אוגוסט 2013

Portal 2 - The boy

There is a boy knocking on my door.

I wake up in a shabby motel room with a headache like I drank twice my own weight in pure alcohol last night (Science tells me that’s impossible. Science can stuff it) and there is a boy knocking on my door. There is something decidedly surreal about the situation, but my mind is foggy, and I can’t remember what it is.

Oh yes. The death robot. The murderous engine of destruction which considers itself my mother and which I had to fight my way through to get out of my previous place of residence. The door once again reminds me that there is a boy standing outside it.

I open the door, and find that the boy, too, is a robot. I suppose this is what passes for normal in these parts. The robot boy lets itself into my room, talking and joking and lying. He’s smooth, in a disarmingly awkward way. He insults me to my face and then talks it over, pretending nothing happened. It reminds me of something I read about once, negging, the practice of undermining someone’s confidence in order to make them more sympathetic to you. I feel momentarily defensive, then shake the thought, the robot boy is obviously too incompetent to perpetrate such a scheme.

He asks me to run away with him. Well, not in so many words, but as we (he) speaks, the sentiment is made clear. He needs me to get an old thing of mine, so we again head back into the place I fought so hard to leave behind forever.

Portal 2 - She's back

She’s back. I fought so hard to get rid of her, to put her out of my misery and move on, but one tiny (huge) mistake from the robot boy and she’s back in my life again. She lifts me up and I hang limp. For one tiny moment I feel like a ragdoll, like she’ll always be there controlling my every move. Then she drops me in the place I dropped her and I remember why I fought her the last time she tried that shit, and why I’ll fight her this time too.

Portal 2 - Stupid

Stupid stupid stupid. I am so stupid. Just because a guy’s charming and funny and silly and interesting and utterly, utterly incredible doesn’t mean he’s nice.

I just gave Wheatley control of the facility. I met him not five days ago and I just handed him the keys to my life. In hindsight, that was a pretty stupid move. Admittedly, it meant getting the old death robot out of the machine, but the new one isn’t what I for a brief, stupid moment believed he’d be. Oh well, live and learn, just one more challenge to beat, and this was better than my other idea anyway. Not like I had anything like the skills and equipment for that one, and it wouldn’t let me escape anyway. Still, it was a nice daydream.

Not that I’m sure my head would even fit in that thing anyway. Like I said, wrong skill set.

Portal 2 - Rock bottom

Ok, ok. Assessment. I’ve lost my escape elevator, my companion turned evil and the closest thing I ever had to a mother figure just got trapped in a potato and eaten by a bird. Oh, and I’m trapped at the bottom of a mineshaft, thousands of feet underground. And I haven’t eaten anything but potatoes in about six hours worth of heavy exercise. And I may or may not have brain damage (I’ve gone through what self-diagnostics I can remember off-hand a couple of times, but it’s hard to know with brain damage).

Given what I know of what I’ll likely need to get through to get back up, I am probably in the direst straits I’ve ever been in since, perhaps, graduation.

And it thrills me.

Portal 2 - Orphan

GLaDOS, we need to talk. The orphan thing? Kinda cute at first, but it’s getting pretty stupid. You seem to like facts, so here’s one for you. My parents don’t have the same skin color I do, and no, my skin does not fall anywhere close to any kind of interpolated line between them. Also, they’re both male. And one is sterile. Really. I figured out I was adopted at age four, and learned why at age six. Do you really think you can learn sanity-shattering secrets about a person by looking at their files? The public files? As in anyone can read them? Including me?

Out of all the companies to figure out Artificial General Intelligence, why’d it have to be the one determined to make them just as moronic as the rest of us?

Portal 2 - Cube

The cube. Out of all the possible things the old hag could have possibly given me for a souvenir, she hands over the freaking cube. The old, ratty cube with its corporate consumerism on the side. With the burn marks, because she had me throw it in the incinerator in some sick game (probably designed to teach me “independance” while forcing me to remain codependant with her and so ruining the exercise) even though she always knew it’d survive (because fun fact: ceramics aren’t usually combustible).

It’s too much, really. Far, far too much. Emotions well up, and now that I can finally show them without having to care about some robot peeking, I let it out. I laugh. I laugh and I laugh and I’m not sure when I stop, if ever.

Then, I look again at the brave new world ahead of me, and I leave the ratty old shed behind, cube and all.

Dota 2 - ??? - Part 1

Once, there was a great monster. Her legs were those of a lion, her back that of a dragon, and her tail was a five-headed snake. She had three heads, one that of a hydra, fangs dripping with venom, one that of a hippopotamus, strong enough to shatter steel and tear down mountains, and one that of a deer, its eyes filled with such impossible majesty that those who met them were struck down and died at the spot. Many brave heroes heard of the monster, and set out to destroy her, but one by one, they were destroyed, their swords shattering upon her sorcerous scales and their bodies rent asunder by her threefold jaws.

Then, one day, a simple girl came before her, soft of step and with hair like kelp. “Strike me down if you wish, beast, but know then you killed an innocent, one who did not come for war.” There came a great rumble from above, and the beast lowered her three heads to speak with the girl. “I hear you speak of innocence, but I smell divinity on you, and the immortal are rarely innocent, little goddess. Make your claim, but know that if I am displeased I will devour you, and immortality will be no comfort in my belly.” So speaking, the monster passed over the girl who was a goddess, blocking the exit to her lair and encasing it in darkness.

Dota 2 - ??? - Part 2

Undaunted by the shade, the girl spread her arms and made her claim. “You have killed many in your days, and you have rent them asunder and devoured them. But I ask you, were these struggles not unfair? They, though heroes, were no monsters, but little things, with no scales to protect and no venom to destroy. Can you truly claim to be the greatest of monsters, when your tools do all your work? Could you have felled Altiron without your claws? Could you have slain Guin without your fivefold lashing tail? Could you have defeated Elai, child of Carl, without your terrible gaze? Was it you that won you these battles, or was it merely your form?” The beast thought this over for five days, lying all the while in front of the entrance to the cave, allowing the girl neither light nor freedom. Five times she rose to pounce upon the girl and devour her, and when she stopped the fifth time with the girl’s head already in her fangs, she realized something. “So what is it you propose then, little godess.”

Dota 2 - ??? - Part 3

The girl smiled, for she knew that she had won. “I shall take your form from you. I shall take your tail and I shall take your scales and your venom and your strength and I shall take your terrible gaze from you. And in return, I shall give you a new form, one small of stature and soft of skin. I shall take your strength and replace it with weakness. I shall take your scales and replace them with fur. I shall take your majesty and replace it with meek beauty. You shall have no weapons save a pretty face. You shall have no protections save the lightness of feet. I shall take every one of your advantages and replace them with handicaps, and you shall be the most harmless of creatures. Only then shall the field be even.”

Dota 2 - Aiutha - Final Part

The beast thought this over. It was true that much of her power came from her form, but her spirit, too, was mighty and indomitable, and that, no godess could take from her. So she accepted the bargain, and the lair was at once filled with light, for the monster was no more, and the thing that was once a monster was by no means large enough to fill up the entrance. And in a flash of light and the scent of salty winds, the godess was gone. The thing that was once a monster examined her form. It was true what the godess had said, her new form was meek and soft. But the monster had fought many things, and knew well that to be meek and soft, too, was a power, and that her spirit was undiminished by the change. And so she set out to rule the world, not with claws, but with love.

The End

Spoiler warning: May contain Homestuck

There are many tales of the dread lord’s summoning. In each universe he conquers, his entry is different, particular and customized to the subverted realm. This is one such tale, echoed backwards in time much like the influence of its master.

It started as a seed in a man’s head, a tiny white pinprick of an idea, placed there by the demon’s servants, waiting for the right time. Its influence shaped the world around it, and imperfect copies of its true form flowed from the hands of its host, strange tales that captivated the minds of the impressionable and nostalgic.

The seed sprouted, and from it grew an egg which consumed the mind of its master, and then grew greater still, feeding off of the dreams and hopes of those lured by its siren song. Their numbers grew to the hundreds, the thousands and the millions. When they numbered a billion, the world grew wary, but it was too late. As the song stretched ever longer, promising an end that never came, it began to warp the world around it, changing calendars to fit the necessary circumstances of its final design. And then, one day, it was done.

On the sixty-second and a half of Undecember, 2014, the Homestuck hatched, and Lord English arrived.