#but those will all get proper writeups at some point
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CoM Predictions/Manifestations/Theories
Involves DLC, Hermit Room, and Interlude spoilers. Putting it under the cut bc it's long lol. Not rly sorted or in any particular organization, just thing I want to happen and some theories and thoughts on stuff!
mostly writing this bc it's quick and easy compared to the metas i'm working on hehe
Kado Orie is the source of the Mirages, using the Harada factor in synergy with his Factor Artifact. He has either a Red or a Green one (SNMT has the Rainbow, and Sueko has the other Red/Green). If i HAD to pick I would assign him the red (due to the color in his design) and that way Lin (N portman) gets the green at some point from his mom
The longer that you're in the mirage, the more you become a 'fictional' character; You start losing your memories... and Miwa is the one who's been in there the longest, and he went in there INTENTIONALLY, which is why he has no memories outside of being 'Dita'.
Similarly, i want Dita to have an identity crisis over whether or not he's "Real". I want him to choose violence <3
This would bring in the "Factors and Definitions" into more prominence too
I want Mutei to be the one pulling the strings/guiding Rui as the protagonist! we let him out of the hermit's room so i think he should cause problems <3
OH also I dont think this will actually happen but. wouldn't it be cool if we could port our post HR save file into CoM and have the Color we gave to Mutei show up in places...
i want shinano and dita to interact pleass please fukao let him meet his blorbo,,,
linano meetup,,, lin meeting dita,,,
LIN BECOMES AWARE OF THE THREE RINGS. (ie setup for joining System.NH). I think as of 2018 he Doesnt Know yet, but i want him to Learn in CoM!!
Utsugi-Harada factor shenanigans....
Kento Sayo joining the "Utsugis paralleling the Magician Tarot card" gang. aka: i want him to morb ^_^ Lineage of the magicians am i right
Golden dawn. They WILL be relevant. It all adds up alright they know TOO MUCH. THEY'RE THE ONES WHO BROUGHT UP THE TREE OF LIFE AND TAROT CARDS so i am desperate to understand them.
in addition to that i did some digging into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and while yeah they were a real group that existed, the coe parallels are insane.
also i know this is a crack theory but please please let mutei be their founder or something
this is a pipe dream but... Izu interacting with atou and/or sanemitsu. also interacting w seodore.
izu is quite literally the seosane child this is canon. Sanemitsu's the dad Rai is the mom and Seodore is. also the mom
ougughhh please let it be revealed that CoS is a time loop please please please please please please i will cry
what is the hakko theatre troupe. EIGHT lights is there an eighth light out there. is there a secret eighth fragment or is that one seodore. Miwa i have so many questions
I want ryuu to kill. also i want to know what happened to azuma and igarashi. are they dead? alive? busy running companies? what on EARTH DOES SEER OF DREAMS MEAN. IS THAT HIS POWER? DREAMWALKING? CREATING DREAMS IN REALITY?
also Azuma connection to Kado....
Eigha knows about his and Dita's true nature. I want to see him make use of this
ok so. this is dewins theory but we think itd be really cool if Rui's job was to satisfy / fulfill the wishes of the Fragments.
also we have a theory that. Mutei wrote Rui into existence and hes fictional sorry Rui but it'd be funny. This one was Yohann's hehe
ryuu my darling rabbit my babygirl i want you to kill ^_^
i want rui to morb
if the Three Rings get mentioned i will go insane
Eigha's current actor is Shiyo Harada. but he's not on the family tree at all what the FUCK is going on with him
is he really a harada?? is he lying?
also the fact that he's a HARADA chosen by miwa to play this role....... suspicious
i Do Not Trust the cat. Godzylla i do not trust you at ALL. he's too meta there HAS to be something up with him
Ito Yamori is suspicious ....
also of the cast we know about, placing my bets that at least ONE of them is associated With the Golden Dawn.
also i talked abt this before but not publicly-- I think Ryuu is the one who attacked Annie and injured her, leading to her and Seodore working together.
#cell of mirage#aria rambles#cell of empireo#aria's analysis#coe spoilers#coe dlc spoilers#gavi no clicky#this is p rambly bc it's not tooo detailed#and it's not meant to be a full theory/analysis/what have you#just a bunch of interesting details#things i want to see#and a couple theory things#but those will all get proper writeups at some point
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~what the hell is going on the night will disappeared? TIME FUCKERY, PERCEPTION FUCKERY, SOME EXTREME STRANGENESS REGARDING JOYCE BYERS AND TERRY IVES THAT IVE NEVER SEEN MENTIONED ANYWHERE BEFORE~
i dont have all the pieces put together yet but there’s too many strange coincidences. ill make a proper document or smthn abt this theory at some point but for rn im just throwing this together
SO. THIS IMAGE. which i’ve made posts about here and here.
Long story short: im basically certain that this netflix still image, which is not from a scene that exists in the show but IS shown on the s1 ep1 pause/idle screen, is from the exact moment that we saw will disappear/the lightbulb get all bright in s1 ep1.
Which means that this is seemingly an image of Will watching himself disappear inside the shed OR watching whatever ACTUALLY happened when the lightbulb started glowing in the shed.
Now, my focus for this writeup is going to be pointing out the little discrepancies that indicate that we’re not seeing the whole story in s1 ep1 the night will disappears. IMO there’s some pov/memory/unreliable narration fuckery afoot.
SO, i wrote about how the door to the shed is completely different when will’s in the shed vs when hoppers in it in this post. Long story short: outside view of door the night will disappears + outside view of door when hopper goes to the shed + inside view of the door when hopper goes in the shed are all the same door. but will’s inside view of the door the night he disappears is a COMPLETELY different door with no spaces in between the planks- it’s not just a different door from hopper, but it’s a different door than the one we see from the outside the night that will disappears, as from the outside view, the gaps are clearly visible, whereas they’re nonexistent from the inside view.
I also want to point out the LAUNDRY. *charlie kelly voice* “can we talk about the laundry? i’ve been dying to talk about the laundry”
This post has a more in-depth explanation of what I noticed with the laundry, but long story short: a.) that scene where will seemingly looks out of the living room window and sees the demogorgon was absolutely not physically shot from the living room window. it is not possible with the location of the clothesline. they cannot put a camera outside of the living room window and get that shot. however, it DOES line up EXACTLY with the location of will’s bedroom window. and b.) the clothes on the line the night will disappears vs the clothes on the line the morning immediately after, are completely different clothes. There is very clearly a plaid shirt with some sort of large, thick towel-like item next to it. However, the next morning, the laundry line has a pair of pants and a polka-dot shirt. This could indicate either time fuckery or perception fuckery, as the laundry could be from another day OR just edited entirely if it’s perception fuckery. I’m not sure which it is, but it COULD be time fuckery if we’re seeing will’s pov from a different time/date somehow in that scene??
Since that first screenshot labelled “will pov s1 ep1″ could not physically have been shot from the living room window, and instead aligns exactly with will’s bedroom window, it’s also worth noting that the blinds in will’s bedroom are pulled UP the morning after he disappears, and we don’t know if they’d been closed or opened before he got home, but we DO know that joyce or jonathan didn’t open those blinds since they would have noticed that will was missing if they went into his room. So, there’s a solid chance imo that will opened those blinds and was somehow looking through his bedroom window at the demogorgon- which would align with that still image that we see of will looking into a glowing shed, because both of these things point to a different will POV that we haven’t been shown yet/possibly point towards will somehow watching himself the night he disappeared.
There’s also the phone. Two things about the phone: a.) will leaves it hanging off the hook the night he disappears, and b.) there’s different writing on the phone the night will disappears vs when joyce uses the phone the next morning. Who put the phone back on the hook?? Did joyce and jonathan just come home that night and go “oh, the phone ringing off the hook, that’s completely normal, let me just put that back and not check on will at all or bring it up whatsoever”?? Or, maybe, did something happen and the phone was never actually left off of the hook- was that scene part of an illusion/warped memory? I’m not sure but it’s definitely strange.
And speaking of coming home that night: this is mostly speculation, but why didn’t jonathan check to see if will was home? was he just so tired that he went to bed + didn’t think to check if will made it back? did joyce not think to check on will either? did neither of them notice that his bike wasn’t outside? or that his shoes and coat weren’t at the door?
Now, regarding part b.) of the phones- the phone in will’s disappearance scene just says AREA CODE 501, which, I made a post about here, and @byler-4-life made a post here about how 501 isn’t even the hawkins area code. The phone in joyce’s scene the next morning, and in the scene where joyce gets zapped by the phone for the first time, the phone has another line of writing underneath it, which is NOT present the night that will disappears.
As well, we’ve got the light switch. The light is already on when will seemingly runs into the shed. And it’s also on when we see him disappear/the light bulb gets all bright and then returns to normal. However, the light is then switched off, not just a dead bulb, but switched off, the next morning, when hopper goes into the shed and switches the light on.
NOW: something ELSE i’ve noticed: the fog. not only is there fog the night will disappears, just like how there’s fog in the upside-down, and fog in max’s upside-down billy graveyard vecna vision, but the fog literally seems to follow will. And it seems to emanate from behind the demogorgon, much in the same way that it seems to emanate from behind vecna in max’s graveyard vision.
And also- WHERE IS THE SHED LIGHT? In the scene where will’s running into the house, we can SEE the shed in the fog: but we CANNOT see any light coming from it. which is extremely odd considering that when will gets to the back of the house, the door is open and the beam of light stretches across the backyard. We should be able to see it in that initial shot, espeically considering that the gaps in the shed walls allow light to seep through, as seen in that first netflix still image in the beginning of this post, but the shed is dark.
Visually, the image of billy/vecna disguised as billy in the fog is very similar to the demogorgon in the fog the night that will disappears. As well, vecna even sounds like billy in that scene- so there’s a chance that he could have disguised himself to look and sound like a demogorgon (like not actually disguised but rather done the same sort of perception warping/vision stuff that he does to max).
As well, max runs into the fog in s4 in order to get away, and ends up in vecna’s mindscape. The fog literally seems to act like a barrier in vecna visions, almost like the invisible walls in a videogame. Will, however, does not run into the fog, so unlike max, he doesn’t escape the weird upside-down vision world. And also, note the lack of weird tentacles or typical upside-down stuff in max’s graveyard, despite the fact that it looks like the upside-down. That indicates that there’s a chance that what we see of the byers house on the night that will disappears COULD be a similar sort of upside-down looking vision situation except without the tentacles and other upside-down stuff???
and that will is going both physically and mentally between the real world and the upside-down on the night he disappears, just like he does in s2 with his episodes (he is able to interact physically with BOTH worlds at the same time in his episodes), which could explain why certain actions like leaving the phone off the hook didn’t actually happen in reality, but other ones like slamming open the back door and leaving an indent DID. (basically, the phone was never left off the hook in the real world because that scene happened when he was in the upside-down/vision/whatever, whereas the door slamming was when he came back to reality and then the shed would be when he went back again into upside-down/vision land)
Going back to the fog again, it’s also interesting to me that this imagery of billy/vecna in the fog is blue-toned, whereas for will’s it’s warm and yellow-toned. which seems like nothing until we recall that picture of henry with the mindflayer in the yellow section of the upside-down. I wonder, if like how the red area started to peek through the blue for max + how running through that fog lead her to vecna’s mind lair, that if the fog would have lead to the yellow area for will. It’s an interesting lighting choice that i think is worth noting, at least, because aside from that moment, the fog is always lit in cool/blue tones for Will.
SO: my conclusion? i don’t quite know HOW this all ties together yet, but something’s not right about the night will disappeared. I don’t think what we saw in s1 ep1 was what actually happened, I think it’s possibly what will remembers, but it’s not the entirety of what happened.
I think that SOMEHOW, and im not sure HOW, or WHY, but i think that somehow, will was either watching himself go through what we saw in s1 ep that night, AND/OR will was flipping between dimensions/in and out of a vecna vision like he does in s2/when hes in the upside down using his true sight in s1/ AND OR, something else entirely happened in that shed, and will witnessed it (hopper even mentions at the library in s1 that there’s a chance that will ‘saw something he shouldn’t have’ related to hawkins lab + they got rid of him as a result).
Hopper’s comment about will witnessing something becomes even more interesting when we consider the following:
a.) the discrepancy between the s1 article vs the s2 article
I’ve written about this more in-depth here, but long story short, the article in the police station in season 1 tells a completely different story with a completely different timeline than the article in will’s locker in season 2. In the season 1 article, it says that will was found as a subject of the hawkins lab after a week of searching, having been subjected to mind control experiments/
In the season 2 article, however, it says that will was missing for eight days (”had gone missing two days prior” and “six days later hopper found him in a cabin”, so according to this article, will’s body was found after he was missing for 2 days, and then 6 days after the body was found, hopper found him, making him missing for 8 days), and claims that hopper found will in a cabin and that the coroner misidentified the body.
Strangely enough, the season 1 article makes no mention of will’s fake body/the one that they found in the quarry.
Both articles are written by the same person, with the same headline, and the same photo. They both seem to have been published at the same time (as i don’t think that they’d publish an article about will’s disappearance in s2), and they almost look like the exact same article except with difference content (again, same author same headline same photo), and part of me wonders if this is some sort of vecna perception warping/unreliable narration, because it really does strike me as strange that there was a whole article about will being tortured at the lab, an article that specifically says that joyce claims that will was taken to the lab and tortured, when the whole stipulation of joyce and hopper being allowed to go into the upside-down and rescue will, was that the lab had nothing to do with it. And why would joyce say that will was experimented on at the lab? Because as far as we know/joyce knows, that’s not true- he was stuck in the upside-down, not found in the lab having been part of mind experiments.
So if joyce WAS going to break her agreement and expose the lab, then why wouldn’t she just expose the truth?
As well, when you look at this uncropped image of the s1, article, there’s something VERY strange when you read further down in the second paragraph: “In a statement issued yesterday mornning (can’t see the other half of the word but ‘morning’ is inferred), Ives mentioned her ‘disgust’ towards, (word ‘towards’ isnt visible but we can infer it) the organziation, saying ‘our own american people are being treated like the enemy (again, with ‘enemy,’ we can only see the last two letters so its inferred), we should be directing out ___tion (not sure what word that is) to the real target, the Soviets, not our own daughters and sons”
Wait- Ives? Ives who? What first name? It’s never mentioned.Why’d they just mention an “Ives” out of nowhere with no first name and no introduction, as if Ives was who they’d been speaking about the entire time?
“In a statement issued yesterday morning-” Which ives is even capable of issuing a statement in 1983? We know that terry isn’t, because she was tortured by brenner long before 1983. But we also know that Becky is very unlikely to issue a statement either, as she didn’t even believe terry’s story until El came to visit in s2. So that only leaves terry. But this statement was issued “yesterday,” which means that it’s from 1983.
With the way that the last name “Ives” is dropped without a firstname, it almost feels like they’re conflating Joyce and Terry- because Joyce is mentioned with her first and last name, and JOYCE is mentioned as being the one who is making the allegations against the lab, so it would make sense for them to refer to her with her last name regarding statements and allegations in the second paragraph, but instead, they just say “Ives,” and don’t say any first name or give any context to Ives. It feels like it’s absolutely out of nowhere, especially considering what I just talked about with how we only know two Ives, and one of them (terry) isnt physically capable of giving a statement, and the other one (becky) doesn’t even believe in the words being stated.
This smells like time fuckery and perception fuckery, ESPECIALLY time fuckery in regards to “Ives” giving a statement “yesterday” in 1983. It’s very, very interesting to me that things are phrased in a way where it seems to conflate joyce and ives, ESPECIALLY since the story that is being credited to “joyce,” about will being the subject of mind control experiments at hawkins lab, is the EXACT story that we find out that Terry was saying about El at the lab, ESPECIALLY since at no point has Joyce ever said that Will was tortured/found at the lab, because as far as we see in the sshow/joyce sees, he WASNT!! And that line at the bottom, about brenner issuing no comment- as far as anyone knew, brenner was DEAD at the end of s1. Even owens claims to jonathan and nancy in s2 that anyone involved with will’s and barb’s disappearance is dead. So why are articles being published claiming that he’s declined comment??
What the HELL is going on here?? Why is Terry’s story about El being credited to Joyce as being about Will???? This smells like timeline fuckery.
b.) the fact that will seems to recognize brenner in s4
I know the 8flix scripts were a contentious affair, but i’m personally of the belief that they weren’t entirely fake, even if they were from earlier in production. And in the 8flix script, it’s mentioned that Will recognizes Brenner when he’s dying in s4. And even the script aside, watching that scene, Will’s reaction/expression towards Brenner is definitely different from Mike’s, and Will’s definitely looks like recognition/realization, imo.
c.) the fact that hawkins lab was able to create a perfect replica of will’s body
How on earth did they manage to create such an extremely lifelike version of will’s body?? especially with the technology available in the 80s, compared to what we have today, that’s no easy feat. and it’s even harder, if not borderline impossible, if you don’t have the person to use as a reference or tons and tons of detailed images of that person. Will’s missing flyers were all in black and white, and yet they even managed to nail his hair colour and skintone. And even then, doing that sort of intricately detailed and accurate work based on a few photos from a small handful of angles alone?? I don’t buy it.
d.) the fact that the hawkins lab team, including brenner, immediately went back to the shed when they visited the byers house.
They didn’t even go into the actual house. They immediately went around back to the shed, and YES they had their little machines that they were using to track, so that could totally be a large part of the reason, but it’s still a little odd to me that they basically made a beeline for the AND were geared up for the upside-down before they even got there, meaning that they knew/highly suspected that some upside-down shit had gone down at the byers household. I also wonder if there’s a chance that THIS is when will saw brenner + why he recognized him, since maybe he was in the upside-down version of the shed at the time, and with his true sight shenanigans, was able to see brenner the same way that he could see the alphabet that joyce painted.
long story short: there’s an absolute metric fuckton of discrepancies between the shed and the byers house the night that will disappeared vs the next day, and this isn’t even all of them. and that still image of will looking into the shed at the exact same moment that he would have been disappearing keeps me up at night because WHAT THE FUCK?? there could be time fuckery at play (i’m looking at you, laundry that’s definitely not clothes from the day that will disappeared), there could be memory/perception fuckery at play, there could be both!! and WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON WITH THE JOYCE AND TERRY STUFF?? IM BAFFLED. I’m probably gonna go compare that Will article to the actual articels written about terry’s comments. Much to think about.
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"I hear the sea, it roars/and I want out of here." - Coeur de Pirate, "Our Love"
For #quins1kdtiys: ol' reliable couture art meets a proper model in "And That's All We Are".
(Writeup under the cut, as usual. Minor Dragons Rising part 2 spoilers there, by the by, but you'll see them coming. I'll let you know.)
Congratulations on 1k, @quintastiic! I hope this does that milestone some justice.
I've done Skybound couture work before; I've done Nya analysis before. Somehow, I have never blended them, and this DTIYS gave me the perfect chance to try that out.
For the first time in my fashion fanart history, I'm not using a boilerplate mannequin - I got my hands on one of those IKEA artist figurines and decided, well, if there's any time to try and draw someone, let's start with a favorite. I'm not hiding behind a standard template here.
For the most part, this is a simple urban riff on Nya's Skybound gi: a black velvet vest and fingerless gloves over a crimson blouse, paired with bright combat boots and flared jeans. A durable ensemble, I like to believe this base of blended aesthetic represents what Nya spends the first five seasons building herself up to be: well, herself. She scrapped a mech and her own role together - and built a legacy in the process. In one way, that's all she is: everything she's crafted so far.
Overtaking the outfit, though, is a cropped leather jacket with a sheer train designed to resemble waves.
It doesn't match the base at all - it glows. It floats. It almost seems alive with motion and light, but at the same time, it's a weight on her shoulders that makes her conspicuous among her teammates. It's a dilemma that plagues her throughout Skybound and beyond - can she make herself work with her powers? Does she want to? In another way, that's all she is: her powers? Or not?
Bridging the gap between the wave jacket and the base ensemble is an element inspired by Nya's monologue to Jay about being friends - and nothing else.
That, of course, is the friendship bracelet inspired chain belt, adorned with four venom-shaded charms:
Closest to Nya herself is another symbol of her powers, and the way she has to reform herself to solve the problems at hand: a simple water droplet, a symbol of life turned into one of risk with the venom-green tint.
On the next layer down, something more classically Claire's jewelry rack bracelet set: a lightning bolt with a tiny heart, representing Nya's evolving relationship with Jay throughout the season. Although I find it important to analyze Nya as her own character in the context of Skybound, it is important to acknowledge Jay's influence, and that's what this is for.
(Partial Dragons Rising part 2 spoilers in this one!) Dangling as far away from Nya as she can get it, but apparently trying to climb back up close to her of its own accord, is a twelve-pointed sun motif that appears in the second half of Dragons Rising to - without getting too spoilery - indicate a curse on the bearer and mark them for inevitable suffering and eventual death. In Skybound and beyond, Nya narrowly evades this fate; the symbol overtakes both of her gloves here, representing her struggle and the hand motif I adore in the season. However, she does eventually escape - and wears it dangling loosely, even casually, from her belt, almost like a trophy.
Hidden beneath the jacket and attached to a belt loop for easy access, like a tool, hangs a charm modeled after the flask of venom used in episode 61. This is resilience, almost to a fault, and a bittersweet reminder of the events of the erased timeline - they go to such lengths to keep the venom, and for what end? Nya's eventual death - and their victory. And everything that comes with that.
The charms round out the trifecta of all she is during Skybound: the circumstances, mortal or not, that shape her actions and determine her destiny.
#I wrote this very fast with cold hands because I was SO EXCITED to get this out#I hope you enjoy this as much as I did making it#quins1kdtiys#ninjago fanart#ninjago skybound#ninjago couture#analysis freak lila back on her bullshit#ninjago dragons rising#Ninjago Nya
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Legend of Zelda Theme Park - Odds and Ends
Here are a few ideas for the theme park that didn't fit into the area-by-area descriptions, either because they apply to the whole park or because it was too much detail for the simple summaries.
Phone App Minigames
I've made a few references to these over the course of the theme park posts, but never gave any specifics. So here are some of those:
Scavenger hunts. How many Zelda games include a "catch 'em all" sidequest? Several, that's how many. The premise of this is quite simple: Some number of a small creature--Koroks, Gold Skulltulas, baby Maiamais, or whatever--are placed around the park, and if you can find and photograph them all, you can get a prize! A combination of signal transmitters and image recognition would ensure the legitimacy of the photos.
Music apps where you look for certain signs and symbols to let you know there's a secret here to be triggered if you play the right song. The effects might be flickering lights, sliding panels in walls or rock faces to reveal a unique sight, etc.
Merch
Throughout the writeups, I've described the unique shops and their unique lines of souvenirs to some extent, but what about simpler, more universal Legend of Zelda goodies that could be sold anywhere in the park? Here are a few fun ideas:
Bag of rupees. How can you be a proper adventurer without your own supply of Hyrule's currency? The way I see it, the bags would come in different sizes at different price points, each containing a fixed number of 1-inch resin rupees, but randomly selected colors--you never know what you're going to get until you open the bag. "Higher-value" rupees are naturally rarer--they can't actually be exchanged for anything, but it mimics the in-game value and rarity.
Fantasy ear headbands. You could get "elf" ears (in a variety of skin tones) and be a Hylian, Gerudo, or Sheikah, "fin" ears to be a Zora, or even big floppy goblinesque Bokoblin ears!
Collectibles from the games. Think Wind Waker's Spoils or Skyward Sword's Treasures--small, distinctive items that must be collected in some numbers to be useful and are not necessary to complete the game.
Food and Snacks
Hard candy rupees. Pretty self-explanatory--just don't get them mixed up with your toy rupees from the blind bag!
Kinstone sugar cookie 2-packs. Two half-cookies frosted with red, blue, or green icing and with part of the Minish clover emblem piped on.
Triforce corn chips. These come in three flavors--Power (chili), Wisdom (blue corn and flax seed), and Courage (avocado). Bags are single-flavor or all three together.
The "Desert Menu." Okay, this is just silly. I thought the dessert menu at the Royal Banquet Hall should have every item named and themed after a desert area from the LoZ franchise. So there would be the Gerudo Dessert (melon sherbet with whipped cream and raspberries), the Lanayru Dessert (crumble cake with buttercream frosting and sanding sugar), the Dessert of Mystery (ultra-dark chocolate mousse cake), and for large parties, the Dessert Colossus (a huge multiflavor ice cream sundae).
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‘straight on til morning’ is so delicious and mesmerising, thank you so much for it!! i’d love to hear about your writing process/tips & tricks if you don’t mind!
thank you so much!!! i'm so happy to hear you enjoyed it!!! :D
as for my writing process... man. im one of those guys who can't write anything longish without outlining. like, A Lot. i also do all my outlines by hand in a physical notebook because that's just what scratches my brain itch nicely and makes the story marinate better in my head!
sotm started off as me going "NOBODY has written a proper long story about kon's knockout and tana trauma?!?!! NO ONE?!?!?" (well, there was one i saw, but it hadnt been updated in like. 5+ years and hadn't really gotten into the meat of it yet iirc.) it sort of manifested in my mind as two distinct images: 1) kon looking at the glint of light off the rim of a teacup while trying not to cry + asking dick grayson what to do, and 2) kon asking clark why he wasn't a child worth protecting.
my first step with a longfic is always to take those initial images, throw them onto a plot diagram, and then fill in the spaces in between. the og one for sotm looks like this!
after that i go flesh out each point further and develop scenes per chapter. like, here you can see each chapter's basic plot points, but then as i got to each chapter i'd further flesh it out a Lot in the notebook, with as much detail as i could think of. for example, ch5's outline and notes look like this:
when i outline, i tend to try to imagine both the general vibes for a scene and specific dialogue notes, because i like sorta having guidelines for how to steer the scene as i write it. otherwise i tend to get pretty indecisive as to where it's going, and then i stop writing to think (or overthink) about what should be happening.
so when i do get a new idea and deviate from the outline i actually go back and rework the entire thing dhfjkds!! this happened in sotm, when i decided i wanted to add an extra chapter and focus more also on kon's career crisis, especially as it relates to his realization that OH, he's traumatized by tana in more ways than he knew. so i went back and outlined and fiddled with the last leg of the plot further:
and ... yeah that's about it!! i work pretty much In Order on everything i do, so it's: outline, outline some more, write the chapter, outline the next chapter, etc.
...also i'm not gonna lie i did partly just use this question as an excuse to show off some of my pretty pens. i am so weak for pretty pens. connoisseur of gelly rolls in particular. <3
ty for asking!! i hope this shed some light on it/actually answered what you were interested in, it was a fun writeup to do :)
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Six Feats Under’s Mouse Guard Campaign is Complete
This fall we brought it back from a production hiatus to give it a proper ending. So if you’ve been waiting to know the full scope of the thing before listening, or before sharing it with someone else, now is the time. And I really think you should.
Over 2+ years of in-game narrative, and 5 years of production (including that previously mentioned hiatus) we fully explored the possibilities of the Mouse Guard RPG, the setting as we shaped it, and our characters. Sometimes it was silly, sometimes it was sad, and always it was under the weight of history. I’ve called this campaign a “laboratory for me to test my ideas on long-form storytelling, narrative, and adaptation; made all the better by having those ideas tested and challenged by eight collaborators.“ And it is that, but it’s also very goofy and fun.
The best way to follow the campaign is at sixfeatsunder.com which has a dedicated page for each season with descriptions and character bios. You can also find Six Feats Under on any given podcast app, but the organization of the site is helpful. Both are also good places to find non-Mouse Guard stuff, like the episode on the game I designed, Last Shooting; or the Monsterhearts 2 miniseries I’m so proud of. Supplemental material, like writeups of important setting elements or a set of letters sent by NPCs for each season, are also on the show’s tumblr page, helpfully tagged.
Any given season is a good enough starting point but the very beginning is here, and has all the advantages a beginning has. Year 2 starts with a recap episode built with all you need to get up to speed as things start to get heavy. And, because I’m weird like that, I think it’s entirely valid to start with the finale, and I’m curious what that experience would be like. And the epilogue game (Part 1, Part 2) that just went live is essentially a one-shot that stands in its own right, with half the cast being new characters.
I also made a set of behind the scenes posts for the three parts of the greater big finish. Those are very bad places to start, but I’m including the link for completeness’ sake.
So that’s what I’ve been up to, in some stage or other of active production since summer 2017, and in planning since the fall before that. And every part of it was a joy to make. Each season left me prouder than the one before. All my warmest and sincerest love to the cast members and collaborators, who made each step and each element stronger and sharper than I could have imagined. And my deepest gratitude to every listener, especially those who reached out and made themselves heard, for joining us on the journey.
-Grant.
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About your tags: is there more that you can share about the OW fandom and fics? This was a phenomenon I wonder about too. It was one of the most popular fandoms around 2017-2018, but the way the fandom stopped on its tracks around 2019 was hard not to notice. Especially from people who didn't play the game but were aware of it's fandom.
oh! overwatch is one of about 50-ish fandoms i track for this one spreadsheet project i do as a hobby (which i Technically blog about @fandom-data-scientist, but i've been too lazy to do a proper writeup to explain what the hell it is i do), wherein i try to answer the age-old question: when did the weebs move to ao3?
(the answer is late 2015/early 2016. most likely this was in large part a result of undertale and sports anime, but that's currently just my own conjecture)
According To My Research(tm), the overwatch fandom peaked in late 2016/early 2017 when it comes to the number of new fics posted per month. after this, it declined quite rapidly, as it didn't even get to enjoy a plateau period.
(there's a reason why the plots are really wonky towards the end of this graph-- it's bc i found the past dates for number of fics archived to a particular site via the wayback machine. since those snapshots are typically bot crawls, the number of fics shown on the fandoms listings will not include fics that have been archive-locked. although i technically started this project in august 2022, i did not add overwatch to my tracking list until this june/july or so. my current guess for the small uptick in the rate of ow fics published to ao3 in october 2022 is that the sequel came out? and then the rate plunged for january 2023 bc of the ai scraping scare that happened at around that time-- nearly every single fandom i track had a significant drop right then bc everyone was archive-locking their fics. the rate shooting up in like july 2023 on this chart is bc like i said, that's when i added ow to my list of tracked fandoms; because i'm logged into my own ao3 acct when checking these numbers live, i get access to the archive-locked fics and so the display number goes up.)
in my experience, fandoms will generally kind of plateau in their fic production after their peak, which will ofc normally gradually taper off. games that receive regular lore or story updates probably have fairly long or stable plateaus, although i haven't made scatterplots or made any comparing analyses to prove this rigorously. this plateau period generally represents a time of fandom stability as the fair-weather, casual, or migratory slash fans run off to the next big thing.
if we ignore the fact the plague and quarantine happened, we can see a nice, steady, and very consistent plateau period for the danganronpa fandom from about 2018-2020!
let's look at an older fandom, like my archnemesis final fantasy:
granted, the ao3 numbers are kind of all over the place these days, but you kind of get my point by now, right? that healthy fandoms tend to plateau as the wind carries away the faintly-interested and leaves the long-haulers behind to form their communities.
overwatch struck me as unusual when i was on one of my long wayback machine trips because of the way there was a net increase of only two fics published from 1 july 2021 to 1 october 2021, when before then it had usually been in the hundreds or so. i then went on a work tangent n googled around n more or less concluded it had Something to do with some kind of scandal with the development company, but otherwise i don't really have any more comments on it hahaha.
#asks#Anonymous#long post#i was too lazy to open my other spreadsheets in the project but i probably could've gotten clearer/longer plateaus#out of some of the western tv shows i've been tracking. like glee. or spn.#glee is INCREDIBLY funny to me bc of the way it just DIES right after the finale. like a bubble POPPING#although frankly maybe naruto would've been a better example for a peak n a plateau bc of how steady its fandom is#anyway this felt kind of like an odd ask to answer on this blog bc i keep it Very Separate from my fandom blog(s) hahaha#anyway i also looked at the rate of fic postage for the kingdom hearts fandom n although i didn't talk abt it here in this reply#i thought it interesting how it seemed to plummet on ffn around when ao3 n tumblr started getting a foothold#and then after the weebs moved to ao3 post-undertale/sports anime boom it had a nice steady 300-ish fics/month there#ANYWAY the reason final fantasy is my archnemesis for this project is bc ffn has each game split into its own category#and so i have to count them all up every single time n when doing that for every single fucking date i have marked in the wbm#for 20 YEARS' WORTH OF DATES. well. it upsets a man just a little bit.#BUT I'M DONE I DID MY TIME ON THE FINAL FANTASY BACKLOG I'M FREE NOW I JUST HAVE TO DO IT EVERY THREE MONTHS WHEN I RECORD LIVE DATA#i talk abt this shit at parties btw. people love to hear me talk abt my fandom spreadsheets at parties.
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was going to do a proper writeup on that lotr show after rewatching a ton of cast interviews from sdcc but I got lazy and my headphones are running out of battery fast so I'm just going to go over the few things that I remember that stuck out to me.
-I do believe the showrunners do understand tolkien or at the very least are very passionate about tolkien. not like "oh I love the lotr movies" but more like "I put elvish on the birth announcement for my child". which I think is promising. It comes down I think to how much their vision of tolkien aligns with my vision of tolkien or how much liberties they're taking with it, which is a thing that's always going to happen in adaptations especially in an adaptation when you have so many blanks to fill in. they really need to make an interview with those guys public, hearing them speak restored quite a bit of confidence with me.
-when they were speaking about parts they were excited to adapt and talked about the part where sauron puts the one ring on his finger for the first time and recites the poem and all the elves know at once they've been betrayed I was very interested to see how they'll tackle that. if they're passionate about it, they'll be able to bring those big moments to justice, which I am very much looking forward to.
-the actors were also very knowledgeable about tolkien to varying degrees - the actor for gil-galad could recite most of the gil-galad poem with only minor prompting. the actor for elrond is my favorite since he said his favorite age is the first age. he said something about how he's approaching second-age elrond primarily as an orphan, with huge expectations given his dad saved the world and is always looking down on him literally from the night sky, and how his complicated past ties into it, and it being so soon after having made his decision to live as an elf rather than as a mortal, and how that's influencing how he sees the world. which is incredible. he also made a comment at one point about the power of oaths in tolkien's universe which made me have to stop the video and hyperventilate for a few seconds because IF ONE PERSON KNOWS. IT'S ELROND. so I'm super looking forward to however much of that they'll portray of him when it comes down to it. (literally if we get a reference to the whole elrond being raised by sons of feanor thing I'm going to lose my mind.) uhh other than him, celebrimbor's actor was apparently a huge fan of lotr as a kid and he practiced writing with elvish script and wrote a play based off of it, which is very cute. elendil's actor could come up with a good amount of numenorean lore on the spot. all good things so far.
-bear mccreary who is doing most of the soundtrack talked about howard shore's influence, the example he gave was using some of the tones shore used with dwarves in a generally lost/grim setting given their position in the third age and bringing it to its full majesty in the second age with khazad-dum, which was very cool.
-I wasn't super satisfied with the answers the showrunners had during some of the q&a stuff primarily with why they're including harfoots, which was basically a "tolkien said hobbits didn't do anything but never said harfoots didn't", which, isn't the point. but as long as they don't make the hobbits tie in to all the other canonical stories and catch the attention of elves and men too much then I'll let it slide. someone also asked very indignantly why the star of feanor was on galadriel's armor which nobody really knew how to answer for a while, some stuff about how it wasn't necessarily the star of feanor, eventually the producer said it was a gift from someone else. I still don't think Galadriel would wear a star of feanor, but I do like the idea of celebrimbor gifting her armor (who, I assume, would be one of the few people still wanting to be associated with the feanorian star at this point).
-both the actors for theo and bronwyn (original human characters in tir-harad which is allegedly pre-mordor) discussed that part of their roles were dealing with being the descendants of the humans who originally betrayed the elves to side with morgoth. which. NIRNAETH ARNOEDIAD REFERENCE??? honestly I think that's very interesting if we're seeing the later ramifications of ulfang that fucker that got fingon killed. though again it's an issue of how much they'd actually be allowed to go into depth with the nirnaeth (probably not at all).
-overall mainly my opinions on the show remain about the same (very excited about some stuff, a lot more hesitant about some other stuff) it kind of mostly confirmed stuff I already knew but gave me a new reason to be interested in tir-harad and definitely gave me more reasons to be super invested in elrond I want to see that I want to see that incredible first age ramifications. anyways. that's all from me for now unless new news comes out
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Hi this is the anon that was complaining about Mia Hughes summarized stuff. My issue is some of her writing in it(seemingly misrepresenting ejaculate in the bit you had a screenshot of, in the intro where Paul McHugh getting the John Hopkins gender clinic closed doesn't seem to bring up how Paul McHugh's intention to shut down the gender clinic was his motivation for getting at John Hopkins and the study used for justification was flawed (Meyer & Reter 1979, sex reassignment follow up, penalized trans people outside of straight relationships as well as those receiving therapy. Also, considering the ghoulish shit John Money did I don't think it is necessarily bad that clinic was closed. Finally, the citation about it closing is an article written by Paul McHugh who seems more to be influenced by right wing Christian views than evidence)) and that I think that a more neutral person in general should have done the writeup, because Mia Hughes has written under various names against trans care and would likely be deemed to be biased. I did see something which I think is silly by Erin Reed talking about issues with the wpath files editorialized section, and I do worry that because of criticism like that there will be less of a chance of people who are vulnerable (like a person with DID being asked for "informed consent" with all their alters, IMO they should not be allowed to get on HRT in that type of mental state) getting protection from bad medical care. Also, full disclosure, I don't know your view on if transition should be allowed in general, but I think for adults who have gone through enough therapy and don't have underlying conditions that could cause them to incorrectly think they are trans that transition is OK. Sorry this was so long.
No need to apologize for the length—I asked you to expand because I genuinely wanted to hear your thoughts. I understand where you were coming from with the screenshot now and agree the phrasing could have been less convoluted.
I'm assuming the citation you're referring to is Citation 33: "Surgical Sex." First Things, 2004. [AL] If so, the most immediate issue I took with Paul McHugh's article is that he seems to be conflating males who transition due to dysphoria with males who transition due to autogynephilia, even stating outright that the latter were the majority patients at the clinic at the time. This causes him to lose some credibility right off the bat in my eyes because a fetish does not equate to a mental health condition and the treatment protocols for them, ethically speaking, are entirely different.
The most pressing issue, overall, though, as you said, is the study he shares in his article to prove his point, as it does not pertain to neither dysphoric nor autogynephilic males, but males who were born with cloacal exstrophy; he shifts his focus halfway through. It is highly hypocritical to, in an exposé, cite an article that not only conflates dysphoric people to autogynephilics and people with genito-urinary disorders, but then also goes on to cite a study concerning a population that the average person seeking gender-affirmative care would not even be a part of. This is not even to mention that the studied population was extremely small—sixteen total, all male, only two of whom were not specifically raised as if they were the opposite sex—and the lack of proper study controls in transgender research is something that is criticized, multiple times, throughout the document. This insinuates, to me, that Mia Hughes has either not done enough careful research of her sources to justify publishing the document at this time, or she is making the same false equivalences that McHugh has—which raises the question of what, exactly, she is criticizing and for which group of people. Either way, this all does, as you say... somewhat delegitimize what is being shared here (...and I say "somewhat" only because the points being made do hold merit, even if the delivery may leave something to be desired).
Well, regardless, in conclusion, I do, in theory, agree that neutrality is important when writing documents such as this one, although in practice, unfortunately, this is very rarely how it works out since most people, concerning most issues, naturally lean towards a "side" whether they have adequate information to choose that side or not. It's difficult to find neutral people when discussing such polarizing issues, especially when today's sociopolitical climate views everything in black-and-white. This is why reading with nuance and having discussions such as this one are so important in formulating our opinions. I haven't seen or read anything from Erin Reed yet, so I'll have to refrain from commenting on that for now—but thank you again for the message. You've given me a lot to take note of going forward with this thing.
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I...I'm gonna do a rare thing and link to my last writeup from the game, in which Tenya is trying to make arrangements to get his husband some medical care.
Some necessary explanations for context, though:
The "Sleep" that gets referenced repeatedly: 160 years ago, Tenya very nearly died. He was out of action for 150 of those, during which his husband kind of just...gave in to The Agonies and hibernated in the hopes he'd eventually return.
They had children at the time (Agathé and Margaux being the two long-lived survivors of that generation), who were essentially left to fend for themselves as teens and raise successive generations with absolutely no parental input. They did very well, but it's caused a lot of trauma and friction.
(Especially when their parents just tried to play off "everything is good and back to normal" once Tenya returned)
Cerise is a descendant of the first generation, he Exalted something like two years ago and is very much in over his head.
Halvar and Florian are their sons, the youngest of the current generation. Courtesy of Lunar charms, they're kind of...eh...I hate to say it, but a Renesme situation. They're hyper-capable toddlers with all the intelligence (on paper) of adults, but not much life experience (as you might assume).
The Lair and its current drama - Tenya's husband has a web of charms around their home that keep the weather perfectly stable, banish disease spirits, and even prevent decay (...which is actually a bit of a logistical consideration). He himself basically serves as the entire ecosystem, magically making the whole thing work even though it's distorted to the point where it shouldn't work, so in his absence things have very, very quickly fallen to shit...which no one is prepared for. There is no backup plan to their artificial environment.
And also footnote, Tenya = Teman. Teman is his "proper" name that gets trotted out when he's in trouble, Tenya is this affectionate nickname version.
So, uh, here it is
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If you're not planning on making a genocide anymore, can you share who was planned to be fought in the hall and the megalo or are those still spoilers for something?
I still do plan to make a writeup and maybe some concept sketches at some point, but eh. I’ve already openly talked about these in the Discord, so...
The major bosses would be:
- Asgore
- Sans
- Dohj + Royal Guard
- Alphys
- Mettaton SPIRAL
- Sans and Papyrus (and technically Chara by virtue of mucking w/ the controls)
- Determinator + six human SOULS, AKA Undying Angel.
All of these would be proper fights and not oneshot kills. Sans would fight long enough to stall for time so the evacuation can push forward and then shortcut out, which is why he’d be alive for later. There’d possibly be some minibosses sprinkled in- the royal guards would be really annoying to deal with because they’d block or guard against attacks. Some would have evacuated, though, or helped w/ the evacuation, and Toriel would be with her people, leaving the SOULs to Undyne.
Undying Angel would be an unwinnable “fight” that would replace the Chara endscreen. It would be possible to abort the run in the Sans + Papyrus duo fight, at which point Frisk would start from scratch... but also be pretty screwed out of a good ending due to Undyne remembering and thus have to do ANOTHER run on top of a pacifist-neutral to get a chance to fix things (w/ Flowey taking the SOULs to selectively erase her memories).
So even “aborting” the run wouldn’t be free of consequences.
The run would also be at a lower LV- all areas after the Ruins would be fully evacuated, meaning no random encounters and the only LV gained would be from bosses. I had the idea that Frisk would also just... only attack/try to kill monsters that were a legit threat (e.g. they wouldn’t try to kill Papyrus even in this scenario for a while, and in the Ruins they’d only kill Looxes and Migosps due to baggage from the bully fight being what’d instigate the run + Flowey goading them to “level grind” since they could always restart once they’ve seen the Underground at its worst).
If Undying Angel is triggered and the “bad” ending plays out, there’d basically be no way for Frisk to continue afterwards. In-universe, Undyne would never give them the chance, and if it were a game, the exe would delete itself like the original Oneshot does. :P
But honestly, as time went on, I just... wasn’t all that interested in these ideas. It felt like I had to contrive reasons for such a run to even happen, and even if some concepts (like Undying Angel) were cool on paper, I’d just rather preserve IF’s integrity by focusing on its central story and not do something solely out of obligation, y’know?
As for the song for the corridor fight- it’s not really a “megalo,” but I’m really in no hurry to release it at this time because I know that if I did, it’d severely overshadow the OST for the main story. It’s on my patreon for now, but I’ll probably release it when the main story has concluded.
Again, I might do a more thorough write-up for the story at a later date, but it’s really not something I’m all that focused on right now. (And again, I ask that folks refrain from geno fan stories, etc, for now because I’d rather wait until I’m in a place where I actually wanna discuss story plans).
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Ace Attorney: Rise From the Ashes (part 1)
A couple of people expressed interest in a writeup as I play through the game, so I thought I’d give quasi-liveblogging a try. It might have come out to be too detailed - let me know if the result is amusing enough to go through the next part.
(I knew this already, but wow liveblogging is a lot of work. And it must take twice as much effort to do this for a show and to include screencaps.)
(I’ve tried three times now to put proper line breaks/spacing in, and they’re just not displaying, at least on desktop. I’m sorry.)
A brief, stylized opening designed not to give away much, except that a creepy-looking doll is involved.
Two months? Phoenix, you haven't taken a single client since Maya left? a) are you depressed, and b) how are you paying rent on the office?
Ookay, you're not going to tell us why you've been moping around. I don't think it's that you have a crush on Maya. Are you just not able to function without a partner? That's not great for your ability to survive, but I can sympathize.
New perky assistant, right on cue. (A partner who isn't a young girl would be a nice change now and then. (But not Larry. Anyone but Larry. In fact, I take it back, this girl with the pink sunglasses will do just fine.))
Oof, Phoenix still not being able to say out loud that Mia's dead.
In the first two minutes pink-glasses girl has asserted that he's his female boss, the coffee boy, and 'better than nothing'. Aha! The problem with all the clients he turned down was that they didn't insult him enough.
Kid, you can't be more than sixteen, and you have silly face buttons on your lab coat. You are about as much a scientific investigator as Photography Girl last episode was a journalist. ...But apparently you have a future job lined up in forensics, so you're more organized than she was. And this world certainly could use more competent crime scene analysis.
"I promised her I'd bring Mia Fey". Huh. Is Mia's murder not well-known to the public, then, even though the Edgeworth case apparently got famous enough to earn Phoenix a bit of a reputation?
A murder charge with an eyewitness, and an assistant who "kind of hates" her sister the defendant. Sounds hopeless, let's do it! Off to the Detention Center.
...Did we just overhear the defendant threatening their terrified guard with a pay freeze? Is she their boss? And if she's someone that high up, why doesn't she already have a better defense attorney?
I like Lana Skye's character design. She looks as though she should be starring in a Takurazuka revue show, swearing eternal star-crossed love to a princess.
She insists she did it. By genre convention we know that can't be the case; my first assumption is that she's being forced to cover for someone, blackmailed or coerced by someone higher up in the system. But it would certainly be interesting if it turned out she was covering for Ema.
Must....resist...plotbunnies...
Oookay. A prosecutor should certainly know ways to commit murder without getting caught, and this sounds like the opposite of those ways. WHY does she claim she did this? You're not even going to ask her, are you? *headdesk*
Ema: "Please ignore that totally gay statement by my sister, because I certainly plan to!"
Lana: "No don't help me, go away go away go away go away go awa-oh fine."
Hmmm. From Ema's description of the behavior change, Lana has been being blackmailed or coerced for a long time now.
Time to go investigate the underground parking garage.
Attorneys aren't supposed to examine crime scenes, and defense attorneys aren't entitled to a copy of the police investigation reports. What does a "normal" defense attorney in this world do for their clients then? Always assume a loss and try to negotiate a plea bargain? I wonder if we'll ever get to see one in action.
It's...a cop with a cowboy fetish? Do police not have dress codes here? Maybe they're waived above a certain level, and some people take pride in cultivating a unique style to show off that they can. It would explain Edgeworth.
You are dramatically pretending to shave in front of us. Also you just called Ema a baby cow. Although you know her and seem sympathetic - I guess Lana brought her little sister to the office sometimes? Not sure what I think of you, Jake Marshall.
I am revising my stance. Being Phoenix's partner on a case requires precise and narrow qualifications. Specifically, just enough sense to stop him from doing something breathtakingly stupid, but not enough sense to take the badge firmly away from him and do the job themselves. Ema fits the bill perfectly.
Ooh, new mechanic! And an ID card number for a Bruce Goodman who dresses like a white-hat agent in Spy vs Spy. (I was trained on games that would require you to write that number down and remember it later, but AA will certainly be more forgiving.)
Using the new mechanic on Phoenix's attorney badge, I deduce that at some point this game it will be stolen.
It doesn't explain Lana's supposed actions, but that red sports car does kind of scream "My owner is a jerk, stuff a body in my trunk." Instead of a chalk outline, they seem to have outlined the hanging body with string? Is that actually a technique, and how do they get the rope to stay put in precise outline?
And the cowboy gives them a hint. So he's on their side but constrained by rules?
Lady put the boobs away. Why are you selling sushi in a negligee under a fur coat, at a crime scene? And why would anyone trust food from someone whose nickname is "the Cough-Up Queen"?
Angel Starr, dominatrix lunch lady. It says something that this is not the weirdest witness in an AA game so far.
She hates prosecutors, and therefore especially Lana. Not a trustworthy witness. But it's probably no fun to cater for a group of (relatively) wealthy and powerful people you despise. Especially if they're smugly giving awards to each other as they eat lunches. (Eeeevil lunches. She probably coughs on them.)
"The rhythmic beat of Lana Skye's knife"... very poetic, but didn't Lana say the victim was stabbed only once?
We can't get back to the car, phooey, so up to the prosecutor's office we go.
Pink...everywhere...no question whose office this is, even if one of his outfits wasn't framed on the wall. (why do you frame an outfit?) I see a very ugly trophy on the sofa, so he's the one who won the award.
Ema: "this is the kind of room that just screams 'I can do the job'. Actually it screams 'I don't need to pretend to be heterosexual', but the two aren't unconnected.
Is it just me or is that trophy broken off at the top?
Edgeworth did you just roll with being insulted and make a joke about it? I'm so proud of you, you've clearly relaxed since your murder trial!
BWAHAHA of course it was Edgeworth's car.
Wendy the security guard from the Steel Samurai case is sending Edgeworth expensive presents?? a) that's both funny and a little sad, b) how can she afford it, and c) he keeps and displays them which is very courteous.
WAIT did you - did this game just heavily suggest Gumshoe hangs out in the office a lot? Twice, once when you look at the shelves and again when you look at the desk? I don't ship it, but this is the point where I start to see why people do.
Awwww he's embarrassed about the trophy, that's cute. So he's the one who "devours the evillest lunches of all", hmm? I wouldn't have thought the Cough-Up Queen's weird not-even-fresh lunches would appeal to Edgeworth's refined tastes.
Ema actually has a bit of a crush, from the way she's rhapsodizing about Edgeworth sleeping on the sofa. d'awww. And I definitely want to know the story behind the outfit. Made by his mom and too precious to wear?
Edgeworth, no one thinks you did it. Sheesh. He certainly doesn't sound happy about having to prosecute Lana, even though he believes she's guilty. His car, his knife... it almost seems like this is a plot aimed at him, or perhaps a plot against Lana with a healthy dose of fuck-you-too-Edgeworth to it.
Huh. Maybe it *is* aimed at him. I've been assuming all this time from his behavior on the stand that Edgeworth has indeed been messing with evidence to convict obviously innocent people, and also assuming that it's common practice in this corrupt justice system. (Much as it is in Japan and in the US). But the way he's talking about rumors right now, it sounds more like he's being slandered. And he thinks the award he was given was out of mockery. Ouch.
So yes, the trophy is broken. (In RWBY, you assume everything is a gun; in AA, you assume everything is a murder weapon. It probably broke when it was used to hit someone over the head.)
Evidence transferal day, huh? Was the murder timed to draw attention away from a case being closed? And Edgeworth parked his car only three minutes before Goodman was stabbed and thrown into its trunk? No way. He was there for the murder, or more likely that's not when the murder happened. (Is he being coerced like Lana? I don't think so, but it's possible.)
Enter an idiot mailman with a bandaged hand. And exit, with sniveling. What was that about?
And a hint to go investigate at the police station. Is Edgeworth being friendly, attempting to signal something, or merely aware that the most efficient way to get rid of Phoenix is to give him a clue to chase?
The police department entrance, with some sort of plywood jester figure in front of it. We're offhandedly informed that it took 30 minutes to get there from Edgeworth's office, which means that will be important later.
This is the creepy doll from the intro! It's clearly meant to be a mascot. Was it made by the sniveling mailman? There's a certain resemblance...
No, I should've guessed that Gumshoe made it. I mean ... mechanically it's pretty clever for someone who's not a craftsman or engineer? Moving articulated limbs and all. It's just the aesthetics and design he shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near.
Yes, yes it is odd that only the top-ranked people are being allowed to work on the case. Are they all in on it? A patrolman in charge of the crime scene instead of a detective - that suggests Marshall is part of the conspiracy. I'm thinking the dominatrix lunch lady is too.
Gumshoe is so happy about the prosecutor's award - Edgeworth probably didn't have the heart to say that for him it's a mockery. Daww. (Also there's something endearingly cheerful about his hopping-caterpillar eyebrows.) He's also being much more helpful than his superiors would want, probably just because he thinks of Phoenix as an ally in general now.
Back to the parking lot, with a letter of introduction in hand this time.
I genuinely can't tell if the lunch lady is a sex worker, if she actually has multiple boyfriends, or if that's code for her professional contacts in whatever she's really doing here. (And that's an interesting cultural bit, isn't it - any of those options seem possible, and I'm not expecting any of the characters to question her competence or morality because of it, not even in court. If this was a US-made game my expectations would be...different.)
"Good men always die young"...I see what you did there, Marshall.
Autopsy report confirms one stab wound. Lana and the victim worked together on "a case a few years back", ding ding ding. Someone didn't want the evidence for that case transferred. Or looked at.
Marshall used to be a detective but got demoted? And he's lying about why he was assigned to the crime scene, and telling us Gumshoe is off the case because he's friends with Edgeworth. The police chief, whoever he is, is now at the top of my suspect list.
Happily, the game will let me do dumbass things like show off Goodman's ID card without consequences. Marshall seems very uninterested in it and why it was found so far from the spot of the murder, which I take to mean "we have our official narrative, don't go messing it up with facts or evidence."
Finally we can examine the car! First up, Lana's cellphone. The whole business about hitting redial and somehow not knowing that Ema's phone rang was weird. Phoenix’s lie couldn't possibly have fooled Marshall, who is bizarrely claiming there's no way to know who the last call was made to. It's an odd thing to conceal, even given the “no facts please we have our narrative” stance. Maybe he's trying to protect Ema somehow?)
Marshall said the rumors about Edgeworth came from Lana. And we have a note found in the trunk: 6-7S 12/2, on a piece of Goodman's stationery.
Er, yeah, Ema, why didn't you mention your sister called you 3 minutes after the claimed murder time? If Lana hung up right away that's hardly incriminating for either of you.
End of Day One! We are, as usual, completely unprepared for tomorrow morning's trial.
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Scintilla.
(n.) a tiny, brilliant flash or spark; a small thing; a barely visible trace.
for MER 2020. day 1, first impressions. set in 2184 [pre-ME2]
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The first time Joker meets Citlali Shepard-Velasquez is during one of the lowest points in his life. When he can barely focus on what's going on around him, and everything feels like its lost its meaning. He hasn't flown anything, much less the Normandy for what feels like forever, hasn't seen the old crew in just over a year. Liara was gone, disappeared off the map. Garrus wasn't going to be found, not after he stopped trying to rejoin C-Sec. Tali went back home to the Flotilla, and so did Wrex, to Tuchanka. Hell, even Kaidan didn't stick around, and instead went off into the Alliance for something or the other. The last time he saw all of them together was at Shepard's memorial service.
Not a word was said to him. He's not sure whether to be grateful with the lack of attention or concerned about the silence on his hand in Shepard's death.
Alchera still manages to haunt him in the early morning hours, dragging himself out of bed with aching bones just to end up back in it a few hours later. Probably had a lot more self-destructive thoughts than was healthy, but what else was new? He's anxious to get back into space, anxious to finally get off this blasted station that's way too white and yellow for him to be comfortable i. If he was given a mission to help Shepard again, in anyway that he could, maybe the ache in his chest would ease. He could get behind anything Shepard did, anything Shepard was willing to fight for. And if that was Cerberus, then so be it.
Maybe when (not if -- Miranda was very confident in the Lazarus Project's completion, and he knew better than to piss off someone from Cerberus when he couldn't even get a headstart) she woke up, he'd feel better.
"As for your new allegiances among us, we've found a capable pilot for when Commander Shepard wakes," He can hear Miranda clicking down the hall in those godforsaken heels, but a new pair of shoes following after her. Not heels, but not military boots either. He turns from his work station, deciding to pull himself up into a standing position in case Miranda has brought someone of some high rank in Cerberus with her. They don't tend to get a lot of new recruits (or at least, since he's been there), and he has chosen to remain rather reclusive since he arrived proper in their service, "Though your service record is rather...limited, I and the Illusive Man believe you'll work well together."
A co-pilot then? He didn't even have one of those on the SR-1. Someone else took the helm at night so he could get a little shut eye and whatnot, and y'know not drive them into a relay headfirst because of the lack of sleep, but he'd never actually had someone else in the seat next to him except for the lieutenant on occasion. That makes him a little nervous, and a little annoyed Miranda didn't say a word about this assignment to him either. He was Jeff Moreau, graduated top of his class and he sure as hell didn't need a co-pilot. Hell he had a service record to back it up, unlike whoever she'd brought on. Navigating the battle of the Citadel was just one of them, Therum and Virmire being others. The person with her is quiet, and doesn't respond as they grow closer to his glorified cubicle. Logging reports on colonies he made supply drops to, that could wait. He needed to know who his new babysitter was, and how soon he could convince them to lay off and find some other job on the new ship the Illusive Man had promised him.
He takes a pause when the two round the corner, but he doesn't focus on Lawson at first. The woman with her is far from what he was expecting. Maybe someone who was uptight, someone like Shepard with her hair pulled up far from her face and with some monotone voice like every AI he'd ever met. Someone who'd probably tell him not to do half the shit he did, and would probably report him for every little thing he said. Would probably get amusement from seeing him suffer until the new ship they had yet to reveal to him was stolen out from underneath him for all the glorified writeups he'd receive from someone like that.
That's not the reading he gets from her in the slightest. Hands on her hips, with a similar hat to his own mashed over her curly chestnut brown hair that tumbles out from underneath the brim of the cap. The Cerberus uniform isn't ill-fitting on her either, if he's being honest she's only a few years younger than he is, and those startling aquamarine eyes stare back at him. Tired, annoyed maybe. A scar runs through her cheek, freckles decorating around it and bags underneath her eyes. Short, but far from stout. Her lips pucker out, colored with a maroon lipstick as she surely takes him in the same way he does her.
She's pretty.
And she looks just like Shepard, save for the eyes and uptight attitude.
Oh shit.
"Mr. Moreau, we've found your co-pilot," Miranda clears her throat, pushing her hair over her shoulder, "Miss Citlali Velasquez, candidate for Flight Lieutenant of the SSV Iwo Jima before the crash of the SR-1 over Alchera."
Velasquez? As in the same Velasquez surname as Shepard-Velasquez?
Just his luck, and only now was he remembering that talk in the mess right before Virmire with everyone talking about their families. A few names stuck out to him now, someone named Sarah from Ashley's family and some from Wrex's, but now he's beginning to remember the younger pilot with the Shepard name. Checks out, yet only referred to as Lali. Had been considered for a posting such as his before his joyride in 2183.
Does she recognize him?
He's fucked if she does.
"Mr. Jeffrey Moreau, Flight Lieutenant and pilot," It's a clipped introduction, and he nearly mentions his status on the SR-1 himself before he takes a pause and it dawns on him that Miranda did it for a reason, leaving out his service record. He glances at her, and that omnipresent smirk is on her face. Maybe she knows that surely Shepard's younger sister (he thinks that's who he's looking at) would blame him for the SR-1's crash. That, would be bad for business, and this new partnership. He's at least conscious enough to make that decision, and it might save him some ill-fated fatality later. It feels like electricity is running through the air, though for now he's blaming that on the biotic standing next to him instead of his own nerves betraying him.
Begrudgingly, she holds out her hand to shake his. He takes it. She's warm, with a firm grip that says she undoubtedly means business. He doesn't know whether to tell her that any tighter, and she might shatter a few of his fingers, but he hides his gratefulness when she lets go, "Hope you're up to raising a little hell with me, Mr. Moreau."
"Sounds good," He answers. There's a twinkle in her eyes, popping out against her tawny brown skin that says he might be in okay hands, "Don't know what we're flying yet, but Shepard's in good hands with you and me."
"She sure as hell will be, with me at the helm this time around," Her expression darkens, "My sister died trying to save some damn pilot on the Normandy. Hope they're happy, wherever the hell they are. Damn glad she's even a little alive. Can't think of the name of her pilot right now, but you wouldn't be against a manhunt, yeah?"
Joker tries not to make it obvious he's about to start sweating bullets if she goes on like this. So she was aware of who he was, just hadn't made the connection between said pilot and the one that was standing in front of her presently. He wonders how long that'd last, and how many surgeries he'd need to logically run from her, "Right, of course not."
"Play nice, the both of you. I'll have assignments for you in the morning, 07:00. We'll see just how well the Illusive Man did with the recommendation," Miranda responds, knowing she's effectively done here playing the bridge between the pilots, "Citlali, your bunk is upstairs, across the hall from the women's washroom. Someone will get you set up with an omni-tool and station. Jeff--" She narrows her eyes at him, "I still haven't received your report from the last colony your delivered to. The Collectors aren't exactly a joke, and we didn't bring you here to freeload."
"I'll send it, was just about to do that when you got here," He holds up his hands in defense, and the woman raises an eyebrow in disbelief, "Promise."
Once the operative has left, she slips her hands from off her hips, pulling her hat off and running a hand through it before replacing it, tousling her tawny brown curls over her shoulders. Similar to his own habits, even if it was unconscious. She doesn't say anything for a moment, squinting at his form as he leans against the wall for more support. He was never one to stay standing for long, "Kinda look like you're about to chew me out for something. Sorry?"
"You probably outrank me anyway, Moreau. Haven't done anything to piss me off yet," For some reason, he wants to see her smile beyond just that little smirk she and his 'supervisor' have going on. There's a space between her two front teeth that he can see just underneath her lips, and through his somewhat unfocused haze, he can see she has twin moons sparkling from her earlobes, "It's what Lawson said, never enlisted but I was considered for some positions a while back. I like to fly fast and play loose with regs." She sighs longingly, "So upset I got looked over for the position on the Normandy. She was one hell of a ship."
"Uh, yeah. She was." He answers uneasily, considering whether or not she takes the hint to leave, "Damn best thing I'd ever flown."
And also immediately regrets what he alludes to twenty seconds after it's left his mouth.
She furrows her brow, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall next to him. No luck on that front then, "Sounds like you're speaking from experience, lieutenant," She chuckles sadly, "To be the lucky bastard who both flew it and got his commanding officer killed. Double edged sword if you ask me."
Well, no one said they had to be friends. But it still stings when she says it. It wasn't as if he was over Alchera just yet. He doubts he ever will be.
He misses Shepard. They weren't the best of friends, but she still left a hole where she used to be. They were all tied together by Shepard, and now that she was gone, he lost the friends he made because of her. No one from the old crew blames him for her death, even if his last conversations with Kaidan about going to Cerberus for her were very clipped and cold, he wants to blame that on the fact he did try to recruit an Alliance officer to a terrorist organization, and not that he'd gotten who he loosely assumes is his girlfriend killed because of his stubborn streak.
"I am," He answers, she narrows her eyes in response. He swallows down his pride and shrugs, "Most people call me Joker."
She pushes herself back off the wall, and he prepares himself for the onslaught he's sure to receive as the look of shock and anger flash across her face in realization. He'd rather not have to sleep with one eye open at night wondering if she'd found out his real identity in the end and have to watch for a knife in his back. At least now he can certainly say his life is not set in stone.
"Does Miranda know?" Is all she asks, her expression entirely blank and not betraying a single emotion to him, "Did she know when you got here?"
"Yeah. Probably whole reason they gave me the position as Shepard's pilot again." He says, watching as another report comes in on his omni-tool. He tries to give her a sarcastic smile, "Not like I'm entirely over it either. Don't worry, I won't get you killed too."
She pauses, her mouth slightly parted with a thought just on the tip of her tongue as he turns back around, sliding back into his seat. Relief washes over his body, the burning in his joints receding accordingly. Damn, did he miss Chakwas, "You can go now, you know. Doubt you'd want to stick around with me for too long."
"You --" She falters, before he feels his chair turn around without a hand on it. She's gently glowing blue and white, though it fades a minute later as she comes closer, "My sister died, yeah. But...she spoke like you were the second coming of the Mars relay. Means she died saving the best damn pilot in the Alliance. Ko-Shepard would never just give up her life for anyone."
She shakes her head, pinching the bridge of her nose, "Can't believe Miranda paired me with the last person to see my sister alive," She mutters, the killed just barely avoided by the tone of her voice and substituted with saw, before lifting her head to face him again, "Not going to lie, I'm not exactly happy to work with you, whether she's alive or in a coma or what. I'm sure I don't have to spell it out for you."
"Yeah, I get that. I'm not happy working with me either." He says sarcastically, giving her a look that says 'for the love of Sovereign please leave', "Didn't Miranda need you for something though?"
"Yeah," She says noncommitally as she looks at him up and down in a way that screams Shepard at him, "I'll see you at seven tomorrow then, Joker."
He doesn't waste another minute watching her go, before she turns around the corner and disappears. So his new co-pilot didn't want to kill him, not yet at least. And she was a biotic. Sounded great, definitely was extending his lifespan for decades.
He groans at the empty document in front of him, before pulling up the UI and subsequently the personnel report Miranda had badgered him to read for weeks. So not a babysitter. Possibly a cause of death. Her groans inwardly, her words and now the document confirming her relation to Shepard. Her track record checks out, though he raises an eyebrow at her year long stay at Jump Zero as a child (remembering off handed comments about the station from Lieutenant Alenko), a few years at Grissom Academy. Trained to be a pilot while there, and like Miranda had said, was a candidate for Iwo Jima in 2182. Young. Twenty four years old to his twenty nine.
Something says he and their new ship are going to be in, at best, okay hands.
#merweek2020#mass effect oc#oc#original character#mass effect#mass effect fanfiction#original female character#citlali velasquez#joker#jeff moreau#mass effect relationship week
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The Tiger King -- Ruler
I'm so sorry.
Joe Exotic has got to be a Ruler, without a doubt. You may be expecting me to say that he ran for Pres and leave it at that, but there's more to his tale -- as we likely all know at this point.
So, when he's inevitably sworn into the Throne, what will his skills look like?
Why Ruler?
Putting aside the obvious (that he ran for Pres), let's look at what he did for a living.
He ran a 'tiger reserve' of a sort, where he'd stuff a shit ton of tigers into a zoo and feed them shitty meats. If it were just this, yeah, he'd probably be a Rider or something.
But there's more to his tale.
As you may remember, he had a group of people under his control. A small group, perhaps, ran by tigers, meth, and marriage. But it was a 'kingdom' of a sort, if a small one. These people followed Joe's command, by their own will or begrudgingly, running this place with almost comically bad rules with comically awful reasons to stick around.
It also helps that he had a long-standing rivalry with another 'ruler' in his eyes -- Carole Baskins, that would ultimately culminate in a murder-for-hire. The battle between the two was legendary (read: kinda boring, really), with Joe himself providing most of the anger between the two, fully convinced Carole killed her husband.
From this, I can conclude his best class is that of a Ruler -- though Avenger could also work, with his anger towards Baskins that he truly never forgot, or Rider, drawing from his Tiger King title. If you guys are masochistic enough to want more, I'll try and do writeups of them, too.
Passives
I imagine Joe would have some degree of Madness Enhancement. A Ruler simply can't have Avenger or any related skills for obvious reasons, but ME is theoretically possible. I'd stick him at EX, to be honest -- as his madness isn't always there, but comes out in full force with his mild obliviousness to reality, and his endless hatred towards Carole.
Apart from this, I don't quite think he'd have any passive skills, apart from perhaps Riding D. As a more modern human, he'd lack Magic Resistance, I imagine.
Active Skills
Charisma E - While I can't say the guy's a rallying master, he knows how to get people to do his thing -- even if it's a small group of people. The morale in the zoo wasn't all that great near the end of its cycle, and apart from the relationships, I can't recall him being much of a moral support.
Mana Burst (Rage) - Joe, as we saw with his rants and general hatred of Carole, quite likes his violent outbursts -- and his liking of weapons quite accentuates that. Personally, I see the Throne morphing that into a form of Mana Burst, letting his anger run wild for a short time, and letting him come in guns ablaze.
The Tiger King's Men EX -- What's a proper SSR without a personal skill? I like to imagine that this would be a 3-turn Buster buff to everyone on the field. As a strange offensive support character that he's turning out to be, he'd be able to strengthen everyone's punching power.
NP -- G.W. Zoo -- Hear thy Name, Baskins
The very zoo that Joe had created -- his life's work, sublimated into one existence.
As a Ruler, his violent nature isn't capitalized on as much here -- however, a pure support NP wouldn't make much sense for someone like Joe.
I imagine it working a bit like Sanat Kumara and Saint Seiya!Roma -- as the GW Zoo wasn't exactly a very safe place, I see it netting a decent deal of damage. An ATK buff on all allies could work, but I'd think that instead, the 'Tiger' tag would be placed upon everyone on the battlefield. Those with the Tiger tag on your side would be gifted with an ATK buff for each tag they had, while opponents with the tag would be hit with another DEF down for each tag they had.
Overall, an NP that winds up over time for a massive punch to the face later -- arguably, kind of like Joe's story was, what with the climactic ending of a murder-for-hire that went south.
(1/2)
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Obligatory promo stuff at the top because it sucks and I hate it and let’s get it out of the way! follow me on twitter where I’m active, check me out on spotify for music, or like my facebook for sparse updates on music stuff. Thank you. The Cover art is by Ellie Tison
Okay!! Last song!!
Well, I say last song, but it's more like “last song”. There is one more song that I used as an epilogue, but I'm not going to get into that, and honestly if you've listened to 13 tracks without being sold (why would you do that?) one more track isn't going to sell you on it.
And would you look at that, the last song is a reprise of the first song. Wow, it's like Sgt Pepper... that's so cool. Now it makes sense why I didn't bother talking about that first song right? Not planned btw.
This song was one of the first songs I wrote for this album. I said this for a few. Truthfully I did four or so around the same time and they were all great. I had a few more tracks in the oven as well. Everything was going great. I was like “wow this album's gonna be done in no time!” Anyway that was like three or four years ago. I guess that's how these things tend to go.
This is back when I was trying to make a bit more of a straight ahead rock/indie rock sounding album. I'm pretty sure I wrote this song on guitar, lyrics and all, which is honestly (and sadly) pretty rare for me these days. I had this idea for repeated backing vocals and a call/response sort of song structure. I'm pretty sure this more energetic version of the song came first. I originally wanted a sort of Lou Reed feel to it, but once I wrote that groovy dancy bass riff it immediately lost that feel. Once I started recording electric guitars I accidentally did a grungy “brrroww” at the end of the phrase and really liked it. I replicated it throughout the track and in turn lost even more of that Lou Reed feel.
In my original recording process I had a damaged patchcord. I didn't realize it at first because I was trying out some new equipment. I just thought it was really quiet. That being the case, I had to turn it up way loud to get a good volume and that's actually where some of the guitar tone you can hear (mainly in the one playing a melody-line during the chorus) comes from. I actually really liked it, I thought it sounded like Pavement. Actually, my Tiff did too and that's probably the nicest thing she's ever said about any of my music.
At some point I added more guitar tracks to the track to make it sound fuller, and also replace some of the ones recorded with a broken patchcord. I honestly kinda liked the original tracks, which still had a little bit of that 70s glam grittiness to them, but I'm far too neurotic about this stuff to really sit with that. In the end it sounded less 70s and more mid 90s. It had a sound that I've actually been trying to get for a while, though not on this track – the sort of fuzzy swirling guitars with a groovy beat and bassline to it. Tiff described it as being “Like those music videos where everything is blue and everyone's got really baggy pants”, which, again, big compliment. I don't know if that one was actually a compliment, but I'll take what I can get.
The song had its genesis at that same party I mentioned last time. There's nothing specific really. We had my album on and it's got a pretty fun cool first half. The people there were enjoying it, but then it gets to the second half and it's a little bit more mopey. It's also completely sexless and uncool throughout. That being the case, one of the guys there was like
“Sorry Con-dog, the vibes are just not working with this right now,”
and I was like,
“Oh don't worry about it, I understand dude,”
And then he was like,
“Right on man. I’m getting fucked vibes from those guys over there. Here, hit this for me.”
And then I did some coke off a Pulp Fiction VHS tape.
I thought to myself, “man it'd be nice to have music that you could put on at a party”. Which basically was the whole idea behind this album, conscious or not. I don't really know if it succeeded, but there's definitely a certain kind of party where this would play, and honestly I don't think I'd mind being at it.
The album was originally going to be more centered around the idea of the character described in this track. I mean, obviously he's me, but I'm trying to detach myself and make things a little more universal. I wanted to explore all the different traits and behaviors that this one person has. Some of them being mine, and some of them being not. Honestly, it didn't really pull through to the end. There's a little bit of that in here, but it's mostly just songs. I'm okay with that. They have some thematic cohesion. It's got this song bookending the album. Wow, it's like Sgt. Pepper.....
The ending is a little bit embarrassing for me because I do a bit of a scream voice, which, honestly I don't think there's anything actively wrong with it, I just cringe when I hear myself doing it because it's like “ah oh god I'm doing that”. I don't know. There's also the fact that, well, one of the things I yell is the word “Wasteman”, which is a little bit of an outdated slang right now, but when I actually recorded the song it wasn't. Whatever, this is an insanely white album from a white kid. I figure a lot of people who enjoy this type of music haven't actually heard that word. I wouldn't have, but I hang out with Tiff's cool friends sometimes. Honestly I think it's a cool term. I think the most embarrassing part though is I copy-pasted it so it repeats twice because I felt like I wanted more intensity. I don't think it's super noticeable, but the idea makes it a little disingenuous. During the outro I wanted to add a little more of that “90s blue and baggy” feel, so I plugged in a keyboard and freaked out on the organ setting. I think it really adds a lot.
The slower version of the song was written afterwards and I actually cheat because it uses some of the same midi tracks. I was super torn between the more exciting sound that I had and my original “vision” for the song, which was a bit more downtempo Lou-Reed inspired. I figured, why not do both?
There's not a whole lot to cover here that I haven't already covered. Mostly the backing vocals, but only because I think I did a worse job with them than the other version. There's nothing outwardly wrong with them per-se, but I think the blend is not good and that's gonna immediately stick out to some people. The middle section just kinda came about because the other version doesn't really have a proper chorus. It just has some guitar noodling. I played around with the chord progression of the middle chorus in the fast version and made something that was a bit more structured, then adapted a melody around it. Harmonies grew out of the melody. I felt like something was missing, so I took that same call and response idea from earlier and applied it here too. I really liked the interplay between the two vocal lines. The “Purify me” line was originally supposed to come up again and again throughout the album. One of the tracks that ALMOST made it would have been the song it was from, and then there would be callbacks to the melody throughout the album. It was kind of like a motif. That was unfortunately completely scrapped and this is the last trace of it. Maybe I'll work the idea into something I do in the future.
I like this song. I realized way too late that it massively rips off The Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane. I guess that “Lou Reed inspired” idea was a little bit too literal. Fortunately I would say the middle section saves it from being too much of a copy. I think it's a good way to start and finish the album. I also like the thematic notions of this album starting with the same track it ends on. Like these things work in cycles and you're never truly free of your own quicksand. Like an Ouroboros eating its own tail, like Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. When one cycle ends, a new begins. The same, but slightly different – until it is completely undermined by the epilogue track that says “no this is actually the end”.
Hey congrats on making it through all of these entries! You may have only read this one, or even skipped to the end. If you did that, disregard that previous sentence and go back to read them. This album was the culmination of a lot of work and thought. 13 of these writeups was nothing compared to probably hundreds of hours spent working on this album, and probably thousands of hours thinking about it. I'm aware few people are reading these writeups, but it's honestly mostly my own indulgence. I gotta decompress this stuff and be free of this album. I can finally get rid of all this useless crap in my brain. I'll probably enjoy being able to go back and read this stuff once I've forgotten most of this, and once I've become a more mature person. I'll probably go “wow this shit is cringe. I can't believe he posted like 22 pages of cringe” but that's okay. The album's okay. I made for certain it was not, in fact, cringe before releasing it. And honestly I enjoyed writing these.
A part of me wants to get back to the freakish pace I had in like 2011 where this blog was nonstop content. I don't think it'd work so well in 2020 Tumblr because who even uses this site anymore? I think it's a little sad because it's pretty much the death of long form posting. Twitter is great because people pay attention to you, but sometimes I just want to write like two thousand words and have some psycho actually read them and respond to it. I think we've lost that on the internet. Sometimes I think of making youtube videos, but I'm no good in front of a camera. Sometimes I wonder, couldn't I just read something like this TO the camera? The answer is no, I can't. That'd be boring. I'm completely convinced nobody would watch that. I sometimes think that if I could add some editing and some visual component though, it'd work out. Some sort of... video essay. Some kind of... man with facial hair and left leaning politics who enjoys media and talks about both... Wow I wonder if that niche has been filled at all?
#music#songwriting#rant#music production#lou reed#pavement#indie rock#the fact that there's an epilogue that ruins the concept is also like sgt pepper
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Alabama men take women’s rights away
Alabama sent the most restrictive abortion bill in the country to the governor's desk Tuesday night, with the state's Senate passing legislation that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison.
The state's Republican backers have pushed the legislation, which amounts to a near-total ban on abortion in the state, forward with the express goal of overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case legalizing abortion. Alabama lawmakers join legislators in several other states in putting forth legislation to restrict abortion, such as Georgia's recent fetal heartbeat bill
.After more than four hours of debate, the Republican-led Senate voted 25-6 to pass HB 314, which would slap doctors with up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion. The Alabama House passed the bill earlier this month.
The law only allows exceptions "to avoid a serious health risk to the unborn child's mother," for ectopic pregnancy and if the "unborn child has a lethal anomaly." Democrats re-introduced an amendment to exempt rape and incest victims, but the motion failed on an 11-21 vote.
Republican Gov. Kay Ivey will have six days to sign the legislation, though the bill would not take effect until six months after becoming law. Ivey has not publicly taken a stance on the bill but has previously aligned herself as anti-abortion, lamenting the courts striking down another Alabama abortion law last year.
Many people are viewing some of these draconian laws as a stunt to force a challenge against Roe V. Wade with a presumably stacked SCOTUS, but let’s also consider that the 25 votes that pushed this abomination to the governor’s desk were Republican men. What’s worse, women compromise 51% of the population of Alabama, but only 15% of the legislature.
And to underline why this type of gender imbalance might lead to laws that work actively against women’s rights, add Clyde Chambliss to the Todd Akin Hall of Fame, the clown parade of dudes who get so much wrong about basic biology. From the TPM writeup:
State Sen. Clyde Chambliss (R-Prattville) answered questions all night on behalf of the chamber’s Republicans, but neglected to properly define numerous terms and phrases in the legislation — particularly the language outlawing abortions for women who are “known” to be pregnant.
Reporters speculated that this emphasis was meant to exclude the morning-after pill. Chambliss stumbled through an explanation.
“I’m not trained medically, so I don’t know all the proper medical terminology and timelines and that sort of thing, but from what I’ve read, what I’ve been told, there’s some period of time before you can know that a woman is pregnant,” he said. “This bill respects that period of time. The bottom of page five talks about having to be ‘known to be pregnant.’”
The time before a woman “is known” to be pregnant, he said, “gives them that window of time. This bill does not change that window of time. Once that person is known to be pregnant, then this bill will take effect.”
He added separately: “You can’t know that immediately. It takes some time for all those chromosomes and all that.”
But if chromosomes from a man and a woman meeting is the deadline for women legally terminating a pregnancy, that’s quite a different standard than a “known” pregnancy. Days or weeks elapse between fertilization and positive pregnancy tests, Democratic lawmakers pointed out. Where does the law stand on those early days?
Chambliss didn’t have an answer.[...]
Later, when Democratic Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison asked Chambliss for his own definition of who is “known” to be pregnant, the senator balked again.
“If you don’t know, then you’re not known to be pregnant,” he replied.
Coleman-Madison seemed to know that was coming.“I guess that’s a typical male answer,” she responded. “You men don’t know what you don’t know.”
I’d also like to point you to this USA Today story, which not only shows the legal challenge coming up, but also lays out as starkly as possible the consequences of a chamberful of dudes deciding things they have no hope of understanding:
Yashica Robinson, an Alabama-based OB-GYN and board member for Physicians for Reproductive Health, said signing the Alabama bill into law would be a "grave mistake."
"Physicians will be unwilling to help patients in need, even when continuing pregnancy is detrimental to a patient’s health or potentially fatal, out of fear of being scrutinized by the criminal justice system," Robinson said. “It is inappropriate for lawmakers to insert their own belief systems into complex, personal health decisions that could affect my daughter and the people I take care of in Alabama."
Fox said Alabama's law is particularly harsh because the state has some of the worst health outcomes for women, including high rates of infant and maternal mortality among black women, according to Planned Parenthood.
If we assume that these laws are passing to get in position ahead of the assumed Roe v Wade overturn, then it’ll be worse than our wildest nightmares.
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