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thequeenofmyownscreen · 2 years

Text

I took time to watch the first season of “All Work No Play”

And then, after that, because a) I have no self-control b) I felt like I was missing on a lot of stuff c) I just could listen to Sam and Liam fuck around and talk about themselves and their lives for forever ??? d) I saw a Tumblr post detailing the facts we learn on the original “All Work No Play” episodes and just could not believe what I was reading... I listened to the original “All Work No Play” podcast only.

So under the cut, details of what I thought of each episode, and the glorious run of the 15 episodes podcast that started it all, really. But yeah, contrary to my preferences, it does not follow chronological order. Which is fine, because if there was a way to describe this experience, it's "drunk delightful clusterfuck", in my humble opinion.

Sword fighting : the start is awkward, the middle is epic, the end is awkward. So yeah, on parr with the rest. I do love a good pun, so the whole knighting sequence was hilarious to me : "I knight you Ser...Pent, Ser... Cumvent, Ser... Vival." I love Will Friedle dry sense of humour and wish we've seen more of him. The mini-movie was awesome ! Put some swords into actors' hands and it does not matter if they were bad at sword fighting (they weren't !), they will sell it with yells and tragic death scenes.

Tap Dancing : Sam doing the worm in that stupid colorful costume... I was expecting no less of him. Liam has NO coordination, this is true, and again demonstrated it in this episode. Courtenay Taylor was a necessary addition, because she knew what she was doing, and her "mom jokes" were unexpected and dry and hilarious. Sam tells the story of the birthday of Macaulay Culkin, whom he went to school with, and the birthday was this : they were in the biggest toy store in New York, which was privatized, and for 10 minutes all the kids could run through the alleys and get any game and toys they could want. Liam, hearing this story of privilege, boiling inside : "It is super fucking hard to be your friend and love you. I try and I try, and everyday you make it a little bit harder."

Rage Room : Liam can run a half-marathon (I'm not surprised), Sam can't (I'm not surprised). Sam is a night pooper and Liam a morning pooper and they both like to take this time to destress. Liam looks at the stars alone at night when in his backyard (relatable). Sam does not feel stress in general because he's weird. Rage room was fun but not as cathartic as the name would suggest, I think it's because rage cannot be in a controlled environment. But Stephanie Sheh was so fun, and seeing the bass fish get destroyed was nice. Also Sam has no darkness inside of him, and maybe he has no soul ? I would watch Sam and Liam take ayahuasca in Brazil, tbh.

Goat Yoga : this is a thing. Call me stupid, but while I think Yoga is a real thing, I think Goat Yoga is a scam and brings NOTHING to Yoga. But the goats were cute !! We learn that Sam got high with Snoop Dogg on his first week in L.A., that Liam once got arrested because he was too busy rehearsing a scene with an object that was not even a fake gun outside and being too good at it to notice the neighbors were calling the cops. And I'm just going to leave this quote here : "She's an anal sniper. She aimed my ass right at the cameras."

Creature Makeup : I barely recognized Alex Ward from the Elden Ring one-shot (he was so good in it), he seems really talented in his specialty. We learn that Sam nearly got himself killed by locking himself in a coffin and discovering after someone was sitting on it, and that Liam's aunt once saw her long-gone father talk with her child in the rearview mirror. Sam and Liam do want to make out with each other while wearing makeup that makes them look like the other. After hearing Sam talk about how snot accumulated in his latex mask, I do not want to do Creature Makeup personally anymore. But I do want to see the movie for which they shot the trailer !

Fire Spinning : Ok ok ok, I am but a simple wee lesbian, Marisha doing the fire spinning did things to me. Just hearing Sam and Liam talk about how cool she is and how she always has the best style is wonderful. What we have learn : Sam technically committed apostasy since he converted to Catholicism but "crossed his fingers the whole time", and on his wedding night he hurt himself so much by stepping on glass (Jewish tradition) that he had to go to the ER after.

Mame Cabinet : Felicia Day !!! I love Felicia Day. We learn that Sam might have more of a chance to develop Alzheimer’s thanks to his t-rex arms. Why was this the most emotional episode yet ? I don't know but the hug Liam gave Sam almost made me cry.

The Hot Tub with, like 12 people : Ok this was just fun as hell. I want to do this with my friends all the time !!! We learn that Courtenay CAN do the cherry trick of tying it up which is HOT, the S'mores Martini takes a century to do, and that the censored nipples of Liam are Sam's pixel face. Thanks Twitch !!

The original podcast : They're so young (it starts at December 2012)! Travis and Laura are mentioned on the very first episode, and so's Liam fear of skydiving. Malaysia is mentioned on episode 2, also Kit Buss ! Episode 2 is where they decide to do a “Laura Bailey harp music”, after they talk about how great she is. Also Sam and Liam are excited because they've decided to play D&D together, and mention Matt and his glorious hair. Sam asks Liam to pick his race and class : "- Can I just be the worst ? - You could be... A gnome !" I CAN'T BELIEVE I HEARD IT LIVE, THE INCEPTION OF SCANLAN SHORTHALT. Episode 3 is the recap of said session of D&D, and you know what's better to hear them screaming into their mics that they loved it so much ? A FREAKING EXCERPT OF THE VERY FIRST SESSION THEY PLAYED TOGETHER ! (there was even Marisha, who was - if I understand - helping Matt and not playing). Episode 3 is also the episode where we learn that if they were abandoned on an island, Liam and Sam would start to fuck "immediately" according to Liam, "48 hours later" according to Sam, who wants to search for help and shelter before fucking. I love the guests they brought in occasionally : it's so good to hear Mary Elisabeth McGlynn, to discover Jennifer Hale who's chill and funny and Roger Craig Smith who seems insane and is also funny as fuck, and to hear Travis and Laura bickering sweetly. Episode 6 is where we learn the very cursed fact that Liam did gymnastics when he was young, and was pretty flexible, so much in fact that he "could reach it" (Sam, not understanding, at first : "You could reach it ? what do you mean..."). About episode 7 I think this is where their lives became much more complicated ; from this one, I just love the recurring "we promise we're gonna do a podcast next week !" only to have the episode after that dated 3 or 5 months later. I loved the episodes they did at conventions, the questions and horrific and convoluted scenarios they put their friends through were funny. Episode 8 is where we learn that Sam's first and only fight, that he WON, was over tickets for Dave Matthews Band. "- We'd obviously like to nail Travis Willingham. - Of course !" Poor Travis ; in the episode with Roger Craig Smith, when put through a horrific scenario of a plane crash in the snowy mountains, he says "I immediately eat Travis Willingham" to the choices offered by Sam and Liam. That does not seem to deter him, since he later admits All Work No Play is his favorite podcast in the world, and he has listened to all the episodes. They do talk a little bit about Critical Role once they've launched the ship in 2015, mainly how is has changed their lives already. By Episode 13, they're not sure of what the format is anymore, and they nearly start reading their e-mails live. We learn that Liam has worked with Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, and how he was very turned on by Harrison Ford. He also likes Gwendoline Christie “because she seems like she could wreck me, with weapons.” (fair). We learn that when Travis was courting Laura, he wanted to be on her level, so he read the books she was reading at the time... which were the Twilight books : “I've read. Every. Single one of the Twilight Books ! And because there were werewolves, at the end... I kinda liked it.” He went by himself to go see the third movie ; Laura wouldn't go with him because she thought the movies were so bad. By the way, the sound effect for Travis is SO ridiculous, and retrospectively I'm laughing so much more because of Travis Willingham's Yeehaw Game Ranch. Episode 15 is really the end : the show has no format anymore, it's either them reviewing cat videos or them doing podcasts recommendations to each other. But Liam and Sam still talk about their kids with incredulity and so much love. We learn that Liam wants his daughter to learn how to kill a man, to protect her, because he knows “98,7% men are terrible”. We end with a cliffhanger : “Hey, Liam, are we gonna get tattoos ?” Really, what more could you want ?

Overall, the podcast holds a charm from the not-so-distant past who is incomparable. But the VIDEO revival can allow so much more ! They did so many activities, some of them dangerous. Also the editing of the videos is a plus, because it allows things like "let's put cards on the screen to directly contradict what bullshit Sam and Liam are saying", or "Yeah, FAO Schwartz is definitely gone". I'm really glad I discovered another piece of the house that is Critical Role.

#my thoughts #critical role #all work no play #awnp

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fyodorloveclub · 2 years

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Hi my favorite little red lobster losers. I am back at it again with more unhinged ideas. Now before I get started I would just like to say; I am soook done with school, I’m this close to drop kicking myself into the fucking ocean. Anyways I love Fyodor but you know who my first love was? Dazai fucking osamu. It’s quite unfortunate that to this day he holds a special place in my heart. So today I give you Dazai headcanons

Dazai won’t admit it but he reads BL like it’s water?? He has spent at least half of his paycheck on an entire series.

Dazai accidentally stole the Vietnamese Presidents Passport and car. Dazai is now banned from Vietnam and for some reason France?

Dazai’ wears different sized shoes on each foot, not because one is bigger than the other but because he said it’s cheaper that way and police have a harder time verifying how tall or how much he might weigh. Because in both of the shoes he put quarters in them so the indent the shoe print leaves is deeper and heavier.

Dazai can’t eat peaches after reading CMBYN LMAONFKDJDN HE LITERALLY TOOK A BITE OF ONE AND STARTED CRYING

dazai can fly a jet, not because he had to learn but because he stole A US naval aircraft for funssies

Dazai stayed at a furry convention motel. Yes Motel.

Dazai can’t ride a bike, and before everyone thinks “omg poor boy he never had a childhood” you’re right but like no he’s just stupid and has no sense of balance on it. Like numerous people have tried to teach him he literally CANT RIDE THE FUCKING BIKE.

Dazai wears a shirts under his button up, that says “I want your chum daddy.” With a cartoon shark making that face you see in those hentai manga headers on tumblr.

Dazai also has a shirt he bought in Korea when he was selling cheap dildos. It said “this shirt was used as a cum rag.”

Dazai was the prime minister of Belgium’s discord kitten for about three years. Yes for three consecutive years Dazai was able to not only catfish but maintain a relationship with this man. To this day it’s still Dazais longest lasting relationship 💀💀

Dazai didn’t know Atsushi was allergic to peanuts and all Dazai fed Atsushi for like four months was peanuts. Yasono doesn’t get paid enough 😭

Dazai and kunnikida had a moment with each other and Dazais ass really said “omg this reminds me of this one BL I read recently.” And he went on an hour tangent about the the goddamn manga. Kunnikida won’t admitted it but he started reading it and likes it

Dazai is banned from every single McDonald’s in the world. He also is not allowed to but Coke-the soda.

Dazai has really soft legs, and like they’re usually hairless??? He doesn’t shave them they’re just like that 💀

Dazai had to gather some intel on a case he was working on and went to this information broker and is now the godfather to the brokers two kids, has a pet frog named turtle, and is missing two ribs, his right pinkie toe, a kidney, and was breifly a sperm doaner for the black market.

Someone bought a three acres of the moon for Dazai. At first he thought it was auktagawa, it was not. It was Ranpo???

The little crevice in between his collar bone and shoulders; if you put your hand in the little dip there and feel it, it’s ✨crunchy✨ no it’s not the bone it’s like crunchy? Like it’s ducking bc weird.

Dazai watched banana fish once and he’s convinced he’s actually never going to be happy again. Like he knew he was depressed but now? Jesus Christ he’s never going to know peace. And he decided to read the manga, the one shot manga, and the two other one shots….yeah he’s not okay. Like he lies away thinking about it. (Same don’t watch it, don’t read it, don’t just don’t. If you like happiness)

Dazai ghost wrote the script for the bee movie!

Dazai hates giraffes??? Like he just thinks they’re up to something, like he’s actually paranoid about it.

-sincerely your one and only shirt that was used as a cum rag☺️

-🪱

NOT DAZAI READING BL FDKLSA;FJDKASL;FDLJ HELP WHY IS THAT FUCKING KILLING ME me too king

OK IVE HEARD OF BANANA FISH BEFORE BUT IVE NEVER WATCHED IT is it really as sad as everyone says it is fjkdfjlas what is it even about

ok i wont lie the belgium one took me so fucking long to read bc i thought u meant he was the prime minister of discord kittens in belgium and i was like fucking whatfdkja;fjsl but then understanding didnt really lead to better comprehension

THIS SHIRT WAS USED AS A CUM RAG I FUCKING NEED THATKJLSFSADJKFKLJF I NEED THAT SHIRT

THANK U AS ALWAYS FOR THESE PSYCHO ASS HCS I LOVE YOU

#voices in my head #🪱 demon #{ musings; dazai }

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oleanderblume · 1 year

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I don't know how else to put this, so here goes.

From one indie author to another, you have a long road ahead of you. I can't tell if you're serious about your publishing career, considering that your blog is full of average Tumblr blog reblogs in-between the sparse posts about your book and other author-ly posts.

First, your marketing could use some work. Most readers will want a summary of the book they are being presented instead of being spoon-fed tropes and other weird Tumblr lingo.

Second, I would suggest getting a new book cover. The one you have now is an eyesore, to be quite frank. The rainbow barrage of colors is just not a good look, and it is very poor graphic design.

Third, you could use a new blurb. Blurbs are very important to sell your novel, and the one you have now left a lot to be desired. Not only is it a massive infodump in the first sentence alone, but it also leaves the genre unclear and is overall worded very confusingly. Blurbs are hard to write, I get it, so I recommend hiring someone else to write one for you.

That's all I have to say. Wishing you the best of luck in your writing endeavors.

Thank you, I'm self pub and honestly don't have any intention of turning my work into a typical run of the mill sort of book marketing scheme, or a full time job. I write because I like to, and I market when I want to. (This being my actual first attempt)

The design and color scheme being loud is intentional, along with the title and the general premise. It's *supposed* to be jarring because how can a story about interdimensional space clowns not be? It's targeted toward people who would be drawn to a book about interdimensional space clowns lol.

My entire marketing is the concept of "this is sounds weird as fuck, wanna read it?"

Idk if you followed the link but the actual blurb is:

Oliver Tarsul is a mostly average 14-year-old kid; aside from being the unwilling roommate to an interdimensional space clown his step-father solicited to rebuild a portal designed by his recently deceased mother. Things are more than a little complicated. Regardless, dealing with a gelatinous slime monster in the shape of a clown girl named Dindet, while also trying to stay under the radar as the only trans kid in school, proves to be significantly harder than he imagined. But the fallout of his mother's supposed death didn't just bring into question what she was working on and who she was working with. It also brought along with it a part of Oliver's past that he'd rather just forget. His biological father.

"Interdimensional space clown" and "portal" pretty clearly state that it's a science fiction, and the inclusion of the MC's personal history denotes a level of reality to the absurd premise.

It's not perfect, obviously, I can recognize that for sure. But I have plenty of time to improve lol.

My blazed post isn't trying to sound like an advertisement because I'm shit at it and that's the point. I don't want to be that platformed, weirdly separated, perfectly curated author. I'm a person first and this is my personal social media, so I will use it personally.

Also...I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but largely what I have seen as successful marketing for books in today's internetty age, *is* utilizing tropes. Like entire manuscripts get picked up by agents based purely off tropes and incredibly brief pitches. There are entire events on social media created to facilitate these sort of pitches for agents and traditional publishers because it's proven to be somewhat successful. (Its also recognizable to the fic community, who I feel would likely be interested in au and original content that fits their favorite tropes)

But...I mean, I've had several notes of people reblogging and saving the blazed post in their tags and thats proof enough to me that my half assed attempt worked.

So, I appreciate the constructive criticism, but I'm not trying to do stuff the normal people way, and definitely not on the single website where doing things the normal people way would work more likely to my detriment lol.

#(being genuine) i do appreciate the critique but its a tad too late cause the book hase been out since last year XD #the blaze is mainly for book 2 which isn't out yet.

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mishafletcher · 4 years

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Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had the sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)

So I got this ask a while ago, and I've been lowkey thinking about it ever since.

First: No. I am a queer, cranky dyke who is too old for this sort of bullshit gatekeeping.

Second: What an unbelievable question to ask someone you don't even know! What an incomprehensibly rude thing to ask, as if you're somehow owed information about my sexual history. You're not! No one—and I can't reiterate this enough, but no one—owes you the details of their sex lives, of their trauma, or of anything about themselves that they don't feel like sharing with you.

The clickbait mills of the internet and the purity police of social media would like nothing more than to convince everyone that you owe these things to everyone. They would like you to believe that you have to prove that you're traumatized enough to identify with this character, that you can't sell this article about campus rape without relating it to your own sexual assault, that you can't talk about queer issues without offering up a comprehensive history of your own experiences, and none of those things are true. You owe people, and especially random strangers on the internet, nothing, least of all citations to somehow prove to them that you have the right to talk about your own life.

This makes some people uncomfortable, and to be clear, I think that that's good: people who feel entitled to demand this information should be uncomfortable. Refusing to justify yourself takes power away from people who would very much like to have it, people who would like to gatekeep and dictate who is permitted to speak about what topics or like what things. You don't have to justify yourself. You don't have to explain that you like this ship because this one character reminds you a bit of yourself because you were traumatized in a vaguely similar way and now— You don't have to justify your queerness by telling people about the best friend you had when you were twelve, and how you kissed, and she laughed and said it was good practice for when she would kiss boys and your stomach twisted and your mouth tasted like bile and she was the first and last girl you kissed, but—

You don't owe anyone these pieces of yourself. They're yours, and you can share them or not, but if someone demands that you share, they're probably not someone you should trust.

Third: The idea of gold star lesbians is a profoundly bi- and trans- phobic idea, often reducing gender to genitals and the long, shared history of queer women of all identities to a stark, artificial divide where some identities are seen as purer or more valuable than others. This is bullshit on all counts.

There's a weird and largely artificial division between bisexuals and lesbians that seems to be intensifying on tumblr, and I have to say: I hate it. Bisexual women aren't failed lesbians. They're not somehow less good or less valid because they're attracted to [checks notes] people. Do you think that having sex with a man somehow changes them? What are you so worried about it for? I've checked, and having sex with a man does not, in fact, make your vagina grow teeth or tentacles. Does that make you feel better? Why is what other people are doing so threatening to you?

Discussions of gold star lesbians are often filled with tittering about hehe penises, which is unfortunate, since I know a fair few lesbians who have penises, and even more lesbians who've had sex with people, men and women alike, who have penises. I'm sorry to report that "I'm disgusted by a standard-issue human body part" is neither a personality nor anything to be proud of. I'm a dyke and I don't especially like men, but dicks are just dicks. You don't have to be interested in them, but a lot of people have them, and it doesn't make you less of a lesbian to have sex with someone who has a dick.

There's so much garbage happening in the world—maybe you haven't noticed, but things are kind of Not Great in a lot of places, and there's a whole pandemic thing that's been sort of a major buzzkill? How is this something that you're worried about? Make a tea, remind yourself that other people's genitalia and sexual history are none of your business, maybe go watch a video about a cute animal or something.

Fourth: The idea of gold star lesbians is a shitty premise that argues that sexuality is better if it's always been clear-cut and straightforward—but it rarely is. We live in a very, very heterosexist culture. I didn’t have a word for lesbian until many years after I knew that I was one. How can you say that you are something when your mouth can’t even make the shape of it? The person you are at 24 is different to the person you are at 14, and 34, and 74. You change. You get braver. The world gets wider. You learn to see possibilities in the shadows you used to overlook. Of course people learn more about themselves as they age.

Also, many of us, especially those of us who grew up in smaller towns, or who are over the age of, say, 25, grew up in times and places where our sexuality was literally criminal.

Shortly after I graduated high school, a gay man in my state was sentenced to six months in jail. Why? Well, he’d hit on someone, and it was a misdemeanor to "solicit homosexual or lesbian activity", which included expressing romantic or sexual interest in someone who didn’t reciprocate. You might think, then, that I am in fact quite old, but you would be mistaken. The conviction was in 1999; it was overturned in 2002.

I grew up knowing this: the wrong thing said to the wrong person would be sufficient reason to charge me with a crime.

In the United States, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996, clarifying that according to the federal government, marriage could only ever be between one man and one woman. It also promised that even if a state were to legalize same-sex unions, other states wouldn't have to recognize them if they didn't want to. And wow, they super did not want to, because between 1998 and 2012, a whopping thirty states had approved some sort of amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Every queer person who's older than about 25 watched this, knowing that this was aimed at people like them. Knowing that these votes were cast by their friends and their families and their teachers and their employers.

Some states were worse than others. Ohio passed their bill in 2004 with 62% approval. Mississippi passed theirs the same year with 86% approval. Imagine sitting in a classroom, or at work, or in a church, or at a family dinner, and knowing that statistically, at least two out of every three people in that room felt you shouldn't be allowed to marry someone you loved.

Matthew Shepard was tortured to death in October of 1998. For being gay, for (maybe) hitting on one of the men who had planned to merely rob him. Instead, he was tortured and left to die, tied to a barbed wire fence. His murderers were both sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. This was controversial, because a nonzero number of people felt that Shepard had brought it upon himself.

Many of us sat at dinner tables and listened to this discussion, one that told us, over and over, that we were fundamentally wrong, fundamentally undeserving of love or sympathy or of life itself.

This is a tiny, tiny sliver of history—a staggeringly incomplete overview of what happened in the US over about ten years. Even if this tiny sliver is all that there were, looking at this, how could you blame someone for wanting to try being not Like This? How can you fault someone who had sex, maybe even had a bunch of sex, hoping desperately that maybe they could be normal enough to be loved if they just tried harder? How can you say that someone who found themself an uninteresting but inoffensive boyfriend and went on dates and had sex and said that it was fine is somehow less valuable or less queer or less of a lesbian for doing so? For many people, even now, passing as straight, as problematic as that term is, is a survival skill. How dare you imply that the things that someone did to protect themself make them worth less? They survived, and that's worth literally everything.

Fifth, finally: What is a gold star, anyhow? You've capitalized it, like it's Weighty and Important, but it's not. Gold stars were what your most generous grade school teacher put on spelling tests that you did really well on. But ultimately, gold stars are just shiny scraps of paper. They don't have any inherent value: I can buy a thousand of them for five bucks and have them at my door tomorrow. They have only the meaning that we give them, only the importance that we give them. We’re not children desperately scrabbling for a teacher’s approval anymore, though. We understand that good and bad are more of a spectrum than a binary, and that a gold star is a simplification. We understand that no number of gold stars will make us feel like we’re special enough or good enough or important enough, or fix the broken places we can still feel inside ourselves. Only we can do that.

The stars are only shiny scraps of paper. They offer us nothing; we don’t need them. I hope that someday, you see that, too.

#queer stuff #lgbtq #gold star lesbians #long post #sorry #Anonymous

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simkhira · 4 years

Photo

I Have 300+ Gameplay Mods?! & Yes, They All Work Together...

Yes, you read that correctly. I have over 300 gameplay mods / overrides in my game. 340 to be exact. & Yes, they all work just fine together. By that I mean hardly any last exceptions / errors. So if you are looking for ways to spice up your game - here you go, sis:

⭐ = my ultimate faves

PLEASE SEE ALL 300+ LINKS ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICE! desktop tumblr won’t let us be great.

BIG DISCLAIMER: Use these mods at your own risk! Just because all 300+ of these mods work for me, does not mean they will work for you. ALSO - when patch day comes, do not refer to this list for the most up-to-date versions of mods… I will only be updating this list when I feel like I need to.

O K A Y

let’s start with... the basics:

MC Command Center ⭐

UI Cheats Extension ⭐

More Columns in CAS ⭐

No Mosaic ⭐

CAS Background

CAS Blob Remover

CAS Immersive Lighting

CAS Tidy Accessories + Details

New Loading Screens

Cube Map Remover ⭐

Into the Light (Lighting Mod)

Out of the Dark (Lighting Mod)

Twinkle Toes (Lighting Mod)

No Fade on Sims and Objects

Build/Buy Camera (Tab Mode) ⭐

Lot Trait Effects Hider

Smaller Plumbob ⭐

& then you need... realistic socialization:

Chat Pack ⭐

Whim Overhaul ⭐

Meaningful Stories ⭐

Personality Please

Better Elders

More Face to Face Conversation

Call Over Sims (Higher Distance)

Call Anytime + Chat Longer on the Phone

Unlisted Phone Numbers ⭐

Low Fun is Boring

Family Matters (Share Big News with Family Members)

Share More News ⭐

Congratulate More

Ask What Happened More

Conversation Tweaks

Chat Standing Still

No Stand Up to Greet

No Rude Intro Animation

No Flirty Animation

Apology Fix (Don’t Apologize if Your’re the Victim)

Angry Walk-style Only When VERY Angry

Less Intrusive Conversations

NPC’s Get Out of My Convo

Autonomous Parenthood Social Interactions

Autonomous Social Interactions

Reduced Idle Chatting

Know Your Coworkers / Classmates ⭐

More Away Actions

More Social Activities

Spend Weekend With

Teach Me the Rumbaism

now let’s talk about... realistic romance:

Chemistry System ⭐

Pillow Talk After Woohoo ⭐

No Shy First Kiss

No Woohoo Dance

Shower Woohoo Tweaks

No Romance for Family

Restricted Romance Interactions

Less Jealousy

Simda Dating App

Can I Come Over?

Date Night Event

Movie Night Event

Set Family Relationships ⭐

Set Extended Family Relationships ⭐

Bathroom Privacy Tweak

Bridal Shower Event

Bachelor(ette) Party Event

Auto Engagement / Wedding Ring ⭐

Vacation Weddings

Sit at Weddings

Better Wedding Presents ⭐

Honeymoon Event

Buy More Gifts from Phone

Ask for Romantic Massage

Realistic Divorce ⭐

Traumatic Divorce for Children

Improved Relationships

No Restaurant Bill When Invited ⭐

Faster Cooking at Restaurants ⭐

Better Food Quality at Restaurants

Finish Eating in Restaurants

Restaurant Guests Overhaul

Restaurant Sit Tweak

(can y’all tell that restaurants annoy me? lmao)

first comes love, then comes... pregnancy / toddler / kids / fur babies:

Ages Behavior Tweaks

Toddlers Spawn at Parks (with Parents)

More Children at Beaches

Pregnancy Overhaul

Rub Your Baby Bump (Small Pregnancy Overhaul)

Determine Baby’s Gender for All ⭐

Ultrasound Scans ⭐

Baby Shower Event

Amazing Birth (Rave About Your Delivery)

Advanced Birth Certificate ⭐

Sibling Care Tweaks

Make Less / Clean Less Mess

Auto Brush Teeth After Puking

Auto Put Activity Crafts into Inventory

Allow Toddlers to go to Services

No Call Out of High Chair

Toddler Power Nap

Better Toddler Milk

Better + Younger Nanny

Call a Babysitter ⭐

Call a Dog Walker

Shorter Dog Walks

Dog Walkers in Other Worlds

Scold All Pets

Sell Grown Up Pets

Pet Food Serving Overhaul

More Efficient Pet Brushing

Kids Can Walk Dogs

Kids Can Order Espresso

Kids Can Ride Bikes

Kids Have More Phone Interactions

Kids Can Cook

Kids Can Do Retail

Kids Can Garden

Kids Can Make Flower Arrangements

Kids Can Make Robots

Kids Can Workout

Kids Can Do Spa Activities

Kids Can Play Guitars

Kids Can Play Ping Pong

Birthday Anytime

Let Friends Age Up ⭐

No Auto Put Away Toys

No Auto Put Away Pet Toys

No Puddles Under Tubs (Toddler Bath)

Has to Pee Walk-style for Kids Only

Better Homework ⭐

Better Grade School ⭐

Better High School ⭐

Preschool for Toddlers ⭐

School Projects are Fun

More School Holidays

25 School Vacation Days

Prom Night Event ⭐

Sleepover Event

Pizza Party Event

Field Trip Event

Family Reunion Event

Pool Party Event

speaking of school... university:

Less Credits for Degree ⭐

University Costs More ⭐

University Holidays Fixed

Higher Scholarships ⭐

Rejection Letter

Harder Distinguished Degree Acceptance ⭐

Degree Required for Promotions

Faster Run to University Class

Teens Jump to University

Choose Your Helmet

Choose Your Roommates ⭐

Roommate Age-Checks

Roommate Significant Other Fix

Roommates No Random Outfit Changing

Roommates No Random Item Spawning in Dorms

Roommates No Spawning Meals

Roommates No Trash

Roommates Sleep All Night

Roommates Less Music

College Org Members Are Uni Students

Faster University Homework ⭐

Faster Tutoring Class

Copy Graduation Photos and Diploma

No Bad Microwave Buffs

No Ghosts on Campus

Sports Fixes

Game Day Event

Graduation Party Event

once you graduate... careers & aspirations:

Plan Career Outfit

Better Work Actions

Enlist in War ⭐

Live in Business

Faster Retail Actions

Faster Record / Edit Videos on Video Station⭐

Higher Acting Gig Payouts & Royalties ⭐

More Realistic Overmax Pay ⭐

Higher Payments for Paintings ⭐

Higher Royalties for Apps/Games ⭐

Higher Royalties for DJ Mixing ⭐

Higher Royalties for Lifestyle Brands ⭐

Higher Royalties for Song Lyrics ⭐

Higher Royalties for Music ⭐

Freelancer Edits are More Successful

Sketchpad No Fees

Campaign Rally Event

Visible Political Position

Watch Political Speeches at Podium

Retirement Party Event

The University Aspiration Pack ⭐

Accomplished Lady Aspiration

Family Aspiration

Grow Up Aspiration

Teacher’s Pet Aspiration

Knowledge Aspiration

Retirement Aspiration

Romance Aspiration

Famous Pastry Chef Aspiration

Twilight Years Aspiration

All-Rounder Aspiration

Programming Genius Aspiration

Travel and Culture Aspiration

Wellness Aspiration

9 to 5 Career Pack ⭐

Night Shift Career Pack ⭐

Part Time Career Pack ⭐

Fitness Career

Health and Beauty Career

Modeling Career

Journalism Career (Adult + Teen)

Trust Fund Career (Adult + Teen)

Welfare Recipient (Adult + Teen)

Saturday Jobs (Teens)

Oceanography Career (Teens)

Private Tutoring Career (Teens)

All Freelancer Careers (Teens)

Tutor (Odd Job)

Woohoo (Odd Job) - lmao

Art Show Event

hahaha... adulting sucks:

Basemental Alcohol ⭐

Happy Hour Event

SNB Realistic Bills ⭐

SNB Banking

Invest in Stocks

Lowered Thermostat Bills

Instant Thermostat ⭐

Auto Wrinkles for Adults

Life Decider

House Warming Party (No More Fruitcake)

Door Knock Notification ⭐

Island Events Notifications ⭐

No Strangers Knocking at Your Door

Quick Showers / Baths ⭐

Shower + Bladder Reliever (don’t judge me)

Power Nap ⭐

Sleep All Night

Smarter Robot Vacuum

Functional Tide Pods

Clean Your Bedsheets

Auto Put Away Clothes

Auto Start/Dry Clothes

Laundry on Community Lots Costs

No Idle Laundry Animations / Sparkles

Don’t Prep Food Where You Angry Poop ⭐

Don’t Wash Dishes Where You Angry Poop ⭐

Eco Dishwasher

Faster Cooking ⭐

No Auto Set the Table

Ask to Cook, Bake, Grill

BBQ Event

Custom Food + Recipe’s ⭐

Custom Drinks + Recipe’s ⭐

Grannie’s Old Cookbook + Recipe’s ⭐

Bake Cupcakes in Oven

Coolers are Cooling

Advanced Fishing ⭐

Fishing Trip Event

Fish for Crabs, Lobster, & Shrimp

More Seafood Servings

More Snacks in Fridge

More Food at the Bar

More Food in the Cafe

Flea Market Every Sunday

Get to Church

just in case you... get famous:

No Fame Decay ⭐

Celebrities Never Reject Fans

Celebrities are Quarantined in Del Sol Valley ⭐

Get Famous Award Overhaul

Less Celebrity Reactions

Famous Sims Gain Followers Automatically

More Follower’s Resolution for Everyone

Free Staff (Chef, Barista, Bartender, etc.) ⭐

Gardeners and Maids on Weekends

Red Carpet Event

whatever you are... just be happy and healthy:

Fitness Controls ⭐

Balanced Calories ⭐

Go for a Walk

Hiking Increases Herbalism Skill

Power Workouts

Athletic Outfit in Winter ⭐

Healthy Drinks

Improved Meditation Stool

Improved Spa Day Tablet

Improved Yoga Mat ⭐

Craftable Pottery

Less Elder Exhaustion

Less Sickness

Longer Basketball Games

More Fun Stuff

Online Gaming with Headsets

and I can’t forget these... more gameplay mods:

NPC Controller ⭐

Improved Autonomy

Simulation Lag Fix

Simulation Timeline Unclogger

Improved Autonomy During Loading Screens ⭐

No Empty Venues When Arriving ⭐

No Temperature Deaths ⭐

No Death from Murphy Bed

No React to Stranger’s Death

Realistic Death (Mortem) ⭐

Memorial Event

Freezing Sims Don’t Turn Blue ⭐

More Club / Holiday Icons

Make Hidden Holiday Traditions Selectable

Random Holiday Traditions

Wellness Traditions

More Holiday Icons

Less Rain More Sun

Less Snow More Sun

Summer Blow-Out Event

Christmas Eve Event

New Year’s Eve Bash Event

No Ugly Rain Outfits

More Umbrella Variations in World

Open Umbrella on Rainy Days Only

No More Broken Umbrellas

Destroy Leaf Piles ⭐

Dress Code Lot Trait

Gender and More Lot Trait

Preferences Lot Trait

Add Sims to Groups During Events

No Auto Club Gathering ⭐

Flower Arrangements Slower Decay

Take Photo Overhaul (Moschino Stuff) ⭐

Snorkel Everywhere

Don’t Turn NPC’s into Spellcasters

No Role Outfits for Sages

ROM Portal Only for Spellcasters

& you also need these... much-needed overrides:

More Sponge Colors

More Sippy Cup Colors

More Dog Leash Colors

White Ice Skates

Better Food Textures (All of Them) ⭐

Hidden Bassinet ⭐

iPhone X Phone Replacement

Playing Cards Replacement

Military Salute Overhaul

Small Saucer Light ⭐

Working Medicine Cabinet ⭐

Working Alarm Clocks ⭐

Realistic Fighting Animation

Oasis Springs + Island Living Palm Trees ⭐

special thank you to all of the wonderful mod creators! seriously, I could not play this game without you guys... (no, really.) There are way too many of you guys to name without missing someone... so if you reblog this, all I ask is that you please tag your favorite modders! (& maybe even add your favorite mods?)

#ts4 #sims 4 #the sims 4 #s4 #s4 mods #the sims 4 mods #sims 4 mods #simkhira #prettyxsimblr #s4cc #ts4cc #reblog to save a life #mods 2020 #ultimate mods list

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stackthedeck · 2 years

Note

Please?????

[Image ID: a screenshoot of tumblr tags reading "I will pop off about Spider-Man's relationship to 'attractiveness' and how that relates to the messaging of classism" end ID]

Oh man you have no idea the gift you have given me!!

Okay, so Raimi's have the strongest class messaging of any of the spider-man movies. Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker is really the only Peter I believe is poor. This Peter delivers pizzas, gets yelled at by his bosses, throws himself into an underground fighting ring for cash, and sells pictures of himself to a guy that hates his guts. This is the most powerful way to express Peter's poverty in my opinion because it captures the soul-sucking feeling of degrading yourself for a paycheck. Like JJ Jameson is a big part of these movies. The Daily Bugle makes Spider-man's job actively harder by destroying his reputation, but Peter needs the money to take care of aunt May and himself. Peter is a genius but he's failing out of college because he has to work to pay for school and be spider-man. Also, this Peter is deeply connected to the working people of New York. Every time he's fighting an evil billionaire, the people help him in some way (see the amazing train scene). When I say Tobey's Peter is the best Peter Parker, this is what I mean.

What most people mean when they say Tobey's Peter is the best Peter, they mean he's a total loser and that Peter Parker should be an incel. The fact of the matter is that in the Raimi movies, the universe hates Peter. Like everything that could go wrong with Peter's life, does go wrong (insert that edit of it's a hard knock life) and I'm alright with that, that's a very spider-man thing. But we are very aware of who is making his life miserable: the rich and the hot. The rich is every villain and landlord of this series (except sandman, but like that's a different essay). The hot are all the people that bully Peter. And hey listen, Tobey Maguire is a very handsome man, but objectively speaking, he's the least attractive person in these movies. Flash, his high school bully, is hotter than him and gets the girl. Harry is his rich hot best friend who steals his childhood crush. JJ Jameson's son is hotter than him and gets the girl. Eddie Brock is hotter than him and gets the well not the girl actually but the freelance job. It's really easy film language to convey that Peter is the underdog. In my personal opinion, I think it's hammered in a little too strong and distracts from the classism message. Like what if Harry did actually get MJ because he has money and can support her dreams of becoming a Broadway star and not just because he's a cute boy that can talk to girls? This doesn't apply to the women of these films, there's no petty comment about Gwen Stacy being prettier than MJ. In fact, the fact that MJ is pretty is usually brought up against her (when Norman accuses her of being after Harry's money). That being said MJ most connects with Peter when she's defying what is beautiful (Harry wants her to wear the black dress, she wears red. the upside-down kiss happens when she is soaking wet, etc). Ultimately, these films were pandering to the kind of dudes they thought liked superhero movies, nerds that can't talk to girls. It's fine, it works, but it only gets more distracting the more years go by. It's very easy to watch these films and say "Peter just can't get his life together because he's a nice guy and also spider-man" and that completely misses the point! The point is he's poor!! But it is hammered in so strongly that this Peter has a bad hand in life that it no longer feels like rich vs poor, it feels like Peter vs everyone else.

The Webb movies have a different problem. For these movies, Beauty is equated with goodness, but I honest to god don't think they knew they were doing this. The class messaging is there, but not as strong as the Raimi movies. They say this Peter is poor, but we don't see him working shit jobs. We see him unable to buy chocolate milk because he's short two cents and that is directly linked to Uncle Ben's death. Tobey's Peter's Ben dies after Peter isn't paid what he's deserved. But Andrew's Peter's Ben dies after he is refused something. It's a subtle difference, but it's like Raimi defines poverty as the presence of something and Webb defines it as a lack of something. Peter doesn't start with selling pictures of spider-man, he's selling pictures of the lizard. The cops hate Peter more than the media in these movies. This Peter doesn't fight evil billionaires as much as Tobey's Peter. He fights petty car theft and Dr. Kurtis Connor in the first film, then Electro-a worker who was hurt by a workplace accident, and Harry Osborn. The villains confuse any class messaging because sometimes he's fighting people who are just trying to get by the same as him, other times it's a billionaire or wealthy scientist. In the first movie, there's this amazing scene with all the construction workers of New York lining up their cranes for spider-man and the audience still feels the connection Peter has with the working-class people. (Personal opinion here, but I think Webb could have just shifted things a little and this could have been a spider-man vs the police movie and the theming of the movie would be so much more compelling, but it's 2012, we can't have that)

Okay but equating beauty with goodness. Andrew Garfield is beautiful, Emma Stone is beautiful, and I wouldn't recast them for the world. But all the villains spider-man fights, are not just unattractive, but disfigured in some way. Dr. Connor is missing his arm then mutants himself into a lizard. Electro looks like the perfect idea of a nerd and then he has a workplace accident that gets him fired and his superpower design is an ugly mess of CGI (no way home, thanking so much for upgrading his design). Harry Osborn has a genetic disease that disfigured him as the movie goes on. Like even the car thief that killed uncle Ben has a tattoo which wasn't a conventionally attractive thing. I don't think this was intentional, but there is this weird undercurrent of ableism in these films. The Webb movies don't have a strong message behind them, but Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone really carry the movies (and that's why a really good anti-cop movie could be there because Gwen has to choose between her father and spider-man) These movies don't say rich vs poor, they kind of say good vs evil, but it mostly reads as Peter vs whoever gets in his way.

But don't even get me started on how bad the MCU fumbles classism when it comes to Peter Parker!

#thank you so much for letting me eleborate #spiderman #peter parker #tobey maguire #andrew garfield #asks #for context I adore all of these movies #even spider-man 3 #I just think that there's room for improvement #and spider-man is one of the most interesting superheroes from an ideological stand point

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rallamajoop · 3 years

Text

The Witcher: The Games vs the Books part 2 – Characters and Accents

So, I've already talked at length about the relationship between the Witcher books and games, but how well they captured individual characters is its whole own subject – and you’d better believe I have enough thoughts on it for a whole extra post.

Andrej Sapkowski's skill for creating vivid and engaging characters really is so much of what brings the books to life, and no matter how much work an adaptation might put into worldbuilding and plot, it's the characters you've really got to nail to get the long-time fans on board. Especially when you’ve done what the games have, framing themselves as a direct continuation of Sapkowski's story. Nothing invites comparison to your source material like basically forcing fans to read the original novels to understand even half the backstory alluded to in-game.

So how did they do? I can only offer my opinion – characterisation is necessarily going to be a lot more subjective than just telling you what plot points the games contradicted outright – but like any fan, I have opinions in plenty.

Of the main cast, I feel Yennefer is the character they've captured the best. They've done just as well with some supporting players – I have no real complaints about Dijkstra or Phillipa, for example, who are favourites of mine in both games and books. For the main players though, Geralt and Regis seem to be the ones who's differences I'm most inclined to forgive, whereas I don't feel like they've done Ciri justice at all. Book!Geralt is much less of a smartarse, for one thing, whereas Book!Ciri is much more of one. But if we're talking about the differences, I’m afraid we really need to start with Dandelion.

Dandelion

For all the genuinely good work the games do with characters, old and new, I don't think I can overstate what a disservice the they've done Dandelion, who I could not stand in TW3, but is now one of my favourite book!verse characters. Alas, Dandelion is a prime example of something the Witcher games really don't do well: camp. Being the archtypical bard, Dandelion is about as flamboyant as any enthusiastically-heterosexual man can be: you should be able to spot this guy by body language alone, he should be flouncing around and he should talk like a spoiled noble auditioning for Shakespeare. Book!Dandelion is over-the-top and ridiculous and just so much fun, and I loved him well before I'd even really gotten into the rest of the books around him.

Here's just a bit of dialogue from one of his first appearances, to give you a sense of how he and Geralt play off each other.

The bard seized the fingerboard of his lute and plucked the strings vigorously. ‘How would you prefer it, in verse or in normal speech?’ ‘Normal speech.’ ‘As you please,’ Dandelion said, not putting his lute down. ‘Listen then, noble gentlemen, to what occurred a week ago near the free town of Barefield. ‘Twas thus, that at the crack of dawn, when the rising sun had barely tinged pink the shrouds of mist hanging pendent above the meadows—’ ‘It was supposed to be normal speech,’ Geralt reminded him. ‘Isn’t it? Very well, very well. I understand. Concise, without metaphors. A dragon alighted on the pastures outside Barefield.’

Though TW3's Dandelion certainly looks the part, you have to go hunting through art from the Gwent cards to find much that comes close to really capturing his personality (see left pic below – though even there, a Dandelion who'd voluntarily break his treasured lute is a very hard sell). Though a lot of fanart does better (right-below – credit goes to Tatiana Ortaliz).

But as poorly as the games capture his flamboyance, they're not that much better when it comes to taking him seriously. TW3 left me thinking he was all talk and no substance; the books make abundantly clear that he really is renowned enough to be welcome in courts across the continent. Though he often overestimates what he can talk himself out of, he isn’t stupid either: he's lectured at Oxenfurt, spied for Dijkstra, and then there are the moments where the frivolous playboy mask slips and you realise he's sometimes much better at understanding people and relationships than Geralt will ever be (which is honestly kind of funny considering how many of Dandelion’s relationships end with plates being thrown at him from an upper story). He's not at all above mocking Geralt when he deserves it either (and especially his personal and relationship issues) – Geralt will happily mock him right back.

We never do learn how they became friends (I'm pretty sure the incident listed in the wiki is just the date of their first expedition together, not their first meeting), but Geralt just doesn't form lasting friendships or romances with anyone he can't have an intelligent conversation with. And Dandelion is a damn good friend to Geralt – one who, despite being a helpless, squishy little bard, will keep Geralt's secrets under torture, or will follow him into Nilfgaard in the middle of a war simply because you don't let a friend make a trip like that alone. (Seriously, I don’t ship it nearly as much as some, but hot damn there is some material in here if you do.) In short, it's basically inconceivable that he'd leave an amnesic Geralt wandering around Vizima alone, as he does in the first Witcher game – which is the kind of thing I can mostly forgive as a gameplay conceit, only it doesn’t really get better from there.

He’s also supposed to be blond, something I don’t think is technically specified until fairly late in the novels, but 100% what I’d been picturing since his first description as a man in a colourful bonnet with cornflower-blue eyes (let’s face it: Dandelion’s hair isn’t the only thing about him that screams ‘blond’). It’s a shame no-one from the games to the show to the novels’ cover artists seem to have noticed – but at least there are some fanartists out there who were paying attention (credit for these goes to Asphaloth, Ghostcupdraws, Hvit-ravn (tumblr deleted), 94355 and itsmespicaa).

As for the games? Well, I cannot speak to how Dandelion came across in the original Polish, but I think it speaks worlds about the priorities of the English version that they didn’t even bother to cast someone with a halfway-decent singing voice as their master bard. There are isolated moments of dialogue that come close to sounding like book!Dandelion– mostly in Witcher 2, which comes closer to capturing the spirit of the books than either 1 or 3, or his attempts to convince his captor he's a disguised noble when you rescue him TW3 – but his voice actor is just painfully ill-suited to the role.

Geralt

Geralt fares much better than Dandelion, though he’s still a little hard to square with the Geralt of the books. Book!Geralt spends a lot more time sulking, just to begin with: he sulks because his job is complicated and gets him no respect, and because the world is unjust and unfair – and, most of all, he sulks because Yennefer has dumped him again. He also gets mocked for sulking, and usually deserves it. Book!Geralt is generally a lot more taciturn and a less prone to making smart comments just to have something to say – arguably because in book!Geralt's world, making smart comments often ends at the gallows, or at least with some corrupt official making your life much harder. Book!Geralt's world kind of sucks, and he's just got to put up with it.

As much as he often plays into the expectations of being an uneducated monster hunter, he's also got a more of an intellectual streak than you’d guess. He may prefer to stay out of politics (because damnit, his job is to save people from monsters, not people who are monsters), but he attended school at Nenneke's temple and has even taken classes at Oxenfurt academy, and there's a lot of thoughtful nuance to his opinions – his speech to Ciri about why he can't in good conscience take a stronger stance against the Scoiata'el contains a wealth of historical perspective, just for one example. Even his smart comments tend to be, well, somewhat smarter in the books.

Book!Geralt’s explicitly a lot younger than Yennefer – around 50 is the usual estimate, falling far short of the 100-ish the games suggest (the scandal of having a man fall for – gasp! – an older woman clearly didn’t bother Sapkowski one bit). You don’t see nearly as much "I'm getting too old for this" from book!Geralt, who's really not that old by witcher standards, and is apparently still hunting monsters long into his future. I'm also a little annoyed by the way they play off his hatred of portals like he's a grumpy old man who doesn't like mobile phones, when his distrust originally came from having seen the gruesome deaths that result when portals go wrong. This is not to say Book!Geralt lacks other ordinary human flaws, however – twice in the last two books of the main saga, he gets severely sidetracked after his ego gets the better of him (in the adulation he receives after being knighted, then after arriving in Toussaint), and it's quite some time before he properly gets back on track for that whole rescuing-Ciri thing again. He’s also pretty hopeless when it comes to romance and relationships – breaking things off gracefully is really not in his skillset.

So why does game!Geralt not bother me more? Well, he's the main player character of a game franchise, and one who has to carry the experience largely solo. Some adjustments for genre are pretty much inevitable in that position. He's certainly fared better than Meve, for example, who's been softened far more from her book characterisation for her PC role in Thronebreaker. Then there's the whole amnesia thing – it's easy to believe that sort of experience would change a man – and if he doesn't sulk so much as he used to, maybe he's grown up a bit. Geralt's also in many ways the straight-man of Sapkowski's Witcher universe – there largely as the reliable centre for other, louder personalities to play off. But I expect the real bottom line here is that I do still like game!Geralt enough to forgive him a lot of what he lacks.

The books never do describe Geralt as being very attractive – something book-based fanart often tries to reflect. The point has been made before that the rather-alien-looking Geralt of the first game (left pic above) is probably a lot closer to his book-description. However, the main distinguishing factor you’ll see in book-based fanart is probably the ubiquitous headband, which genuinely is what book!Geralt wears to make his hair behave (the example on the right above comes from Diana Novich).

All that said, if Sapkowski really wants me to believe that nearly so many women are eager to jump into bed with him, I’m going to have to shallowly assume our witnesses are unreliable on this front, and Geralt is at least as attractive as Witcher 3′s take on him. Nothing else makes sense. *g*

Regis

Regis varies mostly in that book!Regis is a lot more smug, sometimes verging on obnoxious – and a lot keener to make fun of Geralt (who generally deserves it). But then, Regis is old and wise and superpowered enough to dance rings around most everyone else – can you blame him? By Blood and Wine, Regis' overconfidence has been recently smacked down hard after his near-death-experience at the hands of Vilgefortz, and that kind of thing could knock some chips off anyone's shoulder. Throw in the fact that with Dettlaff, we have a situation not even Regis could make light of, and the changes to game!Regis make a certain amount of sense.

I do feel it's a bit of a shame that the vocal direction didn't work just a little bit harder to capture some of Regis' smugger side, or emphasise that his long-winded philosophising on human behaviour is supposed to sound a bit pretentious. This is actually something I suspect they were going for a few times in the script, but which didn't come through in the dialogue quite the way it was meant to. Still, again, I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that I like game!Regis far too much to find much fault in what they've done with him. They've done a lovely job capturing his friendship with Geralt too.

Looks-wise, there's a tendency in book-based art to portray Regis with long hair (even some pre-Blood-and-Wine Gwent art did so – see the two pics on the left above, from Gwent and early B&W concepts. The right-most pic is cover art from the books). I couldn't rightly tell you where long-haired-Regis comes from, though – perhaps it's described more explicitly in the original Polish, or perhaps it comes up in passing in some passage I've forgotten, though it may just as well just be a fannish meme.

The books do describe him as looking rather like a tax collector, slim, middle-aged, with an aquiline nose, prone to wearing black, and his hair as 'greying' or 'grey streaked', so presumably somewhat younger-looking than the game would have it. The hammer-horror-esque sideburns are likewise a game-verse addition, though I do like the look they went with – it's distinct from Geralt in a way that making him another long-grey-haired man wouldn't have been, and that's probably the point.

Being the hopeless Regis fan I am, I have quite the folder full of different fanart takes on book!Regis, so have a selection – art here is by gellihana-art, justanor, greysmartwolf, Nastyaskaya, NatalyLanier, beidak, natalliel, ellaine and afternoon63. For what it’s worth, I feel beidak’s (bottom pic, second from the left) comes the closest to what I’d have pictured personally, based on how he’s first described.

Ciri

I find it much harder to rationalise the changes to game!Ciri, who I didn't exactly dislike, but found stuck too close to the role of generic-macguffin-girl-who-just-wants-to-be-normal to be very interesting. Having read the books, not only do I much prefer book!Ciri, I'm not sure I can emphasize enough how much the game did NOT prepare me for utter gauntlet of whump and misery that girl survives in the last four titles. Book!Ciri is a character who works for me mostly because of the same flaws the game mostly strips her free of – TW3 makes some token noise about how you can't tell her what to do, but she’s an utter little royal brat when we first meet book!Ciri, and it’s so much of what brings her to life. She throws herself into her witcher training with the enthusiasm of a kid going completely native, but still revels in getting to be girly for a change when Triss first arrives at Kaer Morhen. She hates Yennefer at first, but soon bonds with her just as strongly as she ever did with Geralt, picking up some of Yennfer’s haughty mannerisms along the way. And then she gets thrown through a portal and lost in the distant wilderness, and the whole world comes down on her head.

The build up to the first time Ciri actually has to kill someone is intense... and things only get worse from there. Steadily. For another couple of novels at a stretch. Seriously, a major caveat that pretty much has to go into any rec for these books (and I will absolutely rec these books) is that Ciri's story gets heavy. So heavy one finds oneself using phrases like, "that time that one guy died of his wounds on top of her while semi-consensually feeling her up was honestly one of the less traumatic incidents in the period."

By the end of the novels, Ciri has nearly died of thirst, been beaten, tied up, dragged around the country as a prisoner, run with bandits and killed innocent people for the fun of it, done fantasy-cocaine and got a tattoo, fought off more than one attempted rape, been drugged, lain for multiple nights next to an impotent elf who completely fails to impregnate her, watched the bodies of her friends and girlfriend being mutilated in front of her, and did I mention where she got that scar? She has survived hell, and it is absolutely a testament to her own strength that she somehow comes through it and puts herself back together at the end. When Geralt finally arrives to rescue her, what matters most isn't that her ordeal is over, but that she finally knows she hasn’t been abandoned by everyone who’d ever loved her after all.

The Ciri of the books is fierce and wild and arrogant, but she's learned her morals from the best, and she holds onto them until she can't, then picks them back up again when she can, and above all she survives. For all that her story turns arguably too much of the last two books into a slog of misery, oh boy does it pay off at the end. And that's probably about as much as I can say about her Big Moment in the last book without spoiling too much, so suffice to say that by the end of the saga, Geralt has pretty much become a supporting character in Ciri's story, not the other way around. (Seriously, you’d be surprised how few chapters of the last two books he’s actually in.)

Finding art which captures the aspects of Ciri’s character and history which are missing from the game has turned out to be pretty hard, though the fanart above from her bandit phase takes a decent crack at it (credit to Loles Romero and NastyaSkaya). I do rather like that one shot of her on horseback beside her girlfriend too, which comes from Denis Gordeev’s illustrations for the novels (below).

How much of this does TW3 get across with her portrayal in the game? Well, she's still pretty headstrong, I guess. And they let you give a 'sorry, I like girls' answer in one bit of dialogue, so they remembered her girlfriend existed. That's nice. But game!Ciri still has a kind of wide-eyed innocence that book!Ciri lost years ago, while book!Ciri is a little force of nature in ways the games hardly even hint at, and that's a really shameful loss.

You'd think, with a character so young, it ought to be easier to imagine she's simply grown up since we saw her last, but so much of what's changed about Ciri feels like a step back rather than forwards. I can shrug off Geralt and Regis' differences and still enjoy their game-verse-selves, but Ciri leaves me genuinely disappointed.

I’d say the official art that comes closest to capturing book!Ciri is that one portrait of her as a very grumpy young child (right above). Some of the early concept art (left above) feels a little more like it has her attitude, though she’s rather too yellow-blonde – not to mention too pretty. I think it also bears pointing out that Ciri isn’t really supposed to be the kind of beauty she is in the game – even before she gets what’s meant to be a seriously ugly and disfiguring scar. (Fanart below by justanor and bobolip)

But of course, the male gamer fanbase can’t be expected to give a fuck about a girl they wouldn’t want to fuck, so game!Ciri must be generically gorgeous. Le sigh.

Triss

I suppose I should at least touch on Triss, too, though she's a very odd case. She's so out of character in the first Witcher game that I am wryly amused that the biggest thing they arguably do get right is that taking advantage of Geralt the moment he showed up with amnesia is... pretty well in-character for her (look, I gotta be honest here, I'm not much of a fan of Triss in any of her incarnations).

The second game does a much better job with her – she actually feels like book!Triss, she has some good dialogue, we're finally dealing with some of her conflicted loyalties to the Lodge and to Geralt – though by the third, her characterisation has been so softened into “the nice one” that none of that potentially meaty conflict is ever resolved, or even really mentioned. Perhaps there's more buried in the Triss-romance path, which I've never bothered with, but the writers seem to have just given up on dealing with anything that might make her look less than wholly sympathetic. Heck, we hardly even get a clear statement about why she and Geralt broke up between Witchers 2 and 3.

Even speaking as such a not-a-fan of Triss, I promise there is more they could've done with the character the books give us. There's her ongoing trauma in from the Battle of Sodden, where she was injured so badly she was memorialised as one the dead: the 14th of the hill. There's her furious impatience with the neutrality of both the witchers and the Lodge: Triss has fought and died for a cause, and is ready to do so again. The second game sort of gets into this, but by and large, the games really aren't up to tackling the moral complexity of having such a theoretically-sympathetic character as Triss, who was still broadly willing to go along with the Lodge's plans to pair Ciri off and get her pregnant as soon as possible – her own wishes be damned. No, instead, Triss has conveniently left the Lodge before the rest of them go spiraling into abject villainy in the second game, clearing all that messy grey stuff out of the conflict.

Of course, the really big unresolved plot point still hanging over book!Triss is how badly she needs to terms with the fact Geralt's just Not That Into Her, and never has been – but since the games want Triss to be a serious romantic option, that's definitely not getting the resolution it could've used.

Book!Triss also pointedly avoids any outfit with a plunging neckline because her chest is covered with the ugly scars she received in the Battle of Sodden, something the games did not have the guts to reproduce. In a more confusing note, the books do consistently describe her hair as 'chestnut', which we'd usually think of as meaning 'brown' – though it turns out the games actually may not have been wrong to make her a redhead, since in Poland 'chestnut hair' apparently mean dark red hair (google some pictures of actual chestnuts, and you'll see why). Still, the firy-red-haired Triss of TW3 who wears nothing but plunging necklines remains a bit of a stretch, however you slice it. Once again, TW2 gets her best (and I must say, gave her the nicest outfit) – though even here she's conspicuously unscarred in all her sex scenes.

(Leftmost pic above is official Witcher 2 art, whereas Triss-with-scars fanart comes to us – once again – from nastyaskaya)

Shani

Shani sort of falls into a similar category as Triss as someone who isn't terribly well-served by any of her appearances, given that both exist in the first game largely to compete for Geralt's attentions. But I can't honestly say I find Shani’s portrayal in the Hearts of Stone expansion to be much better – the degree to which either version exists solely to fall all over Geralt is a bit painful, especially given that their relationship in the books is limited to a single, undramatic hook-up. Book!Shani really only appears in a couple of chapters: we meet her as a medical student friend of Dandelion's, who's been surreptitiously selling pilfered university supplies to fund her degree, then later see her again in the final book, where she proves herself as a battlefield medic during the climactic Battle of Brenna. She's pragmatic to a fault, and I really can't see her as the type who needs Geralt to point out to her that her patient is dead, for example, or who'd subject a guy with Geralt's problems to such an extended feelings-dump as you'll get out of her during the wedding.

Shani is a reasonably logical book-character to bring back, if only because she’s one of those who explicitly survives the ending, but for my money, "serious contender for Geralt's affections" is just not a role she works in.

Anna Henrietta

The duchess of Toussaint, Anna Henrietta, is another case who differs more from her book counterpart than you might think. In the books, the duchess is by far the least competent of the (pleasantly many and) various female leaders and rulers we meet – she comes across as rather young and naive, and every bit as absurd as everyone else in the ridiculous fairy-tale duchy she rules. She is, for example, most displeased to learn that Nilfgaard's war against the north is ongoing (something her courtiers have carefully avoided mentioning in her presence), because she'd long since sent the Emperor a stern note demanding he brought it to an end. She promptly has one of her ministers sent to the tower for misinforming her, and demands the others prepare an even sterner note for the emperor, which will surely do the job.

After Dandelion (inevitably) cheats on her, she has him repeatedly sent to the gallows, only to change her mind and send him a reprieve at the very last minute each time. Picture yourself a much younger and prettier version of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and you've about got her general vibe.

Blood and Wine sort of waves at this part of her character when she first speaks about Dandelion, and again in suggesting there's a widespread feeling she lacks compassion, and once more as she proves utterly immovable on the subject of her sister. But the generally sensible and insightful woman you deal with for most of the main story is a far cry from her book-verse characterisation. That’s a bit of a shame, because I feel like there's a lot more they could have done to blend the two versions of her. Still, it’s hard to argue the duchess we get suits the story being told around her.

Other characters

Much as I love Yennefer, Dijkstra and Phillipa, I don't really have much more to say about them because I feel the games have done such a good job. The Yennefer of the books gets to show a lot more depth and complexity simply because she has more scenes and more space in which to do so, but when ‘there isn’t more of her’ is your biggest complaint, the game is officially doing pretty well. I could certainly gripe her about how “dresses in black and white” seems to have been taken as “dresses in black with maybe a trace of white trim”, or how Yennefer and Triss seem to be the only sorceresses in the world capable of wearing pants, when Phillipa (just for one) is in sensible men’s clothing the very first time we meet her, but that’s getting into serious nitpicking territory.

(Not that Yen can’t look amazing in outfits with more white – art by Emily Caroll, theclashofqueens, BarbaraRosiak, and cosplay by greatqueenlina)

Vesimir, Lambert and Eskel, Geralt's fellow witchers from the School of the Wolf, fall into a similar category for me – though we spend far less time with them in the books, everything we see of them in the games feels like a fairly logical extension of their book-roles. Vesimir is somewhat over-played as the old fogey, and his death is painfully cliched, but the impact on the characters and Kaer Morhen still hits home – and the games do some especially great work expanding Lambert into a much more complex character. To my mind, the only shame is that more of the book-original characters didn't get the same treatment.

Who have I missed? There's Avallac'h, of course, but I think I've got him pretty well covered by that last post. Zoltan, perhaps inevitably, has had his personality largely flattened into 'generic dwarf', with nothing better to do than hang around Geralt and Dandelion. You wouldn't know Book!Zoltan was apparently incapable of turning away women and children in need, for example – even human women and children with the chronic inability to say thankyou for his help. Or that he eventually admits to Geralt that the luggage he and his friends are carrying comes from a decidedly unsavoury source for such a supposedly charitable, upstanding guy. Yes, even Zoltan gets to be a morally complicated character in the books – who knew?

Speaking of dwarves, pleased as I am that Yarpen Zigren gets remembered in TW2, he's an odd one to talk about, since even in the books, he appears to have had a substantial personality transplant between his two main appearances. Yarpen’s a largely comedic figure in The Bounds of Reason short story, where he cheerfully admits to having considered letting his men knock down a particularly pompous aristocrat and piss all over him to teach him a lesson, but he’s evolved into a studious voice of reason against the scoiata'el by Blood of Elves. TW2 doesn't do a particularly good job of capturing either version, which I suspect probably bothered me more than most people – I liked the later book-incarnation of Yarpen immensely (and not even just because he's one of few ever to really call Triss out on just how much she needs to stop misreading Geralt's friendship as anything more than it is). His chapter in Blood of Elves packs a hell of a punch.

On the subject of accents

I do have to wonder if I'd have warmed up to characters like Triss, Shani and Dandelion (or even Letho) more if they'd only had halfway decent voice actors. It's not just that none are exactly leading the talent at the acting part of the job, it's that their American accents stick out in TW3 like a sore thumb.

Geralt mostly gets away his own US accent by dint of being the very first character we meet, so we've gotten used to the way he talks long before we notice how he stands out – hell, maybe that's just how they talk down in Rivia (hilariously, book!Geralt eventually reveals he's not even from Rivia, but simply picked the place and taught himself the accent so he could feel a bit less like the abandoned foundling he is, which only gives us yet more excuse for why his accent might sound a bit weird). More importantly, Geralt is meant to stand out, to be the outsider wherever he goes, so having him sound like no-one else fits the character.

But neither Triss or Dandelion are "of Rivia", and by the time they show up we've had dozens of hours in a game where literally everyone else sounds British, or Scottish, or Irish, or vaguely-eastern-European in the case of the Nilfgaardians. So why do these weirdos sound like no-one else on the continent?

The short answer seems to be that every character with an American accent in TW3 is someone who had an American accent in at least one of the previous games, which were way looser with their casting and had enough incidental American accents around that they didn't stand out. Clearly, by TW3, consistency with prior games has been prioritised over consistency with literally anything else we’re hearing.

Gaetan is an exception to the rule as the only new character (at least that I caught) with an American accent – presumably because between Geralt, Eskel, Lambert, Berengar, and Letho (and cohorts), some sort of 'witchers have American accents' rule has been pretty well established (another random American-accented witcher shows up in Thronebreaker, just to underline the point). We're going to mostly ignore Jad Karadin here, since his British accent is presumably a recent affectation to go with his new identity, and so makes sense.

This still doesn't really work though, since Letho’s school is all the way down in Nilfgaard (land of the Eastern European accents), while the oldest witcher from Kaer Morhen (Vesimir) is the one guy with a British accent. He sounds nothing like any of his students, despite the fact he's logically the guy they ought to have learned their accents from. So the logic falls in a heap however you slice it, and I'm thrown right out of the game.

With TW3 as your intro to the series, it feels almost as if characters like Triss and Dandelion have been assigned American accents because they're just too important to be saddled with the same pedestrian British accents as everyone else, which did nothing to endear them to me. The only one I eventually warmed up to was Lambert, and then only because he's just such a bitter asshole that he eventually goes full circle and comes out the other side (somewhere around when you've heard his miserable backstory, then gotten drunk together and told him how much you love him, man). Gaetan similarly snuck in under the same clause – American accents clearly work better for me in this series when attached to characters you're supposed to find pretty insufferable on first impressions.

Some final notes

To conclude, it seems only fair to throw in a quick nod to some of the more memorable book-characters who don't appear in the games. Neither Mother Nenneke (Geralt's sort-of-surrogate mother) or Vissena (Geralt's biological mother) ever appear either, alas – Vissena doesn't even merit so much as a Gwent card, which seems quite the wasted opportunity.

Milva, Cahir and Angouleme – the three remaining companions of Geralt’s who died alongside Regis but who were not so easily resurrected – naturally don’t appear. But nor are even really mentioned in all the games, which seems rather less than they deserve after giving their lives to Geralt's cause.

Cahir and Angouleme do at least have pretty badass Gwent cards to their names, though I am properly offended that Milva (who has the dubious honour of being my very favourite book character who doesn't ever appear in the games) is stuck with a card of her freaking death scene – which not only gets the scene wrong (believe me, there was no grimacing and gripping the arrow buried shallowly in her chest for poor Milva), but doesn't even bother to get her hair the right colour, for fuck’s sake. Basically, Milva was a stone cold badass and absolutely deserves better. #justice4milva

One can only guess how I'd have felt about some of these characters had I read the books before playing the games – I am obviously biased towards forgiving changes to characters whom I liked in their game incarnations, regardless of how they compare. Still, I think it does speak wonders that there still all these characters who suddenly made sense only after I'd met them in the books.

Even if only for Dandelion and Ciri, I can only dream of seeing a bit more of the book-original characterisations make it into the collective fannish consciousness. There's nothing wrong with getting into the canon purely based on the show or the games, but having read Sapkowski's novels, it's no longer any mystery how they spawned this massive franchise. That the saga wasn’t even fully available in English until well after Witcher 3 was released – a solid couple of decades late, and long after it had already been translated into Russian, French, German, Spanish and more – is a real shame. For once, it’s us in the anglophone world who’ve been missing out: these books deserve so much more than to be thought of as a footnote to the games or the show.

#Dandelion #Witcher novels #Jaskier #Ciri #Regis #Geralt of Rivia #meta #The Witcher #long post is even longer this time #I blame everyone who gave me such lovely feedback on that last post *g*

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alemanriq · 3 years

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Omg why are so talented like you can literally draw anythingbdhdjs

your honor, please tell us about your journey through the world of art

Nony are you for real ahhaahhahahaah if i read this on my blog I'd think i sent it to myself or told my mom to do so 🤣🤣. Scroll a bit and see I can't even do a proper edit on my phone lmaoo.

If you're not trolling me then thank you a lot but really I'm far from being able to draw "literally anything" 😅 each day i spend on the internet i notice all the things i have yet to improve and should be exploring. Moreover seems like doing art gets harder for me with time somehow, it looked easier to switch between styles before but now it feels like a race. So I'd say I'm still barely halfway in my "art journey"...

If i were to resume how i've evolved to this point, I'd say i just have liked drawing since I've got memory...would make drawings out of all my fav cartoons and movies hahaha even my own notebook covers for school subjects...little doodles everywhere.

I was a math/science nerd too though so everyone thought i was going to become an architect or urban engineer and pushed me to go for that kind of career...my gramps was a known chemistry teacher at a very important national univ. and he died when i was like 10 so my whole family wanted me to study there..

Sadly i dropped that option in mid-preparation (even though my ranking was not bad in the exam essays) because the advisors at the career expos didn't sell it for me so I decided i didn't want to be smart anymore ahahsjskddk I love my gramps like a dad but i think he would still have been happy i decided to study graphic design instead.

I went to uni and spent like 6 yrs studying stuff i honestly have forgotten bc in the end gRaphiC dEsiGn wAsN'T mY PaSsiOn....well except for the first two years where i learned about structure and color and those basic artsy things.

By the time i was halfway of graduating (around 2012-13), my friend introduced me to tumblr, which was my first experience with blogging and attempting to do digital art (if you check my oldest posts they're either made with pencil or scanned and drawn over), also sharing stuff with random people which was so new but exciting in a way.

I got a wacom and that was the end for my traditional art skills for a while 🤣 until 2018 when i went to Toronto a couple of months to be part of a traditional animation portfolio workshop...and only then i realized that what i had learned at uni and practiced the former years had been useful, and actually understood what each excercise was for..

I've been trying to keep up with more digital techniques since then, but also trying to not leave traditional medium aside, all while juggling with work hahaha.

Sometimes i feel i don't give myself enough time to improve. I plan to become either a concept artist or storyboarder at some point and i need a proper portfolio, I feel a bit of pressure :P but oh well I'm trying to chill and focus on my jobs while i can

Remember no matter how good you think an artist is, we always will look up to someone and acknowledge we are forever learning how to art, sometimes without even knowing what we did to make a piece look good in the first place.

Thanks again for the ask! I hope to hear from you after this lol.

#me #long post #ish?#art com

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felassan · 4 years

Text

The Origins of the Halla

[theory]. cut for length, Tevinter Nights spoilers and because it’s not very pleasant

(pls note I hope this theory isn’t true and neither do I want it to be true. it’s speculation only and the idea of it is horrid and not okay in any way)

Those halla certainly are proud and beautiful. It's as though they realize how special they are.

Tevinter Nights, with the new information it contained on Ghilan’nain and what she once used to get up to, brought this stuff back to the forefront. it’s possible that the halla did not have.. nice beginnings as a species. it’s possible that the first halla were elves Ghilan’nain changed and experimented upon. some of the bases for this notion are as follows:

first, she’s literally called in surviving Dalish lore “the Mother of the Halla”. the title obviously carries with it the idea of a force which created, a progenitor. she’s also sometimes called “the first halla” and “mother of them all”. it’s a mythos-style ‘mother’ title, ofc, not necessarily meaning that Ghilan’nain literally gave birth herself to all original halla, and in Dalish lore it seems more like she’s the patron of halla or similar (our phrase ‘Mother Earth’ is similarly symbolic, for example.) still, from a different angle coupled with some other bits and pieces, it can begin to take on a sort of ominous feel. a Creator, indeed...

we know from the Temple of Mythal inscription that Ghilan’nain created many beasts and monsters, including earth-bound creatures. among them were the halla. she clearly did create them, it’s just a question of what that creation involved, and if it was similar in nature to the things we read about in TN and the Trespasser lab notes. we also know that the hallas’ origins go way back to the ancient times - as far as Arlathan, per WoT. they’re not a recent addition to the Dalish. it’s not the case that elves of Halamshiral bred them into existence.

the way Dalish elves view halla and their relationship with them: the Dalish stress that halla are companions, not simple pets. they’re not akin to human horses. Dalish elves see them as noble entities. in one Codex a halla-tender states “they are our brothers and sisters”. this is more of a symbolic descriptor, reflecting the clear reverence/appreciation and kinship Dalish feel for halla. this makes complete sense in a normal light due to how important halla are for Dalish clans - halla help clans navigate, they pull the aravels (homes and storage space), they’re sources of dairy (food), wool (clothing, temperature regulation), leather (armor etc) and horn (tools, weaponry, decoration, potentially a lucrative item to trade or sell), possibly also a source of meat, possibly they might still be used sometimes as mounts, and spiritually in the Dalish faith halla lead elves who have passed away to the afterlife. the reverence also makes sense for Dalish culture as we know it. still, again, from a different angle “brothers and sisters” in combination with other stuff can feel a bit more.. ominous, a bit more literal. the Dalish don’t remember everything and unfortunately got some things ‘wrong’ (this isn’t a criticism of the Dalish, it is not their fault and their culture/belief system of today is valid in its own right). it’s possible that the original thing feeding into the idea that halla are siblings to elves was forgotten/lost.

the nature of halla: noble creatures, as the Dalish are described as noble wanderers (Duncan in DAO). graceful, as in-universe humans sometimes see elves as being. fierce and proud, like the Dalish are noted to be (“[a halla] would sooner fight to the death than demean herself” - compare with such things as “never again shall we submit”). according to tales they’re resistant to human yokes, as the Dalish are. halla are preternaturally intelligent - they only listen to their Dalish tenders, and Dalish elves ask them to accompany them rather than force them. it sounds more like how someone would interface with a literal colleague rather than with an animal companion. which makes sense in a normal light, given their innate intelligence and the respect Dalish elves hold for them. it’s possibly also the case that their intelligence is not the result of anything dark, that it’s natural to the species or is the result of some magic being involved in the breeding of them (the mabari were magically bred by the Formari and as such are also very intelligent, as an example of such a thing). however, it’s possible though that the human or near-human (for lack of a better term) intelligence of halla is because they originally were elves.

the Dalish lore that Andruil turned Ghilan’nain into a halla/the first halla. possibly unfortunately misremembered, since the ToM inscription says that Ghilan’nain created the halla. it’s entirely possible that a mix of both codexes is the truth, or that the Dalish version is figurative. it’s just that it’s interesting that what Dalish elves remember about the first halla involves an elf (Ghilan’nain was once a normal elf) being turned into a halla by a god.. if Ghilan’nain made the halla by transforming elves into them, that could be the grain of truth which is the origin of this piece of Dalish lore.

the halla were the most beloved by Ghilan’nain of all her creations. she loved them above all the rest, such that she couldn’t destroy them prior to her apotheosis. in the Dalish faith no other animal has a god of its own. is that because they were once elves? is it because they were her most successful experiment/signature ‘creation’? they’re closely associated with her, in the lab notes she uses a halla-head symbol as her sigil on a stamp, and in Hormok the striations on the columns are halla horns that repeat over and over. it kinda feels a bit like.. not literally, but what it calls to mind is that if Ghilan’nain was a science/tech company, the halla would be its logo/signature product.

the Trespasser lab notes and Tevinter Nights: speaking of these things. in the bas-reliefs, armies of halla pulled prison-ships with barred windows to Ghilan’nain’s lab. prison-ships with barred windows are used to transport sentient prisoners, not non-sentient livestock animals. the repeating paintings show a queen figure looking mad/cruel as she makes physical changes to the figure which represents one of her people or supplicants. the magic pool can clearly affect humanoids of human-style sentience (it changed Jovis). and as for the wording in the notes (quote from a previous post I made):

About the weird wording: supplies brought in from the same stock (remember prison-ship aravels drawn by halla being taken to the lab mountains); bindings, weaving, meshing, grafts (like different parts of different beasts being stitched together); the aim to improve coordination and sharpen the heart (the new darkspawn are more clever than the old ones); explaining the process to the “stock” as a courtesy (yoo that is straight up telling a sentient being what you’re doing to it. You don’t explain shit to mixing acids in a beaker in a school lab or whatever or to your science fair volcano, those things are inert/non-sentient and cannot understand you); and the lesser animals thing (i.e. the ones she was working on at the time in these notes were higher, complex forms of life). These are probably some of her research notes.

some of Ghilan’nain’s experiments clearly involved sentient beings. the Evanuris institutionalized a system of slavery using vallaslin as brands. that’s not in question. the only question is whether or not her creation of the halla involved this predilection of hers for using sentient beings. I want to say No to the halla question, because it’s kinda like fridge horror/nightmare fuel/And I Must Scream, and I want the Dalish to have only nice things, but I digress

What happened to Warden Friedl: the way in which Friedl was mutilated and died in TN has an eerie similarity to the Dalish story of how Ghilan’nain became the first halla. in the Dalish story, Ghilan’nain was bound, blinded and left for dead in a forest. she then prayed to the gods for help. Andruil then sent hares to chew through the ropes, and turned her into a white deer. Friedl was found by Jovis and Lesha in the woods, raving and ghostly white. her eyes were gone, clawed out. they are forced to tie her to the litter, where she mutters a litany over and over (interesting word choice - a litany is obviously a form of prayer). in the morning they find her with her ropes chewed through.

The elven paintings from the ToM

(I think these pulls from the game were by Tumblr user pantymink, but I don’t know what their current url is. if you do know, please let me know so I can edit this)

obviously we begin with the statement that halla are clearly deer-like.

These deer-like creatures look sad (down-turned ears, even a tear-like pattern on one). the red backdrop is ominous/bloody. the designs on their faces look like vallaslin. it could be two creatures, one standing behind the other, or a single creature with 2 heads. (see the monstrous halla description below [multiples of body parts] and remember Ghilan’nain’s grafting and splicing).

the lines on this deer-like creature remind me of full-body vallaslin. it has too many legs and different horns to the horns of modern halla (see the description below about monstrous variants of halla that are different, wrong, insectile, with longer horns, and a harder more rounded look). it’s yellow, golden halla are a thing.

inside this deer-like creature is a line of downtrodden elven slaves (they have vallaslin), in a line like they’re being forced to go somewhere or are having to go somewhere they don’t want to go. it’s potentially both a symbolic - like ‘inside halla are elven spirits’ - and literal depiction - Ghilan’nain’s creations sometimes involved the literal physical meshing and grafting of parts of different creatures and people, using their bodies to make something new. in a way it reminds me of when Orsino used blood magic and the bodies of his dead compatriots to transform into a mashup abomination. and you might also squint at this image and see blood (the red) being drawn out of the slaves.

inside this last deer-like creature, which again has the too-many legs and subsequent insectile theme, are what to me look like a schematic or plan (which makes sense.. if you’re putting together furniture irl, you sometimes follow a schematic. to craft things in-universe in DAI, you find schematics. in a school science lab, you follow experiment instructions. if you were grafting and splicing different parts of things together, you might have drawn up plans or a schematic beforehand). it also looks like a star chart (which is interesting considering that the horse constellation Equinor may really have been a halla in relation to Ghilan’nain but its ascribed animal species was supplanted over time by humanity). if it’s a copy of schematics Ghilan’nain made on paper, maybe that’s supposed to be blood spattered on it (red).

(This last one isn’t from the ToM.) The deer on the far fight looks to be most delicate and refined and modern “halla-like” of the three, and looks to be ‘emerging’ from the previous iterations. the middle deer has a strange elongated body. the uppermost deer is blood-red, and the red paint is stylized in such a way that it looks like blood dripping from the deer’s underside.

Some additional thoughts -

The horribleness of this wouldn’t be out of character for an Evanuris based on the revelations about them in the ToM and Trespasser. or at least a latter-days Evanruis, if you believe they did not start out like that and instead became corrupted over time by power and possibly also by the Blight or red lyrium or some whack force.

The first halla may have originally looked quite different to modern halla. The Hormok bas-reliefs of halla were “different, wrong [...] too many horns [...] harder, more rounded look than was normal [...] almost insectile [...] the horns themselves were longer and ridged. Organic, somehow”. insectile might imply several things, but multiple legs is one possibility. If halla were spliced together in awful experiments on elves, or in experiments on elves that also involved other animals, the first ‘specimens’ or ‘batches’ (I hate this phrasing) may not have resembled the halla we know today. they might have been more akin to the bas-relief description or to the new Hormok darkspawn (darkspawn with animal parts) or the other creatures that were found in the pool room (like the halla-varterral hybrid thing). the halla-varterral thing was especially notable because varterrals are spider-like (insectile), ridged and look wrong.. yknow (also consider that the pool made an insectile thing from Jovis, the centipede monster). was the monstrousness of the first halla intentional on Ghilan’nain’s part? was it because the first batches weren’t successes? hard to say. at any rate, she may have then refined them, or made different varieties that looked closer to modern halla in appearance. alternatively, a long long time has passed between then and now. it’s possible that the way halla look naturally evolved over time or that elves selectively bred them (genetics is weird in Thedas and magic can clearly influence breeding of animals). wolves look a lot different to toy dogs in our world.

maybe the least-frightening reading of this stuff is that Ghilan’nain sacrificed or drew blood from elf slaves to power her experiments or increase her magic for her experiments. that’s still awful but slightly (only slightly) less nightmare-inducing than the other possibility.

anyways.. :|

#dragon age #bioware #video games #mj meta #thanku to the discord who helped synthetize this stuff #pls dont be true though #tevinter nights #tevinter nights spoilers #tevinter nights spoiler #spoilers #spoiler

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boogiewrites · 4 years

Text

Choking On Sapphires 93

Characters: Alfie Solomons x Genevieve (OFC)

Title & Song: Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts

Summary: Alfie is never far from paranoia. But he and Genevieve both find that it's granted when it seems like the whole of London could be out to get them.

Warnings/Tags: Crime. Canon typical everything.

Click on my icon then go to my Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. (Had to do this since Tumblr killed links, sorry.) Please like, comment and reblog if you enjoyed it! It helps out us writers A LOT!

There were only a handful of men in the abandoned warehouse in London this night. A location well suited, as gloomy and shady as their business practices. The cover of smog and fog from the nearby canal both serving as cover for their 'off the book' transactions. Despite their dastardly reputations, if these few men had somehow all been taken out at one time, the city would’ve plunged into bloody chaos that would lead to more trouble than already fell upon their territories.

They were a motley crew to be sure, all with twitching hands and shifty eyes. Not an ounce of trust to be found between any of them. They’d been called to this neutral ground on the guise there was a threat looming over them all. But since when wasn't there one? This desperate claim had been made by Niko, the newest head of the Greek gang who was less than a year into leading after assassinating his father. He was being met with much criticism. The decision to bring together the gangs and criminal leaders of London tonight would be met with the same disdain.

The men stood in their big coats with deep pockets, their seconds in the shadows of the dimly lit and dusty warehouse. Niko stood self-assured in his shirt with the rolled-up sleeves to show his heavy and dark forearms, hair black and slicked away from a strong masculine face. He was feeling accomplished for the ability to get all these infamous people together, and if he’s been smarter he would have actually done something with the occasion. You had the drug runners, the triads, who expected the threat to be from another country. The Sicilians who were known for their brothels thought perhaps new law enforcement might’ve been a threat to their money-making. The English boys and their known violence with the protection rackets they ran, this being their home and all, were worried about the Americans coming in and trying to disrupt the well-established lines in the sand for territories. There were bookmakers and gambling den owners, none who wanted their flows disrupted. Sabini, perhaps the most intelligent of them all had been over the race tracks for some time now, only sharing the space by negotiation or force with the Peaky boys or the Jews. And he couldn’t help but notice neither of which were at this gathering.

Sabini, looking at his pocket watch with a hard face knows Alfie wouldn’t be one to be late, and seeing as he knew the rumors of he and Nikos falling out, his suspicions were growing by the ticks of the watch hands. His faith this would be worth his while was dwindling just as quickly.

“I suppose you are the ones who are going to show...shame not everyone could hear this.” Niko begins, standing from his perched spot on a large wooden crate. “I know you have heard of a joining of powers to be happening soon. And I believe we should all take this as a threat.”

“What are the bloody Americans doin' now?” Billy Hill, one of the English roughens groans.

“No Americans.” Niko corrects and most of the men in the room go through relief and then a feeling of ‘then what?’. “One of London’s own and the French.” He begins.

Sabini groans audibly.

“I’m serious!” Niko insists with eyes that say he’s telling the truth. “I’m sure you’ve all heard that the Jew Alfie Solomons and that French whore Genevieve Durand are getting married.”

“Fucks sake.” Is the grumble of choice that works its way around the crowd.

“We can’t have her alliances and the Jews pairing! It’ll throw off the balance we’ve worked so hard to achieve!”

“And how is Solomons marrying going to affect anyone but him?” The annoyed lead of the Asian gangs calls out.

“This Durand is no ordinary woman.” Niko compulsorily insists.

“Yeah, we know you’re sweet on her.” Sabini mutters.

“This is about her French connections. Parliament, the gypsies, and the Irish! All of them will be with Solomons and not against him now because of her.”

“Look. She’s the godmother of a Shelby baby. That hardly calls for panic. She’s the niece of a French Jew, who has NO footing here. Those are not alliances. You’re acting like a bloody woman, so dramatic.” Sabini purses his lips.

“We all know what Horne did to her.” Billy interjects. “If you think she’s a threat after a wallop like that you’re mad. Alfies the one ya gotta watch for, and you know those Jews, they get all sentimental about their wives. This could work in our favor if he’s gone soft for the bird.”

“I do not think underselling Solomons is a good move. You saw what he did to Horne.” The Asian lead reminds them.

“That shows how unstable he is!” Niko yells.

“Well he didn’t kill his own father now did he?” One of the bookmakers snarks.

“Everyone agreed to that!” Niko shouts, his anger showing at not getting his way.

“Yeah and I think everyone’s agreeing that we don’t give a fuck about the hard prick you’ve got for Solomons woman and how you want us to the dirty work to take him out of the picture.” Billy’s known brash remarks surprise no one.

“That’s not what this is about. She’ll be trouble! I'm telling you. She’s a sly one. Don’t underestimate her. She could be a loose cannon and telling Solomons what to do, and with the men she’s got behind her she could try to take over the city!”

Everyone but Niko laughs. “Her? Telling ALFIE what to do?” Sabini laughs and wipes away an imaginary tear to sell his point. “You daft boy, listen… she’s a woman yeah? She’s gonna get married and shit out a few little kykes and fall into place. Same as the rest. It’s what they DO.”

“She’s not like other women.” Niko growls.

“We know you’re sore about losin' her to a old man like Solomons, yeah?”

“Maybe she prefers the cut cocks.” Someone remarks and a chuckle passes through the group.

“More like the money.” Another adds and a general nod of agreement moves in a wave across the room.

“LISTEN!” Niko shouts in anger. “I think this marriage is a bad idea. She’s been knocked senseless, attacking people in public, and we know Solomons can be unpredictable. Look what he did to Horne!?”

“A man’s love and loyalty to a woman is fueled by an ancient fire. He was within his right to do that.”

“As poetic as that is,” Sabini rolls his eyes “I’ve known Alfie longer than any of you. And if I say there’s no reason to react then there’s not.” He states clearly with the wheels in his head turning his unspoken thoughts.

“He burned down half the city for that woman. He threw a tantrum like a child and bypassed so many of our unspoken rules in the name revenge.” Niko screeches.

“Like you now, yeah?” Sabini snarks. “You have no business with either of them now. Because YOU threw a fit? Remember?” Niko puffs up in shame. “Why do you care? Why are you wasting our time?” Sabini gestures with his hands and gives Niko a disgusted expression for bringing them there “If ya gonna call us all up, Why not talk about the upcoming elections? Or how they're clearing out the slums and breaking up all our established territories?” The reaction from the group is a unanimous groan of agreement. “Those are real fuckin’ things to worry about. If you’re so concerned about women in power why not go after the fucking labour party too?” Sabine’s experience overrides Niko and his barely thought out objections.

The group laughs and makes Niko feel small and childish. A feeling he hated as the youngest son and one he hadn’t felt since his father died. It did him and no one else any favors to light that pain within him again. For it was the one that lead him to kill the last man who caused it. But now that he had the attention of the entire family. ho knows how he would lash out next time he reached his breaking point?

For as crass and disrespectful as Sabini was, he wasn’t the dumbest criminal in London by a long shot. He’d thought about what Niko said after patronizing him in front of everyone. Even though he didn’t agree, he did have a few points of sense that he hadn’t meant to make. Alfie would be having to change up his repertoire. He had Shelby in Parliament and an uncle in law that was the head of a crime family. Albeit was in France, but clout was clout and bodies were bodies when fighting broke out. Sabini didn’t think Gen would be a problem, as he had heard of her seriousness with her newly found Judaism and expected her to be a good little wife and let her husband rule the roost. But Sabini only knew of the slurs and stereotypes for the Jewish people, not so much their beliefs. Because if he had, he’d know what sort of power, Gen, as the wife would hold in their household. Instead, he saw an opportunity to mend things with Alfie. A peace offering for the joyous occasion so it wouldn’t seem suspicious. As he had said, he knew Alfie. He knew what he was capable of and what a pain in the arse he could be. He’d like to make things easier, not harder so he knows it’s time to make a truce, to show him he wasn’t a threat. Sabini knew it was time to reach out to an old school mate. Because he most certainly didn’t want Alfie Solomons on his bad side.

———

Genevieve’s giggle could be heard from the other side of her bedroom door. The raised hand to knock hesitates.

“Do I have to do it?” The young boy winces, fearing interrupting Solomons during his time with his fiancé.

“Oh fucking-c’mon!” Claire gruffs and shoves him out of the way. “Gen? Alfie? Pardon the interruption but we have some little birds with news out here.

The groan of Alfie can be heard, rolling to his back and throwing his arm dramatically. “WOT THEY WANT?” He shouts as Gen pops out of bed to throw his pants at him and slide on a gown before slinking back into bed. “WHO is it?” He asks quickly after.

“One of yours and one of Genevieve’s.”

“Both?” She hears the women in question ask.

“Come in.” Alfie commands, now sitting up with the covers pulled up under his arms.

“Go on.” Claire shoves the two young boys into the room who feel immediately as if they were trespassing. She stands in the doorway so they cannot leave and watches them creep forward.

“Ya gonna speak or what?” Alfie asks with a jut of his chin.

“Yes sir.” The taller of the two mumbles as he steps forward.

“Come to the foot of the bed and speak up.” Genevieve directs with much more kindness in her tone, directing them with a pointed finger.

“Yes ma’am.” The boy keeps his eyes lowered, his hat being wrung in his hands, a clear ring of sweat around his collar. “Who first?”

“You dear, you’ve been employed the longest,” She explains to Alfie's nervous spy. “Seniority.” She nods.

“Yes ma’am. There was news of a meeting last night.”

After a pause, Alfie makes a rolling motion with his hand. “Anything else to go wif that to make it useful?”

“Downtown they saw some men meeting in one of the old warehouses.”

“Some men?” Genevieve tries to get more out of the boy.

“Gangsters, ma’am.”

“Mmmph. And who?”

“Only person I was told the Greeks.”

“Fuckin ell.” Alfie sighs. “That all ya got?”

“Yes sir.”

“I have more.” The smaller of the two adds sheepishly.

“Then out wif it.” Alfie demands loudly.

“The Greek was there first, then some of the English Hill lads and the bookmaker Comer. Triads, Sabini, and the other Italians.”

“Now that’s the kinda report I need yeah?” Alfie says in a fatherly tone to his informer.

“Is that all?” Genevieve pries a final time.

“No one was inside to hear what was said but no shots or shoutin' and it was over very quickly. No one we knew was there.”

Alfie hums with narrowed eyes in thought. “What of the fascists?”

“No political men, only the kind what run the streets like you, sir.”

“Good lad.” He nods in approval.

“Claire pay them their due.” Genevieve points her way. “Leave with her boys, thank you.”

“Give the missus boy more,” Alfie calls out and the young one's eyes blink with surprise. “We reward detail. Leave nothing to interpretation when ya can lads.”

“Yes sir.” In unison comes from the shabby pair.

After the door is shut behind them the minds of the two business owners are piecing together what they had.

“Of course I wasn’t invited to this but I’m assuming you weren’t as well?”

“No,” Alfie says with a slow shake of his head. “No Jews at all actually.”

“But no fascists. Curious.”

“Not about us then.”

“Not as a whole, no. But Niko…”

“Yeah that... fuckers up to somefin.”

“I’ll keep an ear out, poke around at my retailers today.”

“Good, good. I know I can lean heavily on paranoia…”

“It’s kept you alive this long.” Genevieve smirks. “Listen to your gut, always.”

“But no one you run wif was there. None of ours. Leads one to believe this might be personal, yeah?”

“I do agree. We know the man isn’t happy about us. Now we're being left out and those with known loyalty to us are as well. I don’t believe that to be paranoia so much as putting together a bigger picture. Perhaps you could ask-“

“Sabini, yeah.” He finishes her thought.

“Mmm Hmm. He’s been behaving as of late. Due for another check-in I’d say.”

“And I’d say you’re right.”

———————-

Sabini happened to have reached out to Solomons for a meeting before Alfie had the chance to initiate. Alfie knew this meant one of two things, that Sabini needed him, or he needed Sabini. Or perhaps a third option of both? Alfie was prepared for all outcomes as he prided himself in.

For anyone else the smugness on Derby’s face, set to its usual twitch of him acting as if he’d smelled shit, would’ve been an indicator of which option was on the table for discussion. But this observation was useless against someone like Sabini. He didn’t give himself away until you dug in close and arrogance was his base nature.

He waltzed in like some greyscale silent film star with shiny shoes and a coat draped over his shoulders. His appearance next to Alfie gives nothing away that they were both raised in the same streets as the learned posh facade Sabini had long practiced to appear authentic. Alfie even has the passing thought of observing Sabini’s practiced measures of sitting down to be a tad too feminine at this point but that was neither here nor there, he supposes.

Alfie’s nose twitches both from his business mate’s luxury cologne and his impatience for the small talk. He was only interested in faux comradery if he could benefit from it. Sabini was lamenting on the state of the cabinet, the changes, and the way the kids no longer remembered the war and it was leading in directions he didn’t particularly care for. Perhaps it was an attempt to be personable, but Alfie had no time for such things when it came to someone who he’d known since before his balls dropped.

Alfie perks up his demeanor, hands flat and wide on his old wooden desk, dust unsettling as he hit heavily against the top. “Now DERBY… “He clears his throat, lips pooching out ever so slightly to appear in thought, but it was clearly making a mockery of the behavior of Sabini. “We could, y’know, sit and listen to you talk out ya arse ‘bout shit no one gives a FUCK about.” he blinks rapidly and nods his head with his low brow directed at his associate. “Or we could just skip it, the gossipin’ like the birds ‘n that, and get down to business. Like men.” his tongue punctuates against his teeth to show through his deepened voice that he meant what he said. In case Derby had forgotten.

“Now for what it’s worth, your precision is something I always did like about you Alfie.”

“Compliments ain’t like you now, Derby, old friend. Should I pull me cock out for those sweet words or do you want to get to your fucking point?”

With a slight wince of his lips, Sabini takes a deep breath to crispen his delivery. “I am here as a show of good faith, right? I have some information that you need and I want to discuss how this might affect us in the future.”

“Us?” Alfie laughs and sits back in his chair with a smug grin. “Presumptuous, innit?”

“Yes. Us, Alfie.” Sabini states with the annoyance already showing through in his voice.

“Go on then.” a demanding hand motions forth from the leather chair.

“The Greeks are trying to upset the truces.”

“Ahhh.” Alfie groans. “Always the fuckin’ Greeks, yeah? If not then it’s the Italians.” he jokes.

Sabini chose to ignore the jab. “I have the information you want. But I need something from you in return.”

“How do you know I need it? How do you know, yeah? That I don’t already know?” Alfie's lip curled up almost in an almost childish taunt.

“Because you aren’t reaching out to anyone. You’d be doing damage control if you knew. Gettin’ all the little ducks in a row to keep everyone in line.”

“You are being rather bold, y’know, there mate... Don’t much care for it to be honest. Arrogance, innit? Which means, you tellin' me how you think I fuckin’ run things, which you can fuck RIGHT OFF with, mate, respectively, I mean that Derby old mate… THAT indiscretion leads me to believe, yeah? That you do genuinely think that the information you have is valuable.” he taps the desk in front of him to demand the information with not only his words. “So what is it that you think is so important that you’d come down here to mingle among us… dirty dust bin lids, I believe is what you call us.

“I need something from you in return.”

Alfie throws his hands up half way, “Let me ask you this Derby, in all seriousness now lad, Are you thick? Are you lame? NO! No, listen ‘cause that statement was something an imbecile would say to a man like me.”

Sabini sighs and rolls his eyes, “Me ‘n you go way back Alfie. We’ve been enemies, and we’ve been friends. And isn’t it much better when we’re friends?”

“Oh yeah, mate.”

“I need us to be on the same side here. We grew up together. Immigrant lads and the like. We know war, we know the streets, we have an advantage here as a pair and I want to propose we work together instead of apart for the foreseeable future.”

“Mmm.” is Alfie’s only response. Best you stay silent and let the other man do the talking.

“Can you agree to that? We can do it formally, with your contracts and that. I know how your lot loves to have documentation of everything.”

“Can ya fuckin’ blame us? What with whats’ goin’ on out there?”

“That’s why we need to work together.”

“How’s about you tell me what this information is and I will tell you if it’s worth me workin’ with a man like you? You Italians aren’t known for your inclusivity ya daft fascists.”

“Alfie.” Sabini groans. “You know I'm not that stupid and I know you aren’t either. Let’s move past this yeah? I’m English, I don’t live in bloody Italy, my parents don’t live there, I work with what’s in front of me don’t I? Not with my head in some other fuckin’ country. Give me a bit of credit here, I'm not some amateur.”

“A truce?” Alfie quickly switches the conversation direction in a show of understanding.

“Yes.” An exasperated Sabini spits out.

“What terms?” Alfie asks with a rather dainty placement of his gold spectacles and a lick of his pen.

“We share the tracks. I can give you more races to share if you agree to not come for me or my men. We won’t cross on each other territories of businesses. No fighting over pubs and theatres. We’d have each other's backs, like the good old days.”

“Good old days.” Alfie snorts as keeps writing. “I get one race a month of my own. Share the rest.”

“Fine.”

“NO crossing territories, no murderin’, no fightin’.” Alfie repeats, with a mumble as it’s the least of his worries.

“Agreed.”

“And the giving of men for circumstances of attack and revenge on other groups if the situation arises.”

“Acceptable.”

“Then sign here,” Alfie says with a satisfied expression. “You must be in a right spot, mate. Givin’ up this.”

“It’s an investment.”

“Mmm.” Alfie hums and shakes the paper to dry the ink. “Now. This information…”

“There was a meeting-”

“Remember when I said I knew things…?”

“Let me bloody talk now. We get it you KNOW things, Alfie.” he interjects with an annoyed wave of his hand. “What you might not know is that Niko tried to gather the lot of us from all of London and turn us on you.”

“Mmm.” another sound of acknowledgment that meant nothing.

“He doesn’t trust you or your bride to be. Congratulations by the way.”

“Thank you.” he nods gracefully.

“We all know he’s after her, yeah? But he wants us to believe she’ll turn you against everyone and try to take us all down one by one. Which after your reaction to Horne, almost all of us aren’t sure what the fuck to think about you.”

“Couldn’t possibly have been intentional.”

“I wanted a truce because I don’t want you coming at me how you did Horne. A new war between us will do nothing but lead to problems I don't fucking have time for anymore. Not with how the worlds changing and us getting older.”

“Yeah, I feel it in my legs mostly...” Alfie groans.

“Niko is going to come for you. I believe you need to set up a meeting of your own and address him and, well bloody almost everyone else. It might help, might not. But at least then when faced with you and not behind your back you might see what sort of man Niko has turned into after taking over.”

“Never was much of one to begin with.” Alfie rolls his eyes.

“No, which makes him behave like a child and thus not act according to the truces that are set in place.”

“Yeah yeah.” Alfie nods. “There needs to be somethin’ said. Can’t have the little wanker goin’ round runnin’ his fuckin’ mouth bout me. OR my wife. “

“All this over a fucking woman.” Sabini groans.

Alfie points a ringed and aggressive finger his way. “You can’t be talking about her either, yeah? That’ll break this little agreement faster than I could put a bullet in your fuckin’ skull, right?”

“I'm not. Nothing personal just… he’s acting like a little boy. I know marriage is important to you Jews.”

“Always the tasteful one, Derby.”

“You know what I fuckin’ mean.”

“Unfortunately I do speak prick.”

“Alfie, I’m not after you or your wife. In any capacity. How I talk is just how I talk, yeah? I don't mean nothin’ by it, it’s just how I am. How we grew up. And I know you. We know each other right? And I would rather work with the devil I know than the devil I don’t. And that’d be you. Especially after what you did to Horne.”

“Mmph.” Alfie nods. “Spose that checks out.”

“I was impressed, I’ll admit. We haven’t seen a retaliation wipe out a whole enterprise like that in decades.”

“And I’d dig him up, skull fuck him and set him on fire if I could. Salt the fuckin’ earth wherever his feet touched.” Alfie's eyes are familiar darkness to Sabini. He’d expected as much from him after seeing the ash fall from the city skyline line it was snow from the destruction Alfie orchestrated. “I don’t blame you for not wantin’ me on your bad side. I know they say we’re both crazy now.”

“But see...I know neither of you are.”

“And that’s why we’ve not killed you yet, mate. Every now and then, you use your brain. ”

@jaegeeeeer @cosettewinchester @lookuptheskyisfalling-blog @brianaisasongbirdd @cry5t4l-w4rri0r @jess2464 @hardygal69 @thegarrisonpublichouse @a-flock-of-angry-pigeons @pootle @s-h-e-w-r-i-t-e-s

@musingsby-night @shine-dont-shadow @inkinterrupted @vale0413 @emerald-bijou @elaenom @give-jack-a-lightsaber @ultrablackwidower @tinastarkandco @arrowswithwifi @marvelgirl7 @they-are-not-just-stories @ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes @alitheamateur @gold-trashbag @divadinag @imhelenagardner

#alfie solomons #alfie solomons fanfic #peaky blinders fic #alfie solomons fan fiction #peaky blinders fiction #alfie solomons fic #alfie solomons au #peaky blinders au #tom hardy

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torque-witch · 4 years

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Hello

Tumblr is still my only vent safe place for social purposes. I’m just here to relay some advice that was given to me today.

“You should buy phone cases at 5 below and stencil your modern witch design on them, resell them.”

“...what is my modern witch design?”

“I thought I saw that one thing with the moons was a modern witch thing. Doesn't matter. Make a stencil and do phone cases. I was researching online businessman and tech stuff is very popular. Everyone wants a phone case. Make your life easy with some quick cash... Work smarter not harder. It's a business now. You can't put your heart and soul into every single piece. You need more easy volume.”

“Idk I think mass production is boring.” (Aka I’m not going to make something just because - there are literally a million people selling phone cases with catchy designs branded for young witches. That’s boring and unoriginal to me, personally.)

“Work can be boring. Just some phone cases. You know what's really boring and sucks? Poverty 😢”

...

Anyway so my job as a disabled person is now to bow to capitalism and give up my heart and soul because poverty....is boring??

There’s a lot to unpack with that statement that I won’t go into. We hopefully all know how systemic poverty happens.

I’m not gonna say who this was but essentially they were implying that my husband would somehow also dip into poverty because I’m not paying my share. Which is completely false. I do not need him to pay anything except his half of everything. I take care of my bills. My car payments. My insurances. My loans. My phone bill.

It’s just. It’s always. Always! That my job. Even making 50k a year was not legitimate to my family bc it wasn’t Journalism. And now. While my health is declining and there is a pandemic in which I am vulnerable, my Etsy income isn’t legitimate. My art isn’t legitimate. It’s isn’t worthy of sustaining me.

It’s not just this person either. It’s old high school friends sending me their job info directly after telling them I’m running Etsy full time and am booked at the auction through December. That I should really consider working for a call center instead of pursuing something I actually enjoy and can physically and mentally manage.

I’m not allowed to be disabled in a capitalist society where there is no sustainable financial help to those who are struggling. I’m not allowed to quit my job for my health without being harassed about how capitalism has made it so that big businesses don’t have to care about their workers. I am not allowed to be disabled at all. I know how that game works. And now I am in more pain constantly than I ever have been before.

I am so tired. If you don’t pay my bills? Don’t have access to my bank account? I guess it’s none of your business how I make and spend money. And certainly not how I run my business, no matter how small it may be.

#torquetalks

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noh8-make-a-rainbow · 3 years

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Original Characters of The New Noah: Noah’s Immediate Family

I finally decided to sit down & make a masterpost of the characters I’ve created for The New Noah. I’ll attach photos as well, I created them through the Sims. Because of how large the list is, I have to split this up.

Noah’s Immediate Family

-Aunt Amelia

Amelia is one of six sisters that Noah and Nicole’s mother had, and is younger than their mom by 2 years. Amelia and his mom were very close, so she took her death harder than any of their siblings. Amelia is single and child-less, and lives in a large house alone. She spends a lot of her time traveling, and rents out her house to Airbnb while she’s gone. She was able to retire early on account of selling her boutique. Amelia is the stereotypical, fun-loving aunt, but can be very nosy, out of love. She knows all the family secrets and has all the juicy gossip.

-Joshua

Joshua is the oldest brother of Noah and Nicole. When his parents died, they left them with Joshua. Noah is the more responsible one of the older siblings. He got himself a job as an accountant, like his dad he was good with numbers. He’s not as open in his feelings, he tends to hide his feelings in order to be brave for everyone else. When his parents died, he put Nicole and Noah’s needs over his own.

-Nathan

Nathan is the twin of Joshua, younger by 8 minutes. Nathan and Joshua are the more responsible ones of the older siblings. Nathan works in IT, and loves pulling pranks, as we saw in the Christmas party chapter.

-Blair

Blair is one of five in the quintuplet group, and they came after the twins by a few years. He wants to be a comedian. Blair is named after my best friend Blair, who also wants to be a comedian/writer someday as well.

-Bryson

Bryson is one of the quintuplets. He’s in a band with his sister Valerie, another quint.

-Valerie

One of the quints. She’s an aspiring musician and is in a band with her brother Bryson.

-Gerard

One of the quints. I got nothing. LOL.

-Gavin

One of the quints. He’s a middle school gym teacher.

-Bethany

Bethany is the sister-in-law of Joshua, Nicole and Noah’s oldest brother. She’s a social worker. She’s quirky, but fun. She met Joshua when they were in college, and the two hit it off right away. However, they became too busy for each other and broke up within a few months of being together. They found each other on a dating website after graduation and decided to try again, resulting in their marriage and kids. She loves her kids and is very passionate about her work.

-Nicole

Y’all already know Nicole, but I’m going to give her a character description anyway. Nicole is the twin sister of Noah, older by ten minutes. She’s studying astronomy. She has a huge interest in witchcraft and astrology as well, and since going to college she loves going on nature walks and trails. She also plays guitar and is in her school’s jazz band. She is dating Trent. (art by totaltrauma on Tumblr)

-Spencer

Spencer is Joshua and Bethany’s oldest child. He’s a ball of energy and like every kid, has lots of questions. He idolizes his Uncle Noah and Aunt Nicole, and is a big fan of the Drama Brothers. Cody is teaching him the keyboard.

-Hannah

Hannah is the youngest child of Joshua and Bethany. Like Spencer, she’s very curious and loves to ask any question that pops up in her mind. She loves her aunt Nicole and her parents, and just overall is a very happy child.

#the new noah #total drama oc

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jamingbenn · 4 years

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꒰ 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕖𝕥 𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕖 ꒱ ⋆ฺ｡*:･ dreamnotfound | ao3

summary: or, dream runs a quaint little coffee shop opposite george's little flower shop. shenanigans ensue down somerset lane, and everyone's just the bestest of friends with each other.

genre/au: day in the life, coffeeshop au, flowershop au

pairings: dreamnotfound, gream, dreamnap (all gen as of yet)

warnings: minor cursing, so much happy fluffy soft boys it might be disgusting (ˊ̥̥̥̥̥ ³ ˋ̥̥̥̥̥)

a/n: this is chaptered and on ao3 here! snippets will be posted on tumblr but this is wip

𝔢𝔵𝔠𝔢𝔯𝔭𝔱:

the morning sun washed warmly over somerset lane, painting the street over in a tinge of golden glow.

the scent of spring was fresh in the air, and this bright day saw somerset lane looking positively ethereal. in a little coffee shop called cloudy, inc., there was the gentle hiss of a coffee machine audible from the counter, where one had the best vantage view of this quaint little street. and this morning, as usual, cloudy, inc.’s owner was busy getting the shop ready for the day, trying not to be too distracted by the views of the dawning sun.

♡.°୭̥ ୨୧ૢ✧∘*

dream pulled his eyes back from the sidewalk to the coffee he was making himself. one perk of being the boss, he shrugged to himself.

another perk was being able to watch the street come truly alive. you can hear the cars start to pick up before you see them, really, and before you know it, the streets start to fill up before your eyes. dream liked watching the first few stragglers from his perch behind the pastry display case, sipping his coffee as he woke up alongside the city. it feels like he’s laid claim to this patch of pavement outside of his little cafe, and he’s proud of how every single footstep crunches onto these stone grounds. sure, i mean, technically, the city maintains these roads, but come on. cloudy, inc. cafe and the house of dyes flower shop have become the anchoring points of somerset lane, and he felt safe calling this his neighborhood. (so maybe that makes him feel all fuzzy inside. he’s allowed to revel in that, he thinks.)

a ringing of bells from behind him signaled the back door opening. dream, startled out of his daze, turned to see sapnap stumble out of the kitchen into the front of shop. dream would call sapnap’s foundering steps “precarious”, if he hadn’t seen him manage this delicate balance multiple times a day. how the man managed to juggle trays upon trays of pastry was beyond dream, but he wasn’t gonna question it. it wasn’t everyday you got to work with your best friend and live out your dreams together, after all. he’ll trust him with the pastry. he’s trusted him with much more.

“so what’s on the menu, chef?”

sapnap stuck out his tongue. “stop acting like you didn’t spend hours with me yesterday making sure our summer menu is absolutely perfect. these are the mixed berry tarts, you goof.”

dream laughed, snagging one as sapnap started loading them in. “well, i guess they’ll do for breakfast.”

sapnap’s head snapped back, eyes narrowed. “they’ll do? i’ll kill you! this better be the best goddamn blueberry tart you’ve had in your life.” he retorted, conveniently grabbing a nearby notebook to whack dream with.

dodging, dream could do nothing but laugh harder. there was never a dull moment at cloudy, inc., so dream couldn’t let sapnap’s words go by uncontested. “it’s the absolute worst thing i’ve tasted. i have no idea how we’ve managed to stay in business selling these terrible pastries.” of course, they were delicious. the base was just the right mix of flaky and crumbly to immediately melt in your mouth, while the filling had a satisfying tartness that made you immediately want more. and of course, the light sprinkling of coarse demerara sugar on top gave the entire sweet treat just a little desired crunch. but he couldnt let sapnap know any of that, now, could he?

“shit- i- that’s it, come here, you son of a—!” sapnap’s voice may have sounded harsh, but the grin on his face probably gave him away.

as dream blocked more hits and as sapnap made increasingly crude choking gestures, the tell tale chiming of the cafe door interrupted their play fighting with their first customer of the day. dream grinned as he straightened up, turning to beam his best customer support smile at this poor, unsuspecting, unlucky fellow who’s first introduction to cloudy, inc. was that of the two owners’ mutual (friendly) violence.

“welcome to cloudy, inc, the one stop relaxation shop for your coffee, pastry, and spiritual needs! what can i get you today?”

♡.°୭̥ ୨୧ૢ✧∘*

the other side of the road saw a similar scene at the house of dyes, a little flower shop owned by george’s grandparents. this morning saw george unloading boxes of supplies, which happily meant many tiny walks across the pavement. this left him free to witness any and all shenanigans going on in cloudy, inc.— and the almost daily smack-fest between the two owners with whatever objects were nearby was always a highlight.

the trio were good friends, of course. while george grew up on this street, hanging around his grandparents' shop from the moment he could walk, dream and sapnap moved in to the opposite lot a couple of years ago. they were fresh out of school, bright faced and risking it all, armed with market research and barista skills that had them confident they’ll make it big. they saw the potential of somerset lane, and saw it as the next “it” place in town, if they just built on the house of dyes’ energy and atmosphere. and they couldn’t have been more right. now, between techno’s butchery, skeppy’s mystical magic supplies store, wilbur’s ethereal photography boutique, and all the other dreamy shops, somerset lane was the place to be in town.

george has always loved it here, of course, he grew up scootering down these roads near daily. he’s always associated the pinkish hues of the setting sun with the sweet, earthy smells of fresh cut flowers. as he’s grown, he’s taken over more and more of the operations, especially the backroom management and bookkeeping. after all, can’t be letting a colorblind kid mess with floral arrangements now, can you? yet even as he’s taken over most store manager duties, he still wishes he could be more appreciative of the beautiful aesthetic work his grandparents do. all in all, it doesn’t bother him all that much, because colors are ultimately just a small part of the house of dyes’ flower arrangements. each petal and each blossom still bloom with their own curves and structure, and sometimes an arrangement can look like a delicately balanced dance. not to mention the fresh smells of subtle floral notes, paired with the velvety textures of the petals, if you just rubbed them gently between your fingers. most importantly, though, being at the house of dyes meant being around his community of people that makes him feel his happiest. being around the people of somerset lane meant he felt comfortable being his goofy, smiley self, secure in the fact that he was loved and he was appreciated. he knew, and felt, like he was an integral part of this band of chaos personified.

#dreamnotfound #dreamwastaken #sapnap #dreamnap #drapnap #dreamteam #fanfic #fic #coffeeshopau #flower shop au #cafe au #nina does words #aaaaa i have no idea if this is any good #but people on ao3 seem to like it so eeee #gream #georgewastaken #dteam #somerset lane #j

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