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Aleth Snake Animation, by Armaina - Text by Ame
Animation by Armaina: http://armaina.com/ ~ https://twitter.com/armaina
~
Today, May 18th, 2020, is the tenth anniversary of the (North American) release of a particular game about a particular writer. :}===<
One of my favourite games, ever.
~
.
...
I am trapped.
I have been trapped for ten years.
There is no time here, in this ocean of inky blackness, this Dark Place.
Perhaps it's only been a year, maybe it's been a century. Something within me, or something within this place tells me, it's been a decade. It sounds right, my imagination wants that to be the number.
Clean, round. Ten. One and Zero, the simplest numbers: existence and non-existence. Binary. On and Off. Life and Death.
When I fought Mr. Scratch in the southwest, in that desert town that had the misfortune to become Night Springs, I had imagined it had been two years. And then, it was.
Had it only been one day, one week, at the time?
And now, it feels like it's been longer still. But is that only my perception?
I cannot escape the fact that I think it's been ten years, therefore, it has been exactly that long, to the day. It's too perfect for that not to be it, and I curse myself for not being able to come up with a sufficiently poetic way to send myself back in time. To be in Bright Falls in the 70s, to meet Thomas Zane. To change the past.
Although, time travel stories never escape without paradox, time itself could shatter, and that's a headache I do not need.
All of me aches. I am so very tired.
I do not sleep, and yet I am not awake. I swim, I slither, I move, I flee the horrors around me - and I think, I create. All at once.
I wish I didn't.
My name is Aleth Snake, and I was once a writer.
I departed from the world, into a lake. The lake was a gateway. On Earth, it was horribly deep, but now I know, it was the thinnest skin between worlds or dimensions or realms - whatever you care to call them. The lake was a tiny bubble on the sea of oil that is this nameless place of Darkness. Cauldron Lake was nothing, compared to this.
It is as infinite as the imagination.
For ten years I've tried to write my escape, only sinking deeper.
I used to know where fiction ended and reality began.
Here, they are all the same.
It's a hideous trap, my every thought made real.
Fear.
Desire.
How can I ever know for sure I've escaped and not just lost in my own fantasy of it? That thought alone can drive you mad.
But I tried, oh how I tried.
I knew the story had to be good, in the view of the otherworldly force that rules this place. It had to ring true, things had to have real costs, there had to be dramatic twists, unexpected revelations, tragic loses.
In this waking dream, I am cursed.
I am the curse.
I feel sick, for I believe my mind to be the source of my greatest nightmare.
For that's where our dreams, our nightmares, always come from.
Our own minds.
It began as a way to escape. To see Alma again, if only briefly once again. Although my sojourn into the southwest had felt like a victory at the time, I think the Dark Place only allowed me to craft a story where I defeated Mr. Scratch and saw Alice for a moment, because it knew how it would torture me, drive me to greater desperation.
It knew, eventually, I would dare create - consciously or not - something I could not control.
And it really is all about control, isn't it?
The core of my misguided concept for escape was - is - a powerful one. Or rather, the idea of me, as an unhinged psychopath, a blood-thirsty killer naga. Aside from the imagery of a serpent as an evil being, even I must admit that the duality of a person, the good parts of it pitted against the evil side.. it's an enduring thought. The bad twin, the evil twin, the bizarro-dimension version of someone, being at battle with yourself. Virtue versus vice.
And so, the idea I cannot forget, no matter how much I want to, was Mr. S(#@%ch, intruding into the world once more. An insidious squid, all inky tendrils, each of them a weapon at the neck of some part of my former life.
I imagined a serial killer horror mystery story. I imagined the FBI.
I saw so much blood.
But it was all in service of my own reappearance into the world as well. I would be too late to stop Mr. S<<>>tch, of course, or there would be no story. Just like a horror movie where the cell phones work, there would be no film, no deaths.
There would have to be deaths.
I would have to be accused of the crimes HE committed.
But at least I would be out.
Still, the more I thought about it, the worse it became. It all broke apart into something I couldn't control, the narrative had a mind of its own. Maybe it was Mr Scr|||ch, maybe it was the Dark Place. Maybe it was my own twisted, maddened mind, an unhinged layer that lay beneath. It could be I've always had my own private, writhing reserve of something Dark, within my head. Maybe that's why I can survive here, do the things I do.
Am I as evil, as malevolent as people used to think snakes were? As bad as some folk still think we naga are?
Is this how I wrote, before, how I became successful, rich?
I've come to accept I'll never have all the answers to the innumerable questions that plague me.
All I want now is to stop this idea.
But how do you erase something you can't stop thinking about when thought brings it about?
Don't think about elephants.
Now what are you thinking about?
Don't think about them.
I don't dare stop, though, anyway. If I stop thinking about it now, it'll warp and twist itself into something worse and worse. It's a black weed I must trim, a network of sprawling, crawling roots and shoots and stalks I cut down as soon as they appear. But under the ground, I cannot begin to fathom the control I am losing.
As much as this nightmare scares me, no matter how many people die, I have to push it into the world as soon as I can.
Before it gets worse.
Before.. Alma.
Forgive me, Agent Lake.
I just hope I'm not too late.
I am truly sorry.
But also...
You've been warned.
Alan Wake and related IP are © to Remedy Entertainment.
.
~
Today, May 18th, 2020, is the tenth anniversary of the (North American) release of a particular game about a particular writer. :}===<
One of my favourite games, ever.
~
.
...
I am trapped.
I have been trapped for ten years.
There is no time here, in this ocean of inky blackness, this Dark Place.
Perhaps it's only been a year, maybe it's been a century. Something within me, or something within this place tells me, it's been a decade. It sounds right, my imagination wants that to be the number.
Clean, round. Ten. One and Zero, the simplest numbers: existence and non-existence. Binary. On and Off. Life and Death.
When I fought Mr. Scratch in the southwest, in that desert town that had the misfortune to become Night Springs, I had imagined it had been two years. And then, it was.
Had it only been one day, one week, at the time?
And now, it feels like it's been longer still. But is that only my perception?
I cannot escape the fact that I think it's been ten years, therefore, it has been exactly that long, to the day. It's too perfect for that not to be it, and I curse myself for not being able to come up with a sufficiently poetic way to send myself back in time. To be in Bright Falls in the 70s, to meet Thomas Zane. To change the past.
Although, time travel stories never escape without paradox, time itself could shatter, and that's a headache I do not need.
All of me aches. I am so very tired.
I do not sleep, and yet I am not awake. I swim, I slither, I move, I flee the horrors around me - and I think, I create. All at once.
I wish I didn't.
My name is Aleth Snake, and I was once a writer.
I departed from the world, into a lake. The lake was a gateway. On Earth, it was horribly deep, but now I know, it was the thinnest skin between worlds or dimensions or realms - whatever you care to call them. The lake was a tiny bubble on the sea of oil that is this nameless place of Darkness. Cauldron Lake was nothing, compared to this.
It is as infinite as the imagination.
For ten years I've tried to write my escape, only sinking deeper.
I used to know where fiction ended and reality began.
Here, they are all the same.
It's a hideous trap, my every thought made real.
Fear.
Desire.
How can I ever know for sure I've escaped and not just lost in my own fantasy of it? That thought alone can drive you mad.
But I tried, oh how I tried.
I knew the story had to be good, in the view of the otherworldly force that rules this place. It had to ring true, things had to have real costs, there had to be dramatic twists, unexpected revelations, tragic loses.
In this waking dream, I am cursed.
I am the curse.
I feel sick, for I believe my mind to be the source of my greatest nightmare.
For that's where our dreams, our nightmares, always come from.
Our own minds.
It began as a way to escape. To see Alma again, if only briefly once again. Although my sojourn into the southwest had felt like a victory at the time, I think the Dark Place only allowed me to craft a story where I defeated Mr. Scratch and saw Alice for a moment, because it knew how it would torture me, drive me to greater desperation.
It knew, eventually, I would dare create - consciously or not - something I could not control.
And it really is all about control, isn't it?
The core of my misguided concept for escape was - is - a powerful one. Or rather, the idea of me, as an unhinged psychopath, a blood-thirsty killer naga. Aside from the imagery of a serpent as an evil being, even I must admit that the duality of a person, the good parts of it pitted against the evil side.. it's an enduring thought. The bad twin, the evil twin, the bizarro-dimension version of someone, being at battle with yourself. Virtue versus vice.
And so, the idea I cannot forget, no matter how much I want to, was Mr. S(#@%ch, intruding into the world once more. An insidious squid, all inky tendrils, each of them a weapon at the neck of some part of my former life.
I imagined a serial killer horror mystery story. I imagined the FBI.
I saw so much blood.
But it was all in service of my own reappearance into the world as well. I would be too late to stop Mr. S<<>>tch, of course, or there would be no story. Just like a horror movie where the cell phones work, there would be no film, no deaths.
There would have to be deaths.
I would have to be accused of the crimes HE committed.
But at least I would be out.
Still, the more I thought about it, the worse it became. It all broke apart into something I couldn't control, the narrative had a mind of its own. Maybe it was Mr Scr|||ch, maybe it was the Dark Place. Maybe it was my own twisted, maddened mind, an unhinged layer that lay beneath. It could be I've always had my own private, writhing reserve of something Dark, within my head. Maybe that's why I can survive here, do the things I do.
Am I as evil, as malevolent as people used to think snakes were? As bad as some folk still think we naga are?
Is this how I wrote, before, how I became successful, rich?
I've come to accept I'll never have all the answers to the innumerable questions that plague me.
All I want now is to stop this idea.
But how do you erase something you can't stop thinking about when thought brings it about?
Don't think about elephants.
Now what are you thinking about?
Don't think about them.
I don't dare stop, though, anyway. If I stop thinking about it now, it'll warp and twist itself into something worse and worse. It's a black weed I must trim, a network of sprawling, crawling roots and shoots and stalks I cut down as soon as they appear. But under the ground, I cannot begin to fathom the control I am losing.
As much as this nightmare scares me, no matter how many people die, I have to push it into the world as soon as I can.
Before it gets worse.
Before.. Alma.
Forgive me, Agent Lake.
I just hope I'm not too late.
I am truly sorry.
But also...
You've been warned.
Alan Wake and related IP are © to Remedy Entertainment.
.
Category Artwork (Digital) / All
Species Snake / Serpent
Gender Male
Size 500 x 500px
File Size 532.3 kB
Well, I would recommend you play the game, of course. If you're a game-playing-type person, at least.
Also, as part of the ten-year anniversary, I believe the two Alan Wake games - or at least the original - will be part of Xbox Game Pass for the foreseeable future, if you have access to that.
Also, as part of the ten-year anniversary, I believe the two Alan Wake games - or at least the original - will be part of Xbox Game Pass for the foreseeable future, if you have access to that.
Like Stephen Kingsnake, you mean?
I never had any issue with the gameplay, but I can see how there are some criticisms to be made thereupon, sure.
Anyway, you brought up the plot and artstyle, but you didn't mention the music? O: The music!!! :D
I never had any issue with the gameplay, but I can see how there are some criticisms to be made thereupon, sure.
Anyway, you brought up the plot and artstyle, but you didn't mention the music? O: The music!!! :D
The file above is 500x500.
You can determine this sort of thing on your own by opening the image in a new tab. Typically the tab header will then have the information displayed. Or you could also download the image and then view the file information.
Of course, it's only been expanded, stretched to 5 times its actual size. You can see the tiny blocks that make up the image. Each tiny block is - right now - 5 pixels wide and 5 pixels tall. Normally, at the 100x100 size, each would be 1 pixel.
You can determine this sort of thing on your own by opening the image in a new tab. Typically the tab header will then have the information displayed. Or you could also download the image and then view the file information.
Of course, it's only been expanded, stretched to 5 times its actual size. You can see the tiny blocks that make up the image. Each tiny block is - right now - 5 pixels wide and 5 pixels tall. Normally, at the 100x100 size, each would be 1 pixel.
Arma is a great pixel artist! I snuck a peek at her webpage and the pixel art is so luscious. I wonder: do you find all styles of art equally engaging or is there something about pixel art that draws you to it? Maybe nostalgia or its 'simplicity'?
The text is good too, but I'm wondering if I'm treading into spoiler territory.
The text is good too, but I'm wondering if I'm treading into spoiler territory.
I suppose I like pixel art a bit more than I otherwise would, thanks to my history with 8-bit and 16-bit gaming. But it's not like I have dozens of pixel-art commissions that I've bought, either. It just so happened that when I sought out animation artists to hire, pixel-art animators were more readily available, I guess.
I'm still really happy with this text. But yes, you're absolutely in spoiler territory. Although, since none of the actual events of any game are here, only alluded to, you're in the county beyond spoiler-town. :P This document kinda exists in the space between 4 different games.. maybe even a 5th that's not out yet!
I'm still really happy with this text. But yes, you're absolutely in spoiler territory. Although, since none of the actual events of any game are here, only alluded to, you're in the county beyond spoiler-town. :P This document kinda exists in the space between 4 different games.. maybe even a 5th that's not out yet!
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