#love the pen i used for coloring it scratches that itch in my brain

[chalk-drawings-on-the-sidewalk]

uhh hey there's some weird rainbow stuff oozing out of your eyes and ears. yeah you might wanna get that checked out.

[kawaiijohn]

Going Angst Week Day 2: Obsession

Ao3:  Here

WC:  1689

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The scenery behind the door was very... unique Quizz would say.  

“You know, if I wanted space I would just remove a wall.  A room suspended in the endless void is a little... extra, don’t you think?” They asked nobody.

There was a singular platform suspended in an endless inky void of space with a singular pathway to the door.  Nothing sat upon it but a desk- complete with a fancy looking double-monitor setup and roomy drawers underneath.  It looked sleek, modern, tempting.  

Quizz didn’t know why the single point of focus in an otherwise liminal room was so enticing, but hey!  The feeling in their chest hadn’t led them astray.  Yet.

With a shrug they began walking, their saunter turning into a slow but steady glide as they negated gravity.  “Well, only one way to go.  Down it is!!”

The monitors lit up with a strange logo- a devilishly smiling face with red shades and blue flames for hair.  Okay... that looked really cool, but... why was it lighting up?  They tapped the space key and a password entry blinked before them.

“I can’t even remember my name, what makes this place think I’ll remember a fuckin’ password right off the bat?  Sheesh!!”  He pulled the chair out and took a seat, realizing it didn’t need adjusting and was hella comfortable.  

Alright... he could work with this.

With a too-wide grin he began trying to unlock the machine.

-----

It turned out he could not, in fact, work with this.

Quizz had his cheek pressed against the desk, growling lowly at the password box as it flashed tauntingly at him.  It really didn’t help that the damn thing cackled at him with every wrong entry.

“Stupid computer.  Stupid amnesia.  Stupid Quizz... stupid stupid stupid.”  He pried his face off the desk in despair and slammed his forehead on it a few times.  “The fact that nothing seems to hurt me makes me think I’m just having an awful dream.”  Another slam.  “But with my terrible luck I’m in purgatory or something.” Slam.  

“Why is this so damn hard... Always gettin’ myself into so much trouble- way more than it’s worth!!  Gods mom was ri-...”  Quizz paused and thought.  “.... she was... who?  Who was... right??  ACK!”  They grabbed their forehead, talons accidentally scratching the fuck out of their face in the rush.  “I-I... why do things keep.  Leaving me?”

They took a moment to calm, thinking about it- thinking about the trouble they were in; lost and alone with apparently only a locked computer for company.  “Please, I... don’t want to forget her.  I just want to... know...” The pain in their head subsided as the thing in their chest thrummed violently.  “Who was she to me again??”  They had to remember, feelings of both nostalgia and love rushed over them, followed by a single, near debilitating shudder of regret and the gut-wrenching feeling of failure.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t enough... I couldn’t be there for you all...’

Quizz gasped loudly.  “I... someone said I get into trouble... it was familiar, but not angry.  Exasperated... and then I... I left them.  How did I leave?”  Their heard vibrated strangely again.  “I don’t think I left them willingly.  But who were... they?”

A happy, yet tired family sits at a table.  A single chair remains empty yet another day; a small plate covered in frogs sits on a placemat in front of it.  There’s three other people, smiling yet tired.  Pizza steams fresh in the center with two figures talking excitedly about something else.  They’re all smaller besides one more in focus than the others.  They look... older?  The image clears a bit more and reveals a stout woman with slightly greying hair and blank eyes...

Something clicks into place.

"Mom!!!  I remember mom- I think... but who are the others?  Kids, at least maybe?  Ah, what was her name- I can... Her favorite color was peach!!”  They readied themself for pain again, but none came.  “ Ah, so the initial memory sucks when I remember it!!  Noted!  Thanks brain, I hate it!!!”  They tapped their forehead and stood in front of the desk, arms crossed.  “Now, brain, my dear friend- can please you do me a favor and, oh... I don’t know... fuckin’ LET ME UNLOCK THIS FUCKIN’ DESKTOP?? Please???”

The monitor snickered softly at them again after a moment of absolute silence.

“ALRIGHT SMARTASS!!!”  Quizz slammed their fist hard on the keyboard, hearing something click softly underneath.  “There’s literally no need to get sassy with me!  So what do you say, help me out here, bud?  Please???”  They pleaded with the computer, but got a loud raspberry in return.  “Cool.  Just fuckin’ great.”  Another smack to the keyboard made something inside the desk click again, the sound of some sort of mechanism unwinding.  After a moment, a drawer (one he was SURE was locked) glided open gracefully.

Quizz perked up, ignoring the fact they were about ten seconds from slashing the monitor in half with their new claws.  “Alright!  Now that’s the shit I’m talkin’ about!  That’s the shit I’m fuckin’ about!!!”  They turned and saluted the blank space surrounding him.  “Thanks, weird void room.  Thanks weird asshole computer!!  I totally appreciate the help you gave me!!” 

‘Ah, sarcasm.  Never fails to lighten the mood.’

With nimble fingers the amnesiac started shuffling through the drawer.  It had several very... interesting items inside- weirdly shaped pens, a neat collapsable cane he was gonna inspect later, but the best of all was a pair of dope-ass red shades that they absolutely donned immediately- a feeling of pride and rightness filling them as they put them on.

They made it to the bottom of the drawer when their chest thrummed violently.  A lone binder, locked tightly, sat at the bottom.  They grasped their chest with one hand and the book with the other, admiring the intricate silver swirls and black glittering stars covering it.  Quizz placed it on the desk, noticing a small, strangely glittering key hanging off of a chain attached to it.

The room seemed to whisper directly into his mind.

‘Open it.  Inside.  Open... learn about... read... learn...’

With a shaking hand, they unlocked it and read.

They read.

And read.

Memories coming to the forefront and fading away just as soon.  Their eyes scanned words that would pixelate and blur as soon as they glanced at them.  Names and places, numbers and facts- blurred away from his sight.  

‘No.  This is not how it should be.’

A growl bubbled up in his chest as he kept reading.  Names were all universally destroyed, photos for the most part blurred out.  But categories- favorite places and things... birthdays and personality types- all of those were categorized neatly and nicely.  

Some pages had just a few, and those names were less obscured- some even with profile pictures fully visible.

Those pages made his chest rumble happily.  He couldn’t understand why.

But there were three specific pages that stood out.  Just looking at them... it made his blood itch, his chest scream in longing.

He needed to finish them.  If he didn’t... he didn’t know what he would do.  

He poured over the pages over and over and over again.

They all had information filled for the most part, more categories were finished than any other page had been, but things like the person’s name and appearance, as well as the photos were unhelpfully blurred out.

They snarled at the thought of not knowing what it meant.  

“Can’t make anything easy for me, huh?”

One was a page that was rather childish.  Observations were written but he could barely understand them- the letters scrambling before his eyes.  But he noticed something- it seemed the entry was cut short; the only clear thing besides crayon drawings of frogs said ‘entry cut short, just like their time with us.’

The second page was filled with pressed flowers- all different types of lilies and snapdragons.  Everything was written with a glittery peach gel pen.  They ran a claw over the script and felt a tear fall from their eyes.  The writing made them feel something deep and painful- the same pain they’d felt a short while ago.

Their eyes scanned the page, noticing a single clear data entry.

Favorite Color:  Peach

“This was... is this my mom?”

Upon saying that, the page become more readable- some smaller things filling out and the photo less ‘thumb over the camera’ and more ‘they moved while I took this’.

If this was information on people they knew then...

Quizz yelled as their chest spiked in pain, something overcoming their willpower.

If this book was filled with things about the people they loved, then they will... they are going to... uncover all of it- collect all the information and find them.  They’ll collect everyone interesting they meet- ask them... get answers, know things, know all things to... to - 

Protect.

Love.

Learn.

Know. Know them.

After feeling cold pins and needles consume their form, Quizz flipped back to the third and last page that had gathered their interest. 

The very first page in the book.

Their claw ran over the scrawling handwriting- admiring how the writer crossed their sevens with lines, how they looped their letters and underlined things for emphasis.  They felt nostalgic and hollow.

This page had every single category filled, but the descriptions were blackened out; like they’d spilled ink all over the page.  They looked it up and down but couldn’t find a single clue about who page one would have been.

With a sigh they grinned and noticed something peculiar on the inner cover- right next to the bio.  There was a single note, a single clue.

Password:  Page 5′s best friend.

Now that... that tickled Quizz’s fancy.  Page 5... that would be the childish froggie page?  Yes it was.  

Quizz felt the buzzing in their chest become steady, violent yet subdued.  It was telling them this was the right direction- that attaining that information would fill a hunger they didn’t know they had.

Interesting, this was going to just be... delightful.

[multibug]

4. your voice (adrienette)

AO3

Marinette’s morning went a little like this: 

Waking up thirty minutes past her alarm—one that literally screams into her ear, Marinette skirted the line of obnoxiously late to class and tardiness doesn’t suit you, ms. dupain-cheng by busting through the classroom doors ten minutes after the bell had already rang. Her clothes were sopping wet from the rain outside and her inability to be prepared for Paris’ sporadic rainstorms. An excuse that was so incredibly untrue and fallible resided on the tip of her tongue, but her teacher had just sighed and ushered her to her seat. 

Only to notice that her seat was taken by a certain dad-hat wearing boy and the only seat open was next to Adrien. 

Naturally, her first instinct was to glare at Nino and Alya, both of whom had identical smirks in lieu of her flushed expression. Secondly, she'd decided to raise her chin high and drop into the empty seat, ignoring the stares and whispers she received from literally everyone in the room. 

Adrien nudges her with his shoulder and a small smile meant only for her, waving with one hand—mostly his pointer and middle fingers. 

“Hey,” she whispers in response, fumbling to open her bag and tug out her half-charged tablet. 

Passing of time allowed for the squeaking tendences Marinette had while she was around Adrien to fade into small, subtle stuttering over words every now and then. Though her crush on him has only amplified into something akin to love or at the very least intense infatuation, their friendship has blossomed from a weaved-tight-in-a-cocoon pupa to a fully-grown, magnificently-colored butterfly.

With adulthood around the corner, Marinette lives for the small moments with her friends and family. Her world is going to shift from being coddled to overbearing in a matter of seconds. We’re the Millers replays in her brain over and over,  no ragrets  embedded deep in the what the fuck parts of her mind. 

Marinette takes pride in the day going fairly well up until lunch, Adrien whisked away for a photo shoot before she can get a word in otherwise. He two-finger salutes them with a side-smile that’s so achingly similar to Marinette her heart aches and brain tries to scratch the itch she’s feeling.

Think Marinette, think. 

Alya, Nino, and her sit down at their usual table, spot open for Adrien in case he comes back a bit early—though they know the likelihood of that is slim to none. 

(Out of all the times they’ve held his spot, only once has he strolled in minutes prior to the final bell, in complete confusion over the lack of a body in his everyday seat. 

Nino explained it all to him and a very rare, genuine smile appeared on Adrien’s face that warmed their hearts.) 

“Quick question,” Marinette says, arms crossing over her chest as she drops her tray onto the hot to the touch table. Nino cowers slightly at her glare. “Why were you in my seat, Ninhoe? I nearly had a heart attack walking into class.” 

Nino goes to open his mouth but Alya beats him to it, smirking. “Maybe if you would’ve made it to class on time—”

“—my alarm didn’t go off—”

“—then you’d know that sunshine has laryngitis, so his only way of communicating with us is through terrible hand gestures, texts, writing, or this  stupid  text-to-speech app he downloaded.” 

Perking up as the tone of the conversation shifts ever-so-slightly, Nino sits up straighter in his seat and grins. “You should’ve heard the things that were coming out of that robot’s mouth. I mean tablet’s speaker,” he pauses, scratching his head. “Whatever it is. Look, all I know is that I haven’t laughed that hard in a hot minute.” 

“So then how did you end up in my seat?” 

This time, Nino’s expression turns sheepish as Alya laughs, hands flying about as she speaks, “Adrien’s robot voice told Nino to, and I quote, ‘Go sit with Alya before I flick you in the noggin’.” 

All Marinette can picture is a pouty Adrien pointing to the seat behind them as a cackling Nino drags himself towards her unused chair and Marinette portrays Adrien by giggling, so hard that she clutches her stomach. “Oh, oh that’s too good!” 

“It gets even better.” Nino’s grinning too wide and his eyes are lit with humor. “When we had to do the pop quiz, which you missed by the way, he tried to hand gesture to me that he needed a pen, right?” 

And, oh no, Marinette knows by the tone of Nino’s voice where this is going. 

“So I told him to use his text-to-speech since I didn’t understand him,” Mirth swims around in Nino’s eyes as he talks vividly, the calm boy Marinette’s used to suddenly gone. “So at full volume, he types into the app and it says, ‘Nino, can I please have a penis?’ I thought I was going to have a stroke.” 

“No way,” Marinette chokes out, previous giggles lackluster in comparison to her full-belly laughter over Nino’s retelling of class this morning. “This is the one time I regret being late.” 

On their way back to class after lunch, Alya whips out her phone with her wired headphones, placing one of them in Marinette’s ear. She watches as Adrien’s face reddens so quickly, so unlike his elegant, yet nonchalant stature as soon as the robotic voice is heard. (His small smile afterwards indicates he’s not actually upset, just a tad embarrassed.)

“That poor boy!” Marinette’s laughter echoes through the halls and lasts until they arrive at the classroom. 

 ~*~

“Marinette,” a very robotic voice says to her left as class ends for the day, jolting Marinette from her daydreams about defeating Hawkmoth and living a simplistic life as a fashion designer. 

Not about the pretty model with a heart of gold that tugs on her heartstrings sometimes, nope.

“Adrien?” She questions as she purses her lips together to not laugh at the robotic voice. Half of their class immediately piles out of the room once they’re dismissed, letting their conversation become a little more private. 

Pausing his typing to gauge her reaction, Adrien’s eyes flicker from his furious typing on his tablet to her face. “Alya showed you the video from earlier, didn’t she?” 

How does he know? Is he a psychic or something? “W-What do you mean? What video?” 

Adrien sends her a slightly unamused look and Marinette’s lips quirk into a grin, arm coming up to drape over the top of the bench behind him. His eyes glance at her hand, which just barely—accidentally, she swears it—grazes his shoulder. He scoots slightly closer to her so the back of his shoulder is pressed against the front of hers, eyes blinking as if to say is this okay?

Always for you, she thinks, biting her lip.

Instead of a verbal answer, Marinette lays her arm over his shoulder and allows him to settle against her body, in a half hug. “Are you feeling okay?” 

Head resting in the crook of her neck, Adrien grunts and mutters hoarsely, “Hurts.” 

“Adrien, no offense, but your voice sounds like shit. Use your app.” 

The noise he makes can barely be considered human, and Marinette squeezes his shoulder with her hand as she laughs gently. She turns her head and her lips brush the top of his hair in a fleeting kiss, Adrien stilling against her. 

Shit. “Adrien, I’m so sorry, that was crossing a line, I—” She goes to pull away from him, but he stops her immediately, reaching for the tablet and hastily typing. 

“Nooooo-o-o-o-ooooh, Marinette it’s okay. It felt really rice.” The blush that crosses Adrien’s face is so cute, so sweet, so endearing that Marinette can’t help but wrap her other arm around him and tug him closer to her. 

For the first time ever, Marinette isn’t the one embarrassing herself in front of Adrien.

Huh, that’s new. 

“Well, your hair feels really poft,” she tells him with a small giggle, his lips curling up amusedly as his green eyes meet hers.

Embarrassing himself even more, Adrien types, “Your farms are really strong. You could probably break me in half like it was muffin.”

“That’s what you choose to say? That I could break you in half like muffin?” 

She has no idea what this means for them, whether  this is something or if it’s a fleeting moment in their timeline. Whatever it is, she’s excited and ready. 

Adrien let out a small whine, jutting his lower lip out prettily. “Stop making fun of the dick kid, Mari! It’s not nice.”

“That one was on purpose, wasn’t it?” 

The smirk on Adrien’s face says it all.

[mysticsparklewings]

Starfall Mountains

Alternate title: Reasons Not to Buy the Dirt-Cheapest Acrylic Paints You Can Find I normally do like to keep an inexpensive stash of acrylic paint around because even though acrylic paint is not a medium I dabble in often, it much like fabric/puffy paint can come in surprisingly handy. And every once in awhile I will use it for it's intended purpose just to stretch my artistic muscles. Well, one of my art students recently started asking questions about acrylic painting and through giving them what advice I could (knowing arguably too much about acrylic painting for someone that rarely if ever does so) I felt that familiar artistic itch settle into my brain. And then I remembered that between my own one-off projects and a couple that my mom borrowed my small paint stash for, the stash that I had is down quite a few tubes that are just completely gone/empty. And what colors are left (mostly browns and greens, maybe a yellow) are not terribly pretty or useful colors. Thus my wandering art supply eyes started watching for some cheap acrylic paints to add to and replenish the stash. And admittedly to a certain extent, I wanted to take the rare occasion to take a stab at making a proper painting, partly just to see if I could do it and partly so I wouldn't just be throwing my student to the wolves with my advice. I found such paints in the form of an 8-pack set of 9.5 ml. tubes from Dollar General. The set was $4. Now, I know and can accept that this set was not meant to be artist-quality by any stretch of the imagination whatsoever. What bothers me is that my pre-existing stash was a very cheap set that was probably at best meant to be student-quality paint (and there's a good chance that's being generous) and you can get craft paint from Walmart for less than $1 for much larger tubes, and both options are more pigmented than these paints were. Do not be fooled by the results before you; I am fortunate enough that I have a moderate amount of artistic skill, pretty good knowledge of the medium (at least for someone that doesn't use it often), and I've done enough experimenting and encountered enough problems before to be comfortable trying to power through and work with what I had. If I were a humble beginner with much more limited knowledge of art supplies and how to use them, I highly suspect this would be one of those supplies capable of turning someone away from that type of art supply, if not art as a whole, in its entirety. If you've ever used finger paints for kids--you know how in the container and one congealed drop of the paint it looks like a nice, solid color, but then when you start to spread the paint around it's way more transparent and you have to really commit to get the color pay-off you were expecting? That's an accurate description of these paints. The thing is that they aren't totally lacking in pigment. They're about as pigmented as cheap watercolors or gouache. The problem with that is that they are still acrylics at the end of the day--the paint binder is a plastic, which means they dry relatively quickly and typically will not reactivate after they've dried. So if you want the same experience but a medium that's easier to work with, watercolor or gouache would be a better option. But it gets weirder.   I noticed that these acrylics dry a little on the slower side compared to what I'm used to, which is a mixed bag. It helped with blending a little, but it also made the lack of pigment more frustrating, as it meant I had to wait longer for the paint to dry between layers, which I needed in order to make sure I was A. covering the canvas and B. getting the color payoff I wanted. Additionally, it is probably a very good thing that I was using a small 4"x6" canvas board and not one of the 8"x10" canvases I have on hand, because the size of the paint tubes combined with the lack of pigmentation means I very likely would've run out of one or some of the colors. (Almost definitely I would have run out of white because white is always my most overused color). To a certain extent, I did expect to have to layer and do a lot of "put paint on, cover it up. put paint on, cover it up, put paint on--" you get the idea. Acrylics, even when they are better pigmented, can be a more challenging medium to work with because of the aforementioned quicker drying time. But even so I feel like the work I had to do to get good color pay off, decent coverage of the canvas, and smooth blending all at once was still a little more than I should've had to put in. The most egregious and obvious offenders of this would be the orange behind the mountains and the snow/ice caps on the mountains, the latter of which I'm still not totally happy with, but I kept going back and forth with it and eventually just said "y'know, that looks pretty okay, I'm tired of messing with it, and I'd love to not use up the entire tube of white on this one small painting, so I'm done with that." The orange I think turned out fine, though the transition between it and the rest of the sky is a little harsh for my liking. (I'd say it doesn't match the reference photo but that's not really fair as overall I took quite a few intentional and unintentional creative liberties between my reference photo and the final product.) Anyway. Once I had layered enough various shades of purple and bluish-white on this thing to make an eggplant and blueberry salad jealous and fed myself up with the mountains, it was 4 a.m. and I was tired and so I decided to let what I had dry overnight and then finish it the following day. I did wrap my tiny 6-well palette up in a plastic baggie to preserve the mixed paint that hadn't already dried just in case I looked at the painting with fresh eyes and couldn't help but touch it up some more. But fortunately, that didn't happen. Instead, I used some washi tape to make a mask over the mountains and then broke out a bottle of white ink to splatter some stars across the sky, because I knew the white acrylic paint was a serious risk that was likely to not work out the way I wanted it to. (In this case. I have used white acrylic paint before that would've probably worked just fine using the same splatter method, but I didn't want to take the risk with how not-pigmented this white was.) And then I went in with white gel pens to emphasize a few stars, add some white spots in that I wasn't able to do with the paint, and I did end up adding a little extra highlight to some of the mountains in the vain hope of making them look a little better. This is where the title comes in; I think I got a little carried away with the highlight on the mountains vs. the stars in the sky, and so instead of the traditional "snowfall/snowy" mountains, I thought calling them "starfall" mountains might make more sense based on the visuals. One that was done and I was confident that everything was dry, I went over the whole thing with some gloss-finish ModPodge (which smells horrible by the way; the matte-finish ModPodge has a way less offensive smell to me), in two coats, and then re-applied my gel-pen signature in the top corner because for some reason the ModPodge just kinda wiped it off. I don't like ripping on a supply so hard, and I'm sure if you look at some other supply tests of mine that it's pretty obvious I try very hard to give the benefit of the doubt when I can. These just disappointed me on so many levels. Don't get me wrong; the end product still turned out decent, but that's because I more or less know what I'm doing. As I said before, I'm not confident that a beginner wouldn't be totally frustrated by these paints. And yet I can't deny that they're probably fine for younger kids that don't really care about proper acrylic painting, and that's really who they're probably for anyway. If nothing else, I can say this experiment has pushed me towards getting a better quality, wider color-selection set of acrylics to keep in my stash, because I really don't see these working out as a good stash set for me.  It's going to be a tricky decision though, because I want something that'll give me the option to do a proper acrylic painting like this if I want to, but has a price I can justify even if I don't use the paints terribly often. So we'll see how that turns out for me further down the road. I really don't think I'll ever be primarily an acrylic painter (not because of this particular experience--there's just something missing that doesn't draw me into the medium like other mediums have drawn me in before), but sometimes you get an artistic itch and you just have to scratch it, and I have to admit that I don't think I've fully satisfied this itch just yet, so there may be more acrylic paintings to come out of me yet. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[yusselah]

Draw Well, Be Well

My Daughter’s Reminders

My daughter Jenny grew up falling down, with a fractured tibia here and a black eye there. Injuries stemming from a central nervous system disorder with a  hard to pronounce name: Incontinentia Pigmenti. After 32 years, the words still freeze on my tongue. 

I.P. is not a one-size-fits-all genetic disorder in the ways it affects the lives of the baby girls who are born with it. For Jenny, a woman with a girlish face and a small body, this rare neurocutaneous condition deprives her of many things: the balance to stand, walk, or enjoy the kind of grapho-motor control that enables her mother and brother, both formally trained artists, to draw with precision. 

Precision can be very appealing in the right hands. But my daughter doesn’t draw for appeal, or approval. She draws to be well; to feel well; and for her, thank goodness, the very act of picture-making has for decades now afforded her a pleasurable way of breaking past the gravity of her immense motor and cognitive challenges. The story of Jenny’s love of picture-making and the goodness she’s drawn from pictures are perhaps best illustrated in the images she paraded through my old appointment book in a furious sprint over a cold winter’s night when she was 16. As they remind me, indeed I cannot forget them, she was quite ill in body and mind following a mind-shattering fall after becoming severely sleep deprived at a special summer camp. Had the staff been trained to detect and act on the signs of her obvious sleep deprivation, she might have been spared the half year she lost while living in the painful limbo in her shattered consciousness, where unrecoverable sleep falls. She might have avoided her hallucinations, and the dreadful fear of being swallowed back into the jaws of the seizure monsters that ripped entire pages from her school calendar while she was a little girl. 

I refer to these images as my daughter’s reminders, in part because she made them in an old datebook of mine, drawing freely over pages containing handwritten reminders of my appointments and tasks to be completed. But even more so because her images like the fast-falling peanut shell and winged red horse she drew there remind me of the importance picture-making has played in our lives. They remind me how reliably Jenny Lily Gordon, now 32, has piloted herself through dark times on the tip of a pen. How she’s drawn genies back into fallen bottles. And created a hearth of warm friction when her off-kilter body ran a little too cold - as it often does when her neurological temperatures flowed in different directions. Warm on her left, frosty along her right. But “just right” — like a fairy tale porridge — when her busy left hand is working with her eyes to make a new picture.

From the moment she was able to pick up and hold onto a crayon at the age of three, which was not easy for her, drawing has given my daughter a trustworthy way to communicate when words failed her. You see, Jenny’s thoughts get stuck in the upper shelves of her fragile brain’s speech and language freezer. She finds it easier to produce certain kinds of ideas using ink and lead pigments which fly effortlessly from her drawing instruments without a lot of words weighing them down.

Making pictures offers her a profound well-spring of wellness because the activity also provides a fount of liberating physical release. For although she can’t ice-skate or play soccer, she can take great speed on the point of a No. 2 pencil. And the rhythmic sound the lead tip makes against a sheet of paper is music to her ears. “The paper is a mountain I can climb, where you and me can go up to anywhere, we can fly away,” she once told me as we drew beneath a star-studded August sky . To Jenny, the earth’s gravity can be supremely limiting while her paper universe is boundless.

Since her earliest years, our curly-headed, cognitively- and visually-impaired daughter, has been drawn to our home’s bright, white shelves. They’re packed with paper, old calendars, new and used sketchbooks, fat patches of fabric and pens and inkwells of tangy colors: raspberry, lemon, blueberry, carrot, eggplant and chocolate. She continues to reach for these colorful supplies to flavor her way over the bitter aftertaste of some pretty potent medicines.

These particular reminders of Jenny’s scratch deeply into my memories --and my wife’s -- of many of her hardest times. Times when she lost her appetite completely. Times when she couldn’t grip a spoon or hold a cup of milk; night times when repeated falls from her consciousness — sparked by uncontrollable seizures — ripped entire pages out of her school calendar. These are the kinds of drawn reminders I kept hidden in a desk drawer for years even though I cherished them as visual celebrations of Jenny’s remarkable tenacity and strong desire not to be counted out.

When the tornado side effects of her powerful anti-convulsants began to lighten, she immediately reached for her friction sticks to draw her way back to a steadier state of mind. Her pens and pencils were like a conductors’ baton with which to find the music to lift up and re-organize her disordered mind. The pictures were dance partners to her songs. Pictures went hand and hand with singing. They were dance partners that came together over many hours, across many days, until a new destination appeared. These pictures trigger my gratitude for the ancient red line of drawing - the pulsating, sanguine line which runs like the Hudson River through all of human time. Drawing has also given me a way to express gratitude everyday for a piece of chalk, for a circle, or those beautiful, swift lines that drive comic books.

But I have a special gratitude for these images she paraded across the grey pinstriped pages of my old 2007 appointment calendar. They remind me how drawing alongside her for over three decades has again and again restored our hope of finding some joy in the next five, ten or fifteen minutes. The hope that drawing provides is coming in very handy right now as we live through this vaccine-less pandemic.

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but to me these pictures are worth a thousand pictures each. An entire year can be glanced in a solitary image: like that long stretch of time when Jenny’s leg was broken in a completely preventable fall. Thank goodness her hands weren’t hurt. She could still wield magic markers, whose bright, magical colors and pungent scents helped lessen her pain.

“My leg hurts, but the itching is worse,” she told me as we drew cats’ faces over the dense, white cast that stretched from her foot all the way up her thigh. She had injured her right leg during a fall from a rowing machine in a health club. The “trainer” had not remembered to fasten the seat belt, but left Jenny’s right foot tightly fastened to the binding in machine’s pedal; when she slid unattended from the seat and struck the floor, her bound leg twisted radically, resulting in what her orthopedist reassured us was “just a skier’s fracture.” But “just” to Jenny is not really any old just. The fracture healed fine, but the surrounding anatomy never quite restored.

I’m reminded how at night her swollen limb throbbed with blue pain - and that the little balance she had before, enabling her to stand up and pivot with our support, was gone. So we carried her.

One night as we drew more icons over the rock-hard plaster, she paused to say, “Joseph, did you know I am drawing-able? I am very, very able to draw. I can draw all day. I’m never afraid. I have zero paper fright.”

“So you have no ‘stage fright’ when you draw?,” I clarified.

“Zero!” she shot back. “It never hurts to draw, it’s never scary so don’t be scared, dad, ok?”

Ever since, I have tried to take her word for it. Not fearing how a picture might be seen or judged by others is a freedom few of us carry over from childhood.

“Jenny doesn’t draw for anyone’s sake but her own, does she?” an artist friend John asked me as they sat together at a tall window overlooking a row of massive trees outside our Bronx apartment.

She had been drawing at that sill for several hours, filling the pages of an old composition book that once belonged to her brother. Old sketchbooks, spiral notebooks or other semi-used booklets of paper held a special allure because they contained the appealing marks of people whose drawings she loved.

“What are you drawing?” John asked. “The birds, the squirrels?”

The animals were busy that afternoon, flying between branches which dropped red and yellow leafs

“I’m just drawing a picture, John,” she replied. “You want to make one?”

“I once just drew lots of pictures, too, Jenny. On the farm where we all grew up. I drew between my chores and homework.”

“You weren’t scared right?”

“Not a bit,” he replied, as he grabbed a pencil.

Picture-making’s reliability in shifting one’s vantage point is helpful when you’re perpetually sitting on the edge of your next fall. For eleven years she was besieged by seizures while transitioning into and out of sleep. I am reminded of those nights by her image of the hovering “seizure monster” who, she said, was like “crocodiles biting through her pillows.” They flew off with her voice. “I couldn’t speak when they came.” Examining her picture several years later, she told me “I’m glad that bitch is gone.”

Many of our hardest falls are lurking just around the corner, yet we don’t see them even as we’re heading towards them. Like that tree branch snaking beneath the cement sidewalk, opening up a crack that swallows the wheel of your wheelchair, sending you crashing. A collision with asphalt can mark up your porcelain face with alarming exclamation points. These shout out your extreme vulnerability to your neighbors when they see you in the lobby of the 14-story, red-brick high-rise you call home. 

“The colors hurt a lot more than my face does” she once confided, referring to the attention that comes with every bloom of these dreaded color palettes. The hues of purple, crimson, curry yellow, and cloudy grey can take weeks to fade. These are times to stay clear of windows and mirrors, because the reflections really do hurt. Whenever she got slammed she reflexively turned to picture-making, selecting and blending soothing colors and picturing a reassuring and perhaps more stable landscape.

All of this is to remind me how I am deeply grateful for these particular pictures made in her fierce sprint to recover herself from the calamitous fall she took when she was 16. These are the book of pictures I hid away for years. I just couldn’t bare to look at them. They were too potent, too illustrative of that most shattering fall that I should have seen coming. I felt guilty for having placed my paternal trust in that Godforsaken sleep away camp; a sailing camp stationed in a former nunnery in picturesque Newport, Rhode Island. It was there that she fell unnoticed through her REM cycle into the depths of the most severe sleep deprivation. A clueless trio of camp nurses were simply too untrained to see what had happened to her, even though she was unable to speak, sit, eat or  recognize her own parents. “Oh, she’ll be just fine,” the smiling nurse told us, having no idea that Jenny’s severe sleep loss had disorganized her brain so profoundly that she took a year to fully recover. She lingered in that place where unrecoverable sleep falls, alone and lonely, a lost soul in a song-less, picture-less limbo. She dwelled in that nowhere space from late August through late December.

It was a hellish period during which time I soon came tumbling down my own mental hill, like Jack following Jill. Which is why these images remain such vivid reminders of that night in late December as Jenny’s recovery began to take shape in this remarkable parade of pictures, which sprouted fruits, and birds, and rivers, and strange bits of self-portraiture, like that disembodied head rolling down August.

They are still dancing in my old datebook with the red ribbon place mark. Her quickly drawn bright plumes of birds feathers and her fast-falling orange peanut shell all poured forth one winter’s night and morning four months after her August fall. They flowed swiftly when just a few hours before she could barely lift a pencil. After so many painful days of passivity, depression, and sleep disturbed nights, they took form through her tired fingers onto the grey pinstriped pages of my old Lettes of London appointment book. And as she drew I knew as only a parent can know that our daughter was surely on her way back to her steadier self again.

I saw the sparkle return to her wan, brown eyes; and the red rouge come back to her pale cheeks. Should I ever forget what drawing can do for a human being  I will look at these pictures once again. 

When she first reached for the place-mark of that old appointment book, I was annoyed with her lingering illness and with myself for having held onto all these dozens of outdated appointment books - paper objects that had left me bound to the past, and clinging hopelessly to the idea that if I could just plan my days carefully enough that I might not be so fearful of the future. I had gritted my teeth as I began tossing the red- and black-covered journals into the trash. But when the red ribbon danced from the Lettes’ binding it lit Jenny up like a fuse. “Please give it to me, I want to draw in it,” she said as I handed the book over and helped her gather up her markers. 

She quickly began charting her way across the meridian of reminders cluttered with notes of my old appointments. Several hours later, she was still going strong, but I insisted that she stop and try to get some sleep. As sound sleep cycle was still eluding us. She nonetheless awoke early the next morning to continue drawing. 

“Look at all of these wonderful pictures you made. You draw so well,” I said as she moved her friction sticks swiftly over the pin-striped pages like a wind-filled sailboat cutting across Naragansett Bay.

“Well, dad, you know,” she replied, “Draw well, be well.”  She lifted her head to survey the colors of her many pens that lay before her, picked out several reds and oranges, and drew on fearlessly for hours. 

- Joe Gordon

[letalerp]

ＡＬＩＡＳ: AGENT 87 ＣＩＶＩＬＩＡＮ ＮＡＭＥ: HEPHZIBAH GORDON ＢＩＲＴＨＰＬＡＣＥ: LONDON, ENGLAND  Ｄ．Ｏ．Ｂ ／ ＡＧＥ: JANUARY 10TH, 1991 / TWENTY-SEVEN

❝ Learning the inner workings of everything is your calling. Technology, machinery, weapons — they’re a puzzle to you; a puzzle that you learned to solve so well and so quickly. School was a breeze to you; your brain better and faster than those around you, it didn’t take long for your parents to gloat that they had a child genius in their midst. Granted, only they liked that fact. The rest of your classmates were anything but kind to you. Nevertheless, that didn’t make you love your brain any less and although you made few friends, you had a special kind of independence. Fresh out of high school, there was no piece of equipment that was an unsolvable challenge to you. You spent more time with pieces of metal than you did with people and, to you, that was alright. However, the Agents around you seem to lack a reason to like you. But then again, they have no reason to dislike you either. You are a mystery and not everyone likes to solve those puzzles. ❞

ＳＰＥＣＩＡＬＩＴＹ: ENGINEERING

↳  Research, weaponry

ＧＥＮＤＥＲ: FEMALE (SHE/HER)

THIS CHARACTER IS CURRENTLY CLOSED AND IS PORTRAYED BY ZOE KRAVITZ.

Tell us a bit about your past. Do you have a family? Where did you grow up?

A deep breath was inhaled and Agent 87 remained eerily still; defiantly silent with deep eyes not even bothering to wander the room they’d been in several times for this annual line of questioning that was now suddenly so very important. A deep breath was inhaled, a chest rose sucking in and swallowing what was no doubt filtered and recycled air into blackening lungs that was just as soon let go as it was inhaled. Long fingertips restrained themselves from tapping along the edge of the table in impatient annoyance, like some no doubt would display, not showing any particular sign of life. Silent and terribly still they remained knowing if they made such a display of emotion the interviewer would scribble down each and every twitch to record it for evaluation purposes. This was unnecessary. The line of questioning superfluous and redundant the agent in question before 87 had every record, every possible piece of documentation on the being that sat silently in the chair before them. Yet it had been stressed in the wake of what had happened that such an unnecessary evaluation was needed. The mental state of Agent 87 had never needed to be put into question, emotions had no need to be checked, the social habits of such an unknowable creature never put into such scrutiny as they were up until now. With another breath, 87 challenged the agent before them watching muscles in their jaw tense and fingers curl around the pen a little more, thumb hovering just about the clicker waiting to transcribe the thoughts wandering in the mind of Hephzibah Gordon.

That was Agent 87’s name. Who she’d been and still very much was. When the majority of people were recruited into UMBRA they retained very little of their former selves. They changed; transmuted into something else entirely to remain faceless and nameless and fit the mold that was designed for them by the organization. Hephzibah however had presented them a significant challenge. Hephzibah hadn’t changed. Even still the strange creature that seemed most capable of whispering into the soul of any machine, capable of understanding the heart of it who was more at home covered in grease working on the underbelly of some massive beast of a machine or something much more delicate was an enigma. To an organization that officially did not exist and no one but those who needed to know about it knew of it in all its actuality she was still very much unknown; they were in the dark and yet Hephzibah seemed to exist in a deeper realm of shadows then the majority of people here. Yes, when they had recruited her they’d gathered every possible thing they could on the young woman who’d bested the minds of the brightest of their own engineers very little of who she actually was was common knowledge. Health records, birth certificate, academic records and the thousand or so awards and test scores she’d racked up were all there but yet they seemed to explain very little other then she was extraordinarily gifted beyond what was normal. Of course they had also had to have dug into her parents past and their records of mediocrity and tried to piece together the puzzle that was Ms. Gordon but even those attempts just barely scratched the surface.

Sensing an increasing level of annoyance in the movements of the agent before them, Hephzibah finally spoke. “We are ghosts as I recall the welcome message telling us. A ghost has no family, no place of origin or real existence. I’m from nowhere and I am nobody and yet I’m something entirely real.” Hephzibah answered shifting in her seat, crossing the legs of her dark denim jeans one over the other pushing the grease stained sleeves up on the arms of an equally dark shirt. On the table before them that separated the two layed a tight fitting leather jacket that smelled of motor oil and marlboro cigarettes that Hephzibah briefly glanced towards.

“Ms. Gordon- Agent 87…”

“I had a family once yes and a place I grew up but they are no longer of consequence.” Hephzibah said rather firmly yet without raising her voice above the tone she normally spoke in when being questioned. “Next question please, Senior Agent”

What were you doing in your life before UMBRA reached out to you?

Hephzibah reached towards the back of her neck, pushing past long faux locks that were laced to her head in the hairstyle she currently prefered. Her hair changed with her mood; changed at her whim. Mostly it stayed in long locks or even dreads of different colors wrapped up however she felt like putting them up with a metal clip she’d fashioned for herself as the only ornamentation. For the moment it was long and black without any sort of personalization hanging down her back in reverence for their fallen vice-director. Rubbing the muscles there at the back of her neck she strummed them, rolling her neck back and forth for a moment before answering the question. “Tinkering” She very simply stated and that was the terrible truth. She had a small crew of friends and ran with a crowd that greatly appreciated her skills in researching and weaponry but above all else engineering. Hephzibah’s dealings were not entirely legal but they were not entirely criminal either. “Working to advance my knowledge of most things.”

What was the worst phase in your life? And if you were able to change the past, would you?

The room had chilled and Hephzibah would’ve applauded them at such a master stroke if it was not her line of questioning, her evaluation. It had been proven through several tests that the slightest change in temperature in the room could unhinge, unnerve the person being questioned. Too cold or too hot and the subject was eager to answer any questions and tell you exactly what it was that you wished to hear. Yet as she felt this shift in temperature she knew their move and they’d shown their hand. Hepzibah was well aware of what was the worst phase in her life Agent 87 steeled themselves and took another deep breath as hands itched to return to metal; to their work that was of much greater importance than this. Her body down to the division of blood and bone and each sinuous muscle to another desired to be anywhere but in this room with this particular line of questioning eager to be done and over with this. Closing her dark hazel eyes, with another deep breath she found herself centered and yet reliving a memory she liked to repress. Children could be cruel; evil even as reflections of the generation that raised them in their limited views and closed minded ways that fought against everything that challenged their flawed logic. No doubt her experiences of bullying, of the cruelty of children made her what she was. That the words of Maya Angeleu inspired her, strong and unapologetic examples of the greatness in women encouraged her to embrace her spectacularness prints and wires and circuits became her world. Her past did not define her though. It help to shape her bones, build her frame from porcelain, to ivory into steel. It taught her. Taught her that her brain was beautiful and it was strong, just as strong as her body had the capability of being and the only one who could control how she felt or control anything about her was herself. Hephzibah was what she was by choice. No one could ever question or even remotely assume that Hephzibah wasn’t entirely Hephzibah at all times. She would not change it for the world because your past was part of you and it was your own personal choice to allow it to become you or to rise above and surpass former versions of yourself. That was the reason you either loved or hated the woman; why most agents kept her at arms length because still she was an entirely different and unfathomable being. “You change the past you change who you are. I’m meaner than my demons and I rise.”

Do you perceive your work here with us important? if so, explain why. if not, explain why.

Another moment of silence and Hephzibah nodded. She would not have accepted the invitation had she not believed they could have use of her skills or that she would prove to be an effective tool. No one twisted her arm, her test scores and an evaluation of her combat readiness was more than enough proof she would not easily be taken down. They allowed her access to unlimited amounts of research and parts letting her engineering skills flourish to an unprecedented level and from what she saw and knew of the shadows that lurked this was more than important. Umbra was the last bastion of defense and the first. “It’s beyond important. If anyone is willing to strip themselves of an identity and all that they were in order to train as we do and do what we do don’t you think it’s important that someone has sacrificed themselves to be a ghost?”

Is there anything that you believe we can do differently and why?

Hephzibah knew they would not like her answer if she spoke the full truth. Agent 87 didn’t particularly care for how thoroughly they monitored everything and more then enough security cameras in her room and her work space in general have ended up disabled or taken apart and added to projects or simply shot. She felt like a bug underneath a glass, examined and pulled apart and watched as if she was a threat. They wouldn’t change that so Hephzibah simply smiled and shook her head “Better food. Or at least someone who can make a proper Yorkshire pudding. They should be drawn and quartered for such an offense ” She teased darkly watching the interviewer scribble that down.

What is the one thing that you will never do, or at least, will refuse to do?

That was a question the agent had to consider. The room was still uncomfortable and every so often she adjusted in her chair and crossed and uncrossed her legs. A hand slipped into her pocket and the question played upon her mind. What would she refuse to do? In a moment of great reflection it was there like the smell of burning circuits and plastic. She could destroy a creation, kill terrible people without remorse and do several terrible things but there was a point she would draw the line. “Kill a child. That is where I draw the line”

Last but not least, who do you think killed the Vice-Director?

Hephzibah brushed a hand through her locks again and took a deep breath. Agent 87 had very few friends here and fewer still on the outside but she had thought fondly of the Vice Director. With that question she remained perfectly eerily still again with not a single muscle showing any sign of movement. Unreadable she was and then Hephzibah spoke again. “The Vice Director threw themselves in front of the Director - I would ask myself who stood to gain from the director’s demise and start the search there.” She answered firmly and cooly. Even as strange and unique as she was, as mysterious and puzzling to everyone as she was it was not her.

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic 78: Crash Dive! (1984)

Written by Joe Pranevich

For the era that we study, Brian Moriarty is one of the giants. He brought us three of Infocom’s classics, starting with Wishbringer, and jumped over to LucasArts to create Loom, one of my favorite adventure games of all time. Before we move on to Trinity (1986) and start the story of Infocom-under-Activision, I’d like to reverse course and fill in the final blank from his early career. In the early 1980s, Moriarty worked as a writer and eventual technical editor for Analog Computing magazine, celebrating the Atari personal computers that he loved. In that role, he wrote his first game, a tepid Adventure in the Fifth Dimension (1983) that failed to foreshadow the fantastic designer he would become. The following year, he penned Crash Dive!, his final Atari game before joining Infocom. Does that game show his potential? That’s what I would like to find out.

Inspiration can strike from just about anywhere, but Crash Dive! has perhaps one of the more unusual origin stories that I have ever heard. It starts with a failure: in 1982, Analog’s Jon Bell and Tom Hudson wanted to make a submarine action game. Bell and his team even toured two submarines (the Nimitz and Dace) for inspiration and historical accuracy. Cover art was commissioned, the game was announced, and even the back-of-box copy was written… but it evaporated into thin air. Despite the time and expense, it was never released. That would be the end of the Crash Dive! story, if it wasn’t for its “inspirational” cover art and a very special issue of Analog Computing.

Eye of newt, and toe of frog. For a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

In April 1984, Analog planned a special issue to highlight adventure gaming on the Atari. This was early days in our industry and their definition of an “adventure” doesn’t quite match up to our own, but they found joy in narrative games (including what we would call “RPGs”) as distinct from action games. To celebrate these adventures, the editorial staff commissioned reviews of many such games available for the Atari. According to Moriarty’s introductory note, so many reviews were planned and penned that they had to spill over into the next issue.

I do not want to get too sidetracked from our Crash Dive! story, but it’s worth a moment to consider just what Atari adventures were highlighted that April:

Ultima I had finally been ported to Atari, three years after it debuted for the Apple II. Reviewer Steve Panak called it “quite possibly one of the most addictive” role playing games ever made, although he disliked the space segment and found the ending disappointing. (Ultima was covered by our friend the CRPG Addict back in 2010.)

Skipping the direct sequel, Ultima III was reviewed by Cliff Chaput and he had a lot of nice things to say about the title screen and about the first fifteen minutes of gameplay. Although he describes the game as a “must-have”, he admits that his copy (and many of the copies shipped for Atari) doesn’t actually work due to a “glitch”. How he could so glowingly review a product that might not even be playable, I have no idea, but he liked the bits that he saw. (Ultima III was covered by the CRPG Addict only a few months after the previous game.)

Gruds… in… Spaaaaace! (Apple II version)

Gruds in Space is a graphical text adventure game by Sirius Software, but not one I had ever heard of. Patrick J. Kelley reviews it and I’ll let his words speak for themselves:

“This is the most detailed and animated graphics/text adventure that I’ve ever seen, and belies a lot of love in its creation. Blinking eyes, twinkling stars, flashing lights and leering monsters fill every frame with a real character, and the continuity of shape and color are truly amazing. This game sets a standard that many other so-called ‘graphic’ adventures fall far short of, both in concept and execution. In some cases, the animation is so well integrated that it becomes more than just an enhancement to the adventure, but a feature unto itself.”

Saigon: The Final Days was reviewed by Ray Berube and he seems to have hated its puzzle design and the overall execution of the game. He writes, “I can’t recommend Saigon. Invest a little more money and buy an Infocom adventure, or even one of the original Scott Adams titles. You’ll enjoy your investment rather than railing at your monitor.” Our own Will Moczarski seems to have enjoyed the game more than Ray did!

The Return of Heracles was reviewed by Michael Des Chenes and he enjoyed the game very much, although it hardly seems like either an adventure or an RPG. The CRPG Addict shares his enthusiasm for Stuart Smith titles and had a lot of fun with this so the review seems on point.

Planetfall was reviewed by Carl Firman and he waxes on so much about the extras and the setting that he doesn’t even remember to tell us how much he liked the game, although it appears that he liked it very much. I agree! I cannot believe that it’s been two years since my review. Time flies!

These six games hardly account for the state of adventure gaming in 1984, but it’s not a bad mix of styles and genres. Was there really only one Infocom release they could have looked at? Were there no Scott Adams games? Except for Gruds in Space, these are all titles that are somewhat well-known today, at least to people that read our site and sites like it. I’m half tempted to play the game just so we can complete the set!

Some time either during the development of this issue or just before, Moriarty stumbled onto the abandoned art that had been created for the unfinished 1982 Crash Dive! Maybe something clicked then, or maybe he already had submarines on the brain, but that bit of art inspired him to create his own submarine-based text adventure. To save money, he could even use the original title and artwork! Moriarty finished the game in time to be included as a type-in for Analog’s special adventure issue. He explained in his introductory note that most commercial adventures didn’t work on 16K Atari systems, and that we wrote this game to scratch that itch for those owners. (It required 32K to be typed in, but once loaded onto a disk it could be played on a 16K system.)

It was the captain, in the galley, with a butter knife?

Crash Dive! Is by far the largest feature in the issue, no doubt thanks to Moriarty’s role as technical editor. With four pages of documentation and eleven pages of tiny-print source code, I’m glad that we don’t have to type it all in anymore! The documentation includes a half-page image containing the “feelies” for the game, although we’re not supposed to peek at them yet.

The story is well-done over all: we are a maintenance worker stationed on the USS Sea Moss, an experimental submarine in the middle of the cold war. It’s tough to remember that in 1984, the Cold War wasn’t just a genre, it was a lived-in reality. The sub is armed with nuclear missiles and has an advanced cloaking system which renders it invisible to the enemy. All of our greatest foes want to get their hands on the technologies in this sub. While we are doing some routine repairs, the unthinkable happens: sabotage! Everyone else on the ship has been killed by poison gas but we survived thanks to being in an air-tight torpedo tube. Our mission will be to find and defeat whomever killed the crew and keep the submarine from being captured. The manual provides a clue that we will need to get it underwater as soon as possible and that the only solution may be to destroy this priceless technology to keep it out of enemy hands.

Playing the Game

This style of start screen was reused by several Analog Computing games, but I am unsure which is the first.

An interface so cluttered that it is easy to forget that there isn’t much text.

The game opens with us in the “escape tube” that we were repairing when all hell broke loose. The hatch is closed, so I open it. Big mistake! Poison gas fills the room and I’m dead already. We have to start over. Nothing says “fun” like an adventure where you can die in the first move! It doesn’t take me long to realize that the solution (in Adventure International fashion) is just to “hold breath”. That lets you leave the tube and explore.

This game has a punishing start. You can only hold your breath for five turns. That gives you barely enough time to do anything so I save and commit myself to fast exploration-dashes and restoring when I die. For simplicity, I’ll just summarize what I found. The submarine is longer than it is wide with a hallway leading north-south and rooms off to either side. It is arranged on two floors and the room that we start in after emerging from the hatch has stairs down.

We find on the current level:

To the north of our starting position is an access tunnel with a sign warning of radiation. Heading farther north kills you immediately.

West is a locked door with a “very secure” lock.

Further south is a long corridor. Off that corridor to the west is a radio room (with a pair of cable cutters) and to the east is the sonar room. We can activate the sonar to discover that there are enemy ships approaching.

At the end of the corridor is the “command station” with a periscope. Looking through the scope, we can see those same enemies. To the west is a ballast room; we can press a button to make the sub descend and then watch a gauge to see how deep we go. To the east is the navigation room containing a manual and a readout of our current position in X/Y coordinates. I discover in my frequent restarts that the numbers change each game.

Not tremendously easy to read without the original issue.

The submarine manual instructs us to look at the photo in Analog #18. That is easier said than done because while I do have the PDF, it’s not completely clear and I wish I would have been able to find (and afford) the original issue. Nonetheless, we learn that the X and Y coordinates are scrambled through some magic so that they will not relate in any way to real-world latitude and longitude. It also warns that the values are recalculated every several seconds except when the sub is at rest. The remainder of the page describes targeting the sub’s weapons (using the same “simplified” coordinate system) and arming the warhead by radio. We’ll need to find a “Delta-Q Coordinate Decoding Ring” to be able to aim the missiles at the enemy.

Keep in mind that is already twenty or more reloads! With no breathable air in sight, I explore downstairs:

Below the command room is the missile bay. An airlock to the south requires an ID card.

West of the missile bay is the fan room. A traitor who “looks dangerous” there, holding a gun. Doing anything to try to hurt him just gets me shot. How is he breathing?

East of the bay is an equipment room with a radiation suit. I do not have enough breath to pick it up and get it back to the room with the radiation.

The north end is the crew quarters where I find a “card” on the floor. I am excited that it might be the ID card that I need, except that it is a playing card, the ace of spades.

West is a shower and ventilation grate. I try to unscrew it with the screwdriver, but my screwdriver is the wrong size! I also pick up some shampoo.

East of the crew area is a galley with a dull knife. I try to take that to the shower grate, but there’s not enough time.

In the far north is a torpedo room with a wrench. More importantly, there’s a weapons locker to the east containing a gas mask. I can breathe again!

In little 5-turn increments, I explored most of the sub and only found a gas mask in the last possible room. What was the odds of that? With the mask on (just picking it up is sufficient; “wear”-ing it just tells you that you are already holding it), I can explore the rest of the game and start smashing the puzzles. Except, I’m a liar because I only have around 10-15 more turns before the enemy ships (that I saw on the scanner and periscope) catch up to us. I am trading one time limit for another, but at least I have wiggle room. What can we do in 10 turns?

My first puzzle is the grate in the shower room. I theorized before that I could use the dull knife, but I could not get there before I ran out of breath. This time when I use “unscrew grate”, the game knows that I intended to use the knife and it opens! I can crawl south into a ventilation duct and see an opening down into the fan room. Obviously, this has something to do with the traitor who has parked himself there, but I don’t see anything I can do yet. I end up restoring when the enemy captures the sub and I’ll have to come back to this puzzle later. As an aside, the “traitor” has to be a “him”, even though the game doesn’t say so. The US Navy did not allow women to serve on subs until 2011, as sad as that statement sounds today.

My next trick is to check out the radiation area. I grab the radiation suit from the equipment bay and head back upstairs. The radiation-filled room is used by the sonar. There is a “bolted-down” sonar system as well as a power cable here. I spend more time than I care to admit trying to find the right verb to unscrew the bolt, but I fail anyway because they are rusty and too tight. We haven’t found any oil, but the shampoo might be slippery enough. I try it and the bolts come loose! I don’t get to do anything else because I run out of time again.

Oh, duh. I am on a submarine! I restore and head to the ballast room. I set the ship to dive. A few turns later we have a “bang!” when we hit the bottom of wherever we are, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Where was I? The sonar system! I do that all over again and notice that while the system is clearly labeled “radioactive”, I cannot pick it up because the power cable is stuck. I use the cable cutters from the radio room and solve that problem easily. Now what? I take my radioactive prize to the ducts by the shower and drop it down into the fan room below. When I run down to investigate, I discover that he died of radiation poisoning! I pick up his gun, but what I am supposed to do next?

Let’s take stock of what puzzles remain:

Two locked doors, one near the beginning of the game and an airlock to the south that requires an access card.

Some enemies are chasing us and could have depth charges. Can I blow them up with our super advanced missile systems?

The “escape tube” that I started in seems the best avenue for leaving the sub, but I don’t see how to do that yet.

Of these, the most promising is the locked door at the start. I didn’t find a key, but I discover that I can shoot the lock! That door leads to the captain’s quarters. He’s dead, but he didn’t die of the poison gas. Instead, he left a suicide note:

Suicide is painless? Maybe only in the Korean War.

There’s a nice little detail on this note, placing the submarine as SSCN-718. These are US Navy hull classification numbers and a good sign that Moriarty and the Analog team researched for the game. There is no SSCN classification in real life, but the designation would likely indicate that this is a coastal-waters submarine (the SSC) classification with nuclear weapons (the trailing N). I also like that the captain’s name is Captain R. D. Avatar. This game predates Ultima IV and Moriarty was probably thinking of the more generic “avatar” rather than the Ultima variety.

Searching his body, I uncover his ID card which opens up the airlock to the south. That leads us to a missile bay in two sections: the lower section contains a locked arming switch, while the upper bay contains a digital display. That display also has X and Y coordinates, although they are different than the ones in the navigation room. Pushing buttons nearby adjusts the coordinates. I do not have a way to get the coordinates of our enemy; the sonar system didn’t give those to me even prior to when I dropped it on a murderer’s head. Am I supposed to use the coordinates of our own ship? That sounds vaguely like suicide. Since those are the only coordinates that I have seen in the game so far, I set the missiles to those. It takes a long while since the numbers only increment by eight for each button press.

Now, I need to find the key to unlock the firing mechanism… but I cannot find it anywhere. I eventually take a hint which tells me that I need to look at the radiation suit again after wearing it. Some idiot left the firing key in the suit! I do my thing and the firing mechanism is activated. There’s one more button in missile control to push and… boom?

Fade to white.

There’s no text that explains what happened, at least none that I can see before the screen clears, but we don’t need to have it spelled out: we nuked ourselves. Worse, that is apparently the correct answer because we kept the sub and all of its technologies out of enemy hands. Yay? This is the “win” screen so I’ll just end the game right here. I suppose it’s a better “you die!” ending than Infidel.

Time Played: 1 hr 45 min

Final Rating

That was a fun little game, although we must emphasize “little”. Type-in games can never be tremendously large and Moriarty did a good job with narrative efficiency. Let’s see how that comes out in our PISSED rating system:

Puzzles and Solvability – The game’s central mechanic for at least the first half is to die frequently and try again. Needing to discover the gas mask within five turns, then realize that you need to dive (which itself is not difficult) in ten to fifteen more, takes up most of the game’s thought-space. After that, we have a few clever things like dropping the radioactive sonar thing on the traitor and nuking ourselves to keep the sub out of enemy hands. I needed to take one hint. I almost want to bump it up one point, but my first instinct is that this is only worth two points. My score: 2.

Interface and Inventory – The interface is boxy and takes up a lot of space, which is good because otherwise we’re realize just how little text is in this game. Other games used the “windowed” approach for an interface by 1984, but I see little value in having an always-visible inventory and other features. The parser itself wasn’t great but it worked well enough with two-word commands only and no intelligence for the noun selection. You had to “push green” instead of “push button”, for example, because the game isn’t smart enough to know if there is only one button in the room. My score: 2.

Story and Setting – This score is likely going to be the best of the game. The story and feelies are great! The captain’s suicide is relatively unexplained, as is the traitor’s motivations and identity, but the overall idea of a submarine so secret that it has to be kept out of enemy hands at all costs is a good one, especially in 1984. The space was also designed well and the small number of rooms added to a feeling of claustrophobia which benefited the setting. My score: 4.

Final map of the game with only 22 rooms.

Sound and Graphics – I almost want to give points here because of the screen design and the use of the “feelies” to augment the object descriptions, but I really cannot. We have never given points in this category just because a game has a nice manual and I won’t start now. My score: 0.

Environment and Atmosphere – While I did not enjoy the timers for their puzzle-factor, the constant racing to beat the clock made the game tense. The small size of the ship and even the “bang” as we strike the bottom of whatever shallow waters we are exploring help sell the claustrophobia of the situation. Even with the limited text, Moriarty writes well enough for some kudos. My score: 3.

Dialog and Acting – Alas, the game is limited when it comes to game text and occasionally it’s not even clear what you are doing. The game also cuts to white for the ending so quickly that you only realize in retrospect what just happened. My score: 1.

Adding up the scores: (2+2+4+0+3+1)/.6 = 20!

This isn’t a huge score, but higher than Fifth Dimension’s 13. That is understandable given the challenges of writing a type-in, but I suspect there was something else involved. Both of Moriarty’s games for Analog were as much “challenge exercises” for him as they were games. Moriarty first challenged himself to create a BASIC game that worked even on the smallest systems. He then forced himself to re-use a name and cover art from an abandoned project. Even Wishbringer was a challenge to craft a story into an existing universe and that turned out amazingly well. Maybe Moriarty was just the type of guy that thrived under adversity, but I cannot help but think that he could have made even better games if he had fewer strings attached. Is that what we will find with Trinity?

With the last of his pre-Infocom games out of the way, we’ll be looking at Trinity next, probably at the beginning of January. I am playing a stubborn Christmas game right now and have a deadline coming… See you soon!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-78-crash-dive-1984/