Would love to know more about your Arcana/DoL thoughts when the mood strikes, by the way! (Also, I think I had a dream where Julian was isekai’d into Wren and the PC looked and acted exactly like the Arcana MC, but had no memory of the world of Arcana? Like Julian warped into Wren when he was hanged and had all his memories up til that point? But then he wakes up working for Remy and his MC is being treated like livestock? Something like that. I have a migraine so details are fuzzy)
real quick, that last bit? Sad Julian, very sad, he'd be so distraught.
Anyway.
Asra!
Rents a room in Gwylan's shop to sell... Mysterious lil bottles of who knows what and gives you tarot readings! Gwylan likes him to an extend, they're basically roommates and Asra forgets rent and to do the dishes at times.
Later down the line, if you've endeared yourself enough, then Asra will hire you just to clean up after him.
He has a special meter, which is Care. How much he cares for you reflects in your tarot readings, how much he pays you, and the extra speech lines you get. Low Care, Low Love, kinda ignores you. If he sees the Ivory Wraith in your cards, he keeps it to himself how bad it will get. High Care and Low Love, its more that he takes pity on you as a helpless orphan. Pays you more, tries to cheer you up with good cards of the future and makes gives you a freebie. Low Care and High love? You're an independent little thing, aren't you? Worries about you far less, pays you depending on how much you got done instead of the flat rate he would have kept for high care. High Care, High Love, wants to look after you. Worried about ya man.
His cards are impacted by your stats and which events you've done/ coming up. High trauma, always the tower and the hanged man on the horizon, maybe the 10 of swords when a dismissal event is lined up. When you're awareness is low/ you have innocence, its always more perky cards. It does all depend.
Nadia
Well, Quinn has an enemy in office, and its everyone's favourite Nadia!
Well.
She married Lucio, who just kinda suddenly popped up as the most important and rich guy in town, and ran for mayor, for shits and giggles at this point. Thing is, he's hot. Rich. Rich people like him. So he and Quinn have been battling it out for a while. Then... Lucio died? And Nadia felt like she was pressured into finishing his last campaign. Except she won. She doesn't want this fucking job. But goddammit she's so beloved. The time the game takes place, Quinn is running for mayor once more and she's trying to inch out of the picture but its pretty hard.
She is not aware of the dark side of the town at all and its up to the player to let her know, except if she makes changes to the town then her popularity drops and Quinn gets the job. Like, she would have been happy earlier in her life but now she's aware that shits bad, so she tries to do charity drives and shit but it never seems to make a dent.
Her meter is respect. Its different for everyone. For example, she has low respect for Quinn and Valerius (surprise, local wine bitch is in this because I love his shady ass). Also for Lucio.
The more competent you prove, the higher her respect for you is and she doesn't treat you with an icy outer façade like she does for her court council. She becomes warmer and more loving and basically becomes Avery, minus the rage. Likes to gift you stuff and inviting you to stay around hers. The only way to raise her respect is to be thorough in whatever evidence of the perverted side of the town you bring her. Anything faulty or missing, she's either suspicious or thinks you're an idiot. For example, if you want to keep your good relationship with Landry, you have to leave their name out of your findings about the criminal underworld, but she'll be able to tell that somethings missing, and her respect drops. She lives on Danube streets, in the largest house, so another way to meet her outside of bringing your concerns to her in office hours, is to break in. Unless you have high skullduggery, you will be caught and unless you have high English and seduction ahem mommy then she will keep you in the basement till the morning and hand you over to the police to be put in the pillory and trying to raise you respect from that point will be incredibly hard.
Muriel
So this was hard. Because there's already two big bitches out in that forest. A third bitch = overcrowding and it fucks with the ecosystem. C'mon guys.
So...
Muriel is stuck in prison :D
When Lucio's shady dealings make their way to the public, one of the people he used to shut up his detractors was Muriel. So, Lucio decided to dump a huge amount of his misdeeds on the poor lad and Muriel was sent straight to prison.
He doesn't ever want to talk about it. His main meter is safety. How safe he feels with you. Its extremely slow to build, and you have to gift him things like items to use to escape, food, maybe get Wren to smuggle in a small wolf sculpture or something for him to smile at. The safer he feels with you, the safer you will be in prison. He sticks to himself and weirdly the guards never ever bother him, in fact they avoid him and seem to forget about him in general.
You get far more interactions with him outside of the prison. If you escape with Wren, then you have to take him with you or the meter will fall to zero. Won't forget you left him behind.
If you get out by just waiting out your sentence, you can actually arrange visits at the prison for you to talk through the glass and that will maintain your relationship, the fact you don't forget him. To get him out with that is to go to Asra and ask him to insist on Muriel's character to Nadia and that will get him a faster release.
Then, when he enters the rest of the world, he hides out on the edges of the Wood, closer to the lake that Eden but also closer to the wolves. The wolves who love him and he plays with them like they're all puppies.
Lucio
Renowned dead husband of Nadia. What ever happened to him?
Well, hope you aren't trotting along on a dark night, because a figure might catch your eye. Large, hulking, pure white fur with his beady eyes staring straight at you. Yeah, you guessed it. You're getting kidnapped by the Goatman.
It's somewhat easy to kick him and get away but it doesn't mean he'll give up and one of these tries will finally have you carried off.
Of course, this only happens after you've done some of the Asra and Nadia events.
Now you expect the worst, because of course, its this town but he mainly starts bleating at you to use your contacts to fucking FIX HIM, right this second! His main meter is... uh... Love/ Lust.
You have a chance to fix this man. On the quest to restore him, which includes getting Gwylan, reading up on History in the library and trudging out to the Moors, you can raise his love and his lust. Only through his Love being high, will he not return to Nadia and insists on reentering the marriage and returning as Mayor. The town will get much worse, Nadia will not forgive you and Quinn shall have it out for you but on the bright side, there's a handsome New-Jersey accented hottie who likes you and owes you one.
With a high love stat, he moves back into his old house but just kinda hangs out and bugs Nadia but doesn't go back into the marriage. In fact, he's mainly mooning over you, saying terrible one liners and kicking his feet.
His lust mainly impacts on how many times you're getting railed by the goat man/ human goat man.
The Rest are either minor characters or romances that I didn't really wanna play though:
Portia: Depends on if Nadia is in office or not. Either she's her lil personal assistant or a barmaid. She always gets Landry for you or is snarking back and forth with Julian.
Valerius: Bitchy Wine Guy. Comes into the Spa almost every week, and unless you've got a High Hand Skill, then he pays the £10 every time. Later can be seen ragging on Nadia and sitting with Lucio as they drink. Yes, you can suck him off, but he has to like you a WHOLE bunch.
Valdemar: The Night Nurse. Don't go into the hospital at night. She won't help with any affliction and will instead stick things into you.
Morga: Yes, you can go fuck Lucio's mom if you two don't get along. He will scream and kick his feet and throw a tantrum and Morga will be idly rubbing your tongue with her fingers while you perch on her thigh.
I had already seen it once, a couple of years ago, without really knowing what I was getting into. What I got to see was an often immensely frustratingly slow philosophical film, which I wanted to stop watching maybe three or four times during the first half hour. But I didn't luckily.
There was something that held me back. I wanted to know how it ended, of course, I also wanted to know how it all really worked, what other ideas the director could still throw at me.
And I was rewarded - the last 75 minutes of Solaris are just as heavy and slow as the first 90, but then the rewards come: thoughts and ideas are rounded, the coherence throughout the film becomes clear, and the whole experience is crowned with a glorious final shot that can rightfully take its place among the best in film history.
On one side of the spectrum you have "Louis, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship", on the other side you have this visual rebus, which could mean anything and nothing, which makes you instantly want to watch it again.
Solaris is the third film in the short career of director Andrei Tarkovsky, who managed to make impossibly ambitious films in the middle of the Cold War, which radiated a strictly personal vision.
Tarkovsky was an artist, not so much a filmmaker in the classic sense of the word. He only filmed what he wanted to see for himself, and the question of whether an audience could follow along was apparently of no importance. Heavy stuff.
The story of Solaris revolves around psychologist Chris Kelvin, who will be sent to a space station near the planet Solaris in the near future. Communication with this station has become problematic, and the past has shown that residents often suffer from psychological problems - they experience hallucinations, claim to see a park or even people who can’t possinbly be there.
Kelvin travels to Solaris and finds only two scientists there; a third recently committed suicide. The whole station is in utter chaos, and the two survivors are vague in their descriptions of what happened. Then, that night, Kelvin suddenly sees his wife, who committed suicide ten years ago.
Like Dr. Snaut, one of the two remaining scientists, explains, the planet Solaris has the power to physically shape the minds of the space station's inhabitants. Your dreams, your desires, the people you miss are suddenly in front of you, but they are only a reflection of your own inner self. As such, they no longer remember their lives. Kelvin sees his wife again, but their shared past is wiped out.
Whoever wants can, of course, draw up a very profound philosophical treatise from that fact, and Andrei Tarkovsky is clearly someone who wants to. In that respect, at least he delivers a very sincere intellectual honesty: there are hundreds of questions that can be put onto this plot, and the director tries to take them all into account, he doesn’t look for easy answers, and he also doesn’t ignore any problems that his story could create.
The main themes of the film revolve around illusion and reality. When is a person real? Khari, Kelvin's dead wife, is just a walking, talking projection of Kelvin's unprocessed past, but every person we interact with in our daily lives is only real to the extent that we perceive it that way?
Reality is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? Another question: if Khari emerges from the mind of Kelvin, to what extent is his love for and ultimate dependence on her, in fact self-love? Love for one's own mind and its powers? And what was the most fascinating question to me: how does that projection of Khari deal with the knowledge that she doesn’t really exist?
At least that’s a question that gets an answer on a practical level in the film, and in a very emotional manner: Khari commits suicide again, only to reappear a few moments later, as soon as Kelvin needs her.
That way, Kelvin condemns himself to see his wife commit suicide again and again, just like the first time, when she really did. And he condemns Khari to evolve to the same state of despair over and over again - or doesn't it count, since she's not real?
Does all that sound pretentious? Then you should see the film, after all, I didn’t make this all up myself. Solaris is indeed a very pretentious film, with dialogues that often consist of only philosophical theories and with scenes that seem to be stretched on far too long. In this way, Tarkovsky demands a great effort from the audience, just as Kubrick did with 2001 a film often compared to Solaris.
That comparison is not entirely true in my opinion: it was also a science fiction film that may seem challenging even boring at first sight, which was often difficult to follow, but where 2001 resolutely looks into the future to find out where people are going and why , Tarkovsky is more interested in how we deal with our past - where do we come from, and can we ever rise above it by finally calming the ghosts of our past?
Technically there is no denying that Solaris is a masterpiece: Tarkovsky's stylistic choices, his framing, his endlessly long shots, his graceful camera movements, the design of the production etc ... It's all enough to keep every cinephile glued to their seat. As a visual experience, this is nothing short of brilliant, even if relatively few special effects are involved - Tarkovsky really only does it with his camera, with his inventiveness. That’s an achievement that can leave you silent for a day.
He resolutely refuses to accommodate his audience, as if saying to us “You guys come here, it’s just as far.” Maybe the same distance, but the path from public to artist is always much more difficult than the other way around, of course.
Solaris is a work that is almost hermetically sealed, you really have to look for an entrance - but once you find it, you’ll be flooded with intriguing ideas. In return for that effort, you get a glorious image of the human psyche, you get questions and possible answers thrown into your lap that you can discuss for another month - and that's one of the great things cinema can bring about: that that kind of emotion is provoked. That you get an impetus to thoughts, ideas and theories that you may never have thought about before. That you view the world in a different way.
“See, I love you. But love is a feeling we can experience but never explain. One can explain the concept. You love that which you can lose: Yourself, a woman, a homeland. Until today, love was simply unattainable to mankind, to the earth. Maybe we are here to experience people as a reason for love.”
Three days ago I was tagged to do this by @yourlovablesenpai and I never did. But I am now!!!!! =^= I’m sorry.
5 things you’ll find in my bag:
My earplugs
Chapstick
Sticky notes/large index cards
Pens/Pencils
A Celtic design pocket knife
5 things you’ll find in my bedroom:
A lot of growing manga series
A ton of sketch books or writing journals
Random jewelry
A small- but growing- rock collection on my desk
Weapons (i.e. a monkey’s fist, another pocket knife, a katana, ect)
5 things I’ve always wanted to do in life:
Complete a book I begin
Do a web comic series with one of my friends
Hold a play I write
Open a café
Feel free to be who I am
5 things that make me happy:
Writing books/daydreaming them or worlds
Drawing
Singing
Seeing people I care about that I do not see often
Otomes/dating sims (The falls of a fiction loving hopeless romantic)
5 things on my to-do list:
Talk to people I think are cool (or in general. Over messages mainly.)
Finish writing a book
Get my degree and open that café
Work on accepting myself more (mentally and physically)
Treat my body better
5 things people may not know about me:
I am a huge daydreamer
I am a serious hopeless romantic, despite most equate me to horror
I am a feminist and get can get fiery when deemed “feminazi/misandrist”
I’m a bit of a stereotypical Libra with my love and want for balance
I have lived in an abusive household until recently, not sure how much better this new set up is showing to be either
I will tag @secret-agent-mermaid, @romanceandsarcasm and @soul-of-glass
21. A romantic camping trip turns deadly when something in the woods starts hunting our muses.
"I daresay I trust my own judgement, but are you really sure Silverpines is the best place to 'get away', as you put it? I feel a bit...edgy, with the thought of those Balverines around..."
Reaver glanced around at the area they'd decided to stop at, far away from the small village - more of a settlement, really, overrun with Balverines at every turn - but they'd stopped in and gotten one of their 'silver nitrate torches' on the way out. He doubted the small blue flame would keep the beasts back, but the settlers seemed to swear by them. Maybe the few of them left thought themselves close enough to the torches during the attacks.
"Afraid, are you?" his counterpart retorted, raising a brow. "If those beasts do attack, we'll shoot them. Simple solution to a simple problem."
He gave the plan thought for a moment, then shrugged with a quiet sigh. "I guess you're right...On to more important things, then..."
