#so that's davey to me. he has become so used to his entire Purpose just being 'help and be useful' that he just...

[loving-jack-kelly]

Like Real People Do

The path was hidden. Barely visible. It was rarely used. Almost never, in fact, leaving the path faint.

The entrance was marked by a stone, perfectly round and covered in moss that was just slightly too bright green to be entirely natural.

It was always talked about in hushed whispers. Whispered warnings told to friends who wandered too far off the road.

If you wander, the whispers said, the path will appear. And once you take the path, you can’t step off of it until you’ve given it what it wants.

What it wants, nobody knows. Names, some said. Lives, souls, wishes, hopes, dreams, money, goods, anything you have. It wants.

But some whispers didn’t stop there. Some whispers kept going, some whispers dropped even quieter, hard to hear over crackling fires, hidden in the dancing shadows cast by candles. Some whispers went past the warnings and delivered the promises.

The promise that the path, if sought, not stumbled upon, could give up what you needed in return for what it wanted.

The path was dangerous if you wandered onto it by mistake. Keep your eyes on the road, watch for the round, mossy stone and the faint trail, and avoid them.

Perhaps, the promises said, the path was even more dangerous when sought. Perhaps there’s nothing more dangerous than seeking your wishes and being willing to give yourself up for them. But perhaps, for some things, it would be worth it. Perhaps, for some wishes, having no name would be worth it. Perhaps, for some dreams, fewer years would be worth it. Perhaps, to some, the most dangerous few, perhaps vengeance would be worth never leaving the path at all.

David had heard all of it before. It was cookfire gossip, stories of old relatives told to young children to scare them into staying on the well-traveled road and staying off the hunting paths. That was all. About a half-hour outside their little village there was a decent-sized rock that marked an old deer trail, and that was what kids pointed to to tell the stories. They dared each other to step onto the faintly-there trail, and nobody ever went through with it.

Because maybe they all claimed they didn’t believe the stories, but was it worth it, really? To risk it? To risk everything to test a story?

There was another stone. Further along the road, and smaller. Almost hidden in the undergrowth, but almost perfectly round, and covered in moss so green it almost seemed to glow. And just beyond it was a path so faint it was almost invisible, little more than a simple break in the trees. Too natural to be a hunting path, and almost too narrow to have been made by an animal.

That was the stone and the path David was staring at.

Was it worth it? Was it worth the risk of this being the real path? Was it worth giving up a piece of himself?

Yes.

It wasn’t as hard of a choice as it should have been.

David stepped onto the path.

It didn’t feel any different than the rest of the forest. It felt like what it looked like, a barely used rough path through the trees. He followed it, feeling the underbrush catch at his pants, the dead leaves and dry twigs crunch under his boots.

He was hyperaware of everything around him. He wasn’t even sure what he was expecting, but he kept waiting for the path to shift. To change. To become whatever it was that could grant his wish.

It didn’t.

The path ended against a boulder. It wasn’t a clearing, just a big boulder with the trees and brush growing up right against it.

David sat down with his back against the boulder. The path he’d followed hadn’t disappeared. It was still there, he could follow it back to where he came from.

Maybe this was the wrong path. Maybe there was another somewhere, hidden even better.

Or maybe he’d been stupid to believe the stories, even for a second. Even out of desperation. Maybe he’d just wasted his afternoon following a path to nowhere.

“Been a while since anybody’s been down here.” A voice came from somewhere above and behind him, startling him out of his moping. “You here on purpose?”

David stood up and turned around.

A man who looked like he was several years older than him was sitting on top of the boulder. David didn’t know him, had never seen him before, and hadn’t heard him approach or climb up the boulder. He was just…there.

“Must be, if you sat down. When people end up here on accident, they’re freaking out by now. Cursing the name of someone or other, whoever told ‘em to follow the path.”

He was grinning at David, a bright, disarming smile. Something about him just seemed…strange. Maybe it was his eyes, the same bright, bright green of the moss on the round stone. They didn’t seem to match the rest of him. He had dark hair, dark skin, his clothes were muted natural colors, and his eyes were so bright they seemed to glow.

“Nice to have somebody come visit who isn’t kicking and screaming. Guess that probably means you want something, though, huh? Nobody’s ever here just to visit. I wasn’t, the first time. Just got lost in the woods, picked the wrong place to wander.”

He was sitting cross-legged on top of the boulder, and as he spoke, he rested his elbow on his knee and his face on his hand, still grinning.

“Cat got your tongue? I don’t bite. Unless you try to trick me, then I do. It’s in the contract. Clause eight. If trickery is attempted, bite them. Hard. Draw blood. I’m paraphrasing, of course, no need to look so scared. I just have to trick back. You won’t try to trick me, will you? You gotta say something, here, I won’t be able to help if you don’t tell me what you want.”

“You’re…”

“I’m a wish-granter, a man of the path, a soul stealer. A life taker. I’ve been called many things. I guess you could call me Jack.”

“Jack.”

“That’s what everyone called me, once. A long time ago. Nobody has asked in a long time.”

“This is the wish-path, then.”

“That’s one name it’s been given.”

“What do you call it?”

“Home.” Jack’s smile widened, and David pinpointed another slightly unnerving feature. His teeth were ever so slightly pointed, just a bit sharper than a human’s. “And what do you want with it? Nobody comes here on purpose without a wish in mind.”

There was a glint of something in his eyes, David decided. He was speaking charmingly enough and seemed friendly enough, but he was dangerous. Maybe he’d been kidding less than he’d seemed when he’d said he would bite back.

But he was right. David had come here for a reason, and he did have a wish, and he was going to make it.

“I wish that my father was healed.”

“Oh?”

“He got hurt. Two weeks ago. He can’t work, and without him working our family doesn’t have enough. My little brother and I have to work, instead.”

“And you don’t want to work?”

“I don’t mind, but Les is only ten. He shouldn’t have to be working yet. He should be in school. Playing with his friends.”

“You know, making a wish is a dangerous thing. Answers come with a price.”

“I know.”

Jack’s bright green eyes seemed to look right through David like he could see his every thought and his true intentions and was analyzing them closely to see if he was worthy of the wish.

“And you’re willing to pay the price?”

“If I can.”

“I never charge an impossible fare. That’s also in the contract, clause two.” Jack smiled again. It was unsettling, how close he was to human with just the details slightly off. Human but a bit to the left.

“What would the price be?”

“Your wish is simply to heal your father?”

“Yes.”

“Your name.” Jack’s eyes flashed a deeper green, and David wasn’t sure if it was the light or if they’d actually changed colors.

“My…name?”

“I can heal your father if you give me your name.”

David knew those stories well. It seemed like such a simple request. Give Jack his name, just say the word, and his father would be healed. Only that’s not what Jack was asking, not in the way any normal person asked for David to give his name. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t “what is your name?”

It was a price. If Jack told David to give him his name and David responded, then his name wasn’t his anymore. It was Jack’s.

Was it worth it?

David thought about why he was here. About the expression on Les’s face when he had to go to work instead of to school, about how Les was too tired to play with his friends. Was it worth giving up his name for his little brother?

Yes. It didn’t take long to decide. Of course it was worth it. His family was worth anything.

“Okay.”

“In exchange for healing your father, give me your name.”

“David.”

In a flash of a moment, he could feel the difference. It wasn’t his identity that was gone. He knew who he was, where he came from, who his family was. Why he was here. He could remember that a moment ago, he’d had a name, and that it was David. But he could feel that it wasn’t his name anymore. He didn’t have a name. He was himself, but there was no name to attach to that.

Jack’s eyes glowed. This time he knew it wasn’t a trick of the light, light came from Jack’s eyes.

“That’s a nice name. Strong.” Jack looked down at him from his seat on top of the boulder. “Your father is healed.”

“Thank you.”

Jack hummed thoughtfully and slid down to the ground. Almost floated, really, very gently and gracefully. Jack was shorter than him by a few inches, and once he was close his energy was almost palpable, like the feeling before a lightning strike. Jack paused, looking into his eyes, and too late, he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to say thank you. After a long moment, Jack smiled, a much softer smile than the one he’d displayed before.

“You’re honest. You have a good heart. Take a gift from me. I give you a name, not as strong as the one you gave me, but a good one anyway. Davey. And I give you a promise, that nobody will ask to take it away.”

As soon as he said it, the void left by giving up his name was filled, and he knew that he was Davey.

A gift from Jack. Not a filled wish, not a trade, but a gift. Maybe that was even more dangerous, maybe it left a debt unfilled, but that was a powerful gift. A name that nobody would take away.

Jack reached out and touched the tip of his finger to Davey’s nose, and another space was filled, this time one he hadn’t even known existed until it was gone. His name was secure, now, immovable. The second part of Jack’s gift.

“Use it well.” Jack’s eyes flashed again, and when Davey blinked, he was back on the road, staring at the stone that marked the wish-path.

Wish-magic was a dangerous thing. Davey knew that. He’d known that before he sought the wish-path and he’d known that while he was making his wish and he knew that as he made his way home, a new name in his being and a gifted protection burning at the tip of his nose.

He could feel it, where Jack had touched him. The imprint of Jack’s finger, right at the tip of his nose, where the magic flowed around him and protected his name.

Wish-magic was dangerous, and gifts from wish-granters were dangerous, but when Davey got home and the village all knew him as Davey even if there was a little bit of confusion like they knew it had changed, and his father was out of bed, still weak but no longer in pain, it didn’t matter how dangerous the magic was.

He was home. He had a name, and a promise that he would always keep it. His family was safe and cared for. That was what mattered.

In the months and eventually years that followed, Davey was almost able to forget Jack, the man with the bright green eyes who’d granted his wish and given him a gift.

Twice, the tip of his nose burned like it had right after Jack had touched it. Once, when an old woman in the center of the village, passing through selling her wares, asked his name. He gave it, without thinking, and when his nose burned, he noticed her face fall.

And again, walking on the road and passing by a stranger going the opposite way. As soon as Davey looked at him, his nose was burning, and he knew better than to take a second look.

On those occasions, Davey was forced to remember his trip to the wish-path because it was clear the gifted promise was still in effect. When he passed the stone that marked the path, covered in its otherworldly green moss, he remembered. And sometimes, when he wanted something so bad it hurt, he remembered.

But most of the time, he didn’t think about it. The things he wanted were things he could get himself or go without, and he wasn’t stupid enough to think that he’d get off so easy on a second venture to the wish-path.

So while he occasionally thought of the wish-path and of Jack the wish granter, he didn’t really seriously consider going back.

Until, that is, he was told that he was to be married.

He knew that his parents wanted what was best for him and what was best for their family, but he also knew that he would never be happy married to the woman they’d chosen. Mostly because, well, she was a woman. And he didn’t want to marry a woman.

He knew they didn’t understand why it upset him so much when they told him, and he didn’t know where he was going when he left, but somehow he wasn’t surprised when he found himself standing in front of the moss-covered stone.

When he started walking down the path, his nose burned. The closer he thought he was to the end, the stronger the feeling got. It wasn’t painful, but it was very present.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a repeat visitor before.”

Jack’s voice hadn’t changed at all in the three years since Davey’s last visit. When Davey looked up and saw him, again perched on top of the boulder at the end of the path, his face hadn’t changed either. The same bright green eyes framed by dark, dramatic curls. The same muted clothes. He hadn’t changed at all.

By looks, Davey had caught up to his age.

“How are you, Davey?”

That question surprised him. He couldn’t think of any way it could be twisted around. He wasn’t be asked for anything, just a simple question.

“I suppose that’s a silly question, actually. Why would you be here if you were good? Your gift is serving you well, though. I can feel it working now, and I’m not even trying to trick you. I must have made it more powerful than I meant to.”

Jack’s eyes sparkled, and Davey was sure it was with humor.

He had a feeling Jack didn’t do much on accident.

“Do you have another wish?”

“I wish that I didn’t have to marry her.”

Jack tilted his head, and for a second time Davey felt like he was reading every detail of Davey’s mind, thoughts and motivations and desires.

“Strange,” he said after a long moment. “That’s a selfish wish, and yet you still aren’t selfish.”

“What?”

“People have made that wish before. It’s almost out of nothing more than selfishness. Because she’s too ugly, or he isn’t rich enough, not out of consideration for anything. You don’t want to marry her because it will make you unhappy, but also because you know it wouldn’t be fair to her. I’ve never seen that before.”

“Doesn’t everyone deserve to be happy? Is it selfish to want that?”

“It’s selfish to want your own happiness even if it means the unhappiness of others. I don’t think it’s selfish to want something for your own happiness when what you want will also make somebody else happy.”

Jack slid down to the ground, again with the otherworldly grace Davey had seen the last time he was here.

“Selfishness is addressed in the contract. Clause four. If a wish is made for selfish gain, it may only be granted at the highest cost. Even though I don’t think your wish is selfish, it’s a powerful wish. Much more powerful than simple healing. I can grant it, though.”

“What’s the cost?”

“Give me your time.” Jack extended his hand, his eyes glowing like they had when he’d healed Davey’s father.

Davey hesitated, but he took Jack’s hand. It was warm, and Davey could feel energy coursing through the connection, like the burning at the tip of his nose but more comfortable and powerful. After what only felt like a few seconds, Jack let go.

Davey felt dizzy. Something had happened, he could tell, but he wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

“A powerful wish. A powerful price. I hope it was worth it.”

“What did I give you?”

“A year of your time.” Jack tilted his head, studying Davey’s reaction. “She’s married. Happy. There’ll be a kid in a few months.”

“You mean it’s been a year since I came here?”

“I told you. A high price for a powerful wish.”

“What will my family think?”

Jack shrugged.

“They know you’re safe. They probably know you found a path, people are smart about these things. I’m sure they’ll be glad to see you.”

“I…I have to go.”

“Of course.” Jack’s eyes flashed again, and he gave Davey a small smile. “Hey!” He called when Davey started to walk back down the path.

“What?”

“You don’t have to have a wish to visit. Come back any time.”

“You…you want me to just come to visit?”

“Gets pretty lonely here. People don’t come very often. It’d be nice to have a friend.”

Davey’s family was glad to see him. His parents had tears in their eyes when they hugged him, and Sarah and Les did too. The people in their little village looked at him differently. He’d been gone for a year, of course they did.

He didn’t tell his parents, or his siblings, or anyone that his missing year had been a wish. Of course he didn’t, that would require explaining too many things. He told them he’d gotten lost. Took a wrong path while not paying attention, and when he’d found his way back, it had been a year. Just like that. A year passed in the blink of an eye.

And that was what happened. Technically. Just with a little extra intention behind it.

For a while, things were wonderful. Even though it hadn’t felt long for him at all, and he hadn’t aged that year he’d given to Jack, for his family it had been a long time that he’d been away from home. They were happy to have him around, happy that he was safe and home and with them again.

Every once in awhile, Davey found himself wandering down Jack’s path, spending an afternoon just talking to him.

There weren’t many people his age in the village. And he knew, obviously, that Jack wasn’t his age either. Jack was something old and powerful, not even human. But he had a face that seemed to be Davey’s age, and when he wasn’t talking in riddles or saying things just outside of Davey’s realm of understanding, he sounded like he was Davey’s age, too. In fact, he was easy to talk to.

Friendship with somebody like Jack was probably even more dangerous than wish-magic, but he was easy to be friends with. Easy to talk to. Even if the tip of Davey’s nose burned whenever he was there, it was easy to feel comfortable at the end of the path at the moss-covered boulder.

Jack asked questions about life. He’d been human once, Davey learned, a long time ago, before he signed the contract he kept referencing. He wanted to know how much had changed since then. The answer seemed to be not much.

Davey sometimes was brave enough to ask questions back. He learned that Jack was bound to his path, that he could walk from the top of the boulder to the smaller stone that marked the entrance, and no further. He learned that there were limits to Jack’s power, but not many. Jack could raise a person from the dead. He couldn’t force somebody to fall in love. He couldn’t change a person’s nature, make a bad person good or a good person bad.

It took a lot of visits before Davey asked why Jack had signed the contract.

It was clear that he was lonely. He missed being a human, having friends. He wanted to grow up.

“I found this path on accident and made a very, very powerful wish,” Jack said simply. “Signing the contract was the price I paid.”

“What was your wish?” Davey asked.

Jack’s eyes, which changed shades with his mood, darkened to the deepest green Davey had ever seen in them.

“Justice. Something the world rarely offers, which makes it a very costly wish.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Yes.” Jack didn’t hesitate. “Justice served more than me. It was a bigger cause than my life was worth. And one day somebody will come along and sign their name under mine, and I’ll be able to walk away.”

“That’s how it works? A trade?”

“Of sorts.”

For a while, that was wonderful. Davey was happy at home, and happy to continue his friendship with Jack. Happy to continue his relationship with Jack.

If wish-magic was dangerous and being friends with a wish-granter was dangerous, surely falling in love with one was deadly. But could Davey help it? When Jack was interesting and kind and always willing to listen, and always had something to say. Maybe for the same reason he’d been drawn to Jack as a friend, that there weren’t many boys his own age in the village, Davey couldn’t help it.

When his parents began to urge him to find a wife again, that only intensified it, because the way he felt when he was around Jack, leaned back against the boulder in a conversation he was actively enjoying…that kind of feeling never came from anybody else, least of all the girls his parents were pushing him towards.

It was that realization that took him down Jack’s path again, with a wish in his heart.

Whenever Davey came, Jack asked.

“Do you have a wish?”

Normally, Davey told him no.

“I do.”

“Really?”

“I wish that everyone would understand.”

Just like Davey hadn’t had to explain who he hadn’t wanted to marry, he knew he didn’t have to explain what he meant. Jack understood.

“That’s a selfish wish.”

“I know.”

“Clause four. I have to charge a high price.”

“I know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Jack looked into Davey’s eyes, reading him.

“Give me your breath,” he finally said.

His breath.

That was a high price.

Before he could change his mind, he nodded.

Jack’s eyes flashed.

And then he kissed Davey.

It took his breath away.

When Jack pulled back, he was laughing.

“There’s more than one way to steal a person’s breath.”

“That seems like a cheat.”

“Isn’t that my job? To trick? I tricked you. I tricked the contract.”

Davey was also laughing when Jack kissed him again.

The summer sun streamed through the trees, the boulder was solid behind his back, and Jack stole his breath until the light was gold and he had to leave.

And when he got home, everyone understood.

It was a strange thing, long after Davey’s third wish had come true and everyone understood and nobody was trying to push him into a relationship. Long after he’d started to find excuses to spend sun-drunk afternoons with Jack, somehow easily falling into a relationship that should have felt impossible.

A man walked down the road into the village.

He looked familiar, Davey thought. Dark curls framing a dark face, worn in clothes that almost faded into the forest behind him. Eyes so dark brown they were almost black. He was pretty. He walked with a slight limp like there was a stone in his shoe.

Davey didn’t recognize him at first, not until he was much closer.

“Jack?”

“Hello.”

Davey’s nose wasn’t burning the way it always did when he visited Jack’s path. Jack’s eyes weren’t green, they didn’t shift when he smiled. But it was Jack. Unmistakably Jack.

“You left the path?”

“Somebody made a wish,” Jack said, sitting down next to Davey on the step to his house. “A selfish, powerful wish.”

“Oh?”

“There is nothing more selfish or more powerful than wishing to live forever. To leave behind everyone and everything, to cause your loved ones pain, and to disrupt the way of the world.”

“Somebody signed the contract.”

“And now he’ll live forever, and I can live my life.” Jack smiled again, and Davey decided that his brown eyes suited him much better than the green.

“I have one more wish, then.”

“I don’t know if I can grant it.”

“You can.”

“Oh?”

“I wish that you would stay. Here. With me.”

“That might be the most expensive wish from you yet.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Give me your life.” Jack opened his hand, palm up, and extended it to Davey. Resting on his palm was a ring, made out of something as green as Jack’s eyes had been. As green as the moss on the stone that marked the wish-path.

“Okay.” Davey took the ring and slid it on his finger. It fit perfectly. Of course it did, Jack seemed to know everything he wanted to.

Out of all of the prices he’d paid for his wishes, this was perhaps the easiest to pay. Hadn’t he already started to make the decision anyway?

Jack’s smile widened, and he twined their fingers together, staring at the bright green ring against Davey’s skin.

Davey realized that this was the first time he’d seen Jack smile without anything else behind it. Nothing but happiness.

And that meant that Davey’s wish wasn’t selfish. Jack had decided that before, that a wish wasn’t selfish as long as it was to make more than one person happy.

Maybe this was the most worthwhile wish yet, even if magic hadn’t been needed to accomplish it.

[finn-ray-nal-beads]

Ok, but tell me about the first night with your three AU assholes. How do they hit on you? Do they have a pick up line? How do they convince you that they’re the shit? Then, how do they keep you coming back for more?

@safarigirlsp , OF COURSE, YOU COME IN WITH THIS HOT ASS GARBAGE RN AND I LOVE EVERY BIT OF IT BITCH!

OUR FIRST NIGHT WITH CAPTAIN BLOWHOLE AND HIS BAND OF BUCCANEERS: 

of course, finds our slutty asses at some backwoods brothel, and our tits are hiked up to high heaven and we look like we’re askin’ for a good time from anyone we can get our hands-on. He’s not as forward as you’d think he would be, staring us down with his iron-clad gaze from across the bar, taking our movements as our tits struggle in that corset he so badly wants to tear off us in front of God and everyone watching. He finally gets the courage after the 6th man has been turned down by you and their advances, gulps down his liquid courage, adjusts his cap, and stands to his full height to waltz over to you. 

“Hey there sailor,” you notice out of the corner of your eye, “lookin’ for a good time?” 

“Depends on what you can offer lil’ lady,” he smirks at your forwardness. 

“What I can offer huh?” you chuckle at the thought, “last time I checked, you were the one who approached me, sir. So, I should be asking you what your plans are with a lil’ fragile thing like myself.” 

He smacked his lips together, bringing a hand to your synched waist and lowering his face to your ear, “careful there honey, you know you’re speaking to a captain.” 

You shudder at the deep richness in his tone, but gathered yourself to comment back, “you’re not the first captain to storm my shores. What makes you so damn special?” 

He lifted his head to loom over you like a child being scolded by their parents, bringing his hand up to your throat, clasping the delicate skin just enough to make you moan out, “oh little whore,” he marveled at your mewls, “once I’ve run aground through you, you’ll never want your lil’ hole pillaged by any other sailor. Swear to Davey Jones himself,” letting the grip go as you gasped, clutching your tits as if he’d already ravished you. 

“What do ya say, lil’ lady... you wanna right my main mast or settle for deck swabbers the rest of your miserable life?” extending a hand out waiting for yours to land in it. 

Of course, you’d take it and never look back. And of course, he had the biggest and best dick on the entire ocean to which you begged for every second of the day and he gave you on cue whenever you damn well wanted it. 

NOW ONTO OUR FIRST NIGHT WITH THIS IS SPARTA AND HIS SEXY ASS BULLSHIT: 

Since this is ancient Roman times, our first night together was our wedding night. You and he were betrothed by your parents and offered to the most powerful warrior in the village as a prize. You weren’t courted by him due to the fact that he was busy fighting in wars as well as he really didn’t have to win your ass over for any reason. You were his no matter what and your purpose to him was merely a vessel for his seed. 

But when he caught a glimpse of the beauty, the regality, and the poise you emanated, he fell head over fuckin’ heels. The second the marriage was sealed, he decided he was going to try. Try to make you love him, to pine for him, to beg for his cock like he desperately wanted. The reception was full of fine food and drink, coupled with tons of conversation amongst the warriors and the senators present for the nuptials. Flip noticed your uncomfortable behaviors towards a certain member of the senate when he was advancing himself onto you. He barreled over in an instant, barring the man from getting any further with his new wife, warning him of the consequences if he did lay a finger on you. Upon his departure, Flip turned to you, putting both hands on your cheeks, “are you alright my dove?” he cooed as if you’d both been together for centuries. 

“Y-yes,” you froze in shock at his tenderness, “thank you,” bringing your hands slowly up to caress his calloused ones. 

“Good,” he mused, smiling and bringing you into his body by your waist, “I will never leave your side, my love. I will always protect you.” 

You nodded, slightly embarrassed about your damsel in distress behavior, but secretly thanking the gods for picking a man who seemed to care about you. 

The rest of the night was full of love and laughter, and of course, Flip never leaving your side no matter what was happening. 

“Would you accompany me to our quarters?” he whispered in your ear as you gazed at the dancers performing a ritual before the both of you.

You looked to him, and nodded, kissing his cheek as he lifted you in a bridal carry towards your marital home and bed. From that moment on, you fell head over heels for your warrior, only wanting to please him in the best ways possible and provide him with everything you could. 

AND LASTLY OUR FIRST NIGHT WITH HUCKLEBERRY AND HIS BULLSHIT: 

Cowboy Flip wasn’t one to really be into the women-folk. He stuck to his guns, working as a ranch hand and putting in a good day from sun up to sun down no matter what. So, finding him at a bar or brothel was few and far between. He recently answered an ad from a local farmer looking for a reputable rancher who could deal with wild horses being tamed as well as had ranch hand experience. Flip of course jumped at the opportunity to break a Philly or two and rode out to the old man’s farm. 

He was put to back-breaking work, hauling hay, feedin’ hogs, harvesting crops, bringin’ round the cows, takin’ care of the horses, and stock. The labor was grunt work to which he didn’t appreciate, and he was thinkin’ about quittin’ it all together... but then, he caught a glimpse of the farmer’s daughter... which happened to be you. 

You’d just come home from a journey with your mother, lookin’ all kinds of cowgirl pretty. Flip was speechless, removing his hat and nodding with his mouth gaping open like a codfish. 

“H-howdy there ma’am,” he managed to put together as you approached the stable he’d was leanin’ on. 

“Well howdy there to you too, cowboy,” you smiled at him, picking up a saddle from the ground to take to your horse inside, “name’s Y/N. Daddy told me he’d hired a new ranch hand.” 

“Y-yeah,” he said, following you like a lost puppy. 

“Well you ain’t too bad lookin’ either,” you chuckled, takin’ in the bulge becoming ever more present in his Wranglers. 

“Ya like what ya see cowgirl?” he noticed your wanderin’ eyes, regaining control after his gawking. 

“Well, I can’t say I hate lookin’,” you smile back up at him, biting your lips as you drop the saddle on the hay. 

“What’s a man got to offer a lil’ lady like myself huh?” crossing your arms to stand your ground. 

“Oh darlin’,” he smirked, moving closer to you, hats touching each other, “I’m your fuckin’ Huckleberry,” grabbing your belt buckle to pull you into a searing kiss. 

And we all know how kinky this man gets in the good ol’ Wild West... if not, then refer back to the threads from the last few weeks... they’re interesting to say the least.... 👀🤤😂

I FUCKIN HATE HOW BADLY THESE MEN LIVE IN MY MIND AND ITS ALL YOUR FAULT BITCH!😂🖤

[catchlalune]

Legend’s of The Deep: A Long Journey 

a/n: Hello all, I decided I needed a little break especially on my blog. So today I’m coming with another wip that may or may not be finished but I think this one will be entirely up to the feedback I get on this. There are some things to note, there are technically two main characters in this story but only one reader! As well as the fact that this was a story originally intended for someone I’ve fallen out with so the reader portion of her character is actually based on her and for all intents and purposes she is a white mc. This is like the first story I’ve ever posted with a white mc so I apologize to my poc readers but if this is something you guys really want to read (I had four parts planned, but I’ve only written two) then I’ll take this one down and really rework it! Anyway, sorry for the super long authors note! 

Word Count: 1,688 

Pairings: Hongjoong x (white) female Reader/ Seonghwa x (poc) female oc/ Reader x OC

Genre: Angst, Fantasy, Pirate! AU

Warnings: implied smut, mentions of blood and war, this will contain fighting and gore later down the line, alcohol, pirate slang (I did quite a bit of research to get the right slang for what I wanted in this fic)

Part 1: Solar Eclipse

It had happened mere days before they found them. A war in a family; in a relationship. Blades whizzing through the air, flesh torn and blood spilt. Unnecessary and foolish, all stemming from the selfishness of man. 

Greed was surely a deadly sin. 

Hongjoong wonders how they got here, he heard tales about these fearsome women. But at the moment they just look like women, far from the seas they knew with a deep set pain behind angry eyes. Well, at least the redhead was angry. The others eyes looked so soulless it almost unnerved him. Even being bound to her friend with eight swords pointed at them she looked as if she welcomed death. Well, if that's what she wanted he wouldn't give it to her. 

"Bring them." Hongjoong nods to Mingi and San after sheathing his sword. He hoped he wasn't wrong about this. 

♧♧♧♧

It surprised him how they had come with little to no resistance. He wasn't sure if it was because of the way their legs wobbled with the exhaustion of carrying them for days or the gaunt looks of their cheeks from the food he knew they had not eaten on their journey. 

It seemed they'd been ready to risk it all just a few hours ago, but as the minutes ticked by they remained bound and boneless. 

Thorne had not spoken for the entire week that they traveled and Y/N was starting to become extremely anxious for her. She wanted to smooth down her tangled hair and give her honeyed words of encouragement but she could not do that with wrists bound. 

She watched her closely instead, waiting with bated breath for a change in demeanor or a shift of limbs, but it seemed their experience had numbed her down to her very core and she no longer felt anything. 

A pang goes through her as she feels her stomach turn, gnawing at her innards for a crumb of sustenance. They left them there tied to the main mast for hours in the open air and sun. A dreadful mistake on their part, but they would have to wait to figure that out. 

"Drink." 

Y/N had been much too careless, too enthralled by the power that caressed her skin that came in the form of sunrays. She hadn't even remembered closing her eyes and definitely had not heard him approach them. 

"I- I don't mean to offend, but you must drink. You haven't all day." He presses the cool metal vessel to her lips and forcibly parts them with a gentle hand so that she will listen. She would've either way, but the way his skin raises gooseflesh when she looks at him intrigued her. 

Even as the cold of the water slips down her throat she gazes at him over the vessel. It makes him nervous, she can tell. Slowly her eyes slip over to Thorne and she sees the man with cat-like eyes and sharp cheekbones stand over her and watches as she takes a drink on her own. Y/N taps his hand twice to signal that she's had enough. 

"Will this get you in trouble?" Thorne is the one who asks, it takes everyone a bit by surprise. Her voice was rough and husky from misuse. 

"No, do not worry about our wellbeing." The one who forced her to drink speaks with a friendly smile, voice low and not at all what you would expect from such an amicable visage. 

"Our co-captain would like to speak with both of you." The one by Thorne speaks while loosing the ropes around their arms and waists. 

"What are your names?" 

“That is none of your concern.” 

“They should know, should they not?” The two men look at each other, one smiling and the other remaining indifferent to his shipmate's positive attitude. There is a small shift in the way they regard each other. 

"Wh-" 

"I'm Mingi and that's San." The smile never leaves his face, even when his partner fixes him with a quick glare. 

The interaction doesn't stop Y/N and Thorne from standing, stretching their limbs to help their blood circulate. There's a dull ache in both of their bottoms but it is insignificant to the weight of the cuffs around their wrists. They follow the two wordlessly though sticking close to one another. They pass more crew members who glance at them curiously, they never stop their work on cleaning the deck or singing their chantey but simply look on. Their eyes ask the questions that they could not. 

"Are you really the two of legends?" The co-captain wastes no time in their questioning. They had spent only a few minutes traveling deeper into the belly of the ship to make it to him. He sits at a bar taking a sip of what Y/N could only assume is something stronger than the water that was brought to them. The captain sits next to him, not even bothering to turn around in his seat to look at them. 

Mingi and San had already been dismissed and by the looks of it, no one was allowed into this area now. 

"What does it look like?" The redhead had no time for their questions and frankly was rather itching to use her powers. One look from Thorne quells the fire that burned in her belly. 

"It looks like you have a problem with answering questions," The captain speaks, voice authoritative and commanding as it echoes around the room.

"You should ask better questions." The reply is snarky and it makes Thorne sigh. 

"You like to gamble with your life?" The captain finally turns around. There's a smirk on his pretty pink lips but they all know the threat is not there. 

"If you wanted to kill us, you would've tried already." 

There's a pause, a beat of silence before the co-captain steps forward to let them out of their cuffs. The metal drops to the ground with loud thunks, almost leaving dents in the grooves of the wood beneath them. 

"Tried?" He asks as he takes his seat again, taking a sip from his cup that resembles a small barrel with a silvery handle. Thorne is the first to take a seat, she sits beside the co-captain and so Y/N takes the seat next to the captain. 

"You couldn't kill us, you wouldn't know how. Not effectively anyway, we'd just come back. Davey Jones will not keep us." Thorne answers them and it seems the tension in the room wooshes out. Like water rushing over rocks. 

"So, you want answers to your questions and we want answers to ours." There's a glint that flashes in Y/N's eyes and it causes the captain to chuckle. 

"Why don't you eat first." 

That night ended in a bit of bonding between both parties, bonding of minds but also of bodies. They had moved from the bar to the captain's quarters to retain privacy and ended up getting far more than any of them had anticipated. The night began with tension and ended with panting and the feel of skin on skin. There was no doubt that everyone on the ship heard them, but there was no real reason to care. 

"Sleep well?" Hongjoong asks in a smug voice that would've set Y/N's blood boiling had it not been for the dull ache between her thighs. 

Thorne was cuddled against her wrapped in the silk of the captain's sheets, a few bruises littering her neck. Some from Y/N and some from Hongjoong or Seonghwa. The latter is nowhere in the cabin but she figures it has to do with the fact that the sun was well above them. It's rays spilt into the large room from a small porthole window, illuminating it. The sunlight bounced off the gold in the room and caught on the silks, on the light wood of the desk and the glass of black ink that sat next to a quill on top of it. It showed the wardrobe and the crushed velvet of the rug that almost covered all the wood of the floor. A bookcase next to the desk also caught her eye, full of texts but also written documents. 

"You must've if you're in the mood to snoop." Hongjoong untangled himself from the two women and stands in the warmth of the sunlight. He is just as bare as he was the night before, superficial scars run along the expanse of his toned torso and back. He was thin but muscular and his attitude was certainly fit to be a captain's. He pulls on black trousers and a white shirt before shirking on his captains coat. "Whenever the two of you are ready, there will be breakfast waiting for you. Mingi will bring it to you in an hour if you don't come up." 

He leaves soon after his words, though not before laying out fabrics for them to cover themselves with. Y/N lays there for a few minutes before sleep embraces her again. 

The knocking on the door is incessant and it annoys her. She whines for a moment before the warmth of Thorne leaves her to open it. There's a choked sound, a murmur of a barely audible 'shiver me timbers' and the clinking of metal and porcelain before the door shuts just as quickly. Y/N doesn't move until Thorne strokes her hair, then her head pops out from under the blankets. 

"Let's eat." Thorne smiles at her, not flinching away from the gaze on her nakedness. 

"You must've surprised him." A giggle sounds from her friend then a hum as she hands her a plate. It is white and the rim is decorated with golden flowers. 

"Oh I'm sure, but he seems very easy to surprise. Much more your type." 

The two of them talk amicably while eating their food, Y/N relieved at her friend speaking more. She was worried she might have lost her to...them. Maybe after a few more weeks here she would be back to her old self. 

[lonesomealley]

The Beginner’s Guide as a Proper Beginner’s Guide SCRIPT

Why The Beginner’s Guide is a proper beginner’s guide.

By Count_

Spoiler Warning / Opening

Warning, this is the obligatory spoiler warning, if you have not played The Beginner’s Guide I fully recommend that you purchase it for full price and play it. Although if you do not have money, I would recommend that you then go and watch a YouTube let’s play of the experience because you can effectively get the same experience from both despite what some people say. In the description below is a link to a silent let’s play that I recorded which is what was used as the footage for parts of this video. Please watch or play this experience and then come back and watch this video, it won’t be going anywhere. Also, just in case you may want to listen to this video purely through audio, you may miss out on many of the examples that I’ll be flashing up in the backgrounds of my commentary. Spoiler warning over in 3… 2… 1...

The Beginner’s Guide is a narrative experience created by the brilliant mind of Davey Wreden. What ensues is a hybrid of a first and second person narrative where the player walks about the small -death of the author like- 3D environment projects created by an ominous character named Coda. And over time the player begins to learn that the narrator, Davey Wreden himself, isn’t to be entirely trusted. Keeping details of the game emitted until Coda them self leaves a message explaining why they aren’t around anymore.

My overview of this information is so simple because the experience itself is not what the video’s about. The video you’re watching is a case study into how the player can use The Beginner’s Guide as a valuable resource when working on their own passion projects. Since i have played The Beginner's Guide over ten times now, I can say with certainty that there is a lot more here than just an interesting drama. The name “The Beginner’s Guide” not only reflects genius work but is also a dive into the basics of how to make art, media, writing, etc. I’m led to believe that the topics I’m about to discuss hasn’t been considered all too much either, because when looking into the idea there doesn’t appear to be any documentation on these concepts. So what I’m going to talk about are ways that I feel the medium of passion work can be pushed to the absolute limits. Here are some timestamps on screen and they will be in the description if you wish to click past the parts that don’t seem interesting to you.

Case 1: Build with a Purpose

It’s arguable to say that the levels in The Beginner’s Guide are somewhat poorly constructed at times and even amateur. Which is interesting when you take into account that Wreden is taking us on a journey through a collection of amateur environment-story telling projects. And in turn this property makes these levels believable, the player actually feels like they are going through levels produced by someone who isn’t getting paid for their work. Now some people will say that this argument simply exists to dodge criticism but hear me out. Would the experience really be strengthened by having highly polished and professional levels that give the idea that these levels were created by a professional while talking about a single character who simply created these games for them self? No, no it wouldn’t. Wreden even uses this as a plot device when talking about the house level, where he states: [VIDEO CLIP WHERE DAVEY CALLS OUT THE INCREASING QUALITY]. Obviously something to consider when paying attention to the release dates of Coda’s works.

This may seem obvious to some, but those who are just starting off in design should make sure that everything they create has a purpose. I especially find myself in a loop of not really knowing what I want to do because I don’t have a grasp on what is important to developing the world I am trying to show off. What’s the solution? You can build the essentials of a project piece and then add the meaningless details later. Just make sure those meaningless details don’t ruin the overall purpose you are trying to give your work. Although that is no reason for the developers to become lazy with their work; that’s not what is being advertised here. What’s trying to be said is to make everything believable because immersion is one of the preeminent, vital ‘organs’ of passion design. Just like mentioned above, Wreden intentionally made everything appear amateur not to ease his workload, but to convince they player these games were truly made by someone else in their spare time. And from here, the player is given a gateway into the convincing mind of an imaginary character.

A few examples come to mind, such as the environment changing as you move through it to imply the player is in a dreamlike state. Or the player is experiencing the world through the eyes of a grumpy old man who is dying and dissatisfied with his life, so you show the world around in him a different light to reflect this: Dirty textures, things dying underneath the character as he walks around the environment. How about a character that suffers from PTSD triggered from symbolistic objects, and so the developer may make those symbols stand out from the environment, something as simple as making the object colorless in a colorful environment. All of these ideas are relatively simple, yet their impact should not underestimated when it comes to storytelling.

Another thought to maintain as well, keep things simple yet use complexity to your advantage. The literal language that I am speaking right now is based on using simplistic words and sounds to communicate ideas to each other. It’s when one starts applying complexity to an idea and object that it makes such stand out from all of the other ideas and objects. If you’re writing a story for example, you won’t describe every single object in the story unless it provides a gateway to deeper plot devices and storytelling. I can say, “The child tiptoed across the floor.” in a scenario where nothing

else is important except that the child tiptoed across the floor. To add complexity onto this sentence, I can apply details like, “The child tiptoed across the floor in the darkest hours of night.” Now what we have is a situation where a child is probably sneaking around somewhere to avoid something. Finally I can add detailing about the floor, “The child tiptoed across the wooden, creaky flooring at the darkest hours of night.” Now what we have is a sentence that implies a form of danger and performance. It can be important that the child tiptoes across the creaky floor to avoid his parents hearing them, or possibly that they’re trying to escape a monster. There’s even an example of this in the material, you notice these characters? All of them have a distinct box on their head that indicates what role they have in the story. Except for this one. Why? Because it can be inferred that this is a representation of a person from the real world, and that these are prop characters used for a story, whether it be Coda or just a random character used to pull off this idea.

How The Beginner’s Guide pulls off this technique is very subtle, yet when the player looks past the melancholy story and strange environments, they can find how perfectly everything fits into the grand scale of Wreden’s creation. This idea can be applied to most other reputable games as well. If you don't believe me, try looking at your favorite video game, movie, or story, and look at how perfectly the world is crafted simply because everything was created with a purpose.

Case 2: Every POV’s a Screenshot

This next topic drops off the storytelling side of passion design for a little bit, and is more purely about visual design such as video games, painting, and even photography, sprinkled in with some audio design, yet primarily video games since they enact interactivity. If you’re looking for tips on how to do storytelling and are not interested in anything else, you can skip to the next case in the video. Although I would recommend sticking around for this part if you are looking to give your audience a unique mental image to remember your work.

Imagine being placed into a plain, grey, room. No doors, no windows, just you and your mind, starved of entertainment Then all of a sudden, the wall transforms into this bizarre rainbow tunnel or the wall starts getting really trippy. Which one looks better? This, or this [of course showing examples]. If a photographer were to take a picture of either room, which do you think will sell better to an audience? Here is an example from the level Mobius, the player is in a spaceship with a giant door hurdling itself at the ship. Look at this screenshot, everything feels crafted in a way that looks like a work of art, with the main focus being the large colliding space door. Think of abnormalities like this and start applying them everywhere. Except in this scenario, the abnormality only exist because of a painfully plain existence within a controlled environment. Sometimes the abnormalities are subtle enough that it resonates with the observer and becomes something of beauty. Then there are large collections of these abnormalities, which interact with each other to create environments, paintings, defining words scrawled out onto a page. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re wondering “what I am talking about.”

To actually understand the insanity of the first paragraph I need to explain the idea of abnormalities, because believe it or not, our entire reality is made up of those abnormalities. When walking outside everyday, the average person may not take notice of everything around them because they are familiar with the area. Now think of someone who has never been in that environment before, such as a tourist who missed their flight and are stranded in that same environment. Everything feels very strange to them, and they will be wary of their surroundings, keeping an eye out for threats as well as useful places like hotels and fast food joints. What may be a boring town for one person could be seen as mysterious by another. The world is abnormal when you think about it, because all of our standards are different from each other. Google’s definition of abnormal is: “Deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying.” Now then you have to ask the question, “What is normal?” which isn’t an easy or even consistent question to ask on a methodical level. Things that are normal are those that ‘conform to a standard,’ yet now there is another problem, what is the standard? Everyone has different standards, though most of us agree that certain topics are normal and others are not, such as murder, rape, mass genocide, war. But there is always a niche, and in an established society those niches are serial killers, people who are deemed mentally unstable, nazis, and savages. And while I could rant all day about these people, they do exist, and they find such normal offenses such as rape and murder to be normal. Normality is completely subjective from person to person, and is only the result of previous experience and morals. The world is a set of abnormalities that creates ultimately what is normal, and this correlates strongly with video games.

The idea pushed here is to make your environments interesting; worthy of having photos taken. I can go through several screenshots that are beautiful, weird, and enlightening about what meaning the author is pushing forward from their work. And don’t forget that we are working with full 3D environments that allow for movement, sound, and a lot of visual freedom. Rooms with unassuming visuals may be bolstered in-game by a memorable soundtrack or symbolic meaning. Before you ask, yes I am clearly stating that you should also encourage players to take audio screenshots, A.K.A. making memorable music. Especially since it’s often said that audio is 51% when making videos [POINT TO CITATION], and that applies here [POINT BACK TO VIDEO GAME] where the landscape never comes across as empty, but rather rewards the player for looking around and listening in. Simply turning around in some of the levels is enough to give off an entirely different feel. And most of the time that feeling in The Beginner’s Guide is reflection, a need to look back on what you just experienced. Although in your own medium, this feeling can be anything: surprise, shock, confusion, even confidence if you play the cards right.

One critique I’ve seen commonly used against Wreden’s works is that they’re pretentious, sometimes saying that these interactive experiences are just glorified movies. I’m not going to go at destroying this criticism, I was just trying to be clever with my topic transitions, but I will provide why this is relevant soon. So we shouldn’t forget that emotions and feelings are purely mental, along with instincts and logic. Abusing the whims of the human brain can lead to player attachment, interest, immersion, and practices with logical thinking. If the designer places a bunch of strange figures in a room in a certain manner, the player may ask themselves, “Why have they done this?” or think to themselves “Why does this seem to have so much importance even though I don’t immediately understand it?” From here the player will begin to develop their own understanding of the world and what your creations mean to them. The player often becomes the played when going through passion work, because it is expected that the player feels certain emotions and thinks about certain objects in the environment. Though that said, it should be pointed out that a good creator should never need to force a meaning toward it’s players *unless again it is for a pivotal reason within the work, again comparable to Wreden’s narration.* Okay now that this information has been told: what does any of this have to do with pretension? Because while there is no need for The Beginner’s Guide to be interactive, that doesn’t mean there’s no benefit received from this interactivity. The case can be argued that being able to control your own camera in these environments allows the player to further bond with whatever they are faced with. Does the player really need to pay $10 for interactivity? Well if this were a movie instead, the player would still need to pay money in order to watch the movie.

Having a great understanding of the world and what can and cannot be by reality is a strong starting point for anyone who wants to make interesting worlds out of their works. Especially today where the lands of drama and sadness in passion really only cover the basis of love and money, there is a lot of room for unique creativity. So use this knowledge in order to direct your audience toward a place that might just allow them to ponder your creativity and spread it far. *Just a side note: I kind of went on a rant here but I hope that you were able to tap into my mind there and pick up all of what I was trying to explain.*

Case 3: Place Your 4th Wall Somewhere Else

Funnily enough, the entire reason that this part exist in the first place is due to another video created by Ian Danskin (aka Innuendo Studios) titled, “The Artist is Absent, Davey Wreden and The Beginner’s Guide”. In this video essay Danskin states the following: [VIDEO CLIP]. And I know later he goes back on this statement but bear with me. While I watched, I had an epiphany: “ isn’t Davey just a disembodied character who really doesn’t have much to do with the environments in The Beginner’s Guide?” I mean, he does have an impactful role on the environment, but not intentionally. Is it possible that the fourth wall isn’t between Davey and the audience, for which he is constantly breaking, or rather is the fourth wall behind Davey [Shitty Drawing]. So by this logic, the game actually does have a fourth wall, which mind you still does get broken, but it gets broken in a unique way.

The entire story between Coda, Wreden, and these environments is kind of like a crumbling wall, thousands of years old. Coda tries his hardest to renew the wall and build it back up to glory, yet Wreden keeps attacking it and tearing down progress. At the end of it all, Coda gets tired of trying to fight for a lost cause and opts to knock the wall down himself. The Beginner’s Guide has a very obvious beginning, middle, and end much like how the story of the castle wall I described does in the sense of a tragedy. In the beginning, the world is fine and perfect and these little projects are just beautiful. In the middle, things start getting weird and more mental and the questions start to come up. And in the end, everything is going to hell and it’s a mental breakdown of both Coda and Wreden. Except that the story gets so meta that it literally begins to destroy it’s own fourth wall as the process keeps going. Because it is established within the story that Wreden is an unreliable narrator, ironic considering he is our only narrator and the person that is immediately bonded with and trusted.

By the logic that we have setup, where Wreden isn’t a part of the story but rather he’s a part of the audience just like the player, then there becomes this strange scenario where the audience itself actually breaks down the fourth wall as the story continues. Immediately is can be assumed that these projects are for no one, they exist purely to satisfy Coda. When you start the game, Wreden even references this: [VIDEO CLIP]. Which continues to get referenced as the experience unfolds. Speaking of unfolding, at a certain point within the player’s adventure, Wreden takes notice of a lamppost at the end of a segment, and of course this is later to be blamed on Wreden for meddling with

Coda’s work. The earliest example of this act is the stairs level where Davey writes a script that allows the players to bypass an intended mechanic by the creator. If Wreden is part of the audience, but has managed to add content to these works, then surely this is some weird reverse wall where the audience is working with the story. And what is now left is a story where it’s a creator versus their audience, and sure this sounds like a common story, but it has quite the unexpected twist. The audience is not intended out of Coda’s work. Coda makes this point abundantly obvious at the end of The Beginner’s Guide when he states towards Wreden, “Would you stop taking my games and showing them to people against my wishes?” There are a lot of unique qualities about The Beginner’s Guide that make up a lot of possibilities for one to begin creating their own work. I find this experience to be a good reference point for kinds of creative works that I want to create. And I believe that there is a far land of unmarked territory that creative works could step into to; a call to become stronger than the media of today.

I imagine a story where another story is being told from the perspective of a child who is reading that story. And there are moments when the story abruptly stops for moments of time because something comes up, like the kid gets hungry or possibly his mother comes in and takes the book away from him. There can be multiple levels of fourth wall it feels like, maybe at one point there is a letter in the story that’s from the son’s father and it tells him of a tragic world where nothing matters. And from there the child talks to the reader telling them to go out and enjoy their life. Or in the case of video games, have the player personally be the protagonist, not like those games where you simply put in your name and nothing else matters but possibly you could be adding things to the game. A game where the player needs to cross a pit, but the only way to do that is to open the game’s map file and manually add in a bridge of their own. At the end of it all though it could just be said, “Well the wall always rests between the player and what’s inside of the experience.” I simply don’t agree, the fourth wall should be a rather subjective thing because it allows for an expansive idea for how to write a narrative. Everything about creative work is subjective really, and while we refer to our ancestors, times change, and to keep up with the changing times, there should be a change in the possibilities of reality, or as I’m talking here: original works.

This case is much more about opportunity rather than it is logic, or standards of writing. Being capable of shifting the mechanics of how a innovative work can operate allows for much more expansion for how new, high quality work is even produced and what that entails. To begin shifting those mechanics, one must understand the basics of how to communicate and produce, which conveniently rolls back around to Ian Danskin’s video about The Beginner’s Guide, which much like mine isn’t purely about The Beginner’s Guide but heavily relies on the material for sake of topic. The video covers the fundamentals of storytelling, authorship, and communication, which has a vast amount of research dumped into the discussion. Just hold out with me a little bit longer, and then I’ll provide an annotation to this video if you’re curious.

Rephrase / Closing

No matter how many times I play The Beginner’s Guide, I will never quite get the true idea of what the story is trying to tell me. It can be inferred what the game wants me to know, but it never truly feels right to make such a concise opinion about a game that wants to be so vague about itself. It’s a piece of work that much like some of the environments in Coda’s work, appears so closed off and distant from any form of distinguishable character. Wreden has created a scenario where you can never truly know what is trying to be said, yet sprinkles enough information so that you can get pretty close. And I think this is what most stories should strive, such open ended-ness that the player or reader can come to their own conclusion of what to take away.

In my personal opinion, Wreden has created some of the most inspiring works that I have come by. It’s always the bizarre ways that a story will attempt to present itself that gets to me the most, such as the methodical lectures from Alan Watts that tells the universe in a very new but interesting way. Except I’m not talking just stories here, I’m talking art, audio, environments, our language, and the interactivity of video games. The area of passion work is currently in a weird spell where works will have tenuous story beats that allude to being more complex than what is presented simply because it’s the hip and cool thing of today. Yet none of those projects are talked about for very long, they all seem to get the cop out card for not being capable of creating anything more intriguing. Those that seek out a method of having that illusory mean something other than, “Isn’t it funny that you’re currently thinking of how weird this game is?” will often find their works to last longer than the ones that fall into this trap.

The Beginner’s Guide is a stand up in the ring of modern storytelling that I feel needs to be remembered. I mean, this video only exists because I find Davey Wreden to be a genius: [VIDEO CLIP OF THIS VIDEO IN META WAY THING]. If you haven’t picked up on this already, this entire essay is heavily biased, most of what I have talked about here stem from my own head; they aren’t based on facts. The purpose here is to inform myself and any others who are possibly lost in the crossroads of passion design, with what I hope to be a unique perspective. For anyone that is interesting in creating passion work for themselves, or believes that they can do something with the information I have provided, I highly recommend you give another play through of The Beginner’s Guide. Because as Ian Danskin says, The Beginner’s Guide is “a strange meta textual monster of an indie game”. [END]

[madelineelleramst3570-blog]

Curatorial Statement

Although it is often thought that videogames are a shallow form of entertainment, I chose these pieces to prove otherwise. Each of these videogames is a piece of art expressing a philosophical lesson or question. I was especially focused on how the player relates to these videogames. For my gallery I selected Passage by Jason Rohrer, To The Moon by Kan Gao, Undertale by Toby Fox, Creatures Such As We by Lynnea Glasser and The Beginner’s Guide by Davey Wreden.

It is true that some games have no substantial message, but if one does, is it then considered to be a piece of art? I found differing opinions on the subject in Games Can Never Be Art by Roger Ebert and Perspectives on Videogames as Art by Jeroen Bourgonjon, Geert Vandermeersche and Kris Rutten. Roger Ebert argues, as the title indicates, that games can never be art. In Ebert’s piece there is a quotation which is applied to videogames, "Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions” (Ebert). Ebert finds issues with this definition, as well as others, finding there to be exception almost everything. In the end he does correct himself though, saying, "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets" (Ebert). But I have to disagree with him. As he writes, based on conversations with an advocate for games as art, it is possible that art should be judged within their own time period, to truly be able to distinguish what was genius and what was not, during the time. But I would counter that many artists only became critically acclaimed after they passed. In this case, when does the art become real art? Simply when enough people like it? No, I believe that anything which is intended to carry a message to the viewer or player is a form of art, regardless of how many people like it.

In their paper, Jeroen Bourgonjon, Geert Vandermeersche and Kris Rutten enforce this belief, but also reveal an important aspect of the current gaming world. Recently game developers have become more aware of the familiar tropes that videogames have always followed: shooters, racers, fliers and builders. They believed that videogames were not really art when they took these forms. The games lacked depth and were only for entertainment purposes, not to make the player think (Bourgonjon, et al.). But now, with this awareness, developers have begun to branch out into different genres. Many of these developers are, in fact, indie. Perhaps this can be explained by a lack of corporate or social influence on these companies.

But how do game developers relate to the people who play their games? And how do players relate to the games that developers make? Shall we play a game?: The performative interactivity of video games has some of the answers, but really, these questions are still being figured out. The author, Micheal J. Beck, emphasizes the players place in the relationship. He explains that people in videogames will closely associate the avatar with themselves. They can do this even to the extent that is a level of cognitive dissonance in cases where the player needs to act unlike themselves within a game (Beck). However, he explains that this may be more likely in games where the player makes choices in order to arrive at a certain ending. They have greater control over their avatar, increasing the connection to their character and to the game (Beck).

This brings us to our first game, The Beginner’s Guide.  The Beginner’s Guide was created by Davey Wreden. The entire game is a narration by Wreden of his relationship with another developer named Coda. Through a series of puzzles the player discovers that the narrator may not be trustworthy. The two developers co-developed a game and Wreden began to show it off without Coda’s permission. This causes Coda to separate himself from the relationship. Wreden begins to pick apart all of Coda’s work, looking for clues on his friend’s mental state. Based on what you/he finds, he determines that Coda is actually depressed and unhappy with his own work. Coda believes that Wreden’s act of projecting his own beliefs onto the games takes away from them. It appears to violate the line between game developer, game and player. Perhaps intended, Wreden creates the same effect in his own game. He provokes players to project their own thoughts onto the game. Patrick Klepeck makes some great points in his paper The Controversy Over A Video Game's Suggestion Of A Crime, where he evaluates The Beginner’s Guide. Today, because Wreden has chosen to be silent on the matter, people are still developing theories about whether or not this was a work of fiction or nonfiction. They also debate whether this means that the work Wreden shared was actually technically stolen by being distributed without the consent of Coda. This game addresses deep philosophical questions about what artists consent to when they have produced something (Klepeck). Should their intentions be taken into account? Can the player project, like Wreden, their own assumptions onto the games’ maker? Should they? How much of themselves should developers place in their games? Wreden is clearly trying to provoke these questions, by using his own name to insinuate himself into his game. It appears that the game creates the same effect that Beck was speaking about, referenced earlier, a feeling of cognitive dissonance. Beck writes that that, “The Beginner’s Guide disturbed me. It felt invasive—predatory, even. The mere possibility that Wreden had repurposed Coda’s work for his own, selfish purposes was uncomfortable to consider” (Beck).

The next game I found is Creatures Such As We, made by Lynnea Glasser. It is a game that follows the same structure of Depressions Quest, allowing the player to have control over the main characters choices. In this game the main character is a tour guide on the moon. In her off time this character plays videogames but ends up being upset by the game’s unsatisfactory ending. Luckily, her next tour group consists of the people who made that very game. The game begins to take on a dating-sim feeling, as the character decides whether to romance certain characters in the tour group or to stay strictly professional. The really fascinating part of the game, though, is the commentary on the relationship between the game and the player. The game addresses whether or not developers actually owe positive endings to players. Players often go into a game thinking that by the end, their character will have reached a satisfactory outcome. When this doesn’t happen, the player feels betrayed by the developer, often deciding that they do not like the game and it is bad. Game developers often walk a fine line between pleasing players and satisfying their own intentions. The great thing about these new, small indie games is that they do not necessarily need to cater to players desires. They are allowing a new front in games that is working to combine entertainment with important messages.

The third game I found was To The Moon, a videogame created by Kan Gao of Freebird Games. The game is based in the future, where people have figured out how to manipulate memories. In this case, they are manipulating them to give dying people their last wishes. Two scientists go to perform this job on a man named Johnny, who is on his death bed. Johnny has false memories, creating the need for the two scientists, controlled by the player, to look around for clues outside and inside Johnny’s head. All they know is that his last wish is to go to the moon. It is found that Johnny had a wife, and that she had a sort of low-functioning form of Asperger’s. Because she could not directly tell Johnny, she kept leaving hints about something Johnny had forgotten from when they were kids. He doesn’t understand her, and he falls ill while feeling this guilt. In the end of the game it is revealed that he couldn’t keep the promise because of a tragic loss and a consequent issue that causes him to lose some memory (Gao). This game is incredibly emotional and sentimental, with very beautiful imagery and narration. It is meant to provoke strong feelings in the player and make them think about their own lives. It touches on topics like guilt, loss and death. I think, most of all, that this game is a message to the player, telling them to resolve problems with the people important to them in life. Life is fleeting and unfortunately, in this age, we don’t have the technology to grant last wishes.

The fourth game I looked at is Undertale. This game was developed almost solely by Toby Fox, including most of the score and art. In this game the player plays as a young child who has fallen down a hole and into the world of the Underground. In the Underground the character is taken in by a motherly goat-like monster but decide the player decides that they need to get back to the human world. To get there, the player needs to go through the entire underground but they have choices to make. When players encounter monsters, they can choose to either use mercy on the monsters or fight them in order to defeat and progress. This, and other interactions with NPC’s, will determine the ending that the player receives. If the player chooses to never harm a monster, then there is a great ending where the player and all of the monsters, who also want to be free, escape to the human world. Along the way the player encounters funny characters, pun-filled dialogue and the mystery behind the main antagonist, an odd little flower named Flowey. This game is interesting because it really gives players the opportunity to depart from the typical trope of violence common in videogames. It gives players the option, if they really want to use violence, to do so, but gives another option that I think is just as entertaining. I think this game is a clear comment on the amount of violence in the gaming industry and in society. Toby Fox used the structure of a dungeon crawler, where fighting is the expected action, intentionally. Undertale is actually advertised as, “an rpg where you don’t have to destroy anyone” on its official website (Fox). What Undertale lacks in combat (if you do the pacifist route) it makes up for in humor, heart and story.

The last game I explored is Passage. It was developed by Jason Rohrer, a Cornell graduate who began to ponder life and death when a childhood friend passed away. In the beginning of the game you start at the far left of the screen, only able to move right. The game is purposely designed to be narrow, to create the idea of this timeline. As time progresses and you keep going to the right and the center shifts to the right. You begin creeping towards the other side of the screen. As you do your character becomes older, until he eventually passes away and becomes a tombstone. While you progress through the beginning of life to the end you can make several decisions that will affect game play. You have the opportunity to have a wife, however, taking a wife limits what you are able to do. There is treasure that cannot be reached if you choose to have a wife. I think this is addressing how having a life partner can limit options in life but can also make your life happier. Although you now cannot reach as much treasure, the creator himself says that having companion is more enjoyable (Rohrer). Throughout the game, either way, your goal is to collect treasure and walk around obstacles. Having a wife reduces the treasure you can get but when you die, your wife is buried with you. I also found this game to address materialism. Although you can gather treasure with or without a partner, no matter how much you get your avatar will die in the end. Perhaps it is a somewhat melancholy message, but I look at it as advice to live life to the fullest without obsessing over material things.

In conclusion, these games all have substantial messages that the game developers have intended to impart to the player. Or at least, that is what I would like to conclude. However, I think it is interesting to ponder the philosophical questions brought up by Davey Wreden regarding videogames. Although I know for a fact that Passage and Undertale were created for the reasons I stated, it is difficult to say whether or not I have projected my own world views onto the remaining games. It could be that I, as the player, am merely seeing what I want to see. It is an interesting question, but either way, each of these games stands apart from the standard games that exist today. These games are often not as popular as the mainstream first person shooters but have substantial messages that players can interpret in their own ways. After all, this is the definition of art. Who is to say what Leonardo Da Vinci intended people to think when they viewed the Mona Lisa and who is to say what a game developer has intended someone to view in their game? I think one of the most interesting lines I found in curating this gallery was on Jason Rohrer’s site. Before giving an account of his game he wrote right at the top, “Your interpretation of the game is more important than my intentions. Please play the game before you read this” (Rohrer). 

Bibliography

Beck, M. J. (2014). Shall we play a game?: The performative interactivity of video games (Order No. 1601221). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1719513722). Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/docview/1719513722?accountid=14518.

Bourgonjon, Jeroen, et al. "Perspectives on Video Games as Art." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 19, no. 4, 2017. Literature Resource Center, http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA529046139&v=2.1&u=22516&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w#. Accessed 7 Dec. 2018.

Ebert, Roger. "Video Games Can Never Be Art." Roger Ebert's Journal (2010): https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art. (This source was used in an academic journal and is peer-reviewed).

Fox, Toby. Undertale. Undertale, 2015. PC, https://undertale.com/about/.

Gao, Kan. To The Moon. Steam, 2011. PC, http://freebirdgames.com/to_the_moon/.

Glasser, Lynnea. Creatures Such as We. Choice of Games, 2014. PC, https://www.choiceofgames.com/creatures-such-as-we/.

Klepek, Patrick. The Controversy Over A Video Game's Suggestion Of A Crime. Kotaku, 2015, https://kotaku.com/the-controversy-over-a-video-games-suggestion-of-a-crim-1749448664.

Rohrer, Jason. Passage. Sourceforge, 2007. PC, http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/.

Rohrer, Jason. What I Was Trying To Do With Passage. Sourceforge, 2007, http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/statement.html.

Wreden, Davey. The Beginner’s Guide. Steam, 2015. PC, https://store.steampowered.com/app/303210/The_Beginners_Guide/.

[frontproofmedia]

DOLO FLICKS: REVIEW - The Kings: Part Three: The Will To Win

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By Hector Franco

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Published: June 20, 2021

"What is right is for people to be sustained. Not by money. By things that make them feel valuable. Things that make them whole. That is the power of boxing when it is understood. No matter where you’ve come from. No matter who your parents are. No matter your race, your creed, your religion, you can get in that ring, and with all of that in your background, if you’re determined enough, if you've trained enough, if you care enough, a poor kid could become a rich kid. And on one given night, you can become champion of the world."  -- Teddy Atlas

In the third episode of Showtime’s four-part documentary series, “The Kings,” which focuses on the life and careers of legendary pugilists Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, and Thomas Hearns, themes of adversity and ambition loom large.

Each fighter goes through their own set of challenges that would push them to strive to become great. The “Four Kings” used boxing as a ladder to escape the chaos of their lives.

Leonard’s backstory is heavily focused on throughout the episode, including his past growing up in Palmer Park, Maryland, to his drug and alcohol addiction. For all intents and purposes, Leonard was the most well-known of the four fighters putting him in a position to gain the biggest paychecks, but also the most criticism.

Leonard’s notoriety and popularity were a source of motivation for the other three kings putting a proverbial target on his back.

“In a sense, it fueled the others,” Steve Farhood says in the episode. “Their desire to fight him. Their hatred for him. Proving to everybody that they were better. All they saw was this guy with a smile making millions of dollars doing commercials. So you know of the four kings, it’s good to be the number one king.”

The juxtaposition of former President Ronald Reagan and Leonard is continued in the episode as the Reagan era in the 1980s was all about individual accomplishment. If you can pull yourself up from nothing, then you are a winner, and if you can’t, then you are a loser, was the mentality.

“It began an era in which it was every woman or man for himself,” stated Author & Playwright Bonnie Greer in the episode. “And it became about making it off your own back. You can be self-made. In the ring, you are on your own. Boxing becomes the supreme expression of that individuality.

“Because it’s about being a winner. I help the people by being a winner. They look at me, and they help themselves. That’s the Ronald Reagan trope.”

For Hagler and Hearns, their backgrounds of living in poverty in Detroit and Newark are examined in the episode. Hagler’s desire and need to gain the recognition he felt he deserved were also explored.

Hagler, much like his future contemporary Bernard Hopkins was someone who at times was at odds with the boxing media. The political climate of that time may have contributed to any negativity that Hagler experienced, as speaking out about any issues you had was seen as taboo.

“Marvin Hagler cost himself a lot of purses by complaining about how the system was against him,” stated Professor of American Multicultural Studies Michael Ezra in the episode. "People during that time period want to hear about how you don’t need the systems help. In Reagan’s era, people don’t need a safety net.

“Marvin Hagler was just not that good at that game.”

The lack of acceptance and recognition from the boxing world and the general public bothered Hagler for years. Boxing is one of the most difficult and dangerous sports ever created, and for someone who has essentially given their life to the sport, not receiving the accolades you feel you have earned can weigh on your conscience.

“At the time when I was starting boxing, I was beating so many good fighters,” Hagler said on the Tom Cottle Show in the early 1980s. “They’re still trying to keep you down and keep putting other fighters in front of you that you know that you’re better than. I mean, it grows a bitterness in you. I used to wonder, ‘What do I have to do to get the recognition?’ Do I have to hurt someone really bad?”

The resentment and the feud between Leonard and Hagler were extensively explored throughout the series; however, in this episode, the moment where it may have become personal is highlighted.

Following Leonard’s victory over Hearns in 1981, he suffered a detached retina. In the 1980s, a detached retina was seen as a much more concerning injury than it would be in today’s sports world.

In November 1982, Leonard hosted a gala inviting some of the biggest names in the sport, including Howard Cosell, Muhammad Ali, and Hagler. The prevailing thought was that Leonard would be announcing a mega-fight with Hagler at the event. However, Leonard may be due to the demons he was facing in his personal life or the pressure from his family to retire decided to go in a more infamous direction.

“To Marvin Hagler, who I think is beauty also, because he had the same desire, the same want, the same belief. “A fight with this great man, this great champion, could be one of the greatest fights in the history of boxing. But unfortunately, it’ll never happen.” -Sugar Ray Leonard

While the struggle in Leonard’s personal life and Hagler’s desire for acceptance are essential pillars in the story of the ‘four kings,’ the fall and eventual redemption of Roberto Duran is the most inspiring.

The episode looks at Duran’s fights following the infamous ‘No Mas’ rematch with Leonard, where he looked mediocre and apathetic—losing fights to fighters that he could have easily defeated. The humiliation and regret of the second Leonard fight made Duran human, unconfident of his abilities. He looked like Duran, but something was missing on the inside.

“To be special, you go to feel special,” Teddy Atlas, noted in the episode. “He still had the same abilities, but he didn’t have the permission to feel like Duran again.”

One of the cornerstone moments of the entire series is Duran gaining vindication when he stepped in the ring against Davey Moore on June 16, 1983, on his birthday at Madison Square Garden.

Duran bludgeoned and eventually stopped Moore in the eighth round to win a title in his third weight class. The moment with Duran celebrating after the victory with the crowd singing him happy birthday is treated, with the grandeur it deserved.

The moment was epic and one of the most memorable events in the history of the sport.

Duran would continue his redemption by being the first of the kings to challenge Hagler. In losing a close fight, Duran gained a measure of victory. Nobody expected Duran to survive against Hagler, and the fact he was ahead on the judge's scorecards before the final two rounds only added to his legend.

“The fact that Duran was as competitive as he was against one of the greatest middleweights of all time, came as a total shock.” – Steve Farhood.

The documentary brings some levity when Duran describes his lack of preparation for his fight with Hearns in 1984. Duran tells a story about meeting some woman at a club in Miami, leading to an eventual threesome.

The Panamanian describes even thinking about the women when he was facing an all-out assault from Hearns, even smiling when getting hit. These are the type of stories that fans enjoy hearing, getting an inside look into the lifestyle of fighters that we often forget are human.

Hearns would score the most emphatic victory of all the fights between the four kings, scoring a deadly second-round knockout over Duran.

The episode also reveals that Duran finding his redemption in 1983 against Moore and Hagler inspired his greatest rival, Leonard, to return.

While Leonard scored a ninth-round stoppage in his 1984 return over the unheralded Kevin Howard, he was knocked down for the first time in his career and ultimately felt so out of place in the ring that he retired once again.

The climax of the third episode follows the same template as the previous two focusing on a major fight of the four kings. This time it was the most exciting of their encounters when Hagler faced Hearns.

With Leonard retired and both men having dispatched of Duran, Hagler-Hearns represented for both fighters an opportunity to establish this era as theirs and theirs alone.

“You have to be chasing something,” stated Teddy Atlas. “You have to be burning to become something that people, society told you couldn’t be. You have to be fighting for something, more than a freaking check.”

The legacy of Hagler-Hearns speaks for itself, and the episode does a fantastic job showcasing just how amazing the fight turned out to be.

The third episode of “The Kings” measures up to the first two episodes in the documentary series and arguably may be the best so far.

The episode ends with Hagler finally gaining the measure of respect and adulation that he has been searching for his entire career. And with Leonard looking on from the sidelines, imagining what could have been.

[thewritestuffuniverse]

Week 6 “Fire”

To The Fire

By Alex Davey

A fire burnt at the centre of the camp. Roki flicked the remains of a cigarette into the inferno where it quickly shrivelled to ashes. The entire thing was a giant middle finger to government forces. Here we are, it said, come and get us.

Some of the local fighters looked uneasy, but this was Hara Roki, so they kept quiet. Partly out of fear of the man, but mostly out of respect. Whatever you thought of his methods, they got results. Roki was a guerilla-for-hire, going from warzone to warzone to offer his expertise. Fanatics hated him for a profiteer, but they soon realised that he worked for his own agenda over money.

“A forest fire cleanses the habitat - removes dead vegetation and thins the population of animals that were too weak to escape. Society is no different. Governments become ossified, no longer fit for purpose. We learnt that in the early twenty-first century. But the people would not rebel like their forefathers. They were too comfortable.

“But remove that comfort - disrupt supply lines, jam media signals, make them angry. You could get the most straight-laced supporter on our side. Be the spark of that fire, cleanse your world.” So began Roki’s ‘The Little Anarchist’s Guidebook’, an almost universally-banned text.

There was some commotion on the edge of the camp. Roki returned to his own tent, rolling himself another cigarette. The leader of the locals, one Diego Wildner, entered. “Roki, got a lady here who wants to talk to you. Says she’s a journalist or something.”

“What did you do to her security?”

“That’s the thing, she doesn’t have any security.”

“She just walked up to the camp? None of the sentries saw her?”

“A sentry captured her.” Diego had been against the outsider from the beginning. The fire, not understanding basic concepts, that sort of thing. But his superiors said his methods were working, so play nice.

“Well, bring her in.”

Moments later a copper-haired woman entered, to her credit dressed for the occasion in a gunmetal biker’s suit and an armoured jacket. What skin Roki could see was covered in circuit tattoos. Her eyes were tinged red, recording she saw.

“Mister Roki. You’re a-”

“Hard man to find?”

“Surprisingly easy. A few dollars to the right person, they pointed right towards your massive fire.”

“And you came here with no security?”

“Your man told me not to.”

“What man?”

“Maxwell something? Auburn hair, amber eyes. Speaks a lot of nonsense and a scar on his-”

“On his arm? Yeah? Never heard of him.”

“Oh. Well. There we are then. I’ve been looking for you.”

“For a little chat?”

“Exactly.”

To Be Continued…

Fire

By Garrett Brown

I swerved the car, and we jolted back into position. The old Chevy pickup continued cruising at 75 miles an hour down the dusty road. The raccoon scuttled away, shaken but unharmed.

“You didn’t have to miss him,” my dad said. The old man slumped in the passenger seat. His sunglasses obscuring his eyes, his cowboy hat obscuring the glasses.

“What did you want me to hit him?” I asked.

He grunted. “Wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and flicked one out. “Earth is God’s dominion, and he gave Man dominion over the animals. So if they don’t want to get out of the way of Man, well fuck them.” He lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and exhaled, filling the cabin with smoke.

I coughed. “Can you please not smoke in here?”

He grunted again. “God has dominion over the Earth, and I have dominion over this goddamn truck.” But he rolled down a window and tossed the butt out.

We zoomed down the road in silence, not a car to be seen. We passed by buildings that once housed road stops and side attractions, long since boarded up: a diner, a toy museum, a bar, the buildings long since looted and stripped for parts.

We rolled on into the night, kicking up dust behind us, my father still as a mouse. If I didn’t see his chest rise a little every few seconds, I would have thought he was dead.

[coll2mitts]

#89 Head (1968)

From the minds of Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson, is a 110 minute acid trip featuring The Monkees.  Their television show had been recently cancelled, and this movie is essentially their former-Disney star “I’m an adult!” moment in an attempt to break free of their preassigned roles and become Serious Artists.

I cannot adequately express the despair I felt when Head literally announced there would be no plot to this movie, and would instead be a series of skits.  It makes sense in the context of The Monkees, since they were formed for a television show.  Each section of the movie has a different genre, ranging from a traditional Western, a boxing movie, a television commercial, a stage-performed musical number, horror... they are all here, which makes an overall narrative pretty hard to discern, other than The Monkees’ general discontentment with their current position.

It begins similarly to A Hard Day’s Night, where the Monkees are being chased by... we don’t know what yet, but we can assume it is not excited teenage girls.  They then launch themselves off of a bridge, trip on LSD, find some mermaids, and hold a kissing contest that only triggered my Covid-spread panic.  The movie doesn’t give you much time to breathe before it comes in hot with a football player attacking soldiers, a football stadium cheering for war, and The Monkees playing a live concert with a screaming crowd cut together with scenes of civilians being killed during the Vietnam war.

Not gonna lie, I didn't think I'd have to address the Vietnam War at all during this project (unfortunately, Meet the Feebles took that assumption away from me rather quickly).  To be honest, I was really expecting this more from The Beatles, especially with John Lennon's very famous pivot to anti-war protest songs.  In college, I wrote a sociology paper on the Vietnam War's influence on popular culture and the function of the media created, and not once in all my research were The Monkees even seriously cited, other than some coy allusion that “Last Train to Clarksville” might have had something to do with a soldier travelling to an army base.  I was so taken aback by the opening scene of this movie, that I literally pulled out my paper and the books I had purchased to write it to see if I had missed something.  There was ONE sentence about Mike Nesmith singing a protest song before he joined The Monkees.  Granted, if you were alive during the 1960s, to be ignorant of the war in general would have been so incredibly tone-deaf.  Had I realized this movie would be political in any way, I would have expected this.  In one book, the author had compiled over 750 songs that directly addressed the war.  Record sales tripled during the decade, and Woodstock might be the most famous festival we’ve ever held in the US - processing the war through music was very much *a thing*.  So, of course, I had to dive into this, because my brain can't just be like, "Well, I guess The Monkees hated the Vietnam War like the majority of the population, I guess.”

There wasn’t much to find, other than this bizarre clip of Davey Jones on an 80s talk show bragging and singing about how he had evaded the draft.  Turns out, the writer/director of this picture, Bob Rafelson, really controlled the message of this movie, and he inserted these scenes as commentary on the performative aspect of war, and how television “...makes you inured to the realities of life.  Oh yes, it brings it into the living room, but then you don’t have to fucking deal with it.  There is no distinction made between the close-up of the young girl responding hysterically to the appearance of The Monkees and to the shot of the assassination at the same time.  And then the hysterical girls attack the stage where The Monkees are playing and shred their clothing off.  But they’re not The Monkees, they are wooden dummies.  They’ll shred anything, as long as it’s the thing to do.  Rape the stage, attack the musicians, real or unreal, who cares?  And it was just pointing out that there was a sort of a mindlessness to, as The Beatles used to complain all the time, to the appreciation of the music.”

There’s a lot going on in this statement...  I’ll agree that the constant barrage of violence and unrest eventually numbs you to it.  Especially now, with a 24-hour news cycle, and twitter just bombarding you with every fucking egregious thing going on in the world at once.  A sense of hopelessness overtakes you; The doom-scrolling will only pacify you into not acting, because what the fuck can you do to change anything?  There are too many problems, and they’re too large to solve on your own.

The second part of this statement, where teenage girls will do anything “as long as it’s the thing to do” is pretty insulting.  I suppose the attitude of teenage girls being easily manipulated to enjoying things was amplified with Beatlemania.  Its continued on, where bands like New Kids on the Block, The Backstreet Boys, and One Direction are immediately dismissed as superfluous because teenage girls like them, and teenage girls are shallow because they’re driven by their hormones.  What’s unbelievably frustrating about this mindset is it has been disproved time and time again, INCLUDING The Beatles.  I know more dudes who rep for them than I do women.  Shit, in this dumpsterfire of a year, Harry Styles’ new album has been one of the few positive things that has kept me going, and that came out 10 months ago.  With the success of kpop as well, a lot more people are starting to come around to “manufactured content that teenage girls like can be good, actually”.

The Beatles complaining about how their music is secondary to the mania about them is really rich, considering their legacy now.  It’s not like they were that attractive or charming... I sat through 2 of their movies and the only person I even mildly connected with was Ringo, because he was a goofy dope.  I’m fairly certain teenage girls were buying their records and going to their shows because they liked the music.  As a former teenage girl, let me tell you, the illusion of depth and sensitivity is way more attractive than a pretty face.

Teenage girls made The Monkees and The Beatles successful, and for the director, who directly profited off of that success, to make a movie that criticizes them really rubs me the wrong way.  Also, it was the fucking 1960s, about as volatile of a decade as you could get *until* now.  Maybe teenage girls focused so much on The Monkees and The Beatles because it was one of the few uncomplicated things that could bring them reprise from the violence unfolding around them.  But whatever, disparage their money lining your pockets, I guess.

The skits afterward are pretty unremarkable.  Micky is in the middle of a desert trying to get happiness out of a Coke machine, only to find it, and the task itself empty.  He then blows up the Coke machine with a tank given to him by the Italian army.

The Monkees are given a tour of a manufacturing facility, only to see what they are producing isn’t a quality product, and the workers themselves are either fake, or endangered by the endeavor.  There’s a few scenes where they fight against their predetermined personalities in the band, or what their fans might think of their behaviors.  They are used in a dandruff shampoo advertisement and vacuumed up and held hostage in a black box.  There is an outstanding upbeat musical number performed by Davy (and Toni Basil!) about a boy whose father left him.  He lays it all out on the dance floor, only to be criticized by Frank Zappa of all people, for not having a message in his music that will save the youth of America.

While they are searching for answers on how to escape the box they’re trapped in, or purpose in what they’ve accomplished, they find nothing.  Peter tries to enlighten them with a bunch of culty bullshit, but instead Davy loses his shit and starts physically attacking literally everything featured throughout the movie, culminating in The Monkees running from their movie studio and jumping off a bridge to free themselves.  They unfortunately are captured and shoved back in the black box, awaiting the next time they will be carted out to market something else for The Teens to buy.

I probably don’t need to tell you that this movie flopped.  The studio purposely left The Monkees out of all the promotional material because they thought it might detract from the serious motion picture they were trying to release.  The problem with this, however, is if you don’t know anything about The Monkees, this movie is not going to make sense to you.  I had to watch several behind-the-scenes clips to get any semblance of an idea what they were trying to achieve.  Sure, the Capitalism and Manufactured Entertainment is Bad theme is pretty easy to pick out, but why The Monkees were the ones saying this after being immersed in the middle of it for three years is an important position to understand beforehand.  And even if you were a Monkees fan, like my mother was, this basically shits on their entire experience in show business, so it probably doesn’t hit too well with their core demographic, either.  I respect what they were trying to do here, but it’s no mystery to me why this movie has almost entirely been lost to time.

I’d like to say this ends my series on rock bands that decided to make musical movies, but next on the list is a little story about a pinball-wizard-that-could, Tommy.

[thestoryweneededtowrite]

Javid Titanic AU - Part 17

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16

Davey found it surprisingly easy to kiss Jack on the open deck, barely giving a thought to anyone who might catch them. It was almost midnight so most normal folks were tucked up in bed for the night as it was, and besides, it was fun to be a little impulsive. Jack didn’t seem to have many reservations either, kissing Davey hungrily like they hadn’t been to bed together twice in one evening already. It felt like fire and danger and scandal and Davey could definitely become accustomed to the thrill of it.

When a loud bell rang out above them, cutting through the calm night, Davey’s little daydream was shattered. That fire he’d felt suddenly started to blister and he leap back guiltily. Looking up into the darkness above the ship, Davey expected to see someone angrily pointing at them, alerting another crew member as to what they were doing. Instead he heard something else.

“ICEBERG. RIGHT AHEAD.” The call was surprisingly clear, shouted into a telephone 15 metres up in the air and travelling through what had been tranquility. Davey was frozen, still in shock from the interruption and confused by the warning, but Jack had a little more sense about him. He hurried to the railings of the ship, climbing up a couple of rungs so he could grab a nearby rope and swing out a little over the side of the boat to get a look at what was happening. What he saw, he could barely believe.

“That bell ain’t about us, Dave,” he confirmed, his voice low and scarily monotone.

The iceberg looked huge even from this distance, and the ship was heading straight for it. Jack couldn’t bring himself to look away. After a few moments Davey joined him, grateful when Jack’s arm went around his waist to keep him stable on the rails – he’d dangled off the side of this ship one too many times already for the journey. At first he was certain the iceberg was a mirage, but it just loomed higher and higher as they got closer and closer. When the ships engines jolted beneath them, a futile effort to slow the ship to give it time to turn, he was shaken back to full consciousness.  

“What do we do? Jack?!” he cried, confused and panicked.

“Nothin’,” Jack admitted quietly. “We can’t do nothin’.” What use could they be against something that big. The Titanic made its passengers feel like they were on a floating city, and the two of them couldn’t single handedly defend the city from the approaching giant. “Oh my god,” Davey mumbled, pressing his body a little closer against Jack’s, for reassurance now more than anything else.

“It’s the safest ship in the world, right?” Jack reminded him. “It’s gonna be fine.”

Davey nodded, but that didn’t loosen the white-knuckle grip he had on the railings. That iceberg seemed, at least from the angle he was seeing it, almost as big as the Titanic itself. They watched as it got closer, neither of them saying anything. The ocean and the engines and their steady breathing seemed to be the only noise. It was like the ship didn’t know what was coming, like it wasn’t aware that it was heading towards a solid, immoveable object that was going to put up a fight. As the Titanic slowly began to turn, it only brought the iceberg closer to them.

They both felt it when it hit, lurching them just enough that they dropped down off the railings and onto the deck. But other than that, it all seemed fine. Calm. Quiet. The ice seemed to pass just alongside the hull, no doubt shocking anyone who happened to be looking out the portholes. Davey watched transfixed, and wouldn’t have moved at all if it hadn’t been for Jack pulling him away. “Get away from the edge,” he urged, tugging Davey several metres towards the centre of the deck.

He’d been right too. Small chunks of ice broke away from the berg and sprayed across the wooden planks, falling just short of where they were now stood. Davey wanted to reach for Jack’s hand as he looked up at this mountain of ice, feeling uncomfortably small, but people were starting to spill out onto the deck, confused and by no means comforted by what they found.

As soon as the iceberg had passed the length of the steerage deck, Jack ran back to the railings, climbing up again to this time look down at the hull. He couldn’t see anything that suggested severe damage and a wave of relief spread through him. They weren’t in any danger.

More and more people started to fill the deck, some fully dressed all in wool and others with patched jackets thrown over nightwear, all passing on the tale of what had happened like some perverse game of Chinese Whispers. A couple of men started a game of football with one of the larger chunks of ice, laughing as it slid around the deck. The calm of the night had become jovial and light, almost making the collision seem like a dream. When Jack turned to make sure Davey was still okay, he found him holding some of the ice in his hands, watching it intently as it melted.

“Hey,” Jack said gently. “Your hands’ll get cold.”

They already were, bitten red by the quick freeze of the ice. Jack took it off him and held Davey’s hands between his own, warming them up again with his own body heat.

“That was… close,” Davey mumbled, still feeling the final waves of his distress.

“We’re fine, we’re all fine,” Jack reassured him. “Come on, let’s find somewhere warm.”

They didn’t particularly want to head back down into the third class quarters where they knew stewards were probably still looking for them, so that only left up. Jack found a small set of stairs leading up to the second class deck and, since they’d almost completely thrown class divisions out of the window that evening, neither of them had any qualms about climbing up.

As Jack was opening the gate at the top of the stairs, a group of crewmen strode purposely towards them. For a moment he thought he and Davey had been caught once and for all, but then he looked more closely. Was that the captain? Certainly what they’d done wasn’t quite bad enough to get the most senior members of staff involved. But they didn’t seem in the slightest bit interested in Jack and Davey, even if they were climbing up stairs they shouldn’t be, just waving them aside so they could get down to the steerage deck. Jack listened in to their conversation as they passed.

“-boiler room six is flooded eight feet above the plate and the mail hold is worse. She’s all buckled in in the forward hull.” “Can you shore up?”

“Not unless the pumps get ahead.”

“Have you seen the damage in the mail hold?” “No, she’s already underwater. I don’t think-”

Even from the little Jack could catch, it was enough. A chill ran through his entire body.

“This is bad,” he mumbled, barely able to form much of a coherent sentence. He wasn’t exactly an expert on ocean liners, but he could read people. The faces of the crewmembers had spelled panic clear as day, and even the captain had looked inordinately troubled. Besides, words like ‘flooded’ and ‘underwater’ weren’t things you wanted to hear applied to the one thing keeping you afloat in the middle of an ocean of water so cold it could eat you alive.

“What?” Davey asked, confused. There wasn’t any danger, was there? Everything seemed perfectly calm, no one had sounded any kind of alarm after that first bell.

Jack turned to Davey, unblinking and afraid.

“This is serious,” he said, as even and calm as he could manage.

If Jack could read almost everyone, Davey could just read Jack. But it was enough. “We should tell Sarah, and my parents,” he decided. He wanted to make sure his sister was safe, if nothing else.

Jack flinched. “Now it just got worse.”

The Jacobs family were both his favourite and least favourite people. Davey was a miracle, Sarah seemed pretty great, but the parents were a piece of work. They seemed to get off on making other people seem small, and Jack wasn’t even going to start on how they treated their son. “You’re coming with me, right?” Davey asked, worried. He couldn’t go back there alone, not fearing everyone would be judging him for what they undoubtedly knew he had done.

Jack sighed, but he knew what his answer was going to be even before Davey had finished the question. He’d follow him anywhere if he asked with those wide eyes. “Always, darlin’” he promised, trying out another nickname that made Davey smile and blush a little.

No matter what was happening, they were in it together.

***

Getting back to first class was surprisingly easy. The stewards they passed all seemed a little frazzled, like they were being asked too many questions they couldn’t answer, and they didn’t pay much attention to the two men walking closely side-by-side through the foyer. Davey wanted to take Jack’s hand, but it wasn’t worth the risk. There may have been a buzz of something going around, but that didn’t make people blind.

When they rounded the corner to the corridor Davey’s stateroom was on, they found the one person who Davey loathed more than anyone in the world. It took all of his mental faculties to not visibly react with disgust, instead keeping his head high and striding past with Jack beside him.

“We’ve been looking for you, Sir,” Snyder tried, as if Davey hadn’t been part of the game of cat and mouse.

Davey walked into his room to find both of his parents, Sarah, and three uniformed crew members staring back at him. “David!” Esther gasped, shocked to see that he had returned of his own accord. She felt hopeful, for a second, that he was finally ready to repent, but that dropped like a stone in her stomach when Jack followed her son through the door.

“Mother, something serious has happened,” Davey began, unsure how exactly to explain the iceberg. He was hoping Jack would take over, but Esther replied before he had the chance.

“Yes. It has,” she said coldly, her eyes flickering between her son and Jack.

Davey gulped, his cheeks going red. Of course they knew, he’d hardly left his room in a state that suggested anything otherwise. It was a little bit of rebellion he regretted – making the bed would probably have helped somewhat.

“We didn’t-” he tried anyway, hoping all they were doing was speculating. Jack stayed quiet at his side, not wanting to make things worse.

“Lying won’t do you any good, David,” Esther warned, her words clipped and harsh.

Sarah climbed to her feet, pulling Davey into a hug. “They found the drawing,” She admitted, her voice a little teary. “I’m so sorry, they made me open the safe. I didn’t know what would be in there.”

Oh. That was more proof than unmade sheets. He was without doubt the one in the sketch, and Jack’s name was on the paper clear as day. “It’s okay,” Davey tried to reassure his sister, but his words sounded as numb as he felt. He’d never meant for anyone but him and Jack to see that piece of paper.

“Arrest him.”

Esther’s voice sounded out loud and clear and for a second Davey thought she was talking about him, but then she raised her hand to point squarely at Jack. “No!” Davey protested, trying to move to stand in front of him and scowling when the crew members maneuvered him out of the way and forced Jack’s hands behind his back. “Mother, what are you doing?” he asked, betrayed and horrified. “We’re in the middle of an emergency, why are you doing this now?” “What he did to you was illegal, David. He will be arrested,” Esther said.

Jack held his head high as he was manhandled, smirking when the men didn’t touch him more than absolutely necessarily as if liking guys was a disease they could catch. He’d been expecting something like this to happen, at the back of his mind, ever since he’d started fooling around with other boys when he was fifteen. He knew it was against the law, but he didn’t care. It felt good and it wasn’t hurting anyone, so he figured it was the law that was the problem. He’d always been more careful though, so as not to end up in handcuffs, but Davey made him forget how to be practical. Now he was paying the price, but better him than Davey.

Davey wanted to scream. Everything they’d done had been enthusiastically mutual and he was close to yelling he didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t do to him just to see the look on his mother’s face. Jack stopped him. He was struggling against the handcuffs that were being locked around his wrists, but he was urging Davey not to say a thing with his eyes. “Keep yourself safe, please,” he begged, as he was dragged out of the room.

Davey tried to run after him, but Mayer grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him back inside the room, turning the key in the lock.

“You can’t do this,” he threatened, knowing he had ground to stand on.

“I believe I already have,” Esther replied sternly. “It’s for the best.”

The best for who, Davey thought miserably. He wasn’t happy, Jack wasn’t happy, and no one else should even be involved. This was all his fault. He’d been stupid and careless all day and he’d practically dragged Jack back into a trap to arrest him and cart him off god-knows-where in the middle of what he seemed pretty convinced was a disaster. He sat on the edge of the couch, burying his face in his hands. This was all wrong. There was no way he was going to be allowed out of his room anytime soon, that much was evident, and he already felt vines of frustration winding up his legs. A hand rested on his shoulder, making him jump, but it was only Sarah rubbing small reassuring circles that quickly became the only thing stopping him from completely falling apart.