Beberapa tokoh dari Pengabdi Setan versi orisinal turut hadir dalam film ini walaupun memiliki peran yang berbeda. Adegan kunci dari film terdahulu kembali ditampilkan oleh Joko Anwar, seperti sesi pemakaman sang Ibu, meninggalnya orang-orang terdekat dari keluarga tersebut, dan adegan beribadah menurut kepercayaan umat muslim. Namun sangat disayangkan, pesan moral yang terkandung dalam versi remake tidak seaplikatif versi orisinal. Film besutan Sisworo Gautama Putra, sutradara spesialis film horor kala itu yang turut mensutradarai film-film Ratu Horor Suzanna, secara gamblang menunjukkan bahwa berkawan dengan ilmu hitam hanya akan mendatangkan marabahaya dan mendekatkan diri kepada Tuhan adalah satu-satunya jalan untuk memeranginya. Sebaliknya, versi remake mengangkat isu yang terbilang sangat jarang ditemui dalam kehidupan sehari-hari. Keberadaan tokoh pemuka agama pun tidak begitu berdaya dalam melawan setan. Kekompakan dan keharusan untuk saling menyayangi dalam keluarga menjadi satu-satunya pesan moral yang sama dari kedua film tersebut. Dilihat dari aspek kemunculan hantu, Pengabdi Setan versi orisinal lebih frontal dan sering, seperti tiba-tiba menampakkan hantu Ibu sedang mengetuk jendela kamar si bungsu pada menit awal film diputar. Sementara Joko Anwar cenderung menyimpan kemunculan para hantu untuk bagian klimaks.

Terlepas dari kekurangan tersebut, Joko Anwar patut diacungi jempol dikarenakan kesuksesannya dalam mengembangkan cerita Pengabdi Setan versi orisinal. Cerita yang segar, tidak mudah ditebak namun tetap masuk akal, membuat film ini tidak hanya sekedar menakut-nakuti penonton. Sinematografi yang disajikan pun luar biasa. Color grading dalam film ini mampu memanjakan mata, juga dapat memperkuat setting cerita. Penggunaan cahaya minim yang tepat semakin memperkuat kesan mistis dan pengambilan sudut pandang kamera yang tidak biasa pun sering mengecoh penonton terkait dengan kemunculan hantu. Scoring yang digunakan tidak seperti film horor Indonesia pada umumnya yang kerap menggunakan suara-suara piano bernada minor. Pengabdi Setan versi remake lebih mengedepankan suara-suara yang mencekam, seperti suara-suara psychoacoustic, alat musik gesek yang dimainkan secara asal, nada piano rendah, deritan pintu, suara berdenging, dan sayup-sayup percakapan manusia. Pada halaman Facebook Bemby Gusti, salah satu komposer musik film ini, yang diunggah pada Rabu (27/9), menjelaskan bahwa musik dalam Pengabdi Setan mempunyai satu layer yang berisi infrasound, yaitu gelombang suara dengan frekuensi rendah di bawah 20 hertz. Dengan tata suara yang sangat matang, berhasil mempengaruhi kondisi psikologis penonton. Secara keseluruhan, gaya dari film ini akan mengingatkan penonton kepada beberapa film horor barat mainstream, khususnya milik James Wan. Meskipun terasa sangat mengadaptasi film horor barat, ciri khas Joko Anwar yang acapkali menyajikan adegan sadis dalam film-film thriller-nya pun tetap tersaji walau hanya sekali.

Selain itu, sutradara yang telah beberapa kali menyabet penghargaan film terbaik atas karyanya, mampu menggali karakter tokoh-tokoh yang ada. Sosok si sulung yang gemar ajojing pada Pengabdi Setan versi orisinal diganti dengan Rini yang tangguh, keibuan, dan pengayom. Tomy yang berganti nama menjadi Tony dalam versi remake, tetap menjadi adik yang pemberani. Namun, Joko Anwar menambahkan tiga anggota keluarga yang sebelumnya tidak ada dalam versi orisinal, yaitu anak ketiga bernama Bondi, si bungsu Ian yang tunarungu, dan Nenek yang sehari-harinya perlu bantuan kursi roda. Kemudian dihadirkan pula sosok Herman, teman dekat si sulung, dimana dalam versi remake menjadi Hendra (Dimas Aditya) anak Pak Ustaz yang juga tinggal di desa tersebut. Kehadiran Bondi dan Ian mampu membuat penonton tergelak. Dengan dialog-dialog yang ringan, penonton dapat sedikit bernafas lega dan sejenak lupa bahwa sedang menonton film horor. Ian yang polos dan jenaka, mengingatkan saya pada Billy Hodgson dari The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist. Dengan kemampuan akting yang di atas rata-rata, Muhammad Adhiyat mampu membuat penonton gemas. Diselipkannya unsur-unsur komedi dari tingkah laku keempat bersaudara tersebut, dapat menyeimbangi cerita yang ada. Joko Anwar pun tetap mempertahankan sosok Darminah yang misterius walaupun peran yang dimainkannya berbeda.

Film berdurasi 107 menit ini sangat layak dijuluki film horor terbaik Indonesia saat ini, terbukti dengan keberhasilannya menguasai tiga belas nominasi dalam Piala Citra, Festival Film Indonesia 2017. Atmosfer film horor barat bukanlah suatu hal yang buruk, mengingat Pengabdi Setan versi remake merupakan film horor pertama Indonesia di masa kini yang dapat menyejajarkan diri dengan film-film horor yang menembus box office dunia. Jadi, masih yakin mau melewatkan Pengabdi Setan?

Dimuat (dengan banyak penyuntingan yang sembrono) dalam: http://generapersma.com/2017/10/kebangkitan-pengabdi-setan/

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