#the concept of them all fusing together appeals to me

[daydreamerdrew]

Flashpoint (2011) #4

[reversemoon255]

Oh my goodness; new DigiXros content!? Did my birthday come early this year?

For a little context, the user "Ray Chan" on Behance posted a bunch of concept art from a game they worked on in 2013 under the developer The Playforge for a Digimon Fusions game commissioned by Saban. I'll leave a link [HERE] if you want to go read the full thing and see some of the mock-ups.

But I'm a big fan of DigiXroses (or in this case Fusions), having designed quite a few myself, so I thought it would be fun to go through all of them and give my thoughts. I know these are more in the style of things like DonShoutmon and BalliBastemon than the toyetic stuff I design, but a DigiXros is a DigiXros, and some of these are really cool.

Let's start with the Shoutmon stuff. Ray Chan mentions that they chose to fuse random Digimon together as an exercise, and all of the Shoutmon Xroses feel like that. Which, honestly, I think is a fun idea, and one I might try doing myself some day.

As for the Shoutmon X Shadramon design, I dig it. We have three versions here. The very superhero, uncolored design is probably my least favorite, if only because it's trying too hard to be cool. I much prefer the smaller version of the design. It does a good job of merging the already existing segmentation in Shoutmon's design with the Courage Armor aesthetic. The flame details on the mask are also very sharp. The lankier version is ok, but I think it suffers from the same issue I had with the uncolored one where it's trying very hard to be cooler than it needs to be. Those proportions feel closer to an Armor Evolved Shoutmon than a DigiXros.

Then there are these two, the last of the new Shoutmon X2s. The first Pharaohmon Xros is very fun, and I like the additional red. This one also feels very superhero, but Pharaohmon already has that silhouette naturally, so it works. The second design feels more like how the show would blend them, similar to things like PawnShoutmon or JijiShoutmon. It's not as visually appealing as the first, but small touches like the new shoulders really help it stand out.

I really appreciate that they did a Revolmon/Deputymon Xros, since he was a member of Xros Heart. As for the design, it's pretty great. There's a more subtle V incorporated into the poncho, Shoutmon's face is well incorporated into the bandana and horns. It really blends the two ideas to make something new yet reminiscent. However, it doesn't feel very DigiXros; if you used Shoutmon King instead, you could easily call this a Jogress in the same vein as Paildramon.

And we have a new X4! It's such a weird combination of Digimon, but that's part of why I like it so much. I like the humanoid design more, personally; Shoutmon, Lunamon, and Revolmon all have those general proportions, so it makes sense that a Xros of them would maintain that. The gun arms I also feel work in this case. Of all the versions they did of it, the one with the hat is my favorite, as it's obviously Revolmon's hat, but also blends Shoutmon and Lunamon into it. The one issue I have is Togemogumon isn't very incorporated apart from the feet and a few colors; this could have been a X3 with a little tweak.

The less humanoid design I don't like as much, but I also really appreciate it. Not every Xros should be cool; some of them should be weird or goofy. This version has a unique silhouette, and blends Togemogumon a lot more than the other, even if Revolmon is less apparent apart from the chest cannon (and even then, it's very generic). And there's nothing to say the same four Digimon can't Xros in multiple ways, something SkullKnightmon and DeadlyAxemon did in the show, and something I've been working with with Himemon XAT and XSR.

Now we move onto what is personally my favorite of all the revealed concepts, Sparrowmon X Guardromon. It stands out to me because, with a few tweaks, I could easily imagine this as a toy, where Guardromon's head flips into the torso, and its forearms open up and swap the hands for the drills. On the rare chance I get around to kitbashing a Shoutmon X5, I'd definitely want to try doing a Guardromon so I could do this form as well.

As for the design itself, the fact that its forms are so visibly separated is what probably appeals to me to most. The drills are most likely inspired by Sparrowmon's ray guns. The only thing stopping this from being a near-perfect toyetic DigiXros is the feet, but I understand the want for a visual shake-up.

And now we get to talk about the most interesting through-line in this series of concept arts; Dracomon. It seems like the designers had the idea that, to match Shoutmon from Xros Heart, they could use Dracomon as a similar-sized mascot character and center point for Blue Flare. Dracomon's combinations are much more Fusion than DigiXros, but I really like the idea of re-imagining the Blue Flare team with Dracomon as the center.

As for Dracomon X BlueMeramon, it's a neat design. I like the general shape and flaming wings, but it doesn't really feel like either of its components. The face is too different, and the armor shapes and core come from nowhere. It feels like a Lv5 evolution of Dracomon, like Wingdramon or Groundramon (do we have a Flardramon?). A really cool Digimon design, but a pretty bad DigiXros, sadly. Really glad they didn't go with the superhero shaped one.

And then, like Shoutmon, we have this random X4 using Yasyamon, MetalMamemon, and Catsuramon. Despite its appearance, having two Lv5s in there would mean it's probably pretty powerful. Unlike the previous one, this one actually incorporates all the elements of the component Digimon quite well, having Dracomon as a base, and various armor parts from everyone else dotted throughout in a slightly better way than Shoutmon's. I also really like the uncolored concepts as well, even if they feel less like DigiXroses than the one they went with. (Wonder if I could convince Poyo to draw #2?)

But I think the set of designs that will grab most peoples' attention are the Dracomon and Blue Flare Xroses. These feel like the only designs that were made for the game as a forethought, rather than being a fun experiment.

Dracomon X MailBirdramon is a pretty good Xros, borrowing quite a bit from MetalGreymon in the claws, tail, and wings, but the smaller nature and head design do make it feel more its own. I do wish it differentiated itself a bit more, maybe brought in a bit more green, reduced the armor a bit, but think it's a good start. I also really like how the changed the horns.

Then we get our Shoutmon X4 equivalent. I suppose this would be Dracomon X3? It definitely pulls a lot from it, with the heads on the shoulders and the humanoid silhouette. That being said, and knowing that's what it's trying to accomplish, I think it pulls it off really well (with the caveat of it being a Fusion and not a DigiXros). It does a good job of pulling in elements from all three Digimon. It also has a similar vibe to the WayGreymon design I did a bit ago, so I wonder if I can use some of these ideas as inspiration in the future? Still, I think this is a fun design, and accomplishes what the designers seemed to be setting out to do.

And the last design we have to look at for today is Dracomon X4. Funnily enough, this feels very show Xros, essentially being Dracomon X3 with elements of Cyberdramon added onto it. It definitely feels very final form, but maybe not hero final form? Though I suppose that works for Blue Flare.

At the end of the day, I'm just pumped to see more DigiXros content, even if it isn't the toyetic stuff I'm more fond of. It's also the first new DigiXros content we've gotten since Boy Hunters ended over 10 years ago, even if it isn't "official." Like I've said about my own content, I hope these inspire a few people to try designing a DigiXros. I'd love to see other peoples' takes. I'd also love to be not the only person who draws this stuff.

So thanks to The Playforge for designing these, and to Ray Chan for sharing them. It really made my week.

[toyherb]

I was never a fan of Amber's marriage event, man.... I like that it shows a more serious side of Amber and her strong desires, but the lore implications and the fact that Amber isn't particularly present in it. Amber being so kind it almost kills her is kind of frustrating in the first place.

It specifically has always bugged me that the event tells us that Ambrosia and Amber are two separate beings that used to be fused together, and therefore the same would be true for the other Guardians and their respective monsters. It's just less appealing of a concept to me than if the process of becoming Rune Guardians literally transformed them.

(Also like, how is Ambrosia even able to stay in Amber's body in the first place? Her body went but not her soul? I guess Venti did that but she's literally a Dragon God...)

(I think this would also make the monsters Literally A Part of Them and not a separate entity and soul, so when you beat them with Tamitaya enchanted weapons, as all weapons in RF are, you send that monster part of them to the Forest of Beginnings. But saying they fractured into two beings because of that, for the purposes of Rune Factory, isn't something I'm interested in either... So let's say they were like that due to Rune accumulation or something, and sending that monster part away is really you beating the runes out of em. And when you rematch the bosses it's that Rune Energy re-manifesting or something. It feels neat and tidy that way, and makes sense how they are still physically changed. I mean, it doesn't make more sense than being physically changed from just being fused with a monster, because neither are realistic scenarios, but in my head it works.)

Because it's weird that Amber has an entire event like this but it's not addressed anywhere else in the game even though the plot surrounds it and there's 3 other characters who went through it! Do any of them ever talk about their time as a monster, and specifically about being a monster??? Even in Leon's event I don't think he addresses this issue (but I would love to see it if he does).

So anyway I think part of my issue with how this was handled in the game is that I want Amber, Dylas, Dolce, and Leon to actually be monsters and not just people who were temporarily fused with monsters because that means they aren't actually monsters and I have some THEORIES about Rune Factory Lore and the Forest of Beginnings and life and death. Which basically amounts to humans being monsters too, humans dying and going to the Forest of Beginnings*, etc. I think it ties into half monsters in RF3 very well too.

*dead humans can't come back through gates though... unless what has been established about monsters coming back through gates is incorrect and we have been killing monsters this entire time, and the monsters that come back are born from ~reformed rune energy~. Or something.

Humans And Monsters Are The Same is just a juicy theme okay.

[lyxthen]

I am sad about the way AI art technology is being developed. The thing that appealed to me the most about AI art was precisely its limitations. Like, to me weirdness was a feature, not a bug. The output new models keep churning out is so bland in comparison to earlier AI art. I liked it more when it felt like pictures out of a fever dream, like being pulled into the whacky fake reality of a digitally engineered world, beautiful and slightly disturbing. I think the deformities were awesome and that the value of AI art came precisely out of its capacity to abstract and fuse concepts together so clumsily, so thoughtlessly. In a "it makes no damn sense, compels me though" way.

And, I don't know, I just feel like it's gotten too good for its own good. Anyone can learn to paint like Michel Angelo if given enough time and practice. But can anyone paint in the style of like, dall-e crayon? That's harder. Because the process that goes into creating it is completely different. I know cuz I've tried. It's hard to replicate. It's hard to mimic the cognition of a computer. I think they should have left it like that, you know? It was way more interesting, in my opinion, and more inspiring. It gives you something to work with rather than a finished piece.

But now they are trying to get artists out of the picture entirely. And that's sad. AI art was a wonderful tool as it was, but they don't want better tool for artists to work with, they want a full replacement for them. One that won't ask to be paid.

I'm all for AI art, if it a. Is done with consent from artists it will be trained on, b. is free to use, open code and non-profit, and c. doesn't try to emulate human art, instead working towards a model that helps artists in their craft (by doing things like randomized noise, looking for references online, lightning, collaborative projects and such) or goes hard into the trippy nonsense it naturally leans towards. Because as it is, AI art is not only harmful to artists- it is also painfully boring, and every day tech companies are working towards making it even worse on that regard. And I don't like that at all. To think the medium had so much potential...

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Hey! I’m a big fan of your blog, I really enjoy your content, especially on the woke.

I’ve seen you post extracts from it but I was wondering if you’ve ever fully read ‘White Fragility’ by Robin DiAngelo? I’m currently reading it and I swear the stupidity in this book is up there with religious texts. I started reading, trying to be open minded but the amount of hypocrisy and depravity, disguised as moral virtue, it’s disgusting!

I confess that I haven’t read any of Diangelo’s other works yet. But the fact she has a PhD and has written this book? I think she’s an intellectual clown, because so much of what’s in this book, I can’t take seriously.

What do you think?

I have to admit I have not read it all the way through, cover to cover, but read much of it one chapter here, one chapter there.

I've had to repeatedly put it down because reading it for any significant duration gives me a headaches from my eyes rolling back in my head.

It's a remarkable book, for a number of reasons.

It relies upon some of the most amazing fallacies (the entire premise of the book hinges entirely on the Kafka trap) and cognitive distortions, such as mind-reading and catastrophizing.

She's completely up front about what she's doing, especially when she, as Woke does, fuses bigotry and oppression, two separate concepts, together as if they were one and the same.

It's intellectually empty, citing as authoritative nobody who's actually done any rigorous sociological study, so it's nothing more than narratives and opinions and assertions all the way down, quoted if they were religious scripture. The one "empirical" study I can find relied on anecdotes collected and self-reported by students, which is clearly methodologically and ideologically compromised.

Is stunningly manipulative, such as redefining "white supremacy" and then proceeding to tut-tut people who are bothered about being called, or decline to admit to being, "white supremacists". See also: “Dear White Women: Do Not Commit Suicide because You’re Racists” (parody/mild rewrite of Chapter 11, “White Women’s Tears”)

Yet uses very clear language rather than the thick, convoluted academese of most Critical Theory-based screeds.

Somehow manages to be simultaneously pious and treat black people as infantile, incompetent idiots requiring her wisdom to save them (it's been argued that it should be called "Black Fragility").

And because of how confessional it is, un-self consciously lays out just how terrible a person she is.

She's clearly not a deep thinker, and has one blunt instrument that she wields and seeks to confirm everywhere.

But she's also clearly, and even by her own admission, a full-blown racist - in the normal sense, not the "traffic lights are racist" sense. She has a very low view of black people, but is also extremely aware of it; someone once described it as "scrupulosity", a form of religious OCD, about her own racism. Her solution is to project onto every white person everything she hates about herself, and then absolve herself by trapping them into feeling guilty about things that aren't their fault.

Basically, she's the Mother Teresa of Neoracism.

I've been forced to come to the conclusion that her book most appeals to white people who are exactly like her, and to black and brown people who wish to leverage the social status offered in victimhood culture, whether sincerely or cynically.

If you're masochist enough to want the full Robin DiAngelo experience, try these:

"What Does It Mean to Be White?" (2012)

"Is Everyone Really Equal?" w/Ozlem Sensoy (2018)

"White Fragility" (2018)

"Nice Racism" (2021)

As always, reading the scripture helps immunize you against the disease.

https://religion-is-a-mental-illness.tumblr.com/tagged/White%20Fragility

[lokitvsource]

You came into the show with the idea of Loki clashing with the TVA already in place. How exactly does this kind of arrangement work at Marvel? Michael Waldron: There was a creative brief that was 20 pages or so that basically said: “We want to do something about Loki running up against the TVA. Here’s some different avenues that might be cool to explore.” It was really serving it up for writers as a jumping off point for us to put together our pitches. Then I went off and really worked on the idea of Loki being brought in to hunt another Loki, and that becoming the heart of the show, and the Loki/Sylvie relationship. The big thing that I did in my pitch — even as early as pitching it to Kevin [Feige] — I really walked through the six episodes, kind of similar to what they were. I knew I wanted Episode 3, for instance, to be a little bit of a Before Sunrise, with Loki and this character walking across this apocalyptic moon. But Marvel had the initial, probably the most important spark of genius, which was just Loki and the TVA.

Where did the idea of the variant being a female Loki come from? That was one of my ideas, that we then confirmed in the writers room. Yeah, we knew from the get-go that it was going to be Loki falling for another version of himself.

Why was that appealing to you? I love writing any romance; it’s fun. Especially, it hasn’t been done a ton in the MCU. There’s an obviously self-reflective quality to it. And a show that’s quite literally about self-love; it is Loki getting to see parts of himself. At the start of the show, he kind of hates himself. He assesses himself to Mobius as a villain. And then he meets Sylvie, and he sees her as someone on a heroic crusade. He sees the good in her, and is able to see the good in himself.

Mobius suggests that, of course, Loki fell in love with his own variant, because he’s a narcissist. Do you think he’d be capable of falling in love with someone who is not a version of himself? [Laughs] I don’t know if he didn’t fall in love with himself first. Maybe after that, but the first time he falls, maybe this is what it had to be.

What’s the key to telling a time travel story that takes advantage of the concept without confusing the audience? I think it’s doing a lot of work that the audience never sees. It’s really understanding the logic of this thing, building out the TVA as a real organization that actually exists in our minds. Our writers room, we had a TVA handbook, encyclopedia, what they do and why they do it, a glossary of terms. And then you want to only give the audience the absolute bare minimum to understand the story, and to just get swept up in the emotional stakes of everything. If the sci-fi of it all, if the time travel logic of this show did not hold up week to week, then that would have distracted from the emotional journeys of the characters. So I’m glad that even though everyone had to take their medicine a little bit, along with Loki, in episode one, I’m glad it didn’t distract from the story we were telling. And we had the benefit of Loki being the audience’s eyes in. The audience is learning as he is.

There’s a funny scene in Avengers: Endgame where the Avengers start arguing about exactly how time travel works in the MCU. How much did you have to study what other Marvel movies had done with the idea to make sure your rules were consistent? Fortunately, Endgame was the main one, and that’s how they understand it. The TVA is an organization that understands time travel on a deeper level, probably more comprehensively than the Avengers do in Endgame. We wanted to make sure we were staying true to any rules that they laid out, but sort of establishing our own rules. It’s a time travel show. What was I thinking? A movie’s one thing, but a show is hard.

How many Loki variants did you have on the writers room whiteboard at various points? Hundreds. So many different Lokis. There was one Loki, actually maybe it was a version of Mobius that took off his glasses, and he just had really tiny eagle eyes, like he could see everything. There was stuff like that all over the white board. Tom Kauffman, who wrote that fifth episode, he’s an amazing comedy writer, and was on the first three seasons of Rick and Morty. His first draft of that episode was just bananas.

Was there a variant, or a crazy idea in general, that you really loved but couldn’t ultimately do? There was so much different stuff that we wanted to do in the Void. But the truth is, I don’t want to say any of it, because you never know. The ideas that I want to do the most may pop up elsewhere.

Okay, so let’s stick with a variant we did see. Was Alligator Loki actually a Loki, or just an alligator that happened to be wearing a Loki’s crown? A magician can’t reveal his tricks, man. That’s the great debate. Let it rage.

What was Alligator Loki‘s origin story on your side of things? Who pitched him and how was that initially received? That was maybe my very first meeting with the producers at Marvel, Kevin Wright and Stephen Broussard, talking about the show, and me saying, “When we’re doing this, you can encounter lots of different Lokis. You could have an alligator Loki. Why? Cause he’s green.” And us all laughing about how stupid that was. I think I made the point that it’s that energy of what we can do with the show. We can have something like that, but let’s play it straight. Alligator Loki, you get a laugh out of it, but by and large you try and play it straight. That was the fun tonal balance that we tried to strike in the show.

There’s been some conflicting information out there about whether the big bad was originally just going to be He Who Remains, who’s a different comics character altogether from Kang, and whether the casting of Jonathan Majors changed the plan. From your point of view, what happened? The character was always written as a version of Kang, as early as the first draft of the script, we knew in the writers room, relatively early on. He Who Remains, that’s the guy behind the curtain with the TVA, and we saw an opportunity to fuse that mythology with the Immortus mythology. And that was just really compelling. It was a way to elevate, it just felt right for Loki, because Loki was there in the first Avengers, he’s the one who brought the Avengers together, and here is directly related to the exploding of the multiverse, this event that will drive the events of Phase Four. Certainly, when Jonathan came in, it allowed us to step on the gas of just how eccentric and charismatic this character could be. I was inspired in the writing of He Who Remains by Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia, trying to give it that Frank TJ Mackey energy a little bit. He captures that and then elevates it to something else that’s different and weird.

You just said how important the multiverse is going to be to Phase Four of the MCU. How challenging is it to have to set up this big thing for the larger Marvel endeavor while also serving the needs of the particular story you’re telling on this show? It’s a challenge in the sense that it’s all a relay race, and you’ve got the baton on this thing, and you want to do a great job. The name of the game over at Marvel is with each movie or TV show, make it the best it can possibly be. And they’re really supportive of that, and trust that it will organically fit into the larger blueprint of everything. We were excited about introducing a version of Kang, because yeah, to introduce this new big bad was cool for our show. I was aware, and cautious, of the thing I read in your review, that it might not be the most sound storytelling to introduce a new character at the very end that we’ve never seen before as the big bad of this thing. Obviously, we had the benefit that people know who Kang is, and there’s a meta thing where a portion of the audience knows Jonathan Majors is going to be playing Kang in Phase Four. But the finale was only ever going to work if He Who Remains, in a compelling way, serviced the Loki and Sylvie emotional story. That was the most important job that that character did in the finale: he laid out a very compelling conflict that ultimately drove the two of them apart.

There has also been some confusion as to exactly when you knew that there would be a second season, as opposed to you just making a limited series. Initially, in the writers room, we were not operating as though there would be a second season. And the whole way through was, this should be a story that should stand on its own. I referenced The Leftovers and Mad Men all the time. I think about those seasons, they pushed the overall stories forward, but you can pull any one of those seasons and look at it on its own as an individual story. I wanted that to be the case here, whether we did a second season or not. I think we always felt that we would want to propel Loki forward into the MCU after the conclusion of our season. The only question was, would that be in an appearance in a movie, or would that be in a second season. And it was only over the course of development that the stars aligned to make a second season.

But that end scene, where Mobius no longer recognizes Loki and the TVA is filled with Kang statues, wouldn’t have been a satisfying conclusion to a limited series. That is an ending that only works if there’s going to be a second season. So there is another conclusion to the story that I wrote that exists out there, that I guess is just for me. My own little play, that I perform with my action figures.

What was Sylvie’s original plan, before Loki hijacked her to that dying moon? It was to empty out the TVA. The entire bombing of the Sacred Timeline was to create a diversion. She’s not going to be able to create a multiverse from doing that. Ultimately, the TVA has the manpower to get out and take care of these events, but they’re going to have to scramble a lot of their minutemen teams, and it leaves the Time-Keepers significantly less guarded than they would have been otherwise. That was her plan.

You didn’t come into this as a big comic book nerd. So was there someone on staff who could tell you, “Well, there’s this giant cloud called Alioth that eats time,” or, “Well, one time Thanos had a helicopter,” or maybe someone assigned to you by Marvel? I’m constantly reading the comics but trying to not be so beholden to the and do our own thing. I charged our writers assistant, Ryan Kohler, with, “You’ve got to become the authority on all things TVA, all things Kang, and all that.” So he and my assistant, Sophie Miller, became a support staff who read a ton of these comics and became a wealth of knowledge for the writers to turn to. And then the Marvel producers, obviously are very well versed in the comics. It was Kevin Wright who came in one day and was like somebody throwing down a blueprint in an asteroid movie, going, “Alioth! Look at this!” And we were like, “Ohmigod, this is perfect!” The best thing about working on these comic book shows is that if it’s from the comics, it doesn’t matter how much of a deus ex machina it is, it’s just cool, like, “I can’t believe you pulled that from the comics.” Alioth, that was a big breakthrough that unlocked the last two episodes for us.

That is not a famous comic book that introduces Alioth. It’s an obscure Nineties miniseries, with really ugly art. But you look at it and see what it could be. You say, “If we do this, and it feels like Twister, it’s going to be really cool.”

Was Mobius’ love of jet skis there simply to illustrate his character, or did you have a grander idea in mind? I will come clean: I’m a jet ski guy. I’ve spent a good amount of time on jet skis in my day. I used to tow a jet ski to a lake and ride it in college. So it probably was me. Loki, I was just becoming a steward of that character. Mobius was a character I really felt I got to create from nothing. There’s not really anything to that character in the comics. So bits and pieces of me found their way in. I just think there’s something so poignant — here Mobius is, a guy who is literally fighting to preserve all of time in the multiverse, and yet his interests are maybe the most humble, human, terrestrial, unremarkable thing you can think of. Just a jet ski. And when you’ve got Owen Wilson playing him and it’s just that much better.

Will you be back in some capacity for Season Two? [long pause] Time will tell.

‘Loki’ Head Writer Michael Waldron — and ‘Rick and Morty’ Alum — on MCU, ‘Heels’ and More

[parasite-core]

A Memory of Green

This was originally written for the Rusty Fears horror writing competition. The theme was An Animal's Viewpoint. It didn't win, but I'm still really proud of it, so I wanted to share incase anyone would like to read it.

***

A Memory of Green

I don’t know how long I’ve been in this cage. Maybe forever. I don’t know if I have a concept of forever, but the word comes to mind nonetheless. The lumbering two-legged creatures come and give me water and food twice daily, once when the lights come on and again when they go out. The creatures don’t seem to like the dark. I don’t mind waiting through the night, my eyes are sharper than theirs.

I don’t know where I got these thoughts. I hear my furless captors speak, and I understand, but I don’t remember when I learned these words. They go away when I drink the bitter water they provide, that I know is laced with something to keep me calm and peaceful and quiet. My keepers write down notes, and say things like “The subject ‘Naomi’ continues to be compliant. The test is going well.” And normally I do comply. It’s so much easier to just drink and sleep and eat and exist as they desire, than to bite back and risk losing everything they’re willing to give.

But today, today I did not want to drink the poison. They did not seem to notice, or perhaps did not care. They had oh so many cages to care for after all. Creatures with fur and tooth and claw like me. Most quiet and complacent, awaiting nothing but their next meal. Others bite and howl and scream. They tear themselves apart against the bars and cry, until they’re taken away to places unknown, and never return again.

I am usually compliant. It’s so much easier that way. The furless clawless creatures give me food and leave me alone if I’m good. Some even praise me. “Good girl, Naomi. Good girl.” But the cage felt so small today. Or perhaps I felt too big. I wanted to rip apart my smooth and silky coat and stand tall and proud and flee, run free, somewhere with grass and trees and the warmth of sunlight instead of the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs that beat down on us at every waking hour.

So today I did not drink. And my mind felt sharper than it had in…I don’t know how long. Maybe forever.

And for the first time I noticed that my cage was not locked.

I waited for the lights to go out. For the creatures with their slow two-legged gait to retreat from the darkness, to wherever they sheltered while the shadows clung to the walls of their laboratory. Then I pawed at the door of my cage, pushed, and suddenly I was free. The dark corridors between cages stretched before me. All the clawed and fanged and furred and scaled creatures lay in silent stupors around me, none in any state for me to rescue, even if I were of the mind to rescue others. I darted forward, to the open door I’d often seen our lumbering masters exit through. The subtle scratching of my claws against the smooth tiled floor was the only sound. It was a foreign sound. I supposed I’d never walked on tiles before. Why I’d expected the clicking of the apes’ foot coverings, I couldn’t say.

The halls were long and lightless, but I had sharp ears and a sharper nose. To my right everything smelled of plastic overlayed with the metal tang of blood. I went to the left. I heard behind me the whimpering and howling of those creatures who could neither drink their fill nor free themselves. I heard through another door screams and yells of a different kind. Spoken in language, like the great apes spoke to us. I avoided that door. I didn’t want to know what these creatures could do to each other to cause such screams. Such whimpering begging cries for help, almost as broken as the howling of those I’d left behind.

There was a bend in the hallway, and then before me another open door, leading into a room lit by a pulsing green light. Green was good, I thought. Green brought to mind grass and trees. It brought to mind smiling green eyes. Kind forgotten words of assurance, and a hand with a golden ring. Whose eyes were they? Whose hand? When had I seen them? I couldn’t conjure up a memory. Maybe I had made it up. I didn’t remember ever being outside the cage before. How could I possibly remember grass and trees and a woman’s kindness? Love should be a foreign concept to me.

I padded softly forward, too aware of my clicking claws. My tail, held low, brushed against my back leg and I nearly yipped in surprise at the feeling despite myself. I feared that at any moment one of the apes would appear, scoop me up despite any attempt to fight, and take me back to my cage. Or worse, take me to the place where uncompliant creatures go, to disappear. I could turn back. I could hop into my cage and drink my fill and forget about the green and the grass and the eyes.

Instead, I pushed forward. Into a room of glass and metal. Wires and tubes covered the walls, connected to machines and large glass cylinders. So many glass cylinders. Almost as many as there were cages in the room I’d always been in and always remembered. And inside each was one of those creatures, the same clumsy two-legged form as my captors. Humans. The word came to my mind unbidden.

Only these humans were not as furless and scaleless and clawless as my captors. There was a man with feathers growing from his crown, his face melting together into a hard beak. A woman whose eyelids had dissolved, leaving an unblinking black snake eye to stare unfocused at me, as the flesh around it cracked and hardened into countless scales. A tall gangly human with antenna sprouting from their forehead, and their fingers fused into sharp scythes. A creature with a long body covered in sleek black and grey fur, nothing human left, save for green eyes that flickered open for but a moment, meeting mine with a look of utter helplessness and fear, before being eased back into slumber by whatever drugs kept them from twisting in pain from their transformations.

My body was trembling. I hadn’t even noticed. I tried to back away but suddenly four legs seemed like so many to coordinate, and I stumbled and fell. I remembered laughter, and a white dress. I remembered bells and joy. I remembered a future that we’d dreamed of together that was ripped away. I remembered screaming. Crying out as we were torn apart. Someone wanted us to disappear, and then we did.

I heard howling. I heard screaming. I didn’t know which was mine. Maybe both. Maybe neither. I wanted to run, but my limbs were all wrong, and I couldn’t find it in me to forget enough to remember how to use them. I writhed on the ground, willing this to be a nightmare. Willing myself to wake up to green eyes and gentle kisses. Willing myself to wake up in a cage, a mere beast with no memory outside its safe and simple cell. Something. Anything. Anything but knowing both, and being torn apart by having neither.

Eventually one of my captors came. They scooped up my limp body, and I allowed it. Maybe I could have clawed and bitten, struggled and fought. Maybe I should have, just to put up a token resistance. But there was no point. The green grass held no more appeal. The flowers meant nothing, if they weren’t woven into her hair. If I had to remember her smile and know that even in freedom I would never see it again, then what was the point?

I was returned to my cage, and I drank. And—and I forget the rest. It all blurs together now. Soon, I hope, the memory of my escape attempt will fade too.

A new creature has been placed in the cage across from mine. One with black and grey fur, and green eyes that never look at me. She cries and howls and refuses to drink. They will eventually take her away, and I will never see her again. I don’t refuse my water anymore. It’s easier this way. They give me food. They give me shelter. All I have to do is drink, and forget that there was ever anything else. And I’m happy to.

[bestworstcase]

i’ve been thinking about moon varian a bit lately because while i think i’ve mentioned before that as a concept or au it is just not my cup of tea (and frankly i felt it was a little silly as a theory of something that would actually happen in canon but then again i really thought cass was saporian so we’re all clowns here) i do have a difficult time articulating precisely why “moon powers varian” is basically an automatic pass for me when it comes to fic, other than the obvious of i just like cass’s moonstone yoink and subsequent catastrophes

but i have read a couple moon varian fics and i’ve skimmed a lot more and they never quite click with me; and at the same time bitter snow does play with some moon varian tropes so it’s really not because of the common kind of reason for disinterest in the au that i see (ie “varian doesn’t need or want magic”) because i have zero objection to varian developing an interest in magic or whatever

but while sketching out some scenes for the spire arc in moonless air i?? remembered?? this post that i made ages ago and i was like OH 

because the appeal to me of varian acquiring or having magic somehow isn’t that he has powers, it’s the concept of him studying it. the moon varian fics and stuff that i have read by and large seem to fall into either the camp of. varian flips out because he doesn’t want magic or doesn’t believe in magic and there’s drama surrounding that, or varian is just kinda like rapunzel in how he relates to his powers but with an extra side of frustration about not understanding how they work, or frustration about them not following logical rules because they’re magic. which are both reasonable paths to take 🤔 

but i guess what i’d really want to see out of a moon varian au (and what does sort of end up happening in bitter snow even though bitter snow is not by any means a moon varian au) is varian a) tackling the magic he falls into exactly the same way he tackles a confounding alchemical problem and then b) fusing magic and his own knowledge of chemistry and engineering to create sort of his own... school of magic use? 

bitter snow works real well for this because the magic system is so flexible and based on personal relationship with one or more divine beings and that can include a great variety in how recipients of magic choose to use it; and it also gels nicely with varian’s arc of being sort of an anti-demanitus which i will not elaborate on right now because spoilers 

anyway this is all a ramble but this boy took a few drops of mood-swapping potion and broke them down to their bare essentials and figured out how to put those ingredients together in a new way to create a truth serum and that’s precisely the energy i would want out of a moon varian au

[weeping-petals]

Orchestrating the Downfall

Word Count - 1,817

An au where Spinel is a Crystal Gem. Takes place after “We Need to Talk”  before Steven comes to be.

It startled Greg when the door opened and he was presented with Spinel, looking fed up and done with his mere presence.

“Do I... have the right house?” he began, scanning the threshold, as if he didn’t just stroll up the walk to a front door in the heart of Beach City. Honest, one couldn’t be too sure, with magical beings invested in showing him up at every turn.

“Depends,” sneered the Gem. “What’s your cut and facet?”

“Uhhh.....”

“Kidding.” Spinel swung away in her slinky like manner and strutted through the home, as if she were a natural element. “Vidalia! The boyfriends here!”

“BoYFRIenD?!!  No-no, she and me are just good friends. It’s not like- “ He stuttered on, while Spinel snorted a laugh “ - I’m just giving her a lift -”Spinel’s shape looked on the verge of unraveling.

“Chill out. I meant you and Rose. You and Rose are a thing, right?”

They stopped in the living room. Spinel stretched in close and was giving him a very feline grin, as if relishing some private joke. He hated when she and Pearl did this. He sweated bullets, trying to come up with some winning quip.

“Is it that... obvious?”

That was not a winning quip.

Spinel lost it.

“What are you even doing here?” He brushed past the unraveling noodle, trying to hide how red his face felt. “I thought I had babysitting duty today.”

“Aw, you don’t want company? Rose and Garnet are out on Mission, so you won’t- “ A crash cut through the sentence. Spinel stiffened and bolted from the room. Greg was quick to follow, yelping, 

“Sour Cream!” He took the stairs two at a time, huffing and scrambling, while Spinel scaled them in two bounds. He was in such a rush that he nearly plowed into her, when she halted cold turkey in the room the sound originated.

“If you break these, we won’t have someone able to fix them.” 

Amethyst lay strewn over an upturned stool, a grin plastered on her face and hair disheveled.

“You’ll have to turn into a pole. And that’s where you’ll spend your remaining years, holding up cloth. Doing the... nuclear orb blotty... thing.” Spinel stepped over and plucked up the pole in question, with the drapes attached. The window where Amethyst tumbled from expelled the bright dawn light, the harsh rays caught and refracted through the Gem stones on both of the alien beings.

“Or we could use a broom handle,” Amethyst chirped.

Spinel cocked her head and stood back. “Or we could use a mop handle.”

“Or a tree branch.”

“Maybe a sword.”

“One of Pearl’s spears?”

“One of Pearl’s spears,” Spinel echoed, as if the concept appealed. “Ye. Or, y’know, we could not break the poles.”

“You were taking fooooreeeeveeerrrrr. Hey Greg!” Amethyst waved. Awkwardly, Greg returned the gesture.

It was always nice and very semi-human to see the two helping, though he wished they did this stuff more when he and Rose were out together. Probably the reason why they were here helping, because Rose was busy elsewhere and he was here sort of busy, so no saboteur work was planned. Geez, they could be so nice sometimes /sarcasm.

“I heard the distinct sound of someone wrecking my hovel. That’s the complete opposite of what you said you’d do. ” Vidalia came to the doorway and peered in, while fixing her shirt. “Could you give them a hand? I need five more seconds.” She fixed Greg with a glare.

“Oh, yeah. I’m not really good with handy-man stuff, though.”

“You’ll learn. They’re extenders, anyway. I’m sure you can’t complicate that business more than them.” Amethyst chuckled.

“Please hurry,” Greg called in the void Vidalia left. “Okay, so just pinning up blinds. Easy peasy”

“They’re like sideways flags.” Amethyst rolled over and snatched at the one Spinel held, missing when the taller Gem swept backwards.

“’Can’t complicate this.’” Spinel hissed, rolling up the cloth on the staff. “Oh, pssh-lease, this is so basic.”

“Where are the instructions?” Greg posed, dead-pan.

“There were no instructions.”

“I know. I would’ve eaten them.”

“She would’ve - “ Spinel did a double-take. “Did you eat them and not tell me?”

“No!” Amethyst made another move to grab for the pole. “You said I could help!”

“Helping involves two people.” Spinel inched sideways, this time flipping the pole over her shoulders, and twirling it over the upper area of her lithe arm. Greg took a step back while she continued, the staff a whirling blur above the Gems pigtails. “And when you don’t do like you’re told, you miss out on the fun stuff.” Amethyst looked utterly defiant, and on the brink of shoving Spinel, the way a toddler might glower up at a know-it-all uncle. Or aunt.

“Hey, c’mon, you’re gonna wind up breaking it,” Greg spat. He pressed himself against the edge of the doorway, convinced the staff would go rogue at any moment and spear him. “I’m just here to help!”

Spinel glanced his way, the helicopter of a staff halted braced across her lower back. “What can you do then?” She plucked Amethyst up and dropped the smaller Gem onto her shoulders. “Aside from steal hearts?” She tossed the pole to Greg, and he fumbled to catch it, not so gracefully. Spinel grinned.

Greg set his eyes on the corner, where more of the poles and unopened drapes slanted and waited. “I can... put up more of these curtains, than you both. Combined.”

“We’re not fusing,” Spinel snapped.

“We’re not! - ” Amethyst sprawled herself between Spinel’s pigtails. “⁻ ʷᵉ’ʳᵉ ⁿᵒᵗ ᶠᵘˢᶦⁿᵍ?”

“No, I mean - you two working together!” Greg choked. “I bet I can get ALL the blinds hung, before Vidalia - ”

“Okay, ready.” The so named human returned, casting an unimpressed eye from Greg to the yawning window, and her helpers. “Wow. You guys made progress. I’m impressed.”

Greg sputtered. The Gems snickered at his back. 

“Look after my boy, you two! Or else.” Vidalia waved them off. Not the scorning, intimidating threat she’d given him, the first day he took on the babysitter role.

It was when he was downstairs, barely, that they erupted into a monstrous batch of giggles and unrestrained laughter. All at his expense.

__

“You shouldn’t let them get to you,” Vidalia spoke, at last. She sat with her arms crossed gazing through the windshield. Greg still felt some unseen stare, judging him and smiling at every shortcoming.

“They’re - “

“I JUST DON’T GET IT! What do they have against me? JUST’CAUSE I’M DATING THEIR FRIEND! Pearl especially, don’t get me started on that stuck up bird! GRRR!” He actually said GRR.

“Watch the road.” Technically, he didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he was very-very distracted. “The way Amy tells me, Rose is more than just a friend. The way they talk about each other, they’re all family.”

“Yeah, but - y’know. I really like Rose. I never felt this way about anyone, ever, and I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. In a... emotional way. Actually,” He ran a hand through his hair. “The night we, she and I, we danced. I tried some stuff. I was worried she didn’t see me the same way I saw her. Pearl said something really messed up, and she kind of supported the idea - not intentionally. It’s hard to explain.”

“Don’t miss the turn. How so? Give it a try.”

Greg did his best to explain the night, the recording session. And about fusing. He still wasn’t over it. Yeah, he and Rose talked, but he still wasn’t sure about their relationship, though it had been months. Things came a part, and mended, but it wasn’t the same. He was getting better at the relationship thing, and so was Rose, he was convinced. 

Maybe relationships for the Gems was as an alien concept, like the way relationships between human's was. Vidalia called them a family, but they didn’t always act like a family. It was more like a group of people coexisting, because they didn’t have an alternative. From what he gathered in conversations he picked up from, and from Rose directly, they were the only ones on this planet. They only had each other.

“And they’ve been together for ages,” Vidalia surmised, after some discussion. “Not a lot of change happens around them, but they see a lot of change. You come out of left field and sweep their friend, who they idolize, off her feet. The lot of them are going to be a little snippy.”

“A little?” Greg snickered.

“It’s a red light. You should slow down.”

“Huh?” What did she - Oh! A red light! He touched the break.

“They’re probably jealous, and resistant of some change. And let’s not forget, protective. Kids are the same way, and sometimes they’ll reject a new parent. It’s not the same if it’s a friend to their parent, or a loose acquaintance. Building a special bond with someone, in an intimate way, can rile up a family. Have you thought that you’re seeing this as a problem your’re having with them, and not a problem they’re having with you.”

Greg sighed and leaned a little on the steering wheel. “No, it’s kind of hard to be sympathetic with creatures orchestrating your downfall.” He paused. “At every turn.”

“Find some patience. Also, they’re not orchestrating your downfall.” Greg huffed and looked out the driver window, fogging the glass with his breath. “Actually, Spin’s pretty thrilled about you.”

“Oh, is she?” he grumped, voice flat. “Hard to hear that broadcast buried under all those jeers.”

“Yeah, she’s being hard on you. I’ll talk to her, if you want. Subtlety.”

“No. Thanks though. This is probably something I’ll have to get used to. Or deal with.” But man, if Pearl gets into the equation with the terrible two-o, he was done for. Was it really all worth it?

He recalled the night he and Rose danced, and the kiss.

“You’re smiling? What’re you thinking about?”

“Nothing! It’s nothing!”

“Green light, boyfriend. I’m gonna be late for work.”

Begrudgingly, Greg tried to put his focus back on the road. “Geez, Vidalia, when did you get so good at listening and talking?”

“The mom life.” She smiled, and it was warm, and she seemed approachable, understanding, and full of wisdom. Beyond her age. “You think about a lot of eventual things when you’re taking care of a kid. You wanna do it right the first time, because that’s the only chance you got.”

Greg was dazzled by the insight. Yeah, it kind of was the only chance she’d get, to make sure Sour Cream didn’t wind up like his father, or worse, soured by the ideas his father had left.

“Hey, have you... had much contact with Marty, since....” he trailed off.

“Not much.” Vidalia sighed. “And I prefer it that way.”

[arcticdementor]

When I think of the Waverly Diner on 6th Avenue and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, I am moved by romantic nostalgia. By that I only mean that when I think of the Waverly I feel, in some way, what it was like to be young and in the rush of the conversation. The conversation was everything. It flowed all around us, in the subways and the streets, in the diners and the high-rise apartments, and if you could master it, it could take you anywhere. You could still smoke inside of diners back then and sometimes we spent whole days around an ashtray and a plate of disco fries, getting refills on the coffee. I’m not saying all the arguments were good, but sometimes it was thrilling.

Perhaps that’s a uniquely New York thing, to place so much faith in talking. But it once felt very American, too; the diner-booth yapper animated by argument, one version of the big city fast talker who reflected an aspect of the national character right there alongside the taciturn cowboy, the trapper frontiersman, and the Puritan. American because, if you could think it and you could argue it, then maybe you could be it, too. It was at least possible. And it was democratic in the best sense. You could talk to anyone, butt into any stranger’s conversation, as long as you had something interesting to say.

I don’t know how to argue in America anymore, or whether it’s even worth it. For someone like me, that is a real tragedy and so I would like to understand how this new reality came about.

There are distinct and deep-rooted traditions of rational empiricism and religious sermonizing in American history. But these two modes seem to have become fused together in a new form of argumentation that is validated by elite institutions like the universities, The New York Times, Gracie Mansion, and especially on the new technology platforms where battles over the discourse are now waged. The new mode is argument by commandment: It borrows the form to game the discourse of rational argumentation in order to issue moral commandments. No official doctrine yet exists for this syncretic belief system but its features have been on display in all of the major debates over political morality of the past decade. Marrying the technical nomenclature of rational proof to the soaring eschatology of the sermon, it releases adherents from the normal bounds of reason. The arguer-commander is animated by a vision of secular hell—unremitting racial oppression that never improves despite myths about progress; society as a ceaseless subjection to rape and sexual assault; Trump himself, arriving to inaugurate a Luciferean reign of torture. Those in possession of this vision do not offer the possibility of redemption or transcendence, they come to deliver justice. In possession of justice, the arguer-commander is free at any moment to throw off the cloak of reason and proclaim you a bigot—racist, sexist, transphobe—who must be fired from your job and socially shunned.

Practitioners of the new argument bolster their rationalist veneer with constant appeals to forms of authority that come in equal parts from biology and elite credentialing. Have you noticed how many people, especially online, start their statements by telling you their profession or their identity group: As a privileged white woman; as a doctoral student in applied linguistics; as a progressive Jewish BIPOC paleontologist—and so on? These are military salutes, which are used to establish rank between fellow “az-uhs” while distinguishing them as a class from the civilian population. You must always listen to the experts, the new form of argument insists, and to the science. Anything else would be invalid; science denialism; not rational; immoral.

Because of the way it toggles back and forth between rationalism and religiosity, switching categories by taking recourse to one when the other is questioned, the new form of argument-commandment, rather than invalidating itself or foundering on its own contradictions, becomes, somehow, rhetorically invincible—through the demonstration of power relations that the arguer denies exist, but are plainly manifest in the progress of the argument.

…

Argument itself requires that certain fundamental questions are settled and beyond dispute. In order to argue over whether the sky is blue, we’ll have to agree on what the sky is. The new argumentation has not only vastly expanded the number of subjects that are supposed to be beyond argumentation, it has, by a sleight of hand, reversed the nature of the matters that cannot be questioned. Now, it is precisely the most contentious issues—is biological sex a valid concept? Is racism and abuse so widespread in American law enforcement that we should immediately defund the police?—that must be accepted a priori.

To insist that the conclusion that the arguer wishes to reach, with its implied corollary commandment, must be accepted by his or her opponent as a premise before the argument begins is not the move of a person who has confidence in their truth. It is the opposite of any form of reasoned argument. It is coercive. Except the people who argue this way claim that they cannot possibly be coercive, because you must accept the premise that they don’t have power—even if they are editing The New York Times Magazine, or threatening to get you fired from your job. You say they can’t have it both ways? They say, why not—and then accuse you of opposing the powerless, which, it turns out, is a form of authority that cannot be trumped.

The reason we cannot argue about certain things is because they have already been proven true and the truth they have established is such a significant moral advance—like ending child sacrifice—that to question the rational basis on which the truth rests is to risk eroding a foundation of the moral progress that separates us from encroaching barbarism. If you want to argue about those things, then you are a barbarian—which means that argument with you is impossible, because the only argument that barbarians understand is being put to the sword or sent off to a labor camp.

Do you need me to give you an example of this kind of argument? Not really, because such arguments have become the norm. But here are a few recent examples:

…

Here are the two parts of the argument by commandment. There is the empirical assertion—let’s call it X. And there is the moral claim suggested by, or perhaps even mandated by the evidence of X—let’s call that Y. Empirical evidence shows that there is an epidemic of sexual assault against women, that epidemic requires a drastic corrective, and that corrective enshrines a moral claim and a commandment—American women are sexually victimized, egregiously and without the protections of a justice system that systemically discriminates against them. Therefore it is virtuous to “believe women” and to encode that belief formally in new procedures of law and justice.

Only it turns out the rational argument was wrong. The evidence did not actually show that 1 in 5 women would be sexually assaulted on a college campus, a statistic repeated by President Barack Obama himself to justify “sweeping changes in national policy.”

…

But if you were clueless enough to point out the flaws in rational claim X, even if just to wonder over matters of degree, then wham!—you were whacked in the face with moral claim Y. Evidence X isn’t evidence; it’s window dressing. And if you’re too stupid to understand that, then you’re probably an even worse person than the arguer supposed.

Because—think about it—who else but a fervent, drooling misogynist, or a rape apologist, or a real live rapist, namely someone both ideologically and emotionally invested in actively disbelieving women, would be so interested in picking apart the evidence that supported such an obviously virtuous and necessary claim—especially now, at a moment when people are literally dying? What basis would anyone have to question X aside from the desire to violate the moral value of Y?

…

The organs of reason and expertise have one by one, pledged their cultish loyalty to this new faith. A group of doctors wrote an article in Scientific American explaining why the mentioning or reading of the results of George Floyd’s autopsy was a racist act. Public health officials across the country, who had in May condemned public demonstrations in the strongest terms, now fully endorse the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd. In a petition signed by some 1,200 health officials, they declare that it is incumbent on others in the profession to offer “unwavering support” to the current protesters as a matter of both moral and medical hygiene. They all together elide the difference between empirical claim and moral commandment by declaring that, “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.” And so, the merger of pseudorationalist discourse with the new American religion of anti-racism is completed.

America’s elite institutions now routinely make statements and use language that empirically is false. Indeed, they have taken the making, propagation, and enforcement of such language as their central mission. Because these statements are false, they make solutions to the real problems that are being gestured at impossible—while turning people who may want to actually address those problems into evil rape apologists and racists.

What we are witnessing, in the rapidly transforming norms around race, sex, and gender, is not an argument at all but a revolution in moral sentiment. In all revolutions, the new thing struggling to be born makes use of the old system in order to overthrow it. At present, institutions like the university, the press, and the medical profession preserve the appearance of reason, empiricism, and argument while altering, through edict and coercion, the meaning of essential terms in the moral lexicon, like fairness, equality, friendship, and love. That the effort wins so much support speaks to the deep contradictions and corruption of American meritocratic institutions, and of the liberal individualist moral regime it seeks to replace.

[dimensionsunited]

FEBRUARY 2020 DIMENSIONS ENTERTAINMENT SCHEDULES & REVIEW

Members may earn 3 points each (up to 6 points) for writing, by the end of March 7 KST:

A solo para of 400+ words based on their monthly schedule (does not count toward your monthly total).

A thread of six posts (three per participant, including the starter) based on their monthly schedule.

Threads do not have to take place directly during an important date listed on the schedule, but must be related to what the muse is mentioned to be doing in the paragraph explaining their schedule/the company’s schedule for the month and/or their thoughts on the mentioned activities or lack thereof.

These schedules may be updated throughout the month if new information needs to be added.

Reminder: January schedule posts are due by the end of February 7 KST.

Overall Company

February is a big month for Dimensions and its employees. Starting from the beginning of the month, operations will begin moving over into the company’s new, bigger building in Samseong-dong. By the final day of the month, all day to day operations will be officially moved into the new building. The new building is much larger than their previous one and is newly built. That’s not the only change this month, though. After news of their acquisition of Z Entertainment and Dimensions Soloist 3, it’s clear Dimensions is reinvesting its recent profits. Artists under the label may have heard rumors of the news in the week or two before the news was officially released through company gossip or seeing the new soloist and producers around the building.

Important dates:

February 29: Official move-in date for new building.

Dimensions Soloist 1

Her first schedule for the month is to film a Guerilla Date interview appearance where she’ll meet with fans near the Han River at night time and then talk with the host about how far she’s come since debut, but three days later, she’ll have the opportunity to meet with even more fans for a Valentine’s day fan meeting. She’ll perform all of her singles since “Gashina” as well as older favorites like “Bloom” and “24 Hours” and get a chance to interact with fans that haven’t seen her for a while. To welcome their new soloist, she’s also encouraged to make an appearance on Dimensions Soloist 3′s video diary if they happen to be in the building at the same time.

Important dates:

February 11: Guerilla Date filming (to be aired: February 25).

February 14: Valentine’s Day Fan Meeting at Yes24 Live Hall in Seoul, South Korea.

Dimensions Soloist 2

While he continues recording for his upcoming comeback mini-album this month, the fan meeting in Bangkok on the twenty-second is the more important February schedule for the company, so he spends as much time in the practice studio rehearsing his performances for that as he does recording new songs, if not more. To welcome their new soloist, he’s encouraged to make an appearance on Dimensions Soloist 3′s video diary if they happen to be in the building at the same time.

Important dates:

February 22: Be Happy fanmeeting at GMM Live House in Bangkok, Thailand.

Dimensions Soloist 3

She didn’t have much time to adjust to her new company before getting thrown into solo debut preparations, and she already began recording her her debut solo album and attending concept meetings last month, which will continue through into this month. Dimensions has asked her to keep a video diary of her solo debut preparations for them to cut together and release leading up to her debut to increase hype, and she’s encouraged to include other Dimensions artists in some of the videos in order to naturally integrate her into the company “family”.

Important dates:

N/A

Gal.actic

It’s comeback season! That means music shows and fan signs as usual, and the song does better than expected, peaking on the charts around the same position as “Be Ambitious” did (and without all the controversy!), but Gal.actic will also do a special eight hour live stream for their fans for Valentine’s Day from 2PM KST to 10PM KST. The full group will participate for an hour at the beginning and the end, but in between that, each member will get an hour on their own to entertain fans for an hour with talking, singing, cooking, or anything else that fits the format. The assigned time slots are as follows:

2PM-3PM: Full group

3PM-4PM: Leader/main vocal

4PM-5PM: Vocal

5PM-6PM: Main rapper/main dancer/vocal

6PM-7PM: Lead vocal

7PM-8PM: Lead rapper/lead dancer/vocal

8PM-9PM: Maknae/vocal

9PM-10PM: Full group

Important dates:

February 12: Release of “B.B.B.” & mini-album showcase, promotions continue until March 12.

February 14: Special Valentine’s Day livestream show.

February 16: Fan sign in Yeouido, Seoul.

February 22: Fan sign in Gangnam, Seoul.

Alien

Tour is winding down and after next month they’ll get an extended break from touring before they hold an encore concert in Seoul, but for now, they have two concerts this month before returning to Seoul, where they’ll record a new English single “Who Do U Love?” and then film the music video for it later in the month. It’s a different sound from their recent releases in Korea, but Dimensions and Alien’s American label hope it’ll be a more radio-friendly sound in the west. They’ll do some performances for it in the spring as a part of American promotions so there’s choreography to learn as well.

Important dates:

February 7: We Are Here tour concert at Espacos Das Americas in São Paolo, Brazil.

February 9: We Are Here tour concert at Teatro Metropolitan in Mexico City, Mexico. 

February 25: “Who Do U Love ft. French Montana” MV filming.

February 26: Release of Alligator Japanese single album.

February 29: Performance at The Fact Music Awards at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea (also attending: WISH, 7ROPHY, Origin, Fuse).

MARS

Now that their concerts are finished, it’s time for the members to begin preparing for their first comeback of the year. The album will include the last two singles they released, making it a repackaged album, but they’ll need to record the new songs off of it throughout the month, including their next title track, which has a new sound from anything they’ve done before. It’s not necessarily another cute concept, but it is more upbeat and less conceptually intense than their most popular comebacks, so it’s something new for the group to tackle.

Important dates:

N/A

7ROPHY

It’s clear even at the beginning of the month that “Me” failed to live up to the success the group had found in the past year or so. They have a Random 1Line Dance video to film while they’re at the SBS building for Inkigayo, but as the month goes on, management is eager to move past the era and while have plans for their next comeback entirely complete before 7ROPHY even finishes their promotions for “Me” and they’ll only get the last week of the month for “Me” to rest some before they begin work next month toward yet another comeback.

Important dates:

February 9: Random 1Line Dance video filming.

February 22: End of music show promotions.

February 29: Performance at The Fact Music Awards at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea (also attending: WISH, Alien, Origin, Fuse).

Unity

The modeling opportunities keep rolling in in the absence of a comeback and Unity has been chosen as new ambassadors of NBA’s apparel line in Korea, which they’ll shoot a photo shoot for with Dazed Magazine. BC Soloist 1 will join them for the photo shoot to showcase the cross-gender appeal of the line. Their fourth anniversary is approaching in April, which means more personal freedom for the members contractually, but also comes with the expectation to give back to fans. This will be achieved in the form of a special gift song and video release. They’ll record the song early in the month and film the accompanying video at the end of the month. The two main vocals and the leader have also been chosen to record an OST for the upcoming drama School 2017 this month.

Important dates:

February 13: Dazed Magazine March Issue photo shoot with BC Soloist 1.

February 27: Dream Come True anniversary MV filming.

              ↳ CHAMPION

With the album all recorded, that means it’s time to learn the choreography for “Jopping” and “I Can’t Stand The Rain”, the main performance tracks but the applicable members will need to learn choreography for “Super Car”, “2 Fast”, and “No Manners” as well. Dance rehearsals will be done at BC Entertainment’s building as the dance studios there are larger, and near the end of the month, BC will leak pictures and video of all of the CHAMPION members arriving at the building to spark discussion before the sub-unit is officially announced in a few months. For three days, all six members of CHAMPION will be sent on a bonding retreat in Jeonju to strengthen their bond as unit members. This is a genuine effort on the companies’ parts to create better group chemistry, so the will not be filmed during the retreat, although a manager from each group will accompany them on the trip.

Important dates:

February 22-24: Bonding retreat in Jeonju, South Korea.

Lucid

Their extended fan sign run ends on the second day of the month, but the Lucid members are nowhere near a break as they prepare for their second anniversary (which will involve a special fan meeting where they’ll reveal their fandom name and light stick and perform their special second anniversary song for the first time to tease the return of their dark concept, so the members will learn the choreography for it in the first two weeks of the month). They’ve been booked for every university orientation festival Dimensions could shove into their schedule, but they’re also busy with concept meetings and studio recording for their next comeback.

Important dates:

February 1: Fan sign in Daejeon, South Korea.

February 2: Fan sign in Suwon, South Korea.

February 3: Second anniversary fan meeting teaser photo shoot.

February 16: Release of “Full Moon” second anniversary single.

February 16: Second Anniversary Fan Meeting : REVERIE at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea.

February 24: “Full Moon” performance video filming.

February 25: Performance at Cheongju University Orientation Festival in Cheongju, South Korea.

February 26: Performances at Seokyung University Orientation Festival in Seoul, South Korea, and Bucheon University Orientation Festival in Bucheon, South Korea.

February 27: Performances at Sangmyung University Orientation Festival in Seoul, South Korea, and Dongseo University Orientation Festival in Busan, South Korea.

February 28: Performances at Sunghsin Women’s University Orientation Festival in Seoul, South Korea, Hyundai Technical College Orientation Festival in Seoul, South Korea, and Seoul Hoseo Technical College Orientation Festival in Seoul, South Korea.

February 29: Performance at Hongik University of Science & Technology Orientation Festival in Seoul, South Korea.

[rhetoricfemme]

Slow Show | JeanMarco | SNK | Scenic World AU

Rated: T | Words: 935 | AO3

Just a heads up, this oneshot deals with the topic of self-harm. If that’s not a topic for you, please feel free to click off this story. Much love and take care of yourself. <3

--------------

Ruined blisters always seem worse when someone else gets a look at them.

It hadn’t seemed like that big a deal when Marco was dealing with them on his own. It hadn’t been an inconvenience to pick the fiber from his sweater away from an irritated wound on the inside of his elbow. He didn’t mind that his flesh has been left tender and red from the goings on of the day.

On the contrary, it’d been the prick and sting of those very wounds that seemed to help Marco make it from one end of the day to the other.

That’s not to say he was proud of himself. Rather, he liked to be reminded of his place in the world. That despite his accomplishments he was owed nothing, and needed to give better than nothing in return.

No one else could remind him of it. Mainly because it was a concept that made sense only to him; a personal mantra born of him, that one day in the far off future would die with him. It was no one else’s burden to bear.

Marco would bandage it all up before the end of the week. Come to his senses and admit that sticking the hot steel of a cigarette lighter to his skin wasn’t the best idea. Depending on how things were going either promise that this would be the last time, or perhaps admit to himself the likelihood of it happening again.

Maybe he’d bring it up with his therapist. At least, if she brought it up he wouldn’t lie about it.

Marco might divulge how just the other night Jean had found him asleep at the dining room table, wrist bumped up against a once steaming mug of tea. He’d stirred not to the sting of ointment against his broken and scalded skin, but to the sensation of Jean tending to him.

Well.

That had been more than Marco had bargained for.

Always so meticulous about these sorts of things, so cautious and on alert that part of Marco was almost willing to admit to himself that there was a certain appeal in allowing Jean to find out. He certainly hadn’t argued when Jean had raised the sleeve of his shirt past his elbow. Just kept his head down, pretending to still be asleep.

Without a word, Jean had taken care of that, too.

Quietly throwing out used Band-Aid wrappers and pink tinged napkins, replacing the cap on the ointment and putting it away while pouring the now cold tea down the kitchen sink.

Roused Marco from where he lay, hunched over scribbled out numbers and partially finished music scores. One hand on his shoulder while the other gently tugged Marco to his feet, not forgetting to pull down the still scrunched up sleeve of his sweater.

It should have been humiliating, honestly. Had it been anyone else dressing Marco’s injuries, cleaning up after his misgivings, he most certainly would have jolted awake. Politely shoved all potential Samaritans away while refusing the attention.

But Jean, he knew in some ineffable way, was cut from the same cloth. Perhaps from a sturdier patch of fabric, but the same cloth no less.

Marco had come to know this throughout the years, had been there to watch Jean evolve over the course of their friendship. Witnessing Jean’s awkward adjustment from an overconfident boy who knew nothing but trust for others, to a man holding tight to all he held dear, wanting desperately to be the change in both his and the broader world.

There had been no shortage of things Marco had wanted to say to Jean over the course of time. And while he did occasionally find the gumption to voice some of those thoughts—to assuage the uncertainties and hesitations that fought one another in Jean’s eyes—so much else had for the time being, been left unsaid.

Sentiments and words that in Marco’s current state, flowed freely through his mind, daring to make their way past his lips with every second that Jean’s fingers gently clung onto him.

I love you, you should be with me, why aren’t we together, I’m better than this I could be good for you don’t you see...

“M’fine.”

“I know you are.” Jean had whispered, guiding them toward what had become their spot together on the couch.  “C’mon.”

While these days Marco had been caught up in the midst of his own brokenness, Jean had been spending his time quietly on the mend. Fusing his spirit back together after it’d been so thoroughly chipped away.

Together, they were just enough to lean on one another, to help the other stand upright. Realizing that some days it wasn’t so much about feeling good as much as it was about simply getting by.

And in that moment, it’d really been all Marco could possibly need.

He’d allowed himself the quiet bit of succor Jean was offering. The little promise that moments of weakness were indeed okay, and that Jean would be nearby until Marco remembered the strength within his own two feet.

And just like always, it hadn’t been terribly long before Marco found himself standing upright all over again. What a blessing it was to discover Jean standing right there, too.

Ruined blisters always seem worse when someone else gets a look at them, that much might be true.

But for Jean to be there as Marco comes back together, to look at him with pride in his eyes, to kiss at Marco’s skin long after it’s healed over, is a satisfying and hard fought win.

[benjaxdesign]

Why I chose Gellas Kitchen

I found the process of picking what brief to go for challenging as they all had lots of positives.

Firstly the Conrad design brief was so attractive because of the massive scale and endless opportunities it had. The whole nature of researching the past and then using that to inform the design really appealed to me. The main reason I decided against this brief was because unlike the others it wasn't a real world brief with a real client, also the nature of designing for a venue reminded me of the final module in L4.

Secondly the Beyond Words brief, the main attraction to this brief for me was the fact out of all of them it was the most clearly demanding motion work. I decided against the brief because I wanted to go against the type of work I had done in previous modules that had all included motion.

Lastly I was torn between the Gellas Kitchen brief and the Stranger and Stranger brief. The things that attracted me to these briefs are very similar because they both explore packaging design and developing that brand, a thing I haven’t done in 2 years. The reason I chose Gellas kitchen was because the whole concept of fusing the two cultures together really appealing. Also the fact that the brand is relatively new leaves lots of room to experiment with the outcome. The fact storytelling was listed as key to the brand stood out because I love when the story and heritage can stand out in a design. The wide variety of outcomes other than the logo include other things I haven’t explored, so these possibilities further excite me. To conclude the story and personally behind Gellas Kitchen made it the brief I chose.

[syntaxeme]

So once upon a time, roughly 8000 years ago, @bucketofchum sent me this ask when I was looking for Arsenic prompts: 

And it occurs to me now that this fusion doesn’t quite fulfill that prompt but OH WELL With that in mind, I created a Moonstone to go with Arsenic. She was small but feisty and pretty much the only person to ever make Arsenic feel like she wasn’t in control of the relationship or her feelings about it. See, Arsenic is a sort of oppressive and bold personality. In pretty much all her interactions (romantic or not), she likes to be the one in control of the exchange, the one leading the conversation. It’s difficult to rattle or unnerve her, partially because she’s very good at reading people and therefore generally knows what to expect from them (and how to counteract it if necessary). It’s hard to throw her off balance. But Moonstone did. 

It was a while ago that they were together. Toward the end of the war. Moonstone was a Crystal Gem and was probably with a group of them. Arsenic had recently deserted from Homeworld’s ranks, and she was still figuring out where she fit in elsewhere. Maybe she was considering joining up. The first Crystal Gem she encountered personally was Moonstone, who resisted her pushiness by countering it with something similar. She was every bit as quick-tongued, every bit as clever and cutting and sarcastic. And even more flirtatious. That threw Arsenic off. She’d thought Moonstones were delicate, quiet, demure. Weren’t they supposed to be diplomats? And this one was so small, spoke so sweetly to others, yet could easily hold her own against Arsenic’s corrosive presence. Quite a surprise. Even when she thought she now knew what to expect, Moonstone continued to surprise her by constantly putting her on the defensive and taking her out of her element. And when it came to playful flirting, to smirks and winks and sideways glances, she found herself on the receiving end for the first time. One kiss or one brief touch and she all but melted; she would’ve done just about anything Moonstone asked if it meant staying close to her. She had no idea how she’d found herself in this position, but she didn’t bother thinking about it too much. Being with Moonstone was a totally different affair than any “relationship” she’d had before—and in a decidedly positive way.

But as is usually the case for her, it couldn’t go on forever. And the breaking point is often the same. When the idea of fusion was brought up, she balked immediately. She had never successfully fused with another Gem; even trying to fuse with the other Arsenics was a miserable failure, as all of them wanted to be in control and it was impossible for them to be of one mind for any extended period. Knowing exactly how toxic she is, she was afraid that her fusing with Moonstone would corrupt her somehow. Not literal Corruption, but irreversible harm to her psychological state or personality. The last thing she wanted was to hurt the one person she genuinely cared about. Moonstone assured her that there was nothing to be afraid of. “We both know I can handle you, my love. How could this be any different?” Her own misgivings aside, the prospect was appealing. She had seen some of the others fuse, heard them talk about what an experience it was, and she wanted to believe that with Moonstone, it could be a good one. Maybe her goodness would outweigh Arsenic’s poison. And the idea of being that close to her was definitely a positive one. So she agreed to try.

Rainbow Moonstone certainly was an experience. She was poised and self-assured, confident but not cocky. While not entirely selfless, she had a strong sense of the value of other people’s lives (organic and otherwise) and a stronger sense of duty to protect them. In regards to Earth, her feelings were mixed, but she was undeniably fascinated with it and firmly believed she was doing the right thing by supporting Rose Quartz. Even if the Gems they were fighting were only following orders, it was for the greater good that they be stopped. This was what she told herself, at least. And that concept, the concept of “right vs. wrong” was important to her, as well. 

When she (that is, they) unfused, Moonstone was giddy with excitement, delighted with their new understanding of one another. Being one with Arsenic was exhilarating--and she tried her best to brush away the nagging feeling that it was a mistake. Arsenic, however, could do no such thing. She came out of their fusion thoroughly shaken, and she finally realized that she had been worried about the wrong person being damaged. 

Moonstone had not only balanced her; she had practically erased her. Just as in all their exchanges, she had tamed Arsenic to the point that she no longer felt like herself. Not at all. And there was no doubt in her mind that this was not how fusion was supposed to feel. It was meant to be a combining of strengths and weaknesses, not just one component disappearing into another. But wasn’t that what she’d been allowing to happen ever since the two of them had met? Moonstone had a kind of control over her that no one else ever had, and it was changing her. It did change her. She never felt like herself while they were together. Even if some part of her loved the surprises and the challenges that came with their relationship, it was clear that she was in danger of losing herself, everything she knew herself to be, if she stayed. 

She took a step back and looked at the Crystal Gems. She looked at herself. And she found the two simply didn’t jibe. Their whole movement was based on emotion. Sentiment. She preferred objectivity. They had that Ideal, that Feeling that they were doing The Right Thing. She couldn’t get behind that concept of Right vs. Wrong, Good vs. Evil, whatever they wanted to call it. Besides, hadn’t she left the Empire because she felt it was stupid to fight and die for someone else’s ideals? She didn’t belong with them any more than she did amongst the Diamonds’ soldiers. Ruling out those two options left few others, but better to be alone and know that she had her agency than to force herself into a mold she didn’t fit. 

She left without any explanation. And why should she explain? She had no obligations to them. She’d never officially been one of them. No, she preferred having no one to answer to, anyway. She wasn’t the type to fight for a cause, not when she’d finally realized she had a choice. Maybe she’d try her luck among the humans instead. They were certainly well-acquainted with the idea of selfishness; surely they wouldn’t fault her for it. And maybe they had a use for someone unapologetically toxic. 

Anyway, since then, it’s been established that she has a “type” when it comes to romance. That type is 1) physically smaller than her and 2) willing to let her take the lead. At least, that was the rule for a while. With Lapis, she sort of compromised on the second point. But surely that won’t come back to bite her, right? :)

[aion-rsa]

How Scorn Turned the Art of H.R. Giger into a Nightmarish Horror Game World

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Ebb Software’s long-awaited horror shooter Scorn is designed to make you squirm in your seat from the second you lay eyes on it. Set in a gruesome world of bone, flesh, and sharp steel, the game is meant to be repulsive, but it’s also absolutely entrancing. The imagery is visceral and gory — from tendrils of meat hanging down from big, grotesque statues to the bloody creatures crawling all over the walls to the webby, diseased-looking membrane covering the skinless protagonist’s head — but you also can’t look away.

According to game director Ljubomir Peklar, the game’s visual style is meant to challenge what we generally consider to be beautiful.

“Human beings are conditioned to like the external beauty of their bodies and see the internal organs, bones, and tissue as something repulsive. It’s a reflex,” Peklar said of the game’s art direction in an interview with Rock.Paper.Shotgun in 2016. “Our existence as a living organism is at the core of the game and human anatomy is the primary subject. Therefore we referenced many different parts of it as a starting point, then we morph, combine, and exaggerate them, change the shapes until we get something visually appealing. It’s not always about functionality but interesting forms that make sense for what we are trying to express.”

It’s clear the team at Ebb is trying to express a deep fascination with the organic while also making sometimes literal connections between living things and machines. Take the game’s main weapons, the pistol and shotgun, which are living organisms with mouths where you’re meant to insert the bullets. There are ribbed cables that run through structures resembling organs, while leaking phallic-shaped mouths protrude from the metal walls.

Scorn‘s challenging and disorienting art style could make it a defining work of horror gaming, but even if it’s not, it’ll certainly be one of the most visually interesting games on the Xbox Series X when it launches later this year. You can see what I mean in this trailer of the game running on the next-gen console:

It’s no secret that this Gothic hell is heavily inspired by the work of two of the greatest surrealists to ever touch a canvas, the Swedish artist H.R. Giger, who you may know best for his designs for the sci-fi horror movie Alien, and the Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, whose grim creations are particularly responsible for all of the gore in the game’s environments. This isn’t the first time their work has shown up in some form in a video game, but Scorn could very well be the most faithful of the bunch.

Giger most famously collaborated with developer Cyberdreams in the early ’90s, providing access to his artwork for the psychological horror point-and-click adventure game Dark Seed and its sequel Dark Seed II. But the use of Giger’s work in that game can only be described as “quaint” when compared to what Scorn is doing. After all, the technological limitations of the time prevented Cyberdreams from truly building something out of Giger’s art, forcing the team to instead use his airbrushed paintings as backgrounds in the game to set the mood of the somewhat peculiar plot.

“Actually I think no one really did it the right way,” Peklar says of past adaptations of Giger’s work in an email to Den of Geek. “I don’t remember too much of Dark Seed, I played it a very long time ago. I do know that the artwork was just H.R Giger’s already established work collaged into the background. It was not designed from the ground up to be a setting in a game.”

Peklar asserts that no one has done what Scorn has set out to do. Peklar is not only interested in capturing the look and feel of Giger’s twisted work but also the meaning behind the pieces.

“Giger’s visual influence can be seen in many forms, from movies to games, but only superficially, to represent aliens, monsters maybe some strange planet, etc. Nobody truly dealt and realized Giger’s work thematically,” Peklar says. “His work is the most fascinating part but always sidelined, never the focus.”

Director Ridley Scott might take issue with Peklar’s comments, especially since so much of Alien‘s world is based on Giger’s unique vision, but even those movies don’t quite delve into the full breadth of the artist’s work, which often portrayed human beings in a physical, often erotic, relationship with machines, a style the artist called the “biomechanical.”

Indeed, you can see Giger’s “biomechanical” style in the way Scorn‘s protagonist “plugs into” an exoskeleton made of bone in the XSX trailer or how he sticks his arm inside of a terminal, veins like spaghetti running through the “computer’s” circuits to activate a machine in gameplay footage from 2017.

“It’s not about alien worlds, no matter how many people think that’s what his art is about,” Peklar explains. “There is a much more important subtext to it. It’s about the interweaving of human beings and technology. The organism as a structure that defined our existence up to this point, fused with our own mechanical creations in a ridiculous dance of libido and death. Freudian concepts that both move and terrify us.”

If Giger’s work emphasized the symbiosis between the living and the mechanical, the less well-known Beksiński was more interested in man’s connection to death. Many of his pieces, which often depicted dystopian settings riddled with skeletons and corpses presided over by red, bleeding skies, seem to have a singular focus: the apocalypse and what comes after.

Beksiński loved to paint decaying bodies and skeletal figures stripped of the features that once made them human, like faces and skin. One particularly haunting painting depicts a man’s eyeballs spilling — or perhaps growing out like roots — from their sockets in messy ropes of red. Beksiński’s work is likely the most responsible for Scorn‘s faceless protagonist, whose body is mostly made up of skinless muscle tissue and nerves, with the bones of a naked ribcage protruding from his chest.

Peklar tapped concept designer Filip Acovic to create the look of Scorn, from the levels to the protagonist to the weapons, but the goal wasn’t to just produce a “mere homage to Giger” or Beksiński, as the director told Shacknews in May.

“[Giger and Beksinski] are certainly the two main visual influences but their work was not chosen because it looks cool but because different aspects of their work relate to various themes and ideas in Scorn. We also tried to create our own style,” Peklar told Rock.Paper.Shotgun.

Peklar tells Den of Geek that he believes “the art style should always be in service of the themes and the ideas of the game.” But what is Scorn actually about? Peklar is more secretive about the game’s plot, which will unfold through environmental storytelling as opposed to cinematics. In fact, the director wishes he could have kept the game’s whole existence a secret for much longer than he did.

Since Scorn was announced in 2014 for PC, it has gone through two Kickstarter crowd funding campaigns and was initially set to be released as a two-part experience before announcing a full release on Xbox Series X and Xbox Game Pass in May.

“The reason you heard about the game in 2014, 2016, and 2017 was because we were running out of resources so we had to show it and gather interest so we could convince people to invest in the studio. I said it quite a few times, if I had the all the resources needed to develop the game without public knowing about it I most certainly would. You would be probably hearing about the game for the first time now and thinking it’s a new game.”

Yet, six years of cryptic trailers haven’t betrayed the secrets of a game that was “designed around the idea of being thrown into the world.” Like the Giger and Beksiński pieces that inspired him, Scorn‘s macabre dreamscapes may defy explanation, according to Peklar.

“Like the best of nightmares, that surreal imagery will start playing with your psyche the more you play the game,” Peklar told Shacknews. “When you wake up from a nightmare it’s really hard to define what you dreamt, only snippets remain, and the feeling of anxiety. That is something we are trying to recreate.”

In the Shacknews interview, Peklar compared the feeling of traversing through Scorn‘s work to the hectic opening Dario Argento’s horror masterpiece Suspiria: “It’s a montage of sights and sounds that creates the uneasy feeling. Nothing is set up story-wise and nothing truly graphic is happening. It just is.”

While Peklar looked to horror classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill for the environmental storytelling that ties Scorn together, Peklar told PC Gamer in 2017 that he wasn’t interested in a scripted story for the game:

“We are not trying to push traditional plot-driven narrative. That is where these games fail for me. Writing an interesting story requires a good writer, and game developers or writers that specialize in games writing are not very good. If they were, they would write a book or a screenplay. That’s the right medium for the job. Games for me are about interactivity and telling you a story through it.”

Ultimately, what Scorn‘s story is about may not be as important as what players take away from it. Peklar says that he’s ultimately happy to let “players to give their interpretation of the game.”

Giger and Beksiński aren’t the only influences on Scorn, according to the director, who says filmmakers like Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Dario Argento, and John Carpenter are also major inspirations.

“Cronenberg’s main concept that puts our organism at the center of human existence and Giger’s bio structures intersect in many ways,” Peklar says. “Lynch’s surrealness captures the strangeness of the world we inhabit and an oneiric sense of our own being.”

Peklar also cites surrealist writers Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges, whom he says “mostly dealt with the absurdity and weirdness of human existence in this mysterious universe.” Then there’s horror writer Thomas Ligotti, “who deals with all the horrors that come with it,” and the dystopian J.G. Ballard, who “bounds it all together in technological nightmares of sex, violence, and decay.”

What we’ve seen and heard of Scorn so far points to this year’s most twisted game, perhaps even the most uncomfortable visual experience ever released on a console. As I rewatched the footage of the game in preparation for this article, I wondered whether Peklar was worried that gamers would find the finished product too revolting to complete or even play at all. Then I was hit with an even darker thought: was there anything in Scorn that was too fucked up for even Peklar?

When I ask Peklar whether there’s been anything he decided to cut from the game because it went too far, the director simply answers, “I’m hoping for that day to come. Either my imagination is too limited or I have become too numb.”

Scorn is out later this year for Xbox Series X and PC.

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[recentanimenews]

Elevating Shonen Action: Hunter x Hunter's Genre-Blending Approach

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Why It Works! With the world still stuck in perpetual lockdown, I’ve been continuing my recent rewatch of Hunter x Hunter and finding new elements of interest all throughout its winding adventures. Recently, I watched through the arc that essentially serves as the series’ current midpoint, Yorknew City. There, Kurapika works to hunt down the assassins who murdered his tribe, while Gon and Killua attempt to secure a copy of the rare game Greed Island, all in the context of a massive mafia auction involving hundreds of armed guards and dangerous Nen users. It’s a thrilling arc by all counts, and it’s also the first arc to exemplify one of Hunter x Hunter’s greatest strengths: its ability to rise above the expectations of shonen action and embrace the narrative tricks and stylistic appeal of a wide variety of genres.

Hunter x Hunter is far from alone in its genre-blending appeal, even among major shonen properties. To be frank, the base structure of “we wander around fighting progressively harder enemies, perhaps in the service of some larger enemy-fighting organization” gets stale after the first few times you experience it. Stories that lack a sense of larger structure and purpose have a tendency to feel dramatically unsatisfying or lacking in momentum — and while shonen action provides a natural template for things like gaining powers or making new friends, it doesn’t inherently lend itself to a clean, self-contained narrative structure.

Because of this, many of the best shonen properties draw heavily from other genres, supplementing their inherent action appeal with stylistic flair, structural cohesion, and dramatic hooks imported from other fields. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure draws heavily on horror films from throughout history, building episodes and full arcs out of concepts like “what if Child’s Play was a Stand battle” or “what if The Night of the Hunter was a Stand battle.” Meanwhile, One Piece consistently captures the unique thrill of swashbuckling adventure films, embracing both their irreverent comedy and a sense of excitement borne from pure travel and discovery, even in the absence of any outright battles. Through combining genres, these properties arrive at styles that feel exciting and unique, as the base appeal of high-stakes battles is multiplied by the layered tension of a great thriller or the disorientation of an effective horror film.

  In Yorknew City’s case, Yoshihiro Togashi draws heavily on noir and crime dramas, crafting an arc that is full of “shonen characters,” but is structurally much closer to a book-length thriller. Kurapika, who has been defined by his calculating nature and slow-burning anger from the start, here adopts the role of a classic noir detective: a cold man haunted by old demons, hungry for vengeance, and likely to destroy himself along the way. Meanwhile, the assassins he faces, known as the Spiders, form a perfect crime syndicate counterpoint: a loose alliance of dangerous and unstable warriors, plagued by their own suspicions of sabotage and mistrust.

Between Kurapika and his friends, the encroaching Spiders, and the actual mafia families conducting the formal auction, Yorknew City feels ambitious and sprawling, yet also urgent and propulsive. The inherent focus offered by central characters like Kurapika and Gon actually helps clarify the potential disorientation of a story with so many factions, and the active flow of information across the various groups gives the story a clear sense of cause and effect. In fact, that flow of information — of both knowledge and trust — is crucial to Yorknew City, and a big part of what makes it “feel” like a crime drama.

  Every major faction in Yorknew City is essentially doing their own detective work and hoping to identify their enemies before they are identified in turn. Kurapika wants to know where and who the Spiders are, as well as any of their powers or weaknesses. In keeping with this focus, Kurapika’s powers are centered around being a detective, as he has developed the ability to tell truth from lies and interrogate opponents while keeping them physically detained. Meanwhile, the Spiders want to know if they have a mole, if they’re being followed, and ultimately, Kurapika’s own identity. And even the mafia’s greatest power is defined as information gathering, through the mafia princess Neon’s ability to write cryptic but accurate fortunes for anyone she chooses.

The whole scenario works because the Spiders are essentially an unbeatable foe. Even if all the main characters got together and teamed up, they couldn’t possibly overcome the Spiders' physical advantages. Because of this hanging threat of unquestionable death, concealing information becomes key, and protecting your identity most crucial of all. Attempting to overcome an unbeatable foe through misdirection and cleverness is something Hunter x Hunter has embraced throughout all of its arcs — but here, that technique is applied to a city-crossing, multifactional game of cat and mouse, rather than just one individual battle.

  The end result is an arc that is able to elevate its inherently exciting fights with an incredible degree of tension and larger narrative consequence, creating a story that feels like a white-knuckle standoff from start to finish. Rather than drawing focus from the action scenes and central characters, Yorknew’s mafia drama pretensions actually let the story expand its dramatic reach and appeal to us in new ways, offering an arc with the snappy, interlocking pieces and consistent tension of a great crime film, as well as the creative fights and rich characters it’s been offering all along. Combining these genres doesn’t diminish any of them — it simply compliments the strengths of one with the strengths of another, replacing the structural simplicity of a shonen tournament with the narrative intricacy and exciting twists of a crime drama, but keeping all the fun of the actual shonen fights.

Ultimately, Yorknew City is great because Togashi himself clearly reads and watches a broad array of media, and draws ideas from a variety of places in order to enrich his own work. If you only read or watch one kind of story, the stories you yourself imagine are probably going to take roughly that same shape, and likely not offer much to people who’ve already read plenty of that kind of story. It is by drawing broadly that storytellers expand their horizons and artistic potential, allowing them to craft works that fuse genres in compelling new ways, letting the strengths of one structure compliment the strengths of another, and drawing unique ideas from wherever you find them.

Togashi is a master of drawing broadly, and the effectiveness of the Yorknew City arc is a testament to its importance as an artistic tool. I hope you’ve enjoyed this exploration of genre-splicing in storytelling, and please let me know your own favorite examples of times when anime have explored beyond their own genres and triumphed as a result in the comments!

  Nick Creamer has been writing about cartoons for too many years now and is always ready to cry about Madoka. You can find more of his work at his blog Wrong Every Time, or follow him on Twitter.

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