#like this great monolith which you can never see the entirety of

[snakeguy999]

i gotta tell you more abt my ocs sometime. smiles widely

Ooo la la...what did i do to deserve such an honour?

[missdrarrydawn]

Now I don't know if I'm just stupid BUT

I never see any Slavic representation in fiction, specifically I never see any Balkan Slavic cultures, and I think that's a real shame.

Our cultures are amazing y'all.

So in an effort to amend that, here is an incomplete list of some cultural traditions, beliefs, foods, customs etc. of the Balkan Slavs, specifically Serbian Slavs (Balkan Slavs includes Serbian people, Bosnian people, Croatian people, Albanians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Slovenians, Montenegro, north Macedonia and Kosovo, which is a lot and as with any other culture, we're not a monolith so I won't be speaking on everyone everywhere, only my own culture).

So first things first, what does our culture best translate to in writing? Well, Serbian Slavic culture works best for fairy tale fantasy stories/books. Those books set in one village or one small town, where everyone knowe everyone and everyone is the sixth removed cousin of their best friend's neighbor, very self contained and full of little bits of folklore and rich with history.

Why?

Serbia has never been a large or powerful country historically, in fact spending a lot of time colonized and oppressed by other more powerful forces, and so a big number of our people has always lived in villages and small towns. There's maybe 3-4 actual cities in the entirety of the country. So, since our people have always lived in small, somewhat isolated settlements and communities, the best types of stories to apply our culture to are stories with similar settings.

Now, as you can imagine, having that degree of separation has also lead to a huge variety in our customs and traditions, where each village would develop it's own little idiosyncracies and unique twists on established traditions, which may seem daunting when you're hoping to write us, but don't worry, most of the changes I speak of are picky differences that no Serb will really get on your ass for (hopefully).

Okay, so to sum up: Serbian Slavic tradition is best applied to pretty self contained, small scale books with simple settings. Fantasy is a great way to explore this by the way.

Now onto the fun bit, the actual resources!

Let's start with food.

When I tell you us Serbians place A LOT of value on traditional food, I mean it. Good homecooked food is the backbone of any household and there's a lot of pressure on us to become capable cooks. I'm going to list some of our traditional dishes and how to make them, but first I should mention that because Serbia spent about 500 years conquered by the Ottoman empire, a lot of our initial culture was forced to assimilate with theirs, so some of the foods listed here could possibly have origins dating back to the Ottomans, it's honestly impossible to tell at this point as during those 5 centuries the lines really blurred.

Onwards!

1. Musaka is a dish made with potatoes, ground meat, onion or garlic, salt, eggs, milk and spices to taste.

2. Đuveč is a dish made with potatoes, rice, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, onion, garlic, peršun (parsley), salt, pepper, oil and water.

3. Sarma is a dish made of several wrapped rolls with filling. The filling is typically made with ground beef, rice, onion, carrots, garlic, dry bacon and spices to taste. The wraps are pickled cabbage leafs. This dish also has zaprška, which is a mix of usually flour and some other spices meant to be fried and added into the cooking pot for extra smell and flavor. You prepare all the parts and then put a bit of filling on the cabbage leaf and roll it up. There's a specific method of rolling up sarme so that they stay nice and closed. After that you arrange the rolls in a pot, add water and cook.

4. Zeljanica is a type of pie made typically with a mix of spinach, nettles and sometimes other herbs as well.

5. Lenja pita is a type of dessert! It is usually made with either apple slices, cherries or sour cherries as well as powdered sugar. It looks a little bit like cake but it is very different.

6. Salčići are another dessert, a type of pastry made with puff pastry usually filled with fig pekmez (it's kind of like jam) and topped with powdered sugar.

~

I've hit the image post limit so if anyone wants to hear more about Serbian food lemme know and I'll do another post.

I'll compile another post for our other traditions and customs, since this post is way too long already and there's still so much I want to share :)).

I know us Slavic people aren't really a marginalized group by any margins so representation isn't as important as it is for marginalized groups but I still think it would be fun if more writers knew and included some Balkan Slavic cultures, and although I'm only talking about Serbian Slavs here, I think this could be a great introduction to my folk :DD

[savrenim]

i am running thru ur tumblr to find ONE POST to cite for tvtropes, and i agree so hard with the soulmate stuff. what if my soulmate is an awful abuser, i want the choice to NOT be with them without some painful physical consequence or loss of perception if i don't date them just because the universe said we were "meant to be"... plus if it's just a magic thing it "feels" more justified in-universe that soulmates exist and less like an ass pull so you could justify getting 2 characters together

oH gods this is something that I have SO many feelings about that probably is slightly informed by my own orientation and preferences, but. feelings. this got long so it's going under the cut

so there are three and a half major things that I have a problem with in terms of general soulmate tropes that are "there is one person who is your perfect romantic partner" (which to be fair I've seen a number of soulmate AUs do that trope with the addendum "although it only applies to a certain percentage of the population / not everyone has soulmates / everyone has soulmates but not everyone has SUPER PERFECT ROMANTIC soulmates" which at least somewhat avoids the statistic inevitability of abusive soulmates if combined with Fate Can See The Future And So Your Fated Soulmate Just Won't Be) and these complaints aren't even from the "I'm poly where's my poly rep" kind of place which is a whole 'nother bag of worms, but let's go:

1. I aggressively believe that love is a choice. Love is something that is built, not predetermined before you meet someone. There might be initial compatibility aspects going down when you first meet someone, but, like. statistically there are more than seven and a half billion people on this planet. If there is only a single person perfectly meant for you, again, statistically, you are not going to meet them, I've seen the figure thrown that on average a person will meet on the order 10,000 people in their lifetime but let's even go 100,000, you will meet 0.001% of the world's population. Unless you think some sort of divine coincidence or fate is guiding you to a soulmate which throws free will out the window and then I can't help you but, like. discarding the math, I think it is actively harmful to a relationship to believe that it can be sustained on chemistry or predetermined 'but we're perfect for each other' alone. It requires work. You choose who is in your life, you choose who stays in your life, you choose who you want to be important to you based on what they contribute to your life and what you contribute to theirs.

(I am assuming this ask is at least partially in reaction to my soulmate post, which actually the fic in question, a buried and a burning flame, has since gone up. I highly recommend reading Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard first, but besides the setup for arson wizards that alas is never used because the fire mage with a soulmate in question is Responsible, I decided to both tackle 'okay soulmarks trope too let's throw it in', which leads to the not-really-a-spoiler passage that appears fairly early on about actually the full layout (albeit with less detail on the 'yeah for mages it just helps ground their magic, nothing romantic about it' part) of my Soulmate Rules:

Soulmates existed, both in the Empire of Astandalas and across the Wide Seas. They just worked slightly differently in Vangavaye-ve than the rest of the worlds.

The rest of the Empire seemed to view soulmates as a monolith. From what Cliopher had been able to glean, the tradition was grounded in their magic. Magi had soulmates, or rather, magic-workers would each have a soulmate. Cliopher wasn't clear if all magic-workers had a soulmate, or if magic-workers simply could have one, but there was always a mage in soulmate pairs, and it was always a pair. There were no marks, no visible signs involved, as soulmates were something that were sensed with magic. They were permanent, intrinsic, and to be recognized immediately.

To Wide Sea Islanders, soulmates were a choice.

The soul-marks, lana and lani-voa, would appear the first time you touched someone that you had chosen to love, with the full knowledge that you loved them. Cliopher had the marks of his mother and father, his sisters, Basil and Dimiter, Bertie and Ghilly. His skin was covered lovingly with the colors of his love, marks that he had gotten used to concealing with long sleeves in Astandalas when he had gotten tired of the constant staring at his 'primitive tattoos'.

Buru Tovo had been the only one to give him lani-voa, a greater mark of the soul. The pattern, with its thick lines and twisting design in a deep blue, extended over the entirety of his left arm and shoulder. They were the dances of his family pressed onto his skin, and he had traced them over with reverent and feather-light touch for months after he had received them. A lani-voa marked someone who had changed your life for the better in a deep and irrevocable way. It was a great honor to have even one.

And now, with the gold stretching up his right arm, new patterns that he didn't recognize stretching up from a handprint of pure gold that was expanding the longer he held that first contact with Tor—

now he had two.

(Buru Tovo is Cliopher's great uncle, for context. In fact, everyone listed there is either a familial or platonic relationship, with a single relationship that used to be romantic but settled into platonic.))

so. yeah. Love is a choice! The Biggest Of Moods! any soulmate lore that undermines that is a Bad Message, in my opinion.

The emphasis also on platonic soulmates leads into my second point:

2. I have found in my life that platonic relationships that I have are and have always been as important if not moreso than the romantic relationships. the emphasis of a single romantic relationship as the most important relationship that you can be in maybe fits for some people, but as a generalization to absolutely everyone I think is toxic and harmful. and not just for aro people! I'm not aro, but I would be miserable to write off my friends as Less Important And Meaningful to me than my parter, whom I love with all my heart! (I've actually ended up in my life settling into what I call the red/blue/gold system for 'relationships that I treat with the importance that society treats romantic relationships', but that's a personal thing). The standard soulmate trope tends to really solidly deliver the thesis of "there is a single romantic relationship that is the single most important relationship in your life" and I just think that's a very bad thesis.

3. Finally, I think the emphasis on permanent/forever is a harmful one for relationships in general. People change. you drift closer to people or further away from them. you move, they move, your schedules change, your interests change, your life changes. if you are living with a romantic partner you're going to keep seeing each other every day, but that doesn't stop you from changing as a person, which means see Point 1 Love Is A Choice; but even if you choose to remain together, you are probably eventually going to Ship Of Theseus your entire relationship. I think it is an important message that if that happens and it is no longer a relationship that is as deeply positive as it once was in your life, you don't...have to keep it out of loyalty to what it once was.

It's okay for people to drift out of your life that were once the most important person in your life. It doesn't invalidate how important and meaningful that relationship used to be, and it isn't a betrayal to let yourself and them and your relationships change and evolve. The idea that something has to be forever for it to matter I think is the idea about soulmates that I disagree with the most. Probably because that was the hardest lesson for me to learn as a kid and a teenager, and the life lesson that I am proudest for learning.

3.5 your point 'plus if it's just a magic thing it "feels" more justified in-universe that soulmates exist' is exactly on the nose, literally I am unable to write anything without attempting to write down a universal theory of everything for How The World Works. if something soulmate-wise is going down even if it never appears on the page you bet your ass I have either figured out the general cosmology and theology of "are there gods or divine forces who have instituted this policy? if so, why? what purpose does it serve", or in the case of abaabf which already has such interesting magic rules in the original canon of "is there an evolutionary reason for soulmates to exist" which I don't go tracing out full evolutionary biology for a fic necessarily mostly because I would want the full evolutionary biology in canon to make sure mine is compliant enough but that sure as hell does translate to "if soulmates exist and it's not for the reason of Because Godlike Beings Said So, there better be a practical purpose". I find at least long-form soulmate fics (ie things With Plot and a Developed Setting that aren't just "let's do a ficlet with this well-known trope") that Do Not Feel Like They've At Least Thought About Why Soulmates Happen To Exist hurt my soul. which I think slightly intersects with my "I hate it when the rules of the universe/ laws of physics are human-centric" instead of "the base rules which were not designed for humans came first, and how the human world works arose in reaction to them" and. yeah. consistent desire to know at least for myself why things are set up the way that they're set up which gods ifmlam is wild and completely bullshit and pulls from quantum multiverse philosophy I started writing that thing when I was like. eighteen? nineteen? but at least it's there so I can be consistent.

as a caveat for everything above: I don't actually think that fiction, fanfiction in particular, needs to perfectly reflect what A Good Relationship or A Good Message About Relationships should be. it is a very human desire in a chaotic and confusing world to want a simple, absolute, binary thing to hold onto. fiction is a place for escapism or wish fulfillment or even exploring things that you wouldn't actually want in real life, I think that the movement in fandom/fiction that all of the messaging in your story should match the advice you'd give for a real-life setup is a bad and harmful one. mostly my opinions on soulmates and hence desire to do inversions of the soulmate trope in my fic and things like the red/blue/gold system and heavy emphasis on platonic relationships in original work that I'm writing is about a desire to see representation for me and the things I love and find important and my sort of relationships in the stories that are a big part of my life. but I am really glad that in doing so I seem to have struck a chord in other people, who maybe want to see the same thing!

[memoirsverse]

Dresden Files/The Authors of Paradise: Dark Days

This is a crossover fan novel featuring my own characters and world of The Authors of Paradise, blended with those of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. This derivative crossover work is being written for the sheer fun of it, with no financial gain. Jim Butcher owns Harry Dresden, The Dresden Files, and all associated characters. I own Evelyn Alvar, Arabella Thorne, Thornebridge Manor, The Authors of Paradise, and all associated characters. I’ve taken the two worlds, mashed them together, and whipped up this meandering thingamabob. Mmm, tasty. 

This novel is rated M for Mature, because it’ll get bloody. This chapter isn’t bloody, though; just dreadful.

i. Evelyn

I emerged in a room that shifted and warped, always in motion, always changing, and turned my attention to the figure standing at the far end. A softly glowing, color-changing mist curled around my ankles as I walked past impossible staircases and other Mobius-like structures, approaching the figure. It stood dispassionate, sexless, an endless void that glimmered with distant stars. Its name was Thornebridge, and this was the form it took in this place.

If I looked too deeply into that void, I would be drawn in, tumbling helplessly for eons as every potentiality, every reality, every actuality, every universe seared itself indelibly onto my conscious mind. I would know the truth about myself if I did that. I didn’t want to know. I most certainly did not want to know. I was confident it would drive me mad.

My bare feet settled into place, concealed by the mist, as I stopped directly in front of Thornebridge. I was wearing the filmy white thing that I always wore when I Traveled, and hair the color of moonlight tumbled over my marble-toned shoulders. I’d seen my reflection before in this form. I looked like a marble statue with intensely purple-jewel eyes, inhuman and profoundly alien. I had grown accustomed to it, but I still didn’t understand the why of it.

“You have something to tell me?” I ventured finally. I would never be entirely comfortable talking with Thornebridge-- if talking was the right word. The entity had its own language, one that didn’t often translate well into English, or any other language with actual words.

The response was instantaneous. From out of the mist, a great tower pushed its way out of the hidden ground, rumbling like thunder as it grew to a great height. Dust and debris rained down from it as it stretched higher and higher like some kind of monolithic tree, until its top vanished into the star-studded, nebula-swirled darkness above. A pair of winged figures circled the tower, armed with swords, their wings beating the air into a whirlwind as they flew around and around and around it.

A low, animalistic growl surged behind me, and I turned to see a man dressed in robes and expensive finery, crowned by four inverted pentacles that spun around his head. The man looked like a photograph in negative exposure, black and white, light where he should be dark and dark where he should be light. He ran at the tower and leaped on it, clawing at its base, digging to its foundations, tearing off huge chunks of stone and dropping them into a large canvas bag he carried slung over one shoulder. The two angels didn’t seem to see him, continuing their high-altitude patrol.

I sighed. The overall message was obvious, but the details were still obscured. “Who’s attacking you?” I asked.

The robed man vanished from his place by the tower and appeared before me so suddenly that I took a couple of steps backwards. I took a breath to steady myself and turned my eyes to Thornebridge. “But who is he?”

The human-shaped starry void said nothing. Of course. It stood still, its head turned towards me.

I could look into its void and See...

Shaking my head, I motioned with my hand to the diorama. “If you want our help, you’re going to have to be a bit more clear than that. Okay?”

Thornebridge just watched me. This was apparently the entirety of the message; I wasn’t going to get any more unless I Looked.

I ran my hands through my hair and sighed again. “All right, fine. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

Thornebridge nodded, and the scene vanished, replaced once again with the Escher-like environment. Closing my eyes, I let myself phase through the layers of reality, back to whatever dimension my Traveling form was held in. I felt the threads of silken energy close around me like a cocoon, and my conscious awareness faded to gentle black before becoming aware of the weight and solid mass of my everyday form.

I lay there for a minute, eyes closed, letting my consciousness re-align with physical reality. Slowly, my senses re-connected and began to filter information back to me: the lingering scent of incense, the soothing flow of the meditative music that I had set to play in a loop, the spongy feel of the mat between my body and the hardwood floor, the slight chill in the room that raised gooseflesh over my arms. It was September, and morning, and my stomach informed me that I had not yet eaten breakfast.

Opening my eyes, I stretched, then rose to my feet. The room my housemate Arabella and I had designated for communication sessions with Thornebridge was sparsely decorated with a couple of small tables, a bowl for incense, a scattering of candles, a few carefully placed crystals, some calming prints framed on the walls, a small rock garden, and an iPod set up with a meditation playlist. It was simple and zen, intended to cultivate the kind of relaxation needed to put one’s self into a deep trance.

I turned off the iPod, blew out the candles and the incense, and left the room in the heart of the house, winding my way through corridors that never seemed to follow the same path. I had gotten lost on multiple occasions while trying to find my way through the less stable portions of the house, until I had learned to open my senses enough to navigate my way to the space Arabella and I lived day-to-day. 

I saw the door, and my senses told me it was the one that led to the mundane part of the house. It was always a different door, sometimes massive and intricately carved, sometimes simple and rustic. Today, it was narrow, arterial red, and half my height, sporting an ornate silver knob. I turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped out of the dizzying instability of Thornebridge Manor and into the dimensionally stable, comforting warmth of the house’s living space. 

The difference in energy always takes a moment or two to adjust to. It’s a little bit like waking up from a dream, as reality re-establishes itself around you, solid and fixed. After taking a few slow breaths and doing a little grounding exercise by placing my palm flat against a wall and feeling its solidity, I moved on, making my way to the kitchen. 

_________________________________________

The coffee tasted hot and sweet as I sipped it from my favorite old coffee mug, which depicted a calico cat similar in appearance to my own Nimue, batting playfully at a Victorian-style fairy. The house was strangely quiet and felt vast and empty; Arabella had left town to attend some sort of bookseller’s conference. Slowly, I ate a breakfast of eggs, biscuits, and fruit, as I held my battered, leatherbound notebook in my left hand and read over the notes I had written on this morning’s communication with Thornebridge. A well-worn deck of tarot cards, its colors faded and its edges tattered, rested beside the notebook.

I took a bite of scrambled eggs, set my fork down, and flipped through the cards, withdrawing the Tower, the Emperor, Temperance, and the Four of Pentacles, laying them out on the table beside my plate. Chewing thoughtfully, I studied the cards, static images embodying the living diorama I had seen in the communication room, but I came no closer to achieving clarity. The only thing I knew for certain was that someone was attacking Thornebridge, someone Arabella and I-- the Guardians of Thornebridge Manor-- had not yet seen or encountered.

That... was not good. There was an endless list of reasons why that was not good. But I still had precious little to go on. It would be nice, I thought, if the damn house would learn to speak English.

An alarm sounded on my phone, alerting me that it was time to get ready for work, so I put my plate in the dishwasher, returned to my bedroom to dress, made sure my cat and Arabella’s dog Ghost had plenty of fresh water, checked on Virgil the ferret in his little house, and hurried out the door to drive to the shop. There wasn’t a lot I could do until I had more information, and I certainly wasn’t going to figure out the puzzle sitting here all day.

_________________________________________

I own a little shop called Boreas Curios, Antiques, and Odditites. It’s a quaint little place, sharing a storefront with a pizza parlor and a jewelry store, and is situated directly across the street from Arabella’s place of business, an antique bookstore that she inherited from its former owner when he retired. It was something akin to kismet that the two of us spent years working in these places, across the street from one another, before we met for the first time through completely unrelated events. And it wasn’t for a lack of browsing each others’ shops either-- I love books, and Arabella is a bona fide pack rat and loves to collect all sorts of strange and wonderful things. And vice versa. We just always managed to visit when neither of us was in our respective shop.

The shop was slow throughout the morning, giving me time to sort through inventory and clean a little bit as I tried to shake the lingering feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I chalked it up to the vagaries of my communication session with Thornebridge and carried on. A few minutes to eleven, Violet breezed in through the front door, smiling brightly at me with her black-lipsticked lips as we greeted each other. Her hair was short and spiky, black tipped with blue, and she wore black-and-white striped stockings on her arms and legs, a green corset, a knee-length black tulle skirt, and a pair of worn old army boots. She waved at me with a black-fingernailed hand and disappeared into the back of the shop, re-emerging a short time later wearing a blue apron that absolutely clashed with her getup.

I didn’t mind her eccentric way of dressing; in fact, I felt it fit the atmosphere of the shop perfectly. She cashed in to her register, and then set about helping me sort through a box of mini-Furbies that had been programmed to say diabolical things. The store rang out with sinister phrases such as, “I am Lord Beelzebub, hear me rooooar!” and “Sacrifice your virgins on the altar of the Goat King!” for several minutes as we inserted batteries, cataloged everything in the system, and put the Furbies in a wire bin near the register. The Diabolical Furby Collection was Violet’s idea, and I thought it fit nicely in with the theme of Strange and Bizarre I had cultivated in the shop. After all, I kept a constant supply of haunted dolls on a shelf situated on the back wall. People loved creepy things. They always sold well.

Right around 1:45, just as the lunch rush had mostly dissipated, the sky went dark, not gradually, but in a quick fade, as if somebody had used a dimmer switch to turn off the sun, cloaking the world in night. 

Violet, looking up from where she was ringing up one of the last customers in the store, frowned. “Um. Evelyn?” She paused, then added, “Did somebody forget to pay the sunlight bill?” The joke fell flat as her voice trembled a bit. 

I was busy staring through the glass door, blinking in confusion. The slight uneasiness I had felt earlier amplified itself, evolving into the kind of dread that speeds up the heart rate and sends butterflies swarming through the stomach. Violet clearly felt the same, but it was probably just from the inexplicable celestial event. Right? 

“What in the blazes...” I murmured. Casting a glance at Violet and her equally confused and anxious customer, I strode across the shop and out the door, peering up at the sky, searching for the sun. Violet joined me a minute or two later, after shooing the customers out and locking the door.

“Is... is it an eclipse?” she asked, doubt slowing her words. I shook my head, but pulled my phone from my apron and began pulling up an online almanac to be sure.

“Probably not,” I said. “Wouldn’t have gone dark that quickly.” I scanned the almanac long enough to determine that there had been no eclipses predicted for the day, and then my phone went dark.

So did the rest of the block. All around us, the lights illuminating the buildings flickered out, plunging the world into heavy darkness. Even the cars on the street died, rolling to a stop. I heard the metallic clatter of a car wreck somewhere in the near distance, and somebody screamed.

The creeping dread flared into visceral, heart-pounding terror, and for a moment, I was lost in it. I wanted to fall to my knees, pull at my hair, and moan with it. I wanted to dig into the ground and hide from the darkness, to curl into myself, to lose myself to the fear, to be consumed by it. It coiled around me, a primal, atavistic horror that threatened to strangle the life from me. I was barely aware of Violet next to me, frozen and trembling with the same terror.

A long moment passed, and the dread eased of its own accord. It still lingered, pulsing softly on a psychic wavelength, but it no longer threatened to drive us mad. I found I had indeed fallen to the ground, and slowly got to my hands and knees, reaching out to help Violet to her feet. The girl was still shaking, her blue eyes wide in the gloom, but she let me stand her up and steady her.

“What was that?” she cried, but then seemed to realize how near to panic she was edging, and took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. She leveled her gaze on me and said, “I’m going to guess you’ll be leaving the shop to me for a bit.”

I hadn’t ever told Violet about my other job, the one where I worked for the sentient spirit of a dimensionally transcendent and unstable house, but the girl wasn’t stupid. She’d picked up on the fact that I had a tendency to deal with the out-of-the-ordinary things that seemed so often to happen around me. I sighed and ran my hand through my short, wavy hair, a deep chestnut with hints of red and a stark contrast to the flowing silver locks of my Traveling form. 

I turned on my heels and strode around to my car, a 90s-era silver Accord parked in the employee-designated spaces in the parking lot. Violet followed. Unlocking the trunk with the key set I had in my jeans pocket, I removed the emergency bag I kept packed and ready. “Close the shop,” I told her, then frowned. I had been about to tell her to pack up and go home, but she lived several miles away and it seemed as if the cars had all died too. “Stay indoors, keep the doors locked, and watch for looters.”

“That baseball bat still under the counter?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said, and paused. If that feeling of dread had been city-wide, it meant we’d be dealing with mass panic, and panicked people can be violent. “But don’t try to be heroic, okay? If anybody gets violent, just get on out of there. Find somewhere safe. There will probably be some sort of organizational effort to keep things under control, maybe a place for people to gather for shelter, a church or something. Try to find it if you can’t stay in the shop.”

“Gotcha.”

From the bag I removed a pair of silver rods, slender, about the length of my forearm, and etched with runes, then slung the bag over my shoulder. 

Then, taking a deep breath, I stepped into the darkness.

[asterisquebloomed]

!!

You find yourself lost amidst a blizzard, stranded in the snow. In your travels you had heard rumors that spurred you on this course. Legends tell of a crystalline palace in the snowy peaks of Astial. A place where a goddess resides. Intrigued by the tales, you made your way to the northern continent, in hopes of finding this arctic palace.

The bitter cold was starting to nip at you. You had come prepared for arctic weather, but an unexpected blizzard had enveloped the mountains. Tired from the climb and cold from the howling northern winds, Dread began to set in. Fear that this storm would make these mountains your icy grave. You had yet to finish what you had set out to accomplish. You still hadn’t uncovered the truth of what had happened to you.

Since you began this journey, you have learned things known to no man, that we humans, were not alone. There was another sentient life-form that inhabited this planet. A strange and mysterious being that has existed alongside mankind, hidden in the shadows. You had learned that magic, a thing of fairy tales and myths, was in fact real. It existed, right here in the physical world. If you had been told this by another, and not witnessed it with your own eyes, you wouldn’t have believed it yourself.

But here you were, chasing ghosts in an arctic wasteland. Risking your life on matters one would disregard as mere children’s stories. It was absurd, surreal even. You never would have imagined a life like this. You never wanted a life like things. But even so you pressed onward.

With the last reservoirs of your strength depleting fast, you needed to seek out shelter from the storm. Waiting out the worst of the blizzard in a cave would be much preferable to dying out in the cold, you thought.

After a few more minutes of trudging through the knee high snowfields, your hopes had been answered.

As if by chance, ahead of you was a divide in the cliff side. Upon further inspection, it seemed to be a cave tunneling deep into the mountain. Whispering a soft expression of gratitude, you hurried inside, eager to escape the frigid temperatures of the Land of Eternal Winter.

Retrieving a torch from your pack, you lit it, illuminating the obscuring darkness that filled the cave, Slowly you began to make your way further into the mountain.

As you walked through the cavern, you began to notice it was getting warmer the further you went. While it was normal for hidden caves like this to be a different temperature than the region outside it’s mouth, something was a little strange about it. It was too warm for a supposed extinct volcano. As you considered the possibilities, each on worse than the last, you noticed a faint glow further up ahead. Had you crossed straight through the mountain, you wondered. Biting your lip nervously, you edged closer to the pale blue light.

What you were met with was not something you expected.

A cavern of white crystals greeted you.They glowed faintly with a pale blue light. It wasn’t the blinding white of the blizzard outside, but it rendered the use of your torch wasteful. Snuffing out the flame, your surroundings were tinted with an icy blue light.

As you wandered farther in, you came upon exactly what you had come her to find. Before you was a place, entirely made of ice—or rather, crystal—you found as you placed your hand on one of the smooth surfaces of the walls. They weren’t cold to the touch—actually they were the opposite—they gave off a gentle warmth, contrasting the cold blue and while light that illuminated the palace as if it were day. Intricate details were etched and carved into the walls and floors of the palace, even the ceiling above was ornate, much like one would expect from the homes of nobility and royalty. The sight was magnificent, otherworldly even. Once again, if you hadn’t witnessed the immaculate beauty hidden away in these mountains, you would have been hard pressed to believe such a place existed here.

Making your way through the vast halls and corridors of this ethereal palace, you eventually came to an altar of sorts. A large room with a massive crystalline monolith at it’s center. Surrounding the base of the crystal was a pool of clear liquid. Water perhaps, you thought as you approached the altar to get a closer look.

Suddenly the atmosphere of the room became tense, as if you were not alone here. Turning to look though, you saw no one. Glancing back the way you came, you peered into the eerily glowing caverns to see if anyone had come in after you. Finding no one there either, you let out a sigh. Your nerves must be getting to you, you thought. Relaxing yourself with deep breath, you turned your gaze back towards the altar.

Your heart skipped a beat. There, standing in front of the altar was a woman. Where had she come from? There was no place in the room where she could have hidden herself. Even more unsettling was that you hadn’t heard anything. Not a single sound had echoed through the palace walls, save for your sighs and breathing. You could feel your heart pound in your chest as you stared at her, and she at you.

Her features were delicate, like that of a porcelain doll. Her snow white hair was wavy, reaching to her shoulders. Her eyes, which stared into you without ever wavering, were a soft lavender. She wore a light dress with diamond and snowflake like detailing on the petals of her skirt. White stocking adorned her legs, the left of which had an intricate swirling pattern running up her leg. Her figure was petite, but her presence was overwhelming. It was no wonder Astiel’s myths described her as a goddess. You stood in awe of her beauty, as if time itself had ceased to move. Everything was silent.

She blinked, and as if by her command, time begin to flow. Without shifting her icy gaze from you, she began to walk towards you. As she stepped closer you noticed something strange. There were no footsteps. Turning your attention to her stride, you watched as one foot came forward, then the next. Indeed, she had no footsteps, as if she was merely a ghost. Once she was within five feet of you, she stopped. For a moment she silently gazed at you, eyes moving for the first time to take you in. When she had finished looking you over, her cold stare returned to your face.

“Who are you?” She asked, her voice was soft. Her words might have been soothing had her tone not been so monotonous.

You were speechless for a moment, unable to reply to her swiftly. Inhaling deeply, you swallowed the lump that had formed in your throat.

You explained to her you journey up until this point. You told her of the others you had met, These mystical beings, they were like souls without bodies,they were like the pure essence of a person. Essence. Such a fitting word for these creatures. A pure soul in it’s entirety. That’s what they were. The Essence.

“So you have come here seeking out my kin…” She said, her face still devoid of emotion. Her eyes wander over to the burns hidden underneath your clothes, as if she could see through them. “Those wounds…” She paused, taking a good look at the flesh you could not hide from her eyes. “They were caused by one of us…by her…”

Once more your heart skipped a beat. Of all the ‘Essence’ that you had met thus far, none had any inkling as to the identity of the one who had burned you. This was the first lead that you had found, the first clue,, the first trace of them. Eagerly you pleaded with the girl to tell you more. Who are they? Where can I find them? Your sudden fervor had garnered a response from her as she leaned back a bit in faint surprise.

“Her name I do not know, and I know not where she rests…However she is a very foul girl. I would not be surprised if she had done this to you not out of necessity, but out of vanity.” She exhaled softly as she recalled the woman in question. Her brow furrowed slightly, lips creasing into a frown. Her memories of her had not been fond.

“She is not to be trifled with. Pursuing her is to gamble your life. Despite this, will you still search for her?” She asked, to which you nodded. She closed her eyes slowly. “…I see.”

“Long ago, she stumbled into this place. She too, like you, was a traveler. She was running from something, and sought refuge in my home. She didn’t much like the cold…so I have reason to believe she hailed from the south. Perhaps you should begin your search there…”

With a new light of hope now lit within your heart, you thanked her. “I would go with you, to aid you on your quest, but alas…” She said solemnly, gaze cast downward. “The damage to your soul is too great…”

Your heart sank. Your soul had been…damaged…? A sense of dread filled your being. Not only had this creature which you sought out violated your flesh with her flames, but even your soul itself, your essence, had been tarnished by this woman. It was unforgivable…absolutely unforgivable! You clenched your fists in anger. Seeing your rage, the woman let out a sorrowful sigh.

“You see, we….’Essence’ as you call us, we bond with the souls of humans.in order to leave this place. We are trapped here, endlessly. Without a human vessel, we cannot be free…but that doesn’t justify her methods…” Ire rising in the Essence. “She does not care who she hurts. She destroys human souls for her own gain. Malicious behavior like that…I cannot forgive.” Her voice was stern, breaking from her usual monotone. She hated this woman just as much as you did.

After a moment of silence, she let out a sigh. “I may find her reprehensible, but I refuse to sink to her level. I will not disregard human life solely on the basis of not being one of you. I treasure human life, likely more than any of my kin.” She said, turning her gaze back to you. “I am sorry, but you must make this journey alone. Know that I sincerely hope you will find the truth you seek. And I shall pray for your safety and success in your endeavors.”

After ensuring that the blizzard had passed, You prepared to leave this ‘Arctic Palace’ of hers. You thanked her graciously for her tremendous help. She wished you well and said that she will pray for you in the coming months. As you were about to embark once more on your journey, you realized you had forgot to ask her her name.

“My name?” She said with a slight tilt, before giving an—albeit small—smile.

“I kept my original name, from when I first lived. That name is Aliah Meshia. It was an honor to meet you, child.” Spoken with the wisdom of ten thousand years, this woman. Aliah Meshia, the Essence of Light and Order, bid you a fond farewell, as you departed from her crystalline altar.

With renewed vigor and a clear goal finally within your sights, you made your way out of the cave, stepping proudly out into the sunlight with purpose in each step.

[authorsofparadiseroleplay]

Dark Days, Chapter One

This is a crossover fan novel featuring my own characters and world of The Authors of Paradise, blended with those of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. This derivative crossover work is being written for the sheer fun of it, with no financial gain. Jim Butcher owns Harry Dresden, The Dresden Files, and all associated characters. I own Evelyn Alvar, Arabella Thorne, Thornebridge Manor, The Authors of Paradise, and all associated characters. I’ve taken the two worlds, mashed them together, and whipped up this meandering thingamabob. Mmm, tasty.

This novel is rated M for Mature, because it’ll get bloody. This chapter isn’t bloody, though; just dreadful.

i. Evelyn

I emerged in a room that shifted and warped, always in motion, always changing, and turned my attention to the figure standing at the far end. A softly glowing, color-changing mist curled around my ankles as I walked past impossible staircases and other Mobius-like structures, approaching the figure. It stood dispassionate, sexless, an endless void that glimmered with distant stars. Its name was Thornebridge, and this was the form it took in this place.

If I looked too deeply into that void, I would be drawn in, tumbling helplessly for eons as every potentiality, every reality, every actuality, every universe seared itself indelibly onto my conscious mind. I would know the truth about myself if I did that. I didn’t want to know. I most certainly did not want to know. I was confident it would drive me mad.

My bare feet settled into place, concealed by the mist, as I stopped directly in front of Thornebridge. I was wearing the filmy white thing that I always wore when I Traveled, and hair the color of moonlight tumbled over my marble-toned shoulders. I’d seen my reflection before in this form. I looked like a marble statue with intensely purple-jewel eyes, inhuman and profoundly alien. I had grown accustomed to it, but I still didn’t understand the why of it.

“You have something to tell me?” I ventured finally. I would never be entirely comfortable talking with Thornebridge-- if talking was the right word. The entity had its own language, one that didn’t often translate well into English, or any other language with actual words.

The response was instantaneous. From out of the mist, a great tower pushed its way out of the hidden ground, rumbling like thunder as it grew to a great height. Dust and debris rained down from it as it stretched higher and higher like some kind of monolithic tree, until its top vanished into the star-studded, nebula-swirled darkness above. A pair of winged figures circled the tower, armed with swords, their wings beating the air into a whirlwind as they flew around and around and around it.

A low, animalistic growl surged behind me, and I turned to see a man dressed in robes and expensive finery, crowned by four inverted pentacles that spun around his head. The man looked like a photograph in negative exposure, black and white, light where he should be dark and dark where he should be light. He ran at the tower and leaped on it, clawing at its base, digging to its foundations, tearing off huge chunks of stone and dropping them into a large canvas bag he carried slung over one shoulder. The two angels didn’t seem to see him, continuing their high-altitude patrol.

I sighed. The overall message was obvious, but the details were still obscured. “Who’s attacking you?” I asked.

The robed man vanished from his place by the tower and appeared before me so suddenly that I took a couple of steps backwards. I took a breath to steady myself and turned my eyes to Thornebridge. “But who is he?”

The human-shaped starry void said nothing. Of course. It stood still, its head turned towards me.

I could look into its void and See...

Shaking my head, I motioned with my hand to the diorama. “If you want our help, you’re going to have to be a bit more clear than that. Okay?”

Thornebridge just watched me. This was apparently the entirety of the message; I wasn’t going to get any more unless I Looked.

I ran my hands through my hair and sighed again. “All right, fine. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

Thornebridge nodded, and the scene vanished, replaced once again with the Escher-like environment. Closing my eyes, I let myself phase through the layers of reality, back to whatever dimension my Traveling form was held in. I felt the threads of silken energy close around me like a cocoon, and my conscious awareness faded to gentle black before becoming aware of the weight and solid mass of my everyday form.

I lay there for a minute, eyes closed, letting my consciousness re-align with physical reality. Slowly, my senses re-connected and began to filter information back to me: the lingering scent of incense, the soothing flow of the meditative music that I had set to play in a loop, the spongy feel of the mat between my body and the hardwood floor, the slight chill in the room that raised gooseflesh over my arms. It was September, and morning, and my stomach informed me that I had not yet eaten breakfast.

Opening my eyes, I stretched, then rose to my feet. The room my housemate Arabella and I had designated for communication sessions with Thornebridge was sparsely decorated with a couple of small tables, a bowl for incense, a scattering of candles, a few carefully placed crystals, some calming prints framed on the walls, a small rock garden, and an iPod set up with a meditation playlist. It was simple and zen, intended to cultivate the kind of relaxation needed to put one’s self into a deep trance.

I turned off the iPod, blew out the candles and the incense, and left the room in the heart of the house, winding my way through corridors that never seemed to follow the same path. I had gotten lost on multiple occasions while trying to find my way through the less stable portions of the house, until I had learned to open my senses enough to navigate my way to the space Arabella and I lived day-to-day.

I saw the door, and my senses told me it was the one that led to the mundane part of the house. It was always a different door, sometimes massive and intricately carved, sometimes simple and rustic. Today, it was narrow, arterial red, and half my height, sporting an ornate silver knob. I turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped out of the dizzying instability of Thornebridge Manor and into the dimensionally stable, comforting warmth of the house’s living space.

The difference in energy always takes a moment or two to adjust to. It’s a little bit like waking up from a dream, as reality re-establishes itself around you, solid and fixed. After taking a few slow breaths and doing a little grounding exercise by placing my palm flat against a wall and feeling its solidity, I moved on, making my way to the kitchen.

The coffee tasted hot and sweet as I sipped it from my favorite old coffee mug, which depicted a calico cat similar in appearance to my own Nimue, batting playfully at a Victorian-style fairy. The house was strangely quiet and felt vast and empty; Arabella had left town to attend some sort of bookseller’s conference. Slowly, I ate a breakfast of eggs, biscuits, and fruit, as I held my battered, leatherbound notebook in my left hand and read over the notes I had written on this morning’s communication with Thornebridge. A well-worn deck of tarot cards, its colors faded and its edges tattered, rested beside the notebook.

I took a bite of scrambled eggs, set my fork down, and flipped through the cards, withdrawing the Tower, the Emperor, Temperance, and the Four of Pentacles, laying them out on the table beside my plate. Chewing thoughtfully, I studied the cards, static images embodying the living diorama I had seen in the communication room, but I came no closer to achieving clarity. The only thing I knew for certain was that someone was attacking Thornebridge, someone Arabella and I-- the Guardians of Thornebridge Manor-- had not yet seen or encountered.

That... was not good. There was an endless list of reasons why that was not good. But I still had precious little to go on. It would be nice, I thought, if the damn house would learn to speak English.

An alarm sounded on my phone, alerting me that it was time to get ready for work, so I put my plate in the dishwasher, returned to my bedroom to dress, made sure my cat and Arabella’s dog Ghost had plenty of fresh water, checked on Virgil the ferret in his little house, and hurried out the door to drive to the shop. There wasn’t a lot I could do until I had more information, and I certainly wasn’t going to figure out the puzzle sitting here all day.

I own a little shop called Boreas Curios, Antiques, and Odditites. It’s a quaint little place, sharing a storefront with a pizza parlor and a jewelry store, and is situated directly across the street from Arabella’s place of business, an antique bookstore that she inherited from its former owner when he retired. It was something akin to kismet that the two of us spent years working in these places, across the street from one another, before we met for the first time through completely unrelated events. And it wasn’t for a lack of browsing each others’ shops either-- I love books, and Arabella is a bona fide pack rat and loves to collect all sorts of strange and wonderful things. And vice versa. We just always managed to visit when neither of us was in our respective shop.

The shop was slow throughout the morning, giving me time to sort through inventory and clean a little bit as I tried to shake the lingering feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I chalked it up to the vagaries of my communication session with Thornebridge and carried on. A few minutes to eleven, Violet breezed in through the front door, smiling brightly at me with her black-lipsticked lips as we greeted each other. Her hair was short and spiky, black tipped with blue, and she wore black-and-white striped stockings on her arms and legs, a green corset, a knee-length black tulle skirt, and a pair of worn old army boots. She waved at me with a black-fingernailed hand and disappeared into the back of the shop, re-emerging a short time later wearing a blue apron that absolutely clashed with her getup.

I didn’t mind her eccentric way of dressing; in fact, I felt it fit the atmosphere of the shop perfectly. She cashed in to her register, and then set about helping me sort through a box of mini-Furbies that had been programmed to say diabolical things. The store rang out with sinister phrases such as, “I am Lord Beelzebub, hear me rooooar!” and “Sacrifice your virgins on the altar of the Goat King!” for several minutes as we inserted batteries, cataloged everything in the system, and put the Furbies in a wire bin near the register. The Diabolical Furby Collection was Violet’s idea, and I thought it fit nicely in with the theme of Strange and Bizarre I had cultivated in the shop. After all, I kept a constant supply of haunted dolls on a shelf situated on the back wall. People loved creepy things. They always sold well.

Right around 1:45, just as the lunch rush had mostly dissipated, the sky went dark, not gradually, but in a quick fade, as if somebody had used a dimmer switch to turn off the sun, cloaking the world in night.

Violet, looking up from where she was ringing up one of the last customers in the store, frowned. “Um. Evelyn?” She paused, then added, “Did somebody forget to pay the sunlight bill?” The joke fell flat as her voice trembled a bit.

I was busy staring through the glass door, blinking in confusion. The slight uneasiness I had felt earlier amplified itself, evolving into the kind of dread that speeds up the heart rate and sends butterflies swarming through the stomach. Violet clearly felt the same, but it was probably just from the inexplicable celestial event. Right?

“What in the blazes...” I murmured. Casting a glance at Violet and her equally confused and anxious customer, I strode across the shop and out the door, peering up at the sky, searching for the sun. Violet joined me a minute or two later, after shooing the customers out and locking the door.

“Is... is it an eclipse?” she asked, doubt slowing her words. I shook my head, but pulled my phone from my apron and began pulling up an online almanac to be sure.

“Probably not,” I said. “Wouldn’t have gone dark that quickly.” I scanned the almanac long enough to determine that there had been no eclipses predicted for the day, and then my phone went dark.

So did the rest of the block. All around us, the lights illuminating the buildings flickered out, plunging the world into heavy darkness. Even the cars on the street died, rolling to a stop. I heard the metallic clatter of a car wreck somewhere in the near distance, and somebody screamed.

The creeping dread flared into visceral, heart-pounding terror, and for a moment, I was lost in it. I wanted to fall to my knees, pull at my hair, and moan with it. I wanted to dig into the ground and hide from the darkness, to curl into myself, to lose myself to the fear, to be consumed by it. It coiled around me, a primal, atavistic horror that threatened to strangle the life from me. I was barely aware of Violet next to me, frozen and trembling with the same terror.

A long moment passed, and the dread eased of its own accord. It still lingered, pulsing softly on a psychic wavelength, but it no longer threatened to drive us mad. I found I had indeed fallen to the ground, and slowly got to my hands and knees, reaching out to help Violet to her feet. The girl was still shaking, her blue eyes wide in the gloom, but she let me stand her up and steady her.

“What was that?” she cried, but then seemed to realize how near to panic she was edging, and took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. She leveled her gaze on me and said, “I’m going to guess you’ll be leaving the shop to me for a bit.”

I hadn’t ever told Violet about my other job, the one where I worked for the sentient spirit of a dimensionally transcendent and unstable house, but the girl wasn’t stupid. She’d picked up on the fact that I had a tendency to deal with the out-of-the-ordinary things that seemed so often to happen around me. I sighed and ran my hand through my short, wavy hair, a deep chestnut with hints of red and a stark contrast to the flowing silver locks of my Traveling form.

I turned on my heels and strode around to my car, a 90s-era silver Accord parked in the employee-designated spaces in the parking lot. Violet followed. Unlocking the trunk with the key set I had in my jeans pocket, I removed the emergency bag I kept packed and ready. “Close the shop,” I told her, then frowned. I had been about to tell her to pack up and go home, but she lived several miles away and it seemed as if the cars had all died too. “Stay indoors, keep the doors locked, and watch for looters.”

“That baseball bat still under the counter?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said, and paused. If that feeling of dread had been city-wide, it meant we’d be dealing with mass panic, and panicked people can be violent. “But don’t try to be heroic, okay? If anybody gets violent, just get on out of there. Find somewhere safe. There will probably be some sort of organizational effort to keep things under control, maybe a place for people to gather for shelter, a church or something. Try to find it if you can’t stay in the shop.”

“Gotcha.”

From the bag I removed a pair of silver rods, slender, about the length of my forearm, and etched with runes, then slung the bag over my shoulder.

Then, taking a deep breath, I stepped into the darkness.

[searchvoidstar]

Misconceptions your team might have during The Big Rewrite

Disclaimer: I enjoy the project I am working on and this is still a work in progress. I just had to rant about the stuff I go through in my job here, but it does not reflect the opinions of my emplorer, and my personal opinion is despite these troubles we are coming along nicely

I joined a team that was doing the big rewrite in 2018. I was involved in the project before then and knew it’s ins and outs, and frankly think it’s still a great system. In order to break it’s “limitations” a grand v2 gets started. I think my team has been good. My tech lead is really good at architecture. Where I really resist kind of “writing new architecture that is not already there”, he can pull up entirely new concepts and abstractions that are all pretty good. Myself, I don’t much enjoy writing “new architecture” if there is something already there that I can use, and I’ll try to refer to the existence of an existing thing instead of creating new exotic stuff. 

Now, what happened during the big rewrite so far. 4 people on the team, 2 years in

Persistent confusion about sources of slowness in our app

 - it's only slow because devtools is open (maybe it is! but this is definitely a red herring. the code should work with devtools open. reason that’s been stated: devtools adds a “bunch of instrumentation to the promises that slows it down”...stated without any evidence during a 3 hour long planning call...)  - it's only slow because we're using a development build of react, try a production build (the production build makes some stuff faster, but it is NOT going to save your butt if you are constantly rerending all your components unnecessarily every millisecond during user scroll, which is something we suffered from, and it creeps back in if you are not careful because you can’t write tests against this so often one day I’ll be looking at my devtools and suddenly things are rendering twice per frame (signature of calling an unnecessary setState), tons of unnecessary components rendering in every frame (signature of componentShouldUpdate/bad functional react memoizing, etc))  - it's slow because we are hogging the main thread all the time, our killer new feature in v2 is an intense webworker framework. now main thread contention is a concern, but really our app needs to just be performant all around, webworkers just offloads that cpu spinning to another core. what we have done in v2 is we went whole hog and made our code rely on OffscreenCanvas which 0 browsers support. also, our webworker bundles (worker-loader webpack build) are huge webpack things that pretty much contain all the code that is on the main thread so it’s just massive. that makes it slow at loading time, and makes it harder to think about our worker threads in a lighter-weight way, and the worker concept is now very deeply entrenched in a lot of the code (all code has to think of things in terms of rpc calls)  - it's slow because there are processes that haven't been aborted spinning in the background, so we must build out an intensive AbortController thing that touches the entirety of all our code including sending abort signals across the RPC boundary in hopes that a locked up webworker will respond to this (note: our first version of the software had zero aborting, did not from my perspective suffer. arguments with the team have gotten accusatory where I just claim that there is no evidence that the aborting is helping us, pointing to the fact that our old code works fine, and that if our new code suffers without aborting, that means something else is wrong. I have not really been given a proper response for this, and so the curse of passing AbortSignals onto every function via an extra function parameter drags on  - it's slow because we are not multithreading..., so we put two views of the same data into different webworkers (but now each webworker separately downloads the same data, which leads to more resource spent, more network IO, more slowness)

confusion about what our old users needs are

 - tracks not having per-track scroll (problem: leads to many scrolls within-scrolls, still unresolved problem)  - the name indexing was always a big problem (yes it is slow but is it really THE critical problem we face? likely not: bioinformatics people run a data pipeline, it takes a couple days, so what). use elasticsearch if it sucks so bad  - our users are "stupid" so they need to have every single thing GUI editable (interesting endeavor, but our design for this has been difficult, and has not yet delivered on simplifying the system for users)  - our users "do not like modal popups" so we design everything into a tiny sidedrawer that barely can contain the relevant data that they want to see - having interest in catering to obscure or not very clear “user stories” like displaying the same exact region twice on the screen at once saying “someone will want to do this”, but causing a ton of extra logical weirdness from this - not catering to emerging areas of user needs such as breaking our large app into components that can be re-used, and instead just going full hog on a large monolith project and treating our monolith as a giant hammer that will solve everyones problems, when in reality, our users are also programmers that could benefit from using smaller componentized versions of our code - confusion about “what our competitors have”. sometimes my team one day was like “alright we just do that and then we have everything product X has?” and I just had to be clear and be like, no! the competitor has a reall pretty intricate complex system that we could never hope to replicate. but does that matter? probably not, but even still, we likely don’t have even 20% of the full set of functions of a competitor. luckily we have our own strengths that make us compelling besides that 20% - making it so our product requires a server side component to run, where our first version was much more amenable to running as a static site

more to be added

but what does all this imply?

there are persistent confusion about what the challenges we face are, what the architectural needs are, what our user stores are, what our new v2 design goals are, and more. It’s really crazy

[creative-type]

Worth a Thousand Words Part I: How Oda Develops Characters

When it comes to telling a story, there are certain advantages that books have over comics or movies. By their very nature books are able to convey more information per page than a comic, and more direct insight into a character than a movie. A picture is more ambiguous than a description, which is how you can have a well-developed and compelling book character like Katniss Evergreen look like a block of wood in her movie counterpart. 

Comics in particular gets the short end of the stick, as they tend to have less visual information than a movie and less written information than a book. Shonen manga in particular aren’t often known for their deep characterization. Even critically acclaimed monoliths tend towards simplistic, and therefore relatable, tropes that have come to define the genre. Anyone who has read Bakuman knows that series in Shonen Jump are written specifically so that they can get popular and run forever. The industry itself cripples any story that doesn’t fit into a specific formula.

Pictured: Diversity

 One Piece isn’t an exception to this rule, and the series has gotten some flack for not having any character development for the main cast in its twenty years of serialization - basically, Luffy and co are the same in chapter 843 as they were in chapter 1. What’s worse, what little development there is is nothing more than flanderization, making once-great characters the shadow of themselves for a quick gag (or marketing, in Chopper’s case). 

I don’t think that’s fair, or necessarily the truth. If one defines a “well-developed” as a character with defined hopes and dreams, strengths and weaknesses, a unique personality* and worldview, then the Straw Hat Pirates undoubtedly qualify. Whether or not character progression (here defined as a shift in personality over the course of the series) occurs or is even necessary is up for debate, but I could argue that Luffy is exactly the main character a story like One Piece needs. His lack of progression is integral to the themes and ideas Oda is trying to communicate

*I’m talking In-universe personality. Luffy may be a spiritual successor to Goku, but within the world of One Piece he is his own person and there’s no one quite like him

Comics are a visual medium. One Piece never would have gotten as popular as it has if Oda failed to use his art to help tell his story. One of the things I most admire about One Piece is that his characters are never still. There is a sense of constant motion, in each panel individually but also how they flow together. Think of a panel as a block of a quilt - each must convey its purpose itself and together as part of a larger picture. 

Look at this example from Bleach

This might seem like grabbing at low-hanging fruit, but having a single finger take up a half a page is not good storytelling. Tite Kubo is (in)famous for prioritizing “cool” visuals over narrative, and it shows in the overall quality of his work, which honestly reads more like a storyboard than an actual story. Now compare to this scene from early One Piece 

There’s a rule in writing: Show, don’t tell.  That’s even more true for a story presented in a visual medium. We are never told that Usopp likes tinkering with things. We are never told he enjoys drawing and inventing and generally being creative and clever. We see him tell outrageous stories, make Nami’s Climatact, and do his best to keep up the Merry despite not knowing what he’s doing.

Likewise, at this point in the story Nami is the only one in the crew who bothers to read the newspaper even though she’s a total skinflint and the birds keep raising their prices.This tells us about Nami’s character in an organic way, and is a natural segue to Usopp’s question, which in turn gives us more on Nami’s character (this time in the dialogue).

Oda does this all the frikking time. One of my biggest problems with Naruto was the absence of these kind of moments, especially later in the series. I personally think it was a mistake to jump right from the Wave arc to the Chunin Exams. A few mini arcs could have done wonders to build the chemistry between Team 7 and introduced some of the other Rookie 9. Instead we’re dumped with this massive influx of new characters and world building at the expense of strengthening the foundation laid previously, and by the time Sasuke leaves the village I had a hard time believing that he and Naruto are in love best friends with an inseparable bond because they haven’t spent any time together as friends.

Again, let’s compare 

This is taken from the Kuro arc. For context, Usopp has just has his big fight in front of Kaya and stormed off in a huff (because everything Usopp does, he does dramatically). 

Since the argument was about the nature of his father, we can guess that Usopp is thinking about him here. Maybe this is where he would watch for Yasopp’s return when his mother was sick, maybe this is where he would dream about going out to sea to follow in his footsteps. We don’t know and we’re never told. It’s a nice, quiet moment that Luffy utterly ruins.

We learn more about Luffy’s nature in this one gag than we do about Ichigo in the entirety of Bleach’s run (I’m only slightly exaggerating). Now, remember, Luffy was present for Usopp and Kuro’s fight. He knows (or should know) that this is a serious moment. Yet he still chooses to dangle upside down from a tree, because he’s Luffy, and Luffy does whatever he feels like doing in the moment, no matter how silly it looks. 

The next pages are spent establishing Yasopp’s relationship to Shanks, and even though it’s basically an exposition dump the characters are continuously moving. Luffy does a handstand out of the tree, Usopp jumps for joy upon hearing Luffy knows his dad before plopping down to the ground again, and by the end you’d think they’d been friends for years. 

This is visual storytelling. There’s a lot more to say on the subject, and since Nico Robin is my favorite has one of the more dynamic character progressions among the main cast, she makes a good candidate to study in greater depth going forward. 

So buckle your seat belts and get ready for a long ride. Next time we’re going to talk about staging. 

[stained-carmine]

You find yourself lost amidst a blizzard, stranded in the snow. In your travels you had heard rumors that spurred you on this course. Legends tell of a crystalline palace in the snowy peaks of Astial. A place where a goddess resides. Intrigued by the tales, you made your way to the northern continent, in hopes of finding this arctic palace.

The bitter cold was starting to nip at you. You had come prepared for arctic weather, but an unexpected blizzard had enveloped the mountains. Tired from the climb and cold from the howling northern winds, dread began to set in, fear that this storm would make these mountains your icy grave. You had yet to finish what you had set out to accomplish. You still hadn’t uncovered the truth of what had happened to you.

Since you began this journey, you have learned things known to no man, that we humans, were not alone. There was another sentient life-form that inhabited this planet. A strange and mysterious being that has existed alongside mankind, hidden in the shadows. You had learned that magic, a thing of fairy tales and myths, was in fact, real. It existed, right here in the physical world. If you had been told this by another, and not witnessed it with your own eyes, you wouldn’t have believed it yourself.

But here you were, chasing ghosts in an arctic wasteland. Risking your life on matters one would disregard as mere children’s stories. It was absurd, surreal even. You never would have imagined a life like this. You never wanted a life like this. But even so, you pressed onward.

With the last reservoirs of your strength depleting fast, you needed to seek out shelter from the storm. Waiting out the worst of the blizzard in a cave would be much preferable to dying out in the cold, you thought.

After a few more minutes of trudging through the knee high snowfields, your hopes had been answered.

As if by chance, ahead of you was a divide in the cliff side. Upon further inspection, it seemed to be a cave tunneling deep into the mountain. Whispering a soft expression of gratitude, you hurried inside, eager to escape the frigid temperatures of the Land of Eternal Winter.

Retrieving a torch from your pack, you lit it, illuminating the obscuring darkness that filled the cave, Slowly, you began to make your way further into the mountain.

As you walked through the cavern, you began to notice it was getting warmer the further you went. While it was normal for hidden caves like this to be a different temperature than the region outside its mouth, something was a little strange about it. It was too warm for a supposedly extinct volcano. As you considered the possibilities, each one worse than the last, you noticed a faint glow further up ahead. Had you crossed straight through the mountain, you wondered. Biting your lip nervously, you edged closer to the pale blue light.

What you were met with was not something you expected.

A cavern of white crystals greeted you. They glowed faintly with a pale blue light. It wasn’t the blinding white of the blizzard outside, but it rendered the use of your torch wasteful. Snuffing out the flame, your surroundings were tinted with an icy blue light.

As you wandered further in, you came upon exactly what you had come here to find. Before you was a palace, entirely made of ice—or rather, crystal—you found as you placed your hand on one of the smooth surfaces of the walls. They weren’t cold to the touch—actually they were the opposite—they gave off a gentle warmth, contrasting the cold blue and while light that illuminated the palace as if it were day. Intricate details were etched and carved into the walls and floors of the palace, even the ceiling above was ornate, much like one would expect from the homes of nobility and royalty. The sight was magnificent, otherworldly even. Once again, if you hadn’t witnessed the immaculate beauty hidden away in these mountains, you would have been hard pressed to believe such a place existed here.

Making your way through the vast halls and corridors of this ethereal palace, you eventually came to an altar of sorts. A large room with a massive crystalline monolith at it’s center. Surrounding the base of the crystal was a pool of clear liquid. Water perhaps, you thought as you approached the altar to get a closer look.

Suddenly, the atmosphere of the room became tense, as if you were not alone. Turning to look though, you saw no one. Glancing back the way you came, you peered into the eerily glowing caverns to see if anyone had come in after you. Finding no one there either, you let out a sigh. Your nerves must be getting to you, you thought. Relaxing yourself with deep breath, you turned your gaze back towards the altar.

Your heart skipped a beat. There, standing in front of the altar, was a woman. Where had she come from? There was no place in the room where she could have hidden herself. Even more unsettling was that you hadn’t heard anything. Not a single sound had echoed throughout the halls of the palace, save for your sighs and breathing. You could feel your heart pound in your chest as you stared at her, and she at you.

Her features were delicate, like that of a porcelain doll. Her snow white hair was wavy, reaching to her shoulders. Her eyes, which stared into you without ever wavering, were a soft lavender. She wore a light dress with diamond and snowflake like detailing on the petals of her skirt. White stocking adorned her legs, the left of which had an intricate swirling pattern running up her leg. Her figure was petite, but her presence was overwhelming. It was no wonder Astial’s myths described her as a goddess. You stood in awe of her beauty, as if time itself had ceased to move. Everything was silent.

She blinked, and as if by her command, time began to flow. Without shifting her icy gaze from you, she began to walk towards you. As she stepped closer, you noticed something strange. There were no footsteps. Turning your attention to her stride, you watched as one foot came forward, then the next. Indeed, she had no footsteps, as if she was merely a ghost. Once she was within five feet of you, she stopped. For a moment she silently gazed at you, eyes moving for the first time to take you in. When she had finished looking you over, her cold stare returned to your face.

“Who are you?” She asked, her voice soft. Her words might have been soothing had her tone not been so monotonous.

You were speechless for a moment, unable to reply to her swiftly. Inhaling deeply, you swallowed the lump that had formed in your throat.

You explained to her your journey up until this point. You told her of the others you had met, These mystical beings, they were like souls without bodies, they were like the pure essence of a person. Essence. Such a fitting word for these creatures. A pure soul in it’s entirety. That’s what they were. The Essence.

“So, you have come here seeking out my kin…” She said, her face still devoid of emotion. Her eyes wandered over to the burns hidden underneath your clothes, as if she could see through them. “Those wounds…” She paused, taking a good look at the flesh you could not hide from her eyes. “They were caused by one of us…by her…”

Once more your heart skipped a beat. Of all the ‘Essence’ that you had met thus far, none had any inkling as to the identity of the one who had burned you. This was the first lead that you had found, the first clue, the first trace of them. Eagerly you pleaded with the girl to tell you more. Who are they? Where can you find them? Your sudden fervor had garnered a response from her as she leaned back a bit in faint surprise.

“...Her name I do not know, and I know not where she rests…However she is a very foul girl. I would not be surprised if she had done this to you not out of necessity, but out of vanity.” She exhaled softly as she recalled the woman in question. Her brow furrowed slightly, lips creasing into a frown. Her memories of her had not been fond.

“She is not to be trifled with. Pursuing her is to gamble your life. Despite this, will you still search for her?” She asked, to which you nodded. She closed her eyes slowly. “…I see.”

“Long ago, she stumbled into this place. She too, like you, was a traveler. She was running from something, and sought refuge in my home. She didn’t much like the cold…so I have reason to believe she hailed from the south. Perhaps you should begin your search there…”

With a new light of hope now lit within your heart, you thanked her. “I would go with you, to aid you on your quest, but alas…” She said solemnly, gaze cast downward. “The damage to your soul is too great…”

Your heart sank. Your soul had been…damaged…? A sense of dread filled your being. Not only had this creature which you sought out violated your flesh with her flames, but even your soul itself, your essence, had been tarnished by this woman. It was unforgivable…absolutely unforgivable! You clenched your fists in anger. Seeing your rage, the woman let out a sorrowful sigh.

“You see, we….’Essence’ as you call us, we bond with the souls of humans, in order to leave this place. We are trapped here, endlessly. Without a human vessel, we cannot be free…but that doesn’t justify her methods…” Ire rising in the Essence. “She does not care who she hurts. She destroys human souls for her own gain. Malicious behavior like that…I cannot forgive.” Her voice was stern, breaking from her usual monotone. She hated this woman just as much as you did.

After a moment of silence, she let out a sigh. “I may find her reprehensible, but I refuse to sink to her level. I will not disregard human life solely on the basis of not being one of you. I treasure human life, likely more than any of my kin.” She said, turning her gaze back to you. “I am sorry, but you must make this journey alone. Know that I sincerely hope you will find the truth you seek. And I shall pray for your safety and success in your endeavors.”

After ensuring that the blizzard had passed, You prepared to leave this ‘Arctic Palace’ of hers. You thanked her graciously for her tremendous help. She wished you well and said that she will pray for you in the coming months. As you were about to embark once more on your journey, you realized you had forgot to ask her her name.

“My name?” She said with a slight tilt, before giving an—albeit small—smile.

“I kept my original name, from when I first lived. That name is Aliah Y’sha’val, though your people often called me Aliah Meshia. It was an honor to meet you, child.” Spoken with the wisdom of ten thousand years, this woman. Aliah “Meshia” Y’sha’val, the Essence of Light and Order, bid you a fond farewell, as you departed from her crystalline altar.

With renewed vigor and a clear goal finally within your sights, you made your way out of the cave, stepping proudly out into the sunlight with purpose in each step.

[wallkickswillwork]

signal jamming

incoherency is comforting because of the narrative weve been fed our whole entire lives that in order to be palatable media must in some way be complete and have beveled, well-defined edges rather than being a mess of finger paints, bright colors, strange dialogues and verbiage, build trees of moods.

thoughts on: -futuristic anime, 90s anime and the unique sense of mood in toonami shows. they are a very good series of shows for people who are coming of age and who must slowly be forced to reckon with the industrialization and mercenary nature of adult life, as it is increasingly held captive by capitalism. there is also something essentially spiritual about it, especially shows like precure and dbz, where an interior or exterior-made-interior force is responsible for the protagonists' success in the face of an oppressive world-system. under capitalism, it frequently is the case that the entire world or entirety-of-world is against us. heroes must overcome overwhelming odds to leave their mark on a gauntlet of greats. -cowboy bebop, final fantasy 7, metroid as meditations on loss, urbanization, dating back to blade runner. this is a type of meditation that is present in much of cyberpunk, but its also not exclusively cyberpunk, and can extend in nature to non-cyberpunk works.

thinking about necrobarista and how its attempting to "resuscitate" anime, while this approach doesnt really examine what contemporary anime like jojos, precure, and slightly more dated anime like hidaske and nichijou do well. if we get all this tunnel vision for gurren lagann and flcl we can never look forward. i think a lot of the visual work that needs to be done is probably in movies. i think maybe there could be work done to marry cinema proper with its animated counterpart. steven universe seems like it gets it, and there are some anime that really seemed like they got it. i dont think were beyond salvation.

-listening to the whos "tommy" and thinking about how trauma and the humanity of that trauma is experienced and lived-through by the main character in socratic fashion. these stories are discussed by people whose actual, authentic experience of trauma irl is doubtful at best. they are great successes on stage who dont struggle in the sense that an actual victim would struggle. calls to mind how a lot of freuds patients would fabricate csa in order to fulfill the expectations of the therapist. but in other cases, actual patients with csa would repress their experiences or not feel comfortable discussing. so thats how i feel about gurus like meher baba or i guess alan watts. less trustworthy and more like scam artists. i do believe in what they teach, however. i think that a guru can teach the truth even if that guru is a liar. maybe its the truth, but the guru doesnt know it to be true, or else, the way the guru teaches it is untrue.

-for a while i imagined my own autism to be the result of childhood trauma that was repressed, but later emerged that those memories were fabricated, to my knowledge, and was left wondering.

-learning to regard the world with a sense of wonder from media like cowboy bebop and ff7. these worlds are jaded and decaying realities but there is a sense of awe at the vast, uncompromising reality. truly vast, sprawling and yawning cities and vast starry skies up above. beholding these things and beholding the starry skies and huge cities of our own planet surely stirs something in me.

-fantasy anime tends to go the joke route like slayers or else the route of "we are all kids, bro, stuck in an mmo" and i think this is mostly due to the admittedly antiquated setting of high fantasy in european trochets and history which to japanese people probably feel like white person set dressing and as they should, i mean. there are more high fantasy themes in something like inuyasha and japans history can be feudal, edo, the meiji restoration, primordial like princess mononoke, etc, so theres more wiggle room for historical works there. slayers et al is usually reduced to "characters moving around the forest" which is almost like this grand slice of the collective anime consciousness as it stands overlapping with, say, pokemon, to the extent where its one of the cliche anime things everyone thinks about, alongside high school, robots, nurses, etc.

-another thing to which we could probably ascribe the success of something like slayers to is wizardry and by proxy dragon quest. small graph paper monster garden games. the appeal is entirely mathematical so there are only a few directions that anime directors tend to run with it (goofy gag comedy if youre making a show or cut and dried authentic dungeon crawlers with moe characters instead of the usual dbz ones). going off what you definitely learn in japanese history class if youre a japanese student, for starters, there are thousands of years of chinese history, so you have romance of 3 kingdoms type stuff. or you have high school romances accounting for the various fire emblems where the appeal becomes game of thronesy "which of my characters in dragon quest land can i make kiss each other and myself", very good ground to cover as we start asking the important questions. theres samurai stuff as we already know, drawing on years of samurai media, kurosawas films and zen spirituality, art of the blade type stuff, jeet kune do in some instances and reaching so far afield as to probably raise some interesting and important questions about pan-asiatic cultural identity which this author (white) is ill-advised to answer. but reeling it back in, the question mostly being of history, and how a lot of fantasy media draws more from History proper as a codified cultural body than histories being individuated familial experiences. its true that when a work does something unique with history (earthbounds hippy dippy approach to the 1960s, undertales handling of furry culture, yume nikkis south american murals) its tended to be seen as that works "thing" as if because hulk hogan was an all american wrestler that precluded john cena from being same, or at least, embodying a similar if slightly modified niche. nobody can make a hippy dippy rpg now or something because itd just be called an earthbound ripoff rather than a loving homage. and i think thats wrong headed and how genres become stillborn rather than invented and developed upon. we have this vast morass of stuff from the 20th century and we could be developing various 60s, 70s, 80s fantasies. hindsight is 20/20 i guess. who knows, we could see bluff city become something in 50 years time.

i feel this is because of extreme stringent expectations of intellectual property laws and their dissemination into everyday discourse online. i dont really like or agree with monolithic cultural expectations like intellectual property or *shudder* advertising, but only to the extent where i can acknowledge that whether or not i agree with them is irrelevant to their all-consuming scope and the need for marxists to actively combat them. its one thing to say "x is bad" and another to clamor for urgency of fighting x, which is, if you believe what we read every day about global warming, too late, so its not important. nevertheless there are a multiplicity of settings that could be developed into genres and identities and ideologues that rarely are if only because it would be seen as "oh yeah like that other thing". people are fickle and develop dwarflike strange moods when it comes to defining what constitutes original versus hackneyed and derivative. i think its mostly dictated by star signs and the weather.

so lately if you follow me on twitter youve probably noticed im doing sort of a tweet concrete kind of thing where i post plaintext quotes from various media taken out of context. i decided to do this for a while, maybe a few weeks, because aesthetic blogs and the aesthetic style of blogging allow me to pool and channel my energies towards larger and more ambitious styles of writing. i usually get loaded on caffeine during this process and frequently watch large amounts of anime and meditate some. its definitely a process and its geared toward something hazily, vaguely spiritual but with pretentions toward being authentically publishable as theory. the idea also being i would like to make some money to support my livelihood, and i like to write, and am somewhat skilled at it, or at least experienced in kind of a ramshackle homespun sort of way. so if my social media presence is pretty boring and kind of weirdly nostalgic or else contrariwise if you feel it has improved lately thats the reason why that happened.

ive been getting very hazy and foggy mentally lately. i feel like it has to do with caffeination and lack of sleep. its important to get everything flowing properly, and sometimes depression and anxiety make that difficult to do. theres anxiety over unemployment, something im trying to remedy, and theres anxiety over theory and where to proceed next via theory. for years i was a devout buddhist in some ways, and meditated a lot, almost every day. i prayed to the bodhisattvas and copped to buddhist metaphysics, something which, based around personal life experience, i had every reason to believe was true. lately and in my own, strange way, ive begun to question this ideology and interpret it as part of a patchwork of ideologies, each one which attempts to describe a totality, a totality which is rarely if ever described properly by any ideology. grasping at straws in a structural sense, and feeling nonplussed but with no ground to run to, and im back on the boss level in super mario 64 where bowser smashes the ground to make it fall away. attempts at restructuring as this dissolution transpires only serve to create new protocols equal in scope to pre-existing paradigms. and there are plenty of people who dont struggle this much with religion and probably still go to heaven, or think theyre going to heaven, or something. hows marge and the kids. did jerry get that new promotion. mom just got back from vacation in cancun. smalltalk style concerns arising in every day transitionary speech feel distinct and very distant from these kind of hazy, pie in the sky questions. plato never wrote about the kind of stuff you see in a cheers episode. there are philosophy books that try to merge the two, but they usually get shelved in the comedy section.

so its mostly a matter of trying to absorb and contain new information, which abides in abundance, and trying to corral it into sort of a pointing arrow to direct me where to go, in my hewing, a feat not easily done. probably the endgame is in the crafting and solution of art, but what kind of art, and whether i have the tools at my disposal to even create it, is less easily answered. so for now, i guess, im absorbing, waiting, asking questions, and who knows, and who can say.

earliest memories of religion are of the greco roman religion and not knowing about the mystery religious rites but knowing about an abstract concept of wisdom and the ocean and extrapolating the existence of athena and poseidon in that way. later i have memories of exposure to christianity and buddhism and bahai but none of these things feel particularly useful to me at this time in my life. i can more readily receive a picture, a kind of enlarged image, of a broad religious landscape and some of the questions it attempts to provide answers for, or at least, a way of thinking about. the greco roman religion, for instance, is a presentation of a deleuzian multiplicity, and the monotheistic religions are a monad, but i also dont think either of these things can say the other is inherently undesireable. tolerance seems to be the best method, but also, and likewise, not dwelling specifically in any of them. acknowledging they all exist, but not being any of them. enjoying in surfeit the tension between multiplicity and monad. that there can be many things and one thing. like the album cover of dark side of the moon.

[gamerzcourt]

Condemned – What The Hell Happened To It?Condemned – What The Hell Happened To It?xbox 360

New Post has been published on https://www.gamerzcourt.com/condemned-what-the-hell-happened-to-itcondemned-what-the-hell-happened-to-itxbox-360/

Condemned – What The Hell Happened To It?Condemned – What The Hell Happened To It?xbox 360

First person games and horror games have seen a nice overlap in recent years with games like Amnesia and Outlast rising to a well-deserved prominence by taking advantage of what that perspective can do to enhance a scary experience. Where first person games tend to get tricky, though, is when melee combat enters the mix. Depth perception can easily feel weird and it can be very hard to nail that feel just right. This is why most games that have a heavy emphasis on melee combat tend to be third person, it just makes that type of game play easier to pull off. However, in 2005, there was a video game developer, Monolith Productions, who was having none of this conventional thinking, and way before the first person horror craze that Amnesia started, Condemned: Criminal Origins was released worldwide on the Xbox 360 and PC. Europe would know it simply as “Condemned” and in Japan “Condemned: Psycho Crime” respectively.

Regardless of the title in your region most who played the game would concede that it was less than perfect and suffered from some of the issues that tend to arise when first person and melee combat are combined, but largely those issues were minimized and often offset by some tight programming on the part of Monolith and an interesting gritty crime drama backdrop that permeated the entire game, giving it an abrasive yet somber tone, not unlike the films Silence of the Lambs and Seven, which are heavily rumored to be the main inspiration for the game’s visual texture and overall mood. On top of everything it had going for it, Condemned managed to work in a lot of nice investigative elements and mix them with the horror and combat with reasonably good story-telling, and an excellent soundtrack that included everything from great combat sounds to moody ambiance that kept players on edge without always knowing why to really make itself a nice package.

So despite being a little rough around the edges Condemned was received pretty well and ended up gaining more praise than criticism for its risk-taking and bold splicing together of different genres and play styles that usually stayed in their own corners at the time. The game was also probably helped a little by being a launch title for the 360, so it did sell well and there were even plans for a film adaptation at one time that ended up falling through. So why didn’t this turn into a long-running franchise? With such a distinct take on horror and first person melee combat combined with good reviews and good sales, why has this franchise fallen into the shadows of relative obscurity? What the hell happened to Condemned?

Well as you may have guessed, Condemned did well enough to warrant a sequel. Ethan’s story clearly had room for more evolution so Monolith went to work on a sequel that would continue the story about a year after the ending of the first game and work in some modest improvements to the combat and graphics of the original. Condemned 2 would also see a release on the PlayStation 3 as well as the 360, though oddly no PC version. In Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Ethan finds himself reluctantly recruited back to investigate another case that everything depends on. His parter Rosa makes a welcome return as well as a few other characters and themes that fans of the original game would be sure to recognize. During Ethan’s new investigation, he finds himself dealing with a heightened focus on the cult at the center of the evil that Ethan routinely has had to deal with. This was perhaps a better idea on paper than how it actually ended up turning out.

Any subtlety about why things were the way they were that the first game had nurtured was pretty much gone here, as the cult’s super natural powers were painstakingly explained, removing any and all mystery that would have come along with them. On top of that, the focus of the game seemed to switch around from horror to supernatural stuff to sci-fi and back to horror with almost no sense of pacing or timing and many thought the story, while handled relatively well considering what a mess it was, got a little too all over the place for its own good and missed out on the simplicity of Ethan hunting down a serial killer from the original game. This may be part of what went wrong with the series. There’s certainly nothing inherently wrong with complicated stories in games, but for a game like this, it really helps to have an efficient story and transparent motivation for the main character, so the player isn’t distracted with sorting too many things out and can focus on getting immersed in the atmosphere.

This is something that the original Condemned seemed to understand better than the sequel. Combat was notably the biggest improvement with more finishing moves and combos being added in to the roster of ways for Ethan to dispose of enemies, which were also far more interesting and varied than before. The added amount of guns and combo multipliers rubbed many fans of the original the wrong way however, as it made the combat, much like the story, seems like it was trying to do too many things at once, never really spending enough time with any one idea to see it fully fleshed out. This isn’t terribly uncommon of sequels to games, but unfortunately it was such a pervasive issue in Condemned 2 that it made many fans of the first found themselves disappointed by the end of the game despite its various improvements and the game was probably too divisive for Monolith to continue work on the franchise, as they ended up getting back to work on their FEAR series that was gaining more popularity at the time and selling better than condemned games.

Another element that could have been handled better, or perhaps not at all, was the multiplayer in Condemned 2. Surely this is not a mode that many, if any, were asking for after playing the first game, and one can’t help but wonder how much better off and perhaps more focused the second game could have been if portions of the team’s time and attention wasn’t squandered on a pointless multiplayer for a game series that just didn’t need it.

So with all of that said, for Condemned, it probably just came down to the power of the mighty dollar. Supposedly, Condemned 2 did indeed sell well under what the publishers wanted, so, while we could go back and forth on the pros and cons of the second game all day, if a game franchise no longer makes fiscal sense to allocate funds and resources to, it mostly likely won’t happen. Especially in today’s development environment where so many careers and investment dollars are on the line with nearly every mainstream release. However, with the rise of more than capable indy studios showing the Triple-A folks up on many of their expensive projects, with games that look and play great but cost a fraction to make, perhaps we could see a bright future for the series. Jace Hall of Monolith has said as much in a tweet from a few years ago where he mentions that he does still own the Condemned franchise in its entirety and has been entertaining the idea of looking into finding a small team he trusts to take it on. This was back in 2015 so if he did follow through on that idea, perhaps we’re not as far away from a third stab at the franchise as we might think. Maybe, like an insane pipe-wielding psychopath, a third condemned game is lurking just around the corner.

Video Game News, Reviews, Walkthroughs And Guides | GamingBolt

[thegloober]

Thumbnails Special Edition: National Disability Employment Awareness Month

by Chaz Ebert and Matt Fagerholm

October 24, 2018   |  

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Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety. This special edition of Thumbnails celebrates National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which runs through the entirety of October. Our contributor Scott Jordan Harris gave us the following article recommendations, and they provide a vital array of perspectives on the need for inclusivity in media.—Chaz Ebert

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1. 

“Growing Up, I Only Saw Half of Myself Represented On TV—That Needs to Change Now“: A personal essay from Bustle‘s Andrea Lausell about representations of Latinx people with disabilities. See also: Melissa Hung’s Huffington Post piece on “the most damaging way movies portray people with disabilities” and an article by prominent activist Vilissa Thompson on her Ramp Your Voice blog about portrayals of disability in the Black community. 

“As I’ve grown into my adult years, it has made me happy to see Latinx-centered media begin to share stories of other marginalized non-disabled groups in the Latinx community (LGBTQ+, Afro-Latinx, Indigenous-Latinx). Representation is slowly improving with how these identities are viewed with TV shows like ‘One Day at a Time’ having a teenager like Elena Alvarez come out as queer and work through the emotions while seeking acceptance from her Cuban family. ‘Jane the Virgin’ highlights characters of color tackling the topic of immigration, all while making a political statement about our government and its treatment of people seeking a better life. Although these strides are giving us a diverse representation of Latinx culture and are being received fairly well by the community for being marathon-worthy, if Disabled Latinx were to be included in the narrative, would the public receive it as well? I’ve noticed that non-Latinx communities are just starting to embrace disabled narratives on their TV screens. Often, disabled representation in Hollywood, like in the novel-turned-film ‘Me Before You’ starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin, portrays the harmful stereotype of disability being a burden. However, shows like ABC’s sitcom ‘Speechless’ have been a game changers for showing a disabled lead character happy with their life. But that’s just starting to happen now. Growing up, I learned to be ashamed of who I am because there were so few positive disabled Latinx representations on TV. Hearing from my Latinx community that disabled Latinx don’t exist — or that there’s ‘no need’ for us to be shown — told me that my place as a Disabled Latina within Latinidad wasn’t welcomed.”

2. 

“Why are disabled actors ignored when it comes to roles like the Elephant Man?“: Asks The Guardian‘s Frances Ryan. See also: Ryan’s piece on the controversy regarding Netflix’s “Afflicted” series and Julie Rehmeyer’s Los Angeles Times essay on how Netflix is “televising prejudice against the chronically ill.”

“The BBC has been widely criticised over its decision to cast a non-disabled person in its remake of ‘The Elephant Man.’ The role of Joseph Merrick – who had severe physical deformities – will be played by the Stranger Things actor Charlie Heaton. Notably, actor Adam Pearson – who has neurofibromatosis type 1, a condition which was once thought to affect Merrick – has said he wasn’t even given the opportunity to audition. As Pearson told LBC, it’s part of a culture of exclusion for disabled actors. ‘It’s a systemic problem, not only in the BBC but industry-wide.’ From Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man to Eddie Redmayne in ‘The Theory of Everything,’ it’s routine for non-disabled actors to play disabled characters, often gaining critical acclaim in the process. At best, it takes work and exposure from talented disabled actors and further adds to an arts and culture that pushes disability representation – much like race, sex and class – to the sidelines. At worst, it sees non-disabled actors mimic the characteristics of a minority group without any involvement from the community it depicts.”

3.

“‘A Quiet Place’ proves there’s no excuse for using non-disabled actors to play disabled characters“: According to The Independent‘s James Moore. See also: Variety‘s Joe Otterson reports that Maysoon Zayid, who has cerebral palsy, will write and star in “an autobiographical comedy series in development at ABC,” while CNN‘s Wayne Drash analyzes the outrage over the portrayal of epilepsy on Netflix’s “Seizure Boy.”

“The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world haunted by blind monsters that zero in on sound with the aid of supersensitive hearing. Silence is thus a matter of survival. Because her family uses American Sign Language (ASL) they have an advantage: they can talk to each other in a world where speaking can get you killed. The script could have fallen down at this point by having Simmonds perform a functional role without much else to do other than move the plot along for the other actors, including A-lister Emily Blunt, to shine. But it has more ambition than that. Simmonds’ Regan Abbott is a fully formed character; a stroppy teen, chafing against her parents’ overprotectiveness and haunted by what she sees as her role in her little brother’s death. It’s not just her deafness that is central to the plot: she is. She’s neither an afterthought, nor is she an inspiration, which is another trap films involving disability fall into. She’s a person. She’s also the best thing about a film that is full of good things. Director John Krasinski, who pushed to cast her, has further revealed that she changed one of the signed parts of the scripts in an important way that makes it better.  In fact she elevates the whole project. As Kamran Mallick, the chief executive of Disability Rights UK, says, she brings ‘an extra dimension to the role which a hearing actor would not have been able to do.’”

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4. 

“Toppling Structures of Inequality in the Documentary Field“: A great article published at IDA by Nicole Opper. 

“New Day Films, a distribution co-op created by and for independent documentary filmmakers in 1971, has recently been grappling with what it means to be truly representative of the broad spectrum of filmmakers that exists, including filmmakers of color, working-class filmmakers, trans and gender non-binary filmmakers and those with disabilities—groups that have historically been underrepresented or poorly portrayed in the industry. At our Annual Meeting in upstate New York this past June, a panel was convened to discuss the findings of an Equity and Representation task force, and to open up the conversation to all member-owners of the co-op. ‘Very often in the documentary space, I’m the only person of color,’ remarked Michael Premo. Premo is the director of ‘Water Warriors,’ the story of a community’s successful fight to protect their water from the oil and natural gas industry. ‘This is also sort of dually equated with poverty, which is equally as racist as being the token black guy.’ Cheryl Green, the director of ‘Who Am I To Stop It’—a documentary about individuals with traumatic brain injuries—shared her perspective as a filmmaker with acquired disabilities herself: ‘There is no one disability community. What is a film about disability? What is a person with a disability? We’re not a monolith. There’s not one way to talk about it; there’s not one way to present it. The main way disability is represented is non-disabled people parachuting in and filming a medical story. Usually it’s one that starts off as ‘That’s gross or scary or painful! Phew! They got better.’” 

5. 

“CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion“: Scott Jordan Harris recommends Jenni Gold’s documentary in his RogerEbert.com review.

“‘CinemAbility’ is the most entertaining and comprehensive history of disability in American film and television ever made. In that sense it is the onscreen equivalent of Matthew F. Norden’s classic book Cinema Of Isolation: A History Of Physical Disability In The Movies, and Norden is prominent in the film’s opening scenes, explaining the early and generally disheartening history of Hollywood’s ideas about disability. Due prominence is given to Lon Chaney, an able-bodied actor notorious in the disabled community for making a career out of grotesque and exploitative parodies of disability. He often did so in partnership with director Tod Browning, who in 1932 made ‘Freaks’ with a cast of disabled actors. Norden uses ‘Freaks’ to make an important point about audience attitudes to disability then that is still relevant now: ‘Audiences couldn’t handle [‘Freaks’]. People supposedly went screaming down the aisles because what they were seeing on the screen were not able-bodied actors wearing tricky makeup … They were seeing authentic disabled people.’ But ‘CinemaAbility’ never feels like a lecture. It is structured like a conversation, with contributions from an array of industry heavyweights, including Marlee Matlin, Ben Affleck, Geena Davis, William H. Macy, Ben Lewin, Peter Bogdanovich and R.J. Mitte.”

Image of the Day

TV Guide‘s Alyssa Andrews explains “how TV is still failing people with disabilities,” in graphic novel form. 

Video of the Day

[embedded content]

The official trailer for Jenni Gold’s documentary, “CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion,” reviewed above by Scott Jordan Harris.

Previous Article: Thumbnails 9/28/18

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[mrmichaelchadler]

Thumbnails Special Edition: National Disability Employment Awareness Month

Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety. This special edition of Thumbnails celebrates National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which runs through the entirety of October. Our contributor Scott Jordan Harris gave us the following article recommendations, and they provide a vital array of perspectives on the need for inclusivity in media.—Chaz Ebert

1. 

"Growing Up, I Only Saw Half of Myself Represented On TV—That Needs to Change Now": A personal essay from Bustle's Andrea Lausell about representations of Latinx people with disabilities. See also: Melissa Hung's Huffington Post piece on "the most damaging way movies portray people with disabilities" and an article by prominent activist Vilissa Thompson on her Ramp Your Voice blog about portrayals of disability in the Black community. 

“As I’ve grown into my adult years, it has made me happy to see Latinx-centered media begin to share stories of other marginalized non-disabled groups in the Latinx community (LGBTQ+, Afro-Latinx, Indigenous-Latinx). Representation is slowly improving with how these identities are viewed with TV shows like ‘One Day at a Time’ having a teenager like Elena Alvarez come out as queer and work through the emotions while seeking acceptance from her Cuban family. ‘Jane the Virgin’ highlights characters of color tackling the topic of immigration, all while making a political statement about our government and its treatment of people seeking a better life. Although these strides are giving us a diverse representation of Latinx culture and are being received fairly well by the community for being marathon-worthy, if Disabled Latinx were to be included in the narrative, would the public receive it as well? I’ve noticed that non-Latinx communities are just starting to embrace disabled narratives on their TV screens. Often, disabled representation in Hollywood, like in the novel-turned-film ‘Me Before You’ starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin, portrays the harmful stereotype of disability being a burden. However, shows like ABC’s sitcom ‘Speechless’ have been a game changers for showing a disabled lead character happy with their life. But that’s just starting to happen now. Growing up, I learned to be ashamed of who I am because there were so few positive disabled Latinx representations on TV. Hearing from my Latinx community that disabled Latinx don’t exist — or that there’s ‘no need’ for us to be shown — told me that my place as a Disabled Latina within Latinidad wasn’t welcomed.”

2. 

"Why are disabled actors ignored when it comes to roles like the Elephant Man?": Asks The Guardian's Frances Ryan. See also: Ryan's piece on the controversy regarding Netflix's "Afflicted" series and Julie Rehmeyer's Los Angeles Times essay on how Netflix is "televising prejudice against the chronically ill."

“The BBC has been widely criticised over its decision to cast a non-disabled person in its remake of ‘The Elephant Man.’ The role of Joseph Merrick – who had severe physical deformities – will be played by the Stranger Things actor Charlie Heaton. Notably, actor Adam Pearson – who has neurofibromatosis type 1, a condition which was once thought to affect Merrick – has said he wasn’t even given the opportunity to audition. As Pearson told LBC, it’s part of a culture of exclusion for disabled actors. ‘It’s a systemic problem, not only in the BBC but industry-wide.’ From Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man to Eddie Redmayne in ‘The Theory of Everything,’ it’s routine for non-disabled actors to play disabled characters, often gaining critical acclaim in the process. At best, it takes work and exposure from talented disabled actors and further adds to an arts and culture that pushes disability representation – much like race, sex and class – to the sidelines. At worst, it sees non-disabled actors mimic the characteristics of a minority group without any involvement from the community it depicts.”

3.

"'A Quiet Place' proves there's no excuse for using non-disabled actors to play disabled characters": According to The Independent's James Moore. See also: Variety's Joe Otterson reports that Maysoon Zayid, who has cerebral palsy, will write and star in "an autobiographical comedy series in development at ABC," while CNN's Wayne Drash analyzes the outrage over the portrayal of epilepsy on Netflix's "Seizure Boy."

“The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world haunted by blind monsters that zero in on sound with the aid of supersensitive hearing. Silence is thus a matter of survival. Because her family uses American Sign Language (ASL) they have an advantage: they can talk to each other in a world where speaking can get you killed. The script could have fallen down at this point by having Simmonds perform a functional role without much else to do other than move the plot along for the other actors, including A-lister Emily Blunt, to shine. But it has more ambition than that. Simmonds’ Regan Abbott is a fully formed character; a stroppy teen, chafing against her parents’ overprotectiveness and haunted by what she sees as her role in her little brother’s death. It’s not just her deafness that is central to the plot: she is. She’s neither an afterthought, nor is she an inspiration, which is another trap films involving disability fall into. She’s a person. She’s also the best thing about a film that is full of good things. Director John Krasinski, who pushed to cast her, has further revealed that she changed one of the signed parts of the scripts in an important way that makes it better.  In fact she elevates the whole project. As Kamran Mallick, the chief executive of Disability Rights UK, says, she brings ‘an extra dimension to the role which a hearing actor would not have been able to do.’”

4. 

"Toppling Structures of Inequality in the Documentary Field": A great article published at IDA by Nicole Opper. 

“New Day Films, a distribution co-op created by and for independent documentary filmmakers in 1971, has recently been grappling with what it means to be truly representative of the broad spectrum of filmmakers that exists, including filmmakers of color, working-class filmmakers, trans and gender non-binary filmmakers and those with disabilities—groups that have historically been underrepresented or poorly portrayed in the industry. At our Annual Meeting in upstate New York this past June, a panel was convened to discuss the findings of an Equity and Representation task force, and to open up the conversation to all member-owners of the co-op. ‘Very often in the documentary space, I'm the only person of color,’ remarked Michael Premo. Premo is the director of ‘Water Warriors,’ the story of a community's successful fight to protect their water from the oil and natural gas industry. ‘This is also sort of dually equated with poverty, which is equally as racist as being the token black guy.’ Cheryl Green, the director of ‘Who Am I To Stop It’—a documentary about individuals with traumatic brain injuries—shared her perspective as a filmmaker with acquired disabilities herself: ‘There is no one disability community. What is a film about disability? What is a person with a disability? We're not a monolith. There's not one way to talk about it; there's not one way to present it. The main way disability is represented is non-disabled people parachuting in and filming a medical story. Usually it’s one that starts off as ‘That's gross or scary or painful! Phew! They got better.’” 

5. 

"CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion": Scott Jordan Harris recommends Jenni Gold's documentary in his RogerEbert.com review.

“‘CinemAbility’ is the most entertaining and comprehensive history of disability in American film and television ever made. In that sense it is the onscreen equivalent of Matthew F. Norden's classic book Cinema Of Isolation: A History Of Physical Disability In The Movies, and Norden is prominent in the film's opening scenes, explaining the early and generally disheartening history of Hollywood's ideas about disability. Due prominence is given to Lon Chaney, an able-bodied actor notorious in the disabled community for making a career out of grotesque and exploitative parodies of disability. He often did so in partnership with director Tod Browning, who in 1932 made ‘Freaks’ with a cast of disabled actors. Norden uses ‘Freaks’ to make an important point about audience attitudes to disability then that is still relevant now: ‘Audiences couldn't handle [‘Freaks’]. People supposedly went screaming down the aisles because what they were seeing on the screen were not able-bodied actors wearing tricky makeup ... They were seeing authentic disabled people.’ But ‘CinemaAbility’ never feels like a lecture. It is structured like a conversation, with contributions from an array of industry heavyweights, including Marlee Matlin, Ben Affleck, Geena Davis, William H. Macy, Ben Lewin, Peter Bogdanovich and R.J. Mitte.”

Image of the Day

TV Guide's Alyssa Andrews explains "how TV is still failing people with disabilities," in graphic novel form. 

Video of the Day

The official trailer for Jenni Gold's documentary, "CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion," reviewed above by Scott Jordan Harris.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2OOlC4P

[kerstinquam9-blog]

Minute Super Dish Party Foods.

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[felicezhukov]

:: Dear Nicolas Jaar ::

I needed to walk on Wednesday, it’s impossible to spend the entirety of my waking hours cooped up in my room editing films, I need space and air and the sky, sights and sounds. In fact my desire for flaneurism is flaring up again, in part because my physical self is getting stronger I think and because I have oodles more time, without beer gardens and ashtrays as a mainstay.

It needed to be somewhere open but grand, with tourists and street vendors and overly priced coffee shops. I wanted debatable public art, to feel as if I was standing in another city, not the creative ebb of East London with its winding streets and Turkish corner shops and hipster cafe’s, somewhere with more of an epic taint. So I went on maps and I looked for local lidl’s, as I also needed a kg of greek yoghurt (my achilles heel so to speak) and I’ve been getting sick of going to the Hackney Central one, I, like all of us, need variety. One cropped up in Limehouse and from that point I realised it was on route to Canary Wharf, which in fact fit the bill perfectly.

I set out, through handsome tree lined streets and austere townhouses, flanked by blacked out range rovers, past leafy crammed allotments and cutting through communal green spaces of estates, with tire swings and the smell of curry floating in the air. As I reached the motorway the sky suddenly expanded above me, since working in East Village I’ve come to love this higgledy piggledy side of London, conurbations of lego brick towers and palatial grounds, interspersed with ornamental art that seems somehow at odds with all around it. In these weird dream lands there are also dozens of cranes, the stitch in time which suggests that where you are will evolve and that you’re taking in a moment that will not last, one day the great swathes of space that make these places so unusual in my city, will be filled and I will be that person that regails the young about how different the city used to be.

I curved off the motorway and slunk round the docklands museum onto the spacious concourse that began my journey through Canary Wharf. It splashed up memories of being there with my family and the Moon, on one particularly unhappy birthday where I was on the borders of leaving him and infuriated on so many levels. He uncomfortably trailed around with all my family who were sensitive enough to see the rifts between us but didn’t know what to do. I walked the same route we took, over the bridge and then directly cutting through squares with statues depicting different kinds of couplings, until I arrived at my first point, a circular fountain and a pair of jaggedly designed sculptures sat next to each other, regal in their demeanour, as if they were royal.

There’s a photograph of us on that day at this fountain, it’s bittersweet because I can see the pain and anger in mine and the Moon’s face, from years of torturous love, the wind is blowing and my coat and hair (then long) are swept up in the gust, I’m pouring over the fountain at a distance from him, looking with searching eyes into its churning waters, seemingly so fragile in gait and appearance, the light is crisp and autumnal, its seems as if there’s a deep fascination between me and the fountain.

What particularly struck me on that strange Island, was its inhabitants, of course I know its a centre for banking and all the outlying trades that enshrine money, but I wasn’t prepared for the testosterone I felt swinging about its streets. I’d say, at that point, 16:30 on a Wednesday, 90% of the people there were male and the vast majority of these men were clean shaven, wearing well maintained blue suits and white shirts without ties. They mostly travelled in pairs and manned both the streets and the bars that lined them. I felt out of place but not unwelcome, walking around with my fresh new haircut, silk shorts and my token odd socks, there were many admiring glances shot my way, but it was still uncomfortable, because I felt so far away from these men, that they would never see me as comparable to them, that I was just a unique object travelling through a world I couldn’t comprehend.

Perhaps this is where the muhrmaid samurai need’s to cut her teeth, my friend and fellow mermaid sister was speaking frankly about how someone has come into her life recently: a pragmatic, confident male, and has offered her advice and help to develop her managerial skills. She spoke of the project she’s engaged in, a first for her in terms of coordinating people, and how she’d like to be stronger and more adept at organising people and how she perceived opportunities. Which is something that comes back to money again, something these men in blue suits are familiar with, they share their circadian rhythms with it as an entity, they have access to where and how it is accumulated. These men know the true value of things because they are the human aspect of the dynasties that control the flow of money in the world, they know what venture philanthropy is alongside so many other facets of the world’s most potent catalyst.

I’m not sure exactly how the muhrmaid samurai can infiltrate this world, this island that has opened up a deep wellspring of fascination, perhaps just by visiting it and coming into contact with the gatekeepers would be enough to facilitate new idea’s. All I know at this point really is I will be visiting Canary Wharf a lot this August, drawing it and getting used to my reflection in the monolithic tower windows that brace nearly every street. It’s my new favourite place in London.

I hope you’re not at odd’s with money Nicolas, perhaps not allied to it either but not paralysed by its insipid grasp.

[gulfcoastaudiophiles-blog]

Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick 

1972 LP Vinyl Record Album Vintage and Original Sealed Never Opened Unopened * Note: Album is being sold as a sealed collectible! This items value is in the fact that it has never been opened! No refund if you have opened a sealed albums! Album Notes One of the great concept albums by one of the great prog rock acts, Thick as a Brick found Jethro Tull making a big splash with the monolithic, one-track juggernaut of an album. Revisiting that classic work, frontman Ian Anderson takes to the stage in Iceland, performing the album, as well as its 2011 sequel, Thick as a Brick 2, in front of a live crowd on Thick as a Brick: Live in Iceland. Performing both albums in their entirety, this live performance allows listeners to experience the sprawling tale of Gerald Bostock as one epic piece, making this an essential listen for fans of the legendary English band. ~ Gregory Heaney Here is a bit more from the internet:

This was the only song on the album. Side 1 was "part 1," running 22:31, and side 2 was "part 2," clocking in at 21:05. Each side was over 20 minutes long.

A radio edit, running just 3:01, was sent to radio stations and is the version used on most compilation albums. Speaking with us in 2013, Ian Anderson explained: "back in 1972, you had to be aware of what was then called AOR radio - it was a delicate beast. It could only in most cases manage to play music that was in bite size portions. So we had to think about giving the option to American radio playing little edited sections of 'Thick As A Brick,' so they didn't have to delicately drop the needle into the middle of a long track or lift it off after the three and a half minutes. So we did that specially for American radio.

It was never released publicly in that form, but in limited editions which were sent out to radio stations in the US, which is the only place where the record got played, anyway. It never got played in the UK or anywhere in Europe, it was just not that kind of music." "Thick as a brick" is a phrase meaning stubbornly dumb, as one's head is so thick that no new thoughts can enter it. The song starts with Ian Anderson expressing his low expectations for his target ("I may make you feel but I can't make you think") before singing about class structures, conformity, and the rigid moralistic beliefs of the establishment that perpetuates it.

The song follows a young boy who sees two career paths: soldier and artist. He chooses the life of a soldier, just like his father. We see him assimilate into the society he once rebelled against, becoming just like his dad. With minimal meddling, the album took only two weeks to record, and was written in less than a month. The packaging was designed to look like a small-town newspaper called the St. Cleve Chronicle and Linwell Advertiser. When opened, the album revealed 12 pages of newspaper stories, making innovative use of the square foot of sleeve space with a fold-out so the Chronicle measured 12"x 16".

Under the headline "Thick As A Brick," we learn that an 8-year-old boy genius named Gerald Bostock wrote the lyrics for a poetry competition, but was disqualified on moral grounds by the governing body, The Society for Literary Advancement and Gestation (SLAG). According to the story, Ian Anderson of the "Major Beat Group" Jethro Tull read the poem and wrote 45 minutes of "pop music" to accompany it.

The newspaper also contained ads, recipes, TV listings, a crossword puzzle, and a review of the album. Jethro Tull wasn't the first to use the newspaper theme for album art: The Four Seasons 1969 album Genuine Imitation Life Gazette was made to look like a newspaper with lyrics to the songs appearing as stories. It even had a comics-section insert.

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