The journey was long and filled with danger,
Arms at the ready for every passing stranger.
Yet there was one who watched in silence above;
A being with a heart that was void of love.

Through scorching heat and blistering cold,
Together they endured as the day grew old.
The vanguard descended an almost vertical slope,
And stepped onto land that was devoid of hope.

Their eyes took in the horrific scene.
Dismembered corpses with a crimson sheen,
Crushed, torn, and ripped beyond recognition,
It was a massacre truly beyond all redemption.

A chilling scream pierced the pale blue sky,
Their hearts were stilled by their comrade’s cry.
The mountain nearby had stirred to life,
Towering above them, it held a white knife,

The giant from hell had silenced their friend,
Its bloody hands seemed to have no end.
A hero had fallen and they vowed to avenge.
They swore they’d have their blood-soaked revenge.

The blade came down seeking the scent of death,
And then amidst the chaos came a gasp for a final breath,
Their numbers were dwindling and defeat was near.
They had lost their brothers, people held dear.

A courageous one jumped onto its fist,
And was raised into a realm beyond the mist.
Till he came in view of the demon’s face,
In its cruel brown eyes, of mercy was no trace.

He raised his spear in a defiant roar,
And struck in fury to settle the score.
The metal lodged deep in its thick pink skin,
Yet the giant’s face widened in an amused grin.

With a violent shake, he was flung into the distance,
In despair, he accepted the end of his existence.
The rest of his kin soon did follow,
Their defeat was not easy to swallow.

And so the giant went back to its abode in the stone,
Satisfied at its new haul of flesh and bone.
It lies in wait of any fools that one day would,
Enter the Valley of the Crimson Wood.

The Giant was originally published in The Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The year was 2553. The starship Infinity of the United Nations Space Fleet was cruising along at a steady speed of 3 parsecs per hour along the outskirts of the Andromeda Galaxy.

It was a quiet Monday morning. Captain Rajben Pors Rusutt stretched his arms as he saw the stars shoot across his large, panoramic windows. He watched as his wrinkled face yawned in his reflection in the glass pane, stretching the skin around his dry, parched lips.

“Xinul,” he called out.

“Good morning Captain, how may I assist you today,” came a voice that seemed to originate from everywhere at once.

“A glass of water, please.”

As the Captain held out his hand, the particles between his fingers started shimmering as if they were glistening in bright light. The shimmering particles collated into a swirling whirlwind of energy. Before long, they started slowing down, transitioning into calmer vibrations as they started forming bonds; complex molecular structures were being put together atom by atom in the palm of his hand.

The Captain raised the fully formed glass to his mouth. As the first few drops of moisture greeted his expectant tongue, the ship suddenly started slowing down. In fact, the change in velocity was so fast that even the inertial dampeners couldn’t dream of keeping up. The Captain was flung across the room and onto the wall at the opposite end. His back made a painful cracking noise as it made contact with the hard carbon fiber wall that had been adorned with pictures of all his fondest memories.

The lights in his room went red as sirens blared across the ship.

“RED ALERT! ALL OFFICERS TO THE BRIDGE,” called out Xinul as the Captain tried to pull himself back to his feet.

He realized that he had definitely gained weight and wasn’t nearly as agile as he once thought himself to be.

“To infinity and beyond, they said,” mumbled the Captain as he put on his uniform and limped his way over to the main elevator.

The usually calm and sterile corridor was now a buzz of activity. Medical staff rushed the injured to the sick bay. Engineering personnel were running around trying to fix what the Captain was sure was a multi-level catastrophic system failure.

He finally managed to push himself through the waves of people and squeeze into the overcrowded elevator.

“Everyone else, OUT. Captain’s orders. Xinul, take me directly to the bridge.”

The crew of Infinity had thankfully been trained to handle such situations and moved aside for him.

“Xinul, locate Dr. Linges Amgosj,” the Captain demanded.

“Chief Engineer Dr. Amgosj is in Engineering, Level — 3”

“Good, at least one of us has started working on this”, he thought to himself as he finally arrived at the bridge.

If the corridor had been busy, the bridge was a frenzied, manic mess of panic stricken crew, hundreds of beeping computers complaining of multiple failures and what appeared to be a crying baby left alone in the Captain’s own, precious seat.

“CAPTAIN ON DECK!” called out first officer Dovangu Mussori.

At once, the crew stopped what they were doing and looked to the Captain for their orders. Even the baby seemed to have quietened down.

“All right, Commander Mussori, status report.”

“The ship seems to have come in contact with an unidentified physical phenomenon as we travelled past the M33 Nebula. This phenomenon has effectively crippled our ship. We’ve lost all ultra-lightspeed travel functionality and barely have enough power to keep our thrusters on. The system has essentially been locked out of several of its important segments and cannot access them. We are yet to determine whether this phenomenon was caused by some sentient, and potentially hostile entity or if it has natural origins. The main power core has reached temperatures of 6000 Kelvin and is still rising. Dr. Amgosj is currently working to combat this issue. We have 3 casualties and 78 injuries, all being treated in sick bay. All personnel are accounted for and life-support systems are still holding.”

“So it’s worse than I had been expecting. Xinul, open a channel between Dr. Amgosj and the bridge.”

Immediately, the face of a man in his late thirties appeared on the bridge’s main holographic viewing panel. He had a worried expression on his face as he moved between terminals frantically.

“Doctor, what are we looking at?” asked the Captain.

“I honestly don’t have any idea. I’ve been trying to shut down the power core for the last 10 minutes but the system simply refuses to respond. I’m running a complete system diagnostic which should give me an error report once it is done.”

“Keep working on it Linges, we’re counting on you,” said the Captain with a reassuring smile.

He took a deep breath and tried to calm his mind. However, his legs felt heavy and the throbbing pain from his back was starting to become more than just an annoyance now.

“Will someone please get that baby out of my chair?” he asked sternly, looking around at all the crew members.

One of the new cadets quickly scooped the child up, apologized, and rushed to his quarters. Seated comfortably, he finally put his brain to work, thinking about what the most important things were for him to consider at that moment in time. He asked everyone to be quiet so that he could think in peace. After much thought, the answer finally came to him.

“Xinul, from the current rate of increase of the power core temperature, how much longer do we have before it goes critical and explodes?” he asked inquisitively.

“At the current rate of increase, you have approximately 57 seconds before the ship explodes,” declared Xinul calmly.

“Alright, so we have just over a minute to live. Xinul could you show our impending doom clock as a countdown on the main viewer next to Dr. Amgosj’s face?”

“Of course,” chirped Xinul as the viewer went into split-screen mode, with the countdown numbers showing in large bold text on the left side.

The mortified faces of the bridge crew stared at it in disbelief.

“Dr. Amgosj, not to rush you in any way, but it seems that we have about… 45 seconds to live,” called out the Captain.

“Oh, that’s perfect, my diagnostic program will be done in just under 30.”

“Don’t you think we need to consider alternative options at this point?” asked the Captain as calmly as he could.

“Oh, no I’m confident that once my error analysis is done, I should be able to shut the core down immediately.”

“Yes, but aren’t you cutting it a little close?” asked the Captain with increasing urgency.

“20, 19…” Xinul kept counting counted.

“Dr. Amgosj!” the Captain screamed.

“Ah it looks like my program has gotten stuck somewhere, I think it could take another minute to wrap everything up, perhaps we should consider other options now…”

“Dump the Core, now!” the Captain yelled.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit too extreme Captain, I mean…” he started.

“6, 5, 4…” reminded Xinul cheerily.

“LINGES, I ORDER YOU TO DUMP THE CORE!!”

Dr. Amogsj opened the emergency engineering chute, propelling the power core out into the blackness of space. The white-hot material barely made it a 100 kilometers away before it collapsed onto itself. A fraction of a second later, it violently exploded outwards, sending enough energy to power a planet for a decade in all directions.

The shockwaves and debris sped across towards the ship at an alarming speed.

“Divert all remaining power to aft deflectors and shields. All personnel, brace for immediate impact!” urged the Captain.

The knock was just as bone-shattering as the previous one, flinging both man and machine across the lengths of whatever rooms they occupied in the starship. Sparks flew everywhere and many fell on flammable substances, lighting up several sections of the ship.

The Captain couldn’t tell apart the beeps and sirens from the ringing in his own head when he opened his eyes next. He saw several bodies strewn across the floor, bent and broken in abnormal ways. Some of the lucky ones were getting back to their posts to assess the damage and get an account of the extent of carnage.

He somehow crawled on all fours to his precious chair and hauled himself back onto it. His vision was blurry and he realized he was coughing blood.

“Is this the end?” he thought to himself wistfully.

On the main viewer, Dr. Amgosj was not in the frame anymore. Instead, there was now a black screen which displayed some kind of text.

The Captain shook his head and squinted his eyes, and was just about able to make out what was written:

Error Analysis Complete:
Issue(s) found & resolved. Resolution presented in parenthesis.

Segmentation Fault (Core Dumped)

Poetry in motion, an ideal out of reach,
Radiant in its glory, an impossible hill to climb;
Its form towered over me high and proud,
Yet it had an allure I could simply not explain.

Any resistance only delayed the inevitable emotional tsunami.
Legends speak of it as all but an illusion;
A false panacea for the evils of the self and the world.

Knowing it all, I pursued the elusive enigma,
Step-by-step, onward I did march,
Honing in on the treacherous peak.

Mud and grime adorned my worn out torso.
It was a journey through hell in search of an answer,
Maybe this was what it meant to be the alpha.
Obstacles emerged on my path causing hurt and pain,
However, in the end, I came out the last man standing.

At last at the top I looked upon my blood soaked arena,
Never to forget I was the one who was chosen.

I am, what one could quite easily term a DC fanboy who has invested countless hours into almost every form of media produced from this comic book publisher’s arsenal. From the dusty pages of the Crisis on Two Earths event of the Justice League of America comic book collection, yellowing away in my memories, to the rush of gliding down the city as the caped crusader in the beautiful Arkham City on my Xbox, to appreciating the mesmerizing view of Henry Cavil soaring through the sky as Hans Zimmer’s musical masterpieces echo in the background in Man Of Steel, these characters and their stories have come to hold a special place in my heart.

So, when Joss Whedon’s Justice League came out in 2017, I was cautiously optimistic.

The live-action superhero team up movie I’d been waiting for to happen all my life was finally gracing the big screen. Man of Steel had proven to be a fresh and exciting take on the character and Wonder Woman had just won hearts all over the globe. And while Dawn of Justice didn’t live up to the artistic brilliance of the two part ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ animated feature (which itself was based on a 4 part miniseries by Frank Miller in the 80s), of which the movie borrowed several key plotlines from, it was an entertaining experience that left me hopeful for the future of the DCEU.

The Whedon Version

I remember the excitement and the anticipation as I got comfy in my theater seat, along with an expectant audience. I had heard the news of the directorial change and the reshoots, but hey, it was Joss Whedon who had taken up the mantle. With a couple of extremely successful Avengers movies under his belt, he should know how to make a great superhero team up movie. Right?

Well yes, but actually no.

Right from the opening sequence, I could feel that something was off. Many scenes seemed forced and the dialogue delivery felt artificial. The almost goofy tone of the exchanges, the incessant need to deliver one-liners between every few seconds of conversation and the ‘friendly banter’ between each of the characters felt strangely, unnervingly familiar.

It felt like Whedon had just decided to put the new slew of characters into comfortable little personality boxes that he was already used to.

The only person who didn’t seem to fit in quite well was Cyborg. He had a relatively more unique backstory which required a lot more runtime to do justice to (no pun intended). It didn’t help that Warner Bros. pressured him to cut the movie down to just 2 hours to get through the entire plot quicker. All of which led to the character becoming a bland and monotonous character who barely added anything to the roster of more seemingly likeable heroes.

Coming to the villain, Steppenwolf was a very forgettable, one-dimensional, generic bad-guy whose motivations were never really made clear. The ending as well, made all the other League members feel irrelevant the moment Superman showed up on screen, effectively removing all the stakes that had been raised till that point.

Zack Snyder’s Masterpiece

Fast-forward several years and the internet campaign of the fans finally materializes into a 6-part epic in which Zack had been given free reign to do as he seemed fit. When I first read that it would clock in at over 4 hours long, I knew they would be fixing many of the problems that had plagued the previous version. The only other 4 hours+ movie I’ve ever watched was the extended edition of LOTR: The Return of The King, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

One of the biggest challenges in making a good movie is dealing with the limited runtime. The director has to effectively introduce characters and make us care about what happens to them by the end in order form an emotional connection with the audience. This task becomes much more challenging in movies with an enlarged cast since giving each person their own time in the limelight while moving the story along at a decent pace is no easy feat. Back when Avengers: Endgame came out I remember the runtime being one of the topics of heavy discussion.

“Will people actually stay in theaters for over 3 hours?”

The answer of course, was yes! The movie went on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time(till Avatar reclaimed the crown shortly after). Amidst a global pandemic, releasing ZSJL on a steaming service by breaking it down into 6 parts plus an epilogue was a very deliberate decision. This would provide the viewers an experience with the soul of a movie in the format of an episodic series (which most people binge watch anyway, but just in case). The 4:3 aspect ratio, while disliked by many didn’t bother me as much. We were getting extra footage at the top and bottom compared to the theatrical release which had cropped it away, and why would I say no to that?

Now, coming to the actual content of the movie, what I appreciated the most was the handling of Cyborg. Most of the extra runtime has gone into showing us who he was, what his relationships with his parents had been like and the unimaginably scary responsibilities that he has to deal with thanks to his new ‘powers’.

His journey from a brooding, emotionally scarred amalgam of man and machine, to the hero who would risk his life to save the planet was extremely well-done. The development of his relationship with his father is a big part of this movie and every emotion feels earned and every action meaningful during his character arc.

Several stand-out sequences featuring the Flash were an absolute delight to watch.

In the same way the slowed-down Quicksilver scenes always stole the show in previous X-Men films, the two completely new Flash sequences here are a visual treat that elevate the film to new heights.

Apart from these two characters, the most welcome change was for Steppenwolf. The new shiny metallic armor that seems to be an organic killing machine with a mind of its own lends a majestic aura to his presence in every scene. His motivations and history are greatly explored, making him much more relatable and easier to connect with.

In the end, there are hundreds upon hundreds of small decisions that despite its length, made the movie feel tighter, better paced and more weighty. Every questionably constructed scene deleted, every unnecessarily over-the-top dialogue removed and every masterfully crafted sequence added, built up to form one of the best superhero movies I have seen in recent memory.

DC refers to these characters as ‘Gods Among Us’ and I’m happy to say that Zack Snyder has done justice to that title.

#RestoreTheSnyderVerse

The night was quiet as the kingdom slept,
Across the wall, a lonely shadow crept.
Bloody fists scraped across the marble and stone,
A superhuman figure made of flesh and bone.

His shroud of darkness, worn and crimson stained.
Lives had been saved, a crisis contained.
The ghosts of his past haunt him still,
Memories of love he couldn’t bring himself to kill.

He wears a mask for a crown,
And wages war against a clown.
An unending war; for the battle is done,
Only until the next lunatic with a gun.

Powering through the pain he staggered on,
Collapsing on the stairs at the break of dawn.
The lights turned on and he wished he had been subtler,
As the door was opened by his frowning butler.

I was born of frost and flame,
Forged in conditions harsh and unforgiving.
Shaped by the touch of skin and metal alike.
Till I shimmered under the glow of starlight.

I was a thing of beauty.
Yet, I did not epitomize frailty.
No, I was meant to be the protector;
A coat of armor meant to be expendable.

I was whisked away under the cover of darkness,
And then an eternity did I spend in wait.
I lay there, eagerly awaiting the break of day,
Hoping my fearless knight was on his way.

But as time went by I grew less hopeful.
I had grown old and I feared redundancy.
But on that fateful day, he finally arrived,
And I had never known such true joy.

The deal was done and I was to be sent away.
A master craftsman worked on my ageing body.
He brushed away the grit and grime gathered over the years,
Pruned and polished, I had never looked so good.

My life had a clear purpose now,
To be elegant until I could be no more,
To be pristine until I could be no more,
To safeguard the sanctity of a creation far beyond my own.

Our union happened under the perfect conditions,
I vowed to perform my sacred duty,
To protect my master from all evil forces.

I rode home with him, proud and euphoric.
Ready to begin a new life of adventure and excitement.
Yet, what is this I now feel?
There is a force pulling me away from my lord.

I was being stretched and deformed beyond my limits,
I held on stubbornly, refusing to give in.
I screamed out in vain as I was sent over the edge,
My pride was shattered into a million pieces.

My life had just begun and it was already over.
I now lay on the ground, bent, broken and defeated.
What monster could do such a thing I wondered,
As my master picked me up and tossed me aside.

Down into the eternal darkness, I plunged,
As I slowly lost my consciousness.
Against the dull, lingering pain I realized the truth,

My master had deemed me unworthy.

Unworthy was originally published in The Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I gave birth to a monster,”
Said the mother, as her breath quickened and heart beat faster.
She watched as her child raised his head,
With eyes purged of innocence by the blood of the dead.

Corpses lay about like leaves under a tree;
The bloody remains of the boy’s killing spree.
He stepped over his father’s unmoving figure,
Lying cold and damp in a crimson river.

“Mother, was I never worthy of his love?”
He stared into her eyes reflecting the stars above.
As she pulled him close in a final embrace,
He said, “Am I not more than your mistake to erase?”

In her hand, concealed was a silver knife,
Her mind, resolved to end his life.
She swung the blade, but he was quicker.
She was in the arms of death in all but a flicker.

The boy then wandered for many years alone,
Searching for a family and a place to call home,
Yet the only love he received was born of fear.
Till his dying breath he held no one dear.

At the gates of hell he stood at last;
Eternal damnation for the sins of his past.

Then came a touch, a warm presence on each side,
Two faces familiar, with smiles ever wide.
Held his hands and accompanied him inside.

The Demon’s Kin was originally published in The Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Have we run out of stories to tell, I wonder.
Could it be that every possible cliché has made the journey from pen to paper?
We mix and match, we copy and paste.
Is any new idea ever truly original?
Or just a rehashed version of someone else’s excellence.
We are told to imitate, yet told to differentiate.
Our amorphous thoughts are already plagued by bias;
Influenced by infinite ripples of human thought nudging our minds ever so subtly.
We strive to conjure tales unheard of,
Tales of love,
Tales of hardship,
Tales of bravery,
And now a million paths unfurl in front of me.
Yet, I see they have all been worn of travel,
Their sights and sounds already explored,
Their mysteries solved and put to rest six feet under.
I drop my pen, not a word yet written,
Defeated by this insurmountable task.

My eyes close as I lend an ear to my deepest whims,
I hear a faint whisper, a voice from within.
Full of hope, urging me not to give in.
Perhaps it’s okay to dig up some graves,
And tread through roads familiar and fond.
Perhaps I’ll tell a story told time and again,
Only this time, through the lens of my pen, profound.

Again was originally published in The Junction on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The footsteps quiet, reached now ever closer,
Dancing to the tunes of the night’s composer,
She hurries on, not daring to look back,
Of time and space she must not lose track.

There’s a hunter in the shadows,
Lurking and prowling it follows.
A door ajar invites her in;
A haven safe from sin and kin.

A solitary finger brushes against her knee
Startled, she reflexively turns around to see,

The smiling toddler she had come to babysit.
“Found you! Now it’s your turn to be it.”

A journey through human emotions told through the colors of a video game

She walks across the top of a broken building made of white marble. She reaches the edge and jumps down to the red sands below. To her surprise, the ground has a sharp incline and she finds herself gliding through a massive reddish-brown landscape. Her skirt catches the vibrant crimson hues of the scene as the wind flows through it in sublime motion. The silence is broken by warm music that swells with hope, yearning and excitement as the sun rises behind her, turning her into a dusky silhouette. The camera zooms out and you notice that the incline is about to curve upwards. She is launched into a turmoil of dust and clouds as she goes into free fall. Yet, she emerges from it all, the sun centering around her body in the background as she plummets towards the unseen ground. The music reaches its crescendo and we finally glimpse the level rocky bridge she is headed towards. With a flutter of her dress to slow the impact, she makes an elegant landing just as the ending note of the mellow musical piece reaches you.

This sequence of events is one of many that left me in a state of wondrous joy and astonishment in a roughly five-hour run through of Gris. Released back in December 2018, the game immediately caught my eye for its fluid visual art style and the glorious musical masterpieces that accompanied it. Finally, amidst the global quarantine, I found the time to sit down and enjoy this piece of art from start to finish. Going in, I expected to be blown away by the beauty of the game owing to my ardent love for minimalism and vibrant color palettes. However, what stayed with me long after I watched the credits roll was the candid, vulnerable and sometimes scary exploration of human emotion that the game sets out on, and its portrayal of the wars we fight within ourselves.

Using the power of symbolism, Gris effortlessly manages to tell a story of fighting through loss, depression, anxiety and trauma. The young girl that we follow throughout the stunningly crafted levels has no dialogues to say or speech bubbles to fill. Yet, her tale manages to resonate with the deepest recesses of my being, reminding me of what it means to be human.

Gris (Gray)

The word ‘Gris’ actually translates to gray in Spanish, and that is where the game opens. We are introduced to our protagonist, sitting on a large palm made of stone. She slowly rises above the surface and starts singing an almost hauntingly beautiful tune. We see that in this scene, there are splotches of color all over; in her hair, in the stone and even in the sky behind her. However, I immediately realize that something is amiss as I notice the numerous cracks running along the stone. Suddenly, her voice cracks and she is unable to sing anymore. She falls on to the palm as the cracks widen until finally, the entire structure shatters, leaving her plummeting towards the ground.

This shows us the exact moment in which denial gives in to despair. She was singing as though everything was alright, ignoring the deteriorating state of the stone statue until the weight of reality was too much to bear. The statue here could be symbolically interpreted in many ways. It could be a personification of her current state of mental health, barely holding together. Another popular interpretation is that the opening scene represents the loss of her mother, which is alluded to in a hidden scene later on. However you choose to look at it, it represents a critical turning point in the story of our protagonist — one that sends her spiraling into the depths of despair.

She lands in a world devoid of all color. Save for her hair, every misshapen stone, crumbling building and leafless tree is rendered in grayscale. She is shocked at first, unable to get up from where she lands. Yet, she slowly picks herself up, dries her tears and sets off to explore this new place she finds herself in. She walks through the crumbling remains of several stone structures until she finds a glowing white orb. This orb proceeds to follow her wherever she goes and becomes an important gameplay mechanism later on.

She proceeds to collect more of the floating orbs until she reaches a point where she cannot proceed because of the large distance to be covered. The orbs suddenly fly out in front of her and ‘connect the dots’ to create a pathway for her to tread on. This leads me to understand that the orbs could perhaps be representations of the core ideals upon which our personalities are built. They could be character traits or life-changing moments that shape the person you are today. Even in darkest of times, they become your pillars of strength, showing you the way forward even when you fail to see one.

Rojo (Red)

Our protagonist continues on her journey of exploration until she finds what appears to be the broken, crumbling palm that had fallen with her from the sky. It serves as a reminder of her tragedy, triggering a sudden flow of emotion and pain. The music swells with a melancholy note as she rises into the air, shutting her eyes with her hands, until an explosion of red slowly takes over the screen, painting the landscape in what looks like splotches of blood.

Red here could represent rage in its purest form. She could be angry at herself for not being strong enough to prevent this situation from happening. Or perhaps, she could be channeling her anger towards the external world, for being unfair and cruel to her. Anger and hatred of oneself and others is one of the most understandable ways of dealing with grief. We try to overpower the sadness with rage so that we can find someone to put the blame on. We also hope that the feeling of hatred will be able to eclipse the sorrow which lies beneath and hope that it makes things easier to deal with.

She continues on her journey to reach a very elaborate structure that stretches far and wide. I like to think that this building represents the very center of our protagonist’s inner existence. The glowing orbs shoot out towards the sky above the building to form a small part of what looks like a giant constellation. This is where we establish what we’re working towards — filling up the constellation so that we can create a metaphorical staircase back to where we fell from.

This not only creates a way to track progression but also makes the end goal seem like it is something that is in fact achievable, provided we put in the effort.

These are two very important steps to remember when we undertake pretty much any task in this world. Up next comes the sequence described at the beginning of the article, which serves as an interesting expansion to the meaning behind the color red.

Red, I realize, can also signify bravery and the courage to let go and see where the world takes you.

She continues ahead from the bridge she landed on and quickly finds herself in the middle of a relentless sand storm which is strong enough to blow her away. The entire screen turns blood red as the music picks up its pace as she is sent tumbling backwards.

These storms could be representative of panic attacks or sudden bursts of negative emotion that could overwhelm us completely. The most important insight I gained from this section was that these frightful events don’t last forever. If you don’t move forward when the wind stops blowing and stay in the same place, you’ll end up never actually making any progress.

The lesson here is that when the situation is dire, one should lie low and wait for the storm to pass, but one shouldn’t be scared of stepping out on a sunny day for fear of the looming rain clouds.

After trudging through more of the desert, we come across a sort of shrine which unlocks the first ability of the game. I was admittedly amused by the sudden turn of events whereby the delicate, elegant girl could now at will turn herself into a solid cube that could break through certain fragile platforms.

Then, the storm came once again and I instinctively pressed the key to use the ability. To my utter delight, I find that the storm no longer pushes her back. Instead, she’s actually able to take slow, powerful steps forward even as the wind howls and screams across the sands. Braving the storm so many times, I realize, has now given rise to a natural immunity within her. The protagonist is not just someone who is an emotional wreck who always struggles in the face of a threat. She has the strength and willpower to grow; she can stand her ground and be as immovable as a mountain.

Gris, I realize, is not just a journey of understanding and appreciating the different emotions we possess but also about the importance of keeping those emotions in check in the situations that require you to.

Our protagonist moves on to find a destructible platform underneath a large bell. The platform gives way to a seemingly bottomless pit that sees her fall into the deepest, darkest part of her inner world.

This space could represent a graveyard of forgotten sorrows and tragedies as can be seen by the weeping, crumbling statues. This is quite literally a visual metaphor of her hitting rock bottom. Beneath her feet, we see a reflection of herself surrounded by winged creatures fluttering about; a manifestation of the darkness and fear that we all carry locked away within. She is unable to leave this realm of grief until the winged creatures finally cross into the upper world. They gather around her and shoot upwards until they reach the red sky, carrying our protagonist along with them.

Down in this chamber is where she has locked away her fear and grief. Yet, we see that constantly suppressing these emotions and playing prison guard for her negativity is ironically equivalent to locking herself away.

She finally decides that she feels strong enough to no longer run from the fear, darkness and grief that plague her. She is ready to face these issues head on and deal with the consequences of living with them in her world above.

Gris makes the bold statement that living in constant fear of your negative emotions is not living at all.

You can buy Gris on several platforms including Steam, the Google Play Store, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Mac to experience the game for yourself. All credits for the gameplay screenshots go to Devolver Digital and Nomada Studios.

The Grief In Gray And The Rage In Red was originally published in SUPERJUMP on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.