#random excerpts to go with art is fun
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Hey, do you guys want to hear a story? Let me tell you about the romance between Lancelot and Guinevere, as recounted in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
So, I thought I knew the basics. I grew up reading modern versions of Arthurian legend that focused on other aspects, but had a general knowledge of the Arthur-Guinever-Lancelot love triangle. It didn't show up too much, but I assumed it was subtext in some other versions. What I picked up was that it was sort of pure, almost an ot3, and not the cause of a lot of problems.
My friends. In this version it is NOT SUBTEXT, it DEFINITELY CAUSED PROBLEMS, and it is WILD. It is a true will-they-won't-they drama fest soap opera romance, and I need to share. So please, come on this journey with me.
[I’m looking at you, Black Sails fandom people. I need you to know that Flint canonically would have read this. He would almost certainly have also grown up hearing these stories. I’m not saying he’s Lancelot coded, but I am saying it's interesting that he would have been aware that was something it was possible to be.]
A couple notes, before we dive in. I am very much just summarizing what happened in the book. The thing is, the book is a million pages long and also in Middle English, and this is just one of many plots, which I think is why it's not more widely known. I will show some excerpts so you can get a feel for the text, but you don’t need to read them to understand the story. I'm referring to a version that is as close to the manuscript as I can find, though with spelling regularized. For real fun, see what the original looked like. Malory purports to be translating part of the French Vulgate cycle, which likely is where the character of Lancelot originates, but in fact he is doing much more than translating, and compiles other stories as well. Point being, when he says “so the French book sayeth” etc, that is the “book” to which he is referring. Because of my lack of knowledge about the language and cultural context, this lecture series from Mythgard Academy was absolutely invaluable to my understanding. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Inevitably, some of the opinions of the prof are reflected here. I do not have it in me to compare the scholarship of various medievalists right now, I just want to tell you about this DRAMA.
Let’s start with a prophecy. When Arthur decides he wishes to marry Guinevere, Merlin advises him to take someone else, because if he takes her, she will betray him with Lancelot and it will destroy his kingdom. All of this is foretold, not only to us, but to Arthur himself. Of course he takes her anyway, and all is doomed from the start.
As we begin the main arc of this story (several books after the prophecy), Lancelot is widely acknowledged to be the best and most renowned knight of Arthur’s court. He is plainly and hopelessly in love with Guinevere, and she loves him in return. Arthur doesn’t have a problem with this - who wouldn’t love Guinevere? This sort of love is socially acceptable, so long as they do not sleep together, which would be treason. Arthur in fact seems to support their love, because it means that Lancelot will be Guinevere’s champion should she need one. This is a role Arthur himself legally cannot fill because he is the king, and so would have to be the judge. Lancelot is indeed a good champion for her, and fights for her when she is wrongly accused of murder.
Lancelot is deeply chivalrous, in a way that seems sincere. This is a great place for a first excerpt, a conversation with a Random Damsel Lancelot has been helping:
‘Now, damosel,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘will ye any more service of me?’ ‘Nay, sir,’ she said, ‘at this time, but almighty Jesu preserve you wheresoever ye ride or go, for the most courteous knight thou art and meekest unto all ladies and gentlewomen that now liveth. But one thing, sir knight, me thinks ye lack, ye that are a knight wifeless, that ye will not love some maiden or gentlewoman. For I could never hear say that ever ye loved any of no manner of degree, and that is great pity. But it is noised that ye love Queen Guenivere, and that she hath ordained by enchantment that ye shall never love no other but her, nor no other damosel nor lady shall rejoice you; wherefore there be many in this land of high estate and low that make great sorrow.’ ‘Fair damosel,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘I may not warn* people to speak of me what it pleaseth them; but for to be a wedded man, I think it not; for then I must couch with her, and leave arms and tournaments, battles and adventures. And as for to say to take my pleasance with paramours, that will I refuse, in principal for dread of God. For knights that be adventurous should not be adulterers nor lecherous, for then they be not happy nor fortunate unto the wars; for either they shall be overcome with a simpler knight than they be themselves, or else they shall slay by unhap and their cursedness better men than they be themselves. And so who that useth paramours shall be unhappy, and all thing unhappy that is about them.’
So after doing his Knightly Deeds for this damsel, Lancelot asks if she needs anything else. She says no, but you are lacking one thing, which is the love of a woman. It is rumored that is because Guinevere has through sorcery made you love only her, and that causes all of the women great sorrow. In reply Lancelot makes this speech about how he cannot have a wife or paramour and be a good knight, but everyone thinks it is at least in part because his love is reserved for Guinevere.
Now, throughout the book his chastity DOES notably cause all of the women great sorrow. Everyone wants to sleep with Lancelot. Literally he is kidnapped by the four most beautiful queens other than Guinevere, and they say he has to choose one of them as a lover (not even a wife, a lover) or else die. He says he would rather die, though in the end he escapes. This is just an example, truly it is a recurring problem for him. He is, at one point, tricked into sleeping with a woman with whom he conceives his son Galahad (as was prophesied, it's a long story and the romance is only part of it. It is worth mentioning that something similar happens to Arthur, which is how Mordred is sired.) When Guinevere learns that Lancelot has been with someone else, she is angry and banishes him from the court. They still love each other and eventually reconcile.
So, Lancelot goes on the quest for the holy grail. But he fails, specifically because while he is outwardly dedicated to God, in his private heart he is still dedicated to Guinevere. And so he makes a vow to renounce his love for her, acknowledging that it is beyond measure (beyond what is right, even if they have not technically done anything wrong.) However when he returns to Camelot, he cannot keep this vow, as we see.
Then, as the book saith, Sir Lancelot began to resort unto Queen Guenivere again, and forgot the promise and the perfection that he made in the quest. For, as the book saith, had not Sir Lancelot been in his privy thoughts and in his mind so set inwardly to the Queen as he was in seeming outward to God, there had no knight passed him in the quest of the Sangrail, but ever his thoughts were privily on the Queen. And so they loved together more hotter than they did beforehand, and had many such privy draughts together that many in the court spoke of it, and in especial Sir Agravain, Sir Gawain’s brother, for he was ever open-mouthed. So it befell that Sir Lancelot had many resorts of ladies and damosels that daily resorted unto him to be their champion: in all such matters of right Sir Lancelot applied him daily to do for the pleasure of Our Lord Jesu Christ. And ever as much as he might he withdrew him from the company of Queen Guenivere for to eschew the slander and noise, wherefore the Queen waxed wroth with Sir Lancelot.
He and Guinevere start spending a lot of time alone together, and so there are rumors circulating about them in court. In order to put a stop to the rumors, Lancelot starts paying other women attention and doing more good knightly deeds for them. Guinevere is terribly jealous, but he tells her it's for their own good, and also tells her about the vow he made, and his concern that their love is beyond what is appropriate. She is devastated, and weeping banishes him from the court (again).
Lancelot then rides in a tournament, disguised. (Why? Because this is simply a thing knights do.) To make it an effective disguise he takes the token of a woman, the sleeve of the fair maid of Astolat to wear on his helm. When she discovers that he was only using it for the disguise, and he does not indeed love her, she is so heartbroken that she says if he will not marry her or be her lover, she will die. He refuses, on the grounds that love must not be constrained and should arise from the heart, and offers her a thousand pounds a year instead if she marries anyone else. Properly insulted by this, she does indeed die. She has her body sent in a boat to Camelot, with a letter in her hand, saying that she died of her love for him, that he would not return.
Seeing this, Guinevere reconciles with Lancelot, presumably reassured by the fact that he would let this very beautiful much younger woman die of her love rather than being with her. She insists that from now on he will not fight in disguise, and will openly bear her token.
Then Queen Guenivere sent for Sir Lancelot, and said thus: ‘I warn you that ye ride no more in no jousts nor tournaments but that your kinsmen may know you; and at these jousts that shall be ye shall have of me a sleeve of gold. And I pray you for my sake to force* yourself there, that men may speak you worship. But I charge you as ye will have my love, that ye warn your kinsmen that ye will bear that day the sleeve of gold upon your helmet.’ ‘Madam,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘it shall be done.’ And either made great joy of other.
It is important to keep in mind that, to this point, there is no textual evidence that they were sleeping together, and a great deal of evidence that it was important to Lancelot that they not cross that line. There is much less evidence that this is important to Guinevere.
So then one fateful day in May, Guinevere goes picnicing with an entourage of knights. They are captured by someone else who is in love with Guinevere, and taken back to his castle, but she manages to send a message to Lancelot. At the castle, she insists that her knights sleep in her bedchamber on the grounds that they were wounded in the battle when she was captured and need tending, but truly she wants them there to keep her captor from raping her.
Lancelot arrives to rescue her, and the person who kidnapped her agrees to give her back in the morning. She tells Lancelot to visit her room in the night. He climbs up to her window, which is barred. They have a heartfelt reunion and she says she wishes he could come in to her. He acquiesces and breaks the bars to get into her room, cutting his hand to the bone to do so. Despite the profusely bleeding wound and the ten other men sleeping in the room, they at last do sleep together, in this passionate blood covered consummation. He sneaks back out and replaces the bars.
In the morning, the man who kidnapped Guinevere comes in and sees blood all over the bed. He accuses her of being unfaithful to the king, saying she lay with one of the knights who had been sleeping in her room. She denies it, but it is very clear that she did sleep with someone who was bleeding.
Lancelot says he will fight to defend her from this accusation, which is right and proper because he is her champion. In this story people take trial by combat and oaths before God very seriously, especially Lancelot. He really does try. So he swears an oath that he will prove with his life that Guinevere did not sleep with one of the wounded knights who lay in her room. This of course is TRUE, but only on a technicality. Lancelot, having slept with her himself the night before, is also the one who defends her honor after. I love this story so much.
Instead of fighting him, the kidnapper takes Lancelot captive. In captivity he encounters ANOTHER damsel who insists that sleep with her in order for her to help him. He refuses, still faithful in his heart to Guinevere. Eventually she settles for him holding and kissing her, which is not across the line of appropriateness apparently, giving us some idea of where that line is drawn. Anyway, Lancelot gets out, fights for Guinevere and wins. There are indications that he feels like he barely dodged a devine bullet.
Guinevere and Lancelot return to Camelot. Finally the rumors about them are true, the deed has been done, but of course nothing appears particularly different as there were already rumors about them. Two knights, Mordred and Agravaine, who have been intriguing against Arthur already, go and tell Arthur that Guinevere is being untrue to him. Here is his response:
‘If it be so,’ said the King, ‘wit you well, he is none other; but I would be loath to begin such a thing but I might have proofs of it. For Sir Lancelot is a hardy knight, and all ye know that he is the best knight among us all; and but if he be taken with the deed he will fight with him that bringeth up the noise, and I know no knight that is able to match him. Therefore, and it be sooth as ye say, I would that he were taken with the deed.’ For as the French book saith, the King was full loath that such a noise should be upon Sir Lancelot and his queen. For the King had a deeming of it; but he would not hear thereof, for Sir Lancelot had done so much for him and for the Queen so many times that, wit you well, the King loved him passingly well.
Arthur says he will not hear of this without proof, because if Lancelot is accused and allowed to fight he would beat anyone. And, it is said that Arthur had some idea of the affair, but would not credit it because Lancelot had done so much for him and Guinevere, and he loved Lancelot greatly.
So, one night when the king is away hunting, the two accusers contrive to catch them in the act, with a group of twelve armed knights. They do find Lancelot in Guinevere’s chamber, but the text is notably, pointedly vague about whether they are actually in bed. In any case, Lancelot asks for a trial. The knights say no, they have caught him and so may kill him. He is Lancelot, so he kills all of them instead, save one (Mordred) whom he leaves wounded. Lancelot flees, intending to return to rescue Guinevere and take her to his own castle to protect her from Arthur’s wrath. He maintains her innocence, and still intends that they will all reconcile.
Guinevere is to be burned at the stake (normal in this situation). Lancelot rescues her from the burning at the last moment, killing a number of knights of the round table. Arthur seems to blame the accusers more than Guinevere and Lancelot (for good reason; keep in mind that the romance is a subplot, there is a great deal of political intrigue going on.) Now a war will begin, whether anyone wants it or not, because of the people Lancelot killed. Lancelot takes Guinevere to his own castle. Battle lines are drawn, and Lancelot and Arthur confront each other in the fighting:
And ever was King Arthur about Sir Lancelot to have slain him, and ever Sir Lancelot suffered him and would not strike again. So Sir Bors encountered with King Arthur; and Sir Bors smote him, and so he alit and drew his sword and said to Sir Lancelot, ‘Sir, shall I make an end of this war?’—for he meant to have slain him. ‘Not so hardy,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘upon pain of thy head, that thou touch him no more! For I will never see that most noble king that made me knight neither slain nor shamed.’ And therewith Sir Lancelot alit off his horse and took up the King and horsed him again, and said thus: ‘My lord the king, for God’s love, stint this strife, for ye get here no worship and I would do my utterance. But always I forbear you, and ye nor none of yours forbear not me. And therefore, my lord, I pray you remember what I have done in many places, and now am I evil rewarded.’ So when King Arthur was on horseback he looked on Sir Lancelot; then the tears burst out of his eyes, thinking of the great courtesy that was in Sir Lancelot more than in any other man. And therewith the King rode his way and might no longer behold him, saying to himself, ‘Alas, alas, that yet this war began!’
So Arthur tries to slay Lancelot, but Lancelot, the better fighter, refuses to slay him and indeed when Arthur is unhorsed Lancelot forbids that he be slain, and gives him his own horse. Arthur weeps for the honor that is in Lancelot, and laments that the war began.
The pope intervenes and tries to negotiate an end. Lancelot confirms that he is willing to return Guinevere to Arthur, and says he has always been willing to do this and will still defend her honor, but that he does not feel he can do so because Arthur has listened to liars and been misled, and he had more reason to take her away than the accusation of adultery - he does not trust she can be safe in that court, with things as they are.
Eventually they do make a deal, with some assurances, and he surrenders Guinevere to the king. He kisses her openly, says that he will leave, but should she be in danger or ever again accused of being untrue, he will fight for her as he always has. He departs the court forever, to much great sorrow, and returns to his own lands.
The war continues - eventually Mordred seizes the throne, Arthur kills him in battle but is mortally wounded himself and passes to Avalon. Following the king’s death, although her love would no longer be adulterous, Guinevere retires to a convent rather than reuniting with Lancelot. He seeks her out, and this is her reaction:
Sir Lancelot was brought before her; then the Queen said to all those ladies, ‘Through this same man and me hath all this war been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain. Therefore, Sir Lancelot, wit thou well I am set in such a plight to get my soul health; and yet I trust through God’s grace and through His Passion of His wounds wide, that after my death I may have a sight of the blessed face of Christ Jesu, and at Doomsday to sit on His right side;* for as sinful as ever I was, now are saints in heaven. And therefore, Sir Lancelot, I require thee and beseech thee heartily, for all the love that ever was betwixt us, that thou never see me no more in the visage. And I command thee, on God’s behalf, that thou forsake my company; and to thy kingdom look thou turn again, and keep well thy realm from war and wrack. For as well as I have loved thee heretofore, my heart will not serve now to see thee, for through thee and me is the flower of kings and knights destroyed. And therefore go thou to thy realm, and there take ye a wife and live with her with joy and bliss. And I pray thee heartily to pray for me to the everlasting Lord that I may amend my misliving.’ ‘Now, my sweet madam,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘would ye that I should turn again unto my country, and there to wed a lady? Nay, madam, wit you well, that shall I never do, for I shall never be so false unto you of that I have promised. But the self* destiny that ye have taken you to, I will take me to, for the pleasure of Jesu; and ever for you I cast me specially to pray.
Rather than rejoicing in Lancelot’s presence, Guinevere laments that their love brought about the downfall of the Arthurian court, and the deaths of the knights of the round table and King Arthur. She calls upon Lancelot, by all the love that was ever between them to leave her presence, telling him to marry someone else if he wishes and see her no more. Lancelot replies that he wants no one else, and that he will respect her wishes, but will also renounce the world and join a religious order. He asks Guinevere for a final parting kiss, which she denies him.
When Guinevere lies dying of illness, Lancelot sets out to go to her, having had a vision. She knows of his coming, and prays to die before she sees him, because she cannot bear it. She dies a half hour before he arrives, leaving instruction that he is to tend to her body, and then lay it to rest beside that of her lord King Arthur. Lancelot does this with great sorrow, and after ceases to eat or drink, and within weeks is dead himself.
And there you have it, the love affair that doomed Camelot.
HUGE DISCLAIMER: Any and all mistakes or misinterpretations are my own. This is what I gathered, but I am not a medievalist. I am barely an interested layperson. I’m just a random fic writer who got obsessed with research for a story, and had to share this tragic mess.
#i have a million thoughts about this#and there is a great deal of context that would be helpful#but i this doesnt need to be more than 4k words long so#i may do a followup post if there is interest#but black sails folks#i'm writing a lot of flintmadi convos right now#and vaguely planned to have them talk about this book#as a way to discuss their own situation and values#but i had not actually read it#and it is WAY MORE than i expected#anyway they are going to refer back to it#so i figured i should write it down so i can point at it if readers want to know wtf they are talking about#is there an#arthurian legend#tag?#i purposefully haven't looked i don't go here if there is a here to go#but fuck it that was a lot of work might as well see#anyway there are so many things to dig into here#arthur's role or lack thereof#(the rest of the book has a lot more to do with him)#the treatment of fate and prophesy#the courtly love tradition#how this fits into the arthurian tradition as a whole#and the clear french influence#vs the old celtic stories#also so many fun things about language in general#did you know that paramour is derived basically the same way as paramilitary?#'para' as 'beyond that which is regular'#also in middle english negatives are additive rather than canceling each out out!#fun facts
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adventures in bookbinding: making the negret colophon playing card book!
it's diy girl summer and i am Bored. time to attempt a completely new craft with zero research except for like. 3 youtube videos!
so, to start off, i suppose i will ramble a wee bit about my plans/goals/reasoning. truth be told, i just really really like my blorbo who book binds and i think it would be very fun to become Just like him for real. therefore we will be embarking on a journey!! to become my blorbo and also find something crafty to do today. quick psa that this is not a real tutorial because i have absolutely zero experience, but more of a general guide and/or craft with me! let's do this in sectionssss!!
1 - the plan!!
so for my first bookbinding project we are going to do something small, starting out by being silly and taking a page (lol) out of negret colophon's book (lol....) when he makes a tiny book and uses two playing cards as the covers. this will give me a little tiny trial run so i can learn the basic skills and use easily available materials around my house!! afterwards i think i'll sketch out a more ambitious journal idea - i have lots of fabric lying around that would work perfectly to cover a cardboard cover. wow, that's wordy! so! without further ado let's begin :) negret's little bookbinding project is described in the first chapter of raconteurs in this little excerpt here.
seems simple enough!! also the absolute perfect beginner project. it is tiny and the materials consist of Literally Anything. let's get groovy!!
2. materials!!
here's what we're working with:
playing cards! i found a deck lying around in a random drawer somewhere and chances are you have one laying around too. i chose the ace of spades and diamonds, because the text specifies a pair of aces but i couldn't find a matching pair, lol. i was also very tempted to choose one of the king cards as an homage to maisie's story later on (and because the king cards are absolutely gorgeous and detailed) but we're sticking to canon right now. we'll use the other cards for a future project.
needles!! a lot of the tutorials i see use very big or thick needles but i don't have those and this is also a very small project, not a huge journal, so any can work.
thread!! use whatever color you would like! at this point i was very indecisive because i have a lot of options and they're all quite pretty colors, but i settled on red later.
an assortment of papers!! use literally whatever you have lying around. for me, i managed to dig up the one scrap of newspaper in my house, since that's specifically listed, but most of my pages were from a book i sacrificed for an old art project, magazines and flyers, a lot of which were college mail because we're at that point in my life, lol. this is a recycling sort of project. choose anything! the more variety the better :)
i didn't display these in the photo, but if you have an awl, use an awl! i do not have one so i improvised, which i'll elaborate upon later. also, scissors! to cut the pages to scale. a ruler also came in handy :)
alright, now that we have all our tools in order, it's time to get into it :)
3. creating the pages!!
our first step is to measure our playing cards! you might not have to do this step because i'm fairly certain most cards are uniform in size/make, but check just in case, lol.
my cards measured to be 2.5" wide and 3.5" tall. i am no mathematician but using my singular brain cell i deduced that the papers should be twice the width of our cover, since those will fold to be the same size. so, using my Expert calculations, i made a little template cut from an index card measuring 3.5" x 5".
now we get to cutting!! using your various materials, cut out a bunch of papers to the size of your template. i just cut around it because i could not be bothered enough to waste time tracing, lol. i didn't go in with a plan, but i cut 16 papers to this size, which ended up being perfect. here are all my pages !! look at all the colors and textures!! the fun thing about the project being so small is that you can specifically cut the pages as the most interesting photos or sections, or you can even do it at angles too. as long as it ends up the right size, anything is fair game
now, we're going to make the papers into signatures! i just learned this word today lol. essentially, we will be grouping our papers and then folding those in half to become little mini books/pages. since i had 16 papers, i made 4 signatures with 4 pages each.
at this point i was tempted to go cut up more and make a fifth signature, but i decided against it since i didn't want the book to become too thick, and 4 sets with 4 papers each ended up being just about right. one of the tutorials i watched suggested that you group your signatures with paperclips or bobby pins, and at the time i waved off the suggestion but i totally agree now. i didn't have any clips to work with and i managed fine without them, but it definitely would have been easier if i had. so if you have them, use them! it'll make your life better lol. at this point you can stack your signatures together and itll look like a book!
oh yeah now we're cooking!!
4. preparing for binding!!
it was at this point in the process where i ventured out from knowing what i was doing to completely balling, but everything turned out okay and i'll walk you through it! our next step is to create the holes with which we will sew our signatures together. we're going to mark those off. once again i have zero clue how to do math but i managed to use my giant incredible smooth brain one more time to mark my template with a few equidistant points with which we can mark our signatures.
in case it's not clear, i kind of just counted the lines and then had to look up how much that was, but you can also just eyeball it if you're good enough. side note, i added two more holes after this, with one just below the very top and one just below the very bottom.
pardon my very unsightly nails, lol - here's how i used my template to mark the very center of each of my signature. you'll want to mark the point on the center line where you folded it while keeping the pages of each signature together. HOPEFULLY WITH A PAPERCLIP. and without further ado it's time for the stabbing!
now...here's where i got a little bit sacrilegious. you'll recall that earlier i mentioned how i don't have an awl in my possession yet? well, i managed to improvise a solution...
yes that is a sewing pin. IN MY DEFENSE it's all i had, and functionally it's basically the same as an awl! just on a much smaller scale. it worked out though - i imagine that if i'd been using thicker paper it would have posed a bit of a problem but for this project specifically, it was fine. do not kill me book binders. now it's time to get serious...
5. the binding
everyone stay calm! stay calm! it will be okay. i was lowkey intimidated by this part as this was Truly out of my depth of expertise, but i promise it's not that complicated. you're going to get your needle and thread now - i settled upon this gorgeous red color because it contrasted nicely with the playing cards, and there really wasn't much red in the papers i chose.
gorgeous!! tbh i always knew i'd go with the red because i've always envisioned the book with red thread anyways. like come on look at my very first drawing of negret WITH it. literally the exact same materials. i simply had to.
okay. now to the binding part. i don't have any real photos or insights or instructions for this whole stage because 1. i was deep in focus mode and 2. entirely relied on a tutorial for this part. here's the tutorial i used - massive shoutout to this lovely lady ! my spine didn't turn out nearly as neat as hers because i did not properly follow directions for the first bunch of knots (and i had to kind of improvise with the cover) but here's how it turned out!
not too bad for my first book, lol. try not to stress out about it being perfect because this book is not supposed to be perfect! the imperfections give it character. worst case scenario, if you really mess up, your eclectic book is just a little more eclectic than intended. and that's never a crime :)
now the one problem i had to figure out on my own was how to attach the covers, since most tutorials explain how to attach actual big separate covers and not - essentially paper. i ended up just... attaching them as if they were another page or signature to the front and back. my holes on the covers were a few millimeters away from the edge, though, since there's no crease or fold to align them with. what i did was essentially do the first knots/stitching on the signature like the tutorial said, but for each hole i sewed through in the first/last signature, i also made an additional loop through the adjacent hole on the cover. you can kind of see how i passed my needle through like instructed and then took a little extra detour to stitch the card as well. in some places i ended up making new holes in the signature too that were closer to where the cards' holes lined up?? try not to do that but it worked and it looks fine so really whatever makes it attach and hold is perfect.
6. bask in your glory!!!
aaaand that's it!! you did it!! this was a ton of fun to work on and i absolutely loved making this little adventure into a new craft with something so near and dear to my heart. if you make one please be sure to tag me!! i would love love LOVE to see :) here's an additional picture of my little monster (+ next to the legend himself. art credit to me lol. look the books are twinning!!)
#the raconteurs commonplace book#raconteurs commonplace book#green glass house#nagspeake#roaming world#uhhhh#bookbinding#book binding#genuinely i dont know if those are separate words or not. either way LDJKGLHSDJG#crafts#crafting#arts and crafts#yippee this was actually so much fun#to quote alex of vfdiscord fame “the self blorbofication of quill”#it's too late i'm in too deep i'm literally him now#quill crafts
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Your fics are so good. Like, they drive me bananas. I love the way you write. You probably already know that. Anyways.
Do you have a routine that you use? Like, a schedule, or just a method to write each segment? Oooh, and how do you plan it out? I'd really like to know!
Asking you this because you're amazing <3 keep up the great work!
AAAAA THANK YOU MAN!!! My fics are always based on spur of the moment inspiration, so it's always a guessing game of what I'll write first XD (And if I'll finish. I'm not Miss 400 WIPS for nothing!)
I'll tag you in the post I have about my writing process! Though it's vaguely accurate, a lot of my stuff is just written on a whim whenever I have inspiration to start/continue something. Which... does end up being at midnight before I sleep, but let's not talk about that-
Every fic does come around differently! For example, The Body was originally a 3AM excerpt I continued and had too much fun writing, which ended up with me writing little snippets at random points of the story. (A common go to where I just write the parts I can see well in my head.)
And then there's Trembling, which... OK, it also started out as a midnight fic, but it was a midnight fic with a plan! And a midnight fic that actually had art I could follow! Ink and I have an idea bank storing all the info about this AU (it has no name, we've just been calling it the Horror AU) and have been building up lore for it, so I, in the spur of the moment midtalk, drafted up the first draft. (It looks very different to what was the final!!!) And then I added more/rewrote half of it in the coming days! It was originally meant to be a very soft fic :D
If you want any inside comments or first drafts of what I write, I'd love to share!
#my writing style sure is a doozy#im enjoying writing ragnus and schezo atm so probably expect more with them???#i have drafts but theyre very similar to trembling (written before trembling haha) so i dont want to like. write the same things...?#but its so fun to write so aaaaaaaaa#answer box
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5, 12, 14 for ask post :))))
HELLO LIVV!!! I’m DONE WITH WORK sorry for the late answer!!! These were fun!!!! And also. my god retrospective apology for the length of this I got really excited about my Symbolic Worldview Statement About Windchimes In Somewhere to Get To / Sailed Calmly On for a . lot of paragraphs.
5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!
AH well!!!!! Exciting. I’m about to sound so insane for paragraphs and paragraphs. I’ve got metaphors and symbolic imagery operating in very silly places. Here goes:
What’s up with Daniel’s windchimes in Somewhere to Get To and Sailed Calmly On?
And the answer: As with so much in this little fic verse, it comes back indirectly to [loud buzzer noise indicating incoming Parker Being Annoying About A Poem He Loves content] dear old Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts.” Sorry to anybody who has heard me be soooo annoying about this poem in relation to these fics in the past. At least it’s a new angle on it (after a restatement of the Poem’s Relation To Blah Blah Etc. So Sorry Hurrying Through It Now).
Anyway, the poem focuses partially on Breughel’s painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” (see it, and the poem, reproduced at the prior link). As per its title, the painting represents the fall of Icarus, but embedded in a landscape. Icarus is a minute little ocean-splash in the lower right corner of the canvas, a pale pair of legs about to be dragged under the water. Looking at the canvas from a distance, it’s hard to notice him at all. The focus is more on the foreground, where ploughmen go about their work, and on the lovely ship moving through the water. Like us on first viewing, none of the figures in the painting notice, or at least care to act, on the fact Icarus is drowning. This enormous, mythic moment is reduced to a petty background splash—lasting an instant, and then fading away, nobody paying it much mind.
That’s the topic of Auden’s poem (swear to God we’re getting to the windchimes), which (in excerpt) notes:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
(…)
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
So that’s the painting, and the poem, which both deal with the sort of tragicomic mundanity of suffering. Somewhere to Get To and Sailed Calmly On are clearly ripped, title-wise, from the last line of the Auden, and that’s because it was a theme I was playing with very consciously through each—there are a lot of characters drowning, in their own ways, and the world spins on.
OKAY sorry for restating all of that if it’s been read or said before.
In re: the wind chimes: to me, they’re meant to stand—I don’t want to say in opposition to, because both images stem from the same sort of philosophy—but as a partial response to the Icarus-Drowns-Unnoticed theme at play in the fics. Windchimes force a person to acknowledge the existence of the unseen. To me they’re like… symbolic of being a sentinel of joy or care. Happiness (your own) or suffering (of others) is very easy to let slip by unnoticed or at least not consciously registered or responded to (gentle breeze one does not make intentional note of). Treating happiness / joy as a practice instead of a transient, at-random feeling, and being intentional in wanting to perceive others/the world as it stands, helps (I think) Icarus (us, in despair) swim a little stronger, and helps (us, preoccupied) notice drowning strangers when they need it. All of this, translated to fic-verse and imagery, is the ridiculous number of windchimes around the Pierce household, tracking every unseen, unfelt shift of air in a way that is impossible to ignore. They’re doctors, and they’re also, as we learn (to my characterization) people who work actively against an innate despair with the conscious, repeated choice to care, and care widely, and actively look for joy.
And, then, why Hawkeye finds himself so devastated after the war, and so doubly hurt by his inability to get help: all of that attentiveness to the world, other’s pain, active search for joy against an interior tendency towards the water, has been burnt through by witnessing mass-scale violence he was largely powerless to stop. He’s distressed because he’s put so much of himself into the world, at an unsustainable pace, and nearly none of it comes back to him. Or at least not right away. He brushes a windchime when he comes home, listens to it sound, and then does the same with the same windchime in reverse as he leaves the house and flees to the city. And then, by the end of S2G2, a neighbor’s windchime sounds as BJ brings him a clementine and enjoys a warm day, and as Hawk wakes up to look out into the morning fog. Healing, hope, joy and rejection of despair, caring for one another with intentionality, etc. Sorry if this is sooooo silly but I love the windchimes and I'm so glad I got to talk about them LMAO <3
12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?
Ouuughhhhh. Hmm. Barring a few specific exceptions, I’m usually down to read just about anything trope-wise; usually it’s more a question of Author Trust or Is It Well-Written In My Opinion, etc. I’d say, though, there are certain Tropes / Themes / Fic Concepts that are hard Nopes for me in most contexts but are for Hawkeye totally fine because, well, he’s a bit of a special bird.
14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?
Major character death. ESPECIALLY in MASH, if we’re not talking a character who’s already… etc. I can think of 2-4 authors who I would MAYBE. MAYBE read a major character death from. Breaks my heart tooooooo much <3
THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTIONS and I’m sorry about the. length. LMAO got excited about my windchimes
#my fucking god#so sorry livv again the. length of this but THANK YOU i had so much fun#anyway#meta#I guess?#deep read of the. s2g2 windchimes. for anyone interested in my marginal symbolic insanity#ask game
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A W.I.P.Whenever Variation!
I’ve been slowly plugging away at a soft-smut Asher/Babe W.I.P., so I thought this would be a good time to try out a tag game I once talked about with incredible-friend-and-enabler, @ejunkiet. Instead of sharing an excerpt of this W.I.P., I’m going to share a handful of random paragraphs from a W.I.P.. (I don’t know about anyone else, but I also struggle to figure out how much of a text to share in sneak-previews like these, so I though having the freedom to choose paragraphs that aren’t in succession might be fun and help readers engage with fics as they try to put the pieces together.)
If you’d like to participate (or want to do a more traditional WIPW), everyone is welcome join the fun! I’m going to tag @ejunkiet, @sealriously-sealrious, @dominimoonbeam, @taelonsamada, and @gingerbreadmonsters, but no pressure, friends! (Tags back always appreciated so I can read your wonderful work!)
Thanks for reading!
Rating: Teen for this excerpt (but full fic will be E for Explicit), Characters: Asher/Babe, Depictions of Consensual Trancing
He wanted to position them firmly in that dazed and dreamy headspace with which he was quite familiar. It was an intoxicating buzz that he suddenly needed Babe to experience firsthand. Asher scrunched his eyebrows together as he wondered how he could mimic that experience. He could’ve slapped himself when he realized that all he had to do was use his words to get Babe into that place. “But tonight, I want you to feel more than just good. And you will. Because tonight, Babe, I make the rules.” He stretched out his thumb and pointed it into his chest. “Rule number one, every time you obey one of my commands, you’re going to feel an extra jolt of pleasure come over you. I know how hard it can be for you to let other people lead you, even when you want to be led. So let me make it a little easier, okay?”
Asher sputtered, “Babe, whatever do you mean?” He splayed his palm flat against his chest and gripped his shirt, feigning shock. “I’m merely trying to evaluate the strength and parameters of the service we co-purchased!” He giggled, putting his hands up in the air in exasperation. “It’s a perfectly responsible, mature, fiscally-sound action.” Without warning, Asher brought his hands down to his sides and pointed to Babe. “Tell me what you were really thinking that time you were sick and I made you canned soup.”
While some vampires sold their services independently, Asher had always felt like going through the bureau was the smartest way to go about buying a trance, especially when it was going to be involved in intimate affairs. The bureau was regulated through the Department. A legal contract accompanied every trance, not to mention that the vampires employed at the bureau were trained in how to explain the effects of their trances to nonvampiric citizens. They were highly skilled in the delicate art of trancing, meaning that they knew how to craft careful wording of their trances to ensure that the magic they delivered was exactly what the customer wanted. There was an official record filed with the Department, in case anything went wrong. It was the safest way for Asher and Babe to explore how they might take advantage of trancing magic in ways that gave them both something they needed.
"Show me you're ready for this, Babe," Asher commanded, slow and cool without a hint of hesitation. "Kneel for your beta."
#redacted asmr#redacted fanfiction#redactedverse#redacted asher#redacted babe#wipw variation tag game#consensual trancing
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Which fandoms are you on? Any game ones?
Puhaaa!!! 😆 That’s a surprisingly difficult one..
The list is waaaay too long and changing constantly 😅
Plus, I’m an old woman so I’ve been watching/reading stuff for a looooooong time already… So I tend to forget and usually draw blanks when I’m asked to write lists.. pls send help 🤣🙈
Also.. I hope it doesn’t sound weird, but I actually enjoy a lot of media without truly considering myself an active part of “the fandom” 🤔like.. in a sense that I don’t always necessarily feel the urge to interact and/or create fan content, even though I like something a lot. This is even more a thing in particular when it comes to tickle art!! Let’s just say my decision whether I want to create something is very private and individual in a way 🤔 It has to feel right for me if that makes sense. So this list will contain things I might never consider drawing for 😅
Okeeeeee 🙈🙈🙈 Sorry for the ramble on such a “short and simple” ask!!! I have a talent for making things complicated 🤣
Honestly, I suck at this… 😩🙈 But somehow I felt the need to clarify before I get into it 🙃🙃
EDIT!!! I made a tiny update to the list and added a colour code!!
Green: I usually feel comfortable with creating art for these fandoms.
Orange: I might create art for them but it strongly depends on the scenario and/or characters.
Red: Just no ^^ For personal reasons.
NOW! For the actual list! 🤣👇👇👇👇 (Yaaay)
It’s probably not truly a “fandom” list but more an excerpt of old and new personal favourites of mine 💪
-------------------------------------
Anime/Manga/Webcomics:
19 Days
91 Days (omg this looks so stupid listed like this, but this is neither a typo nor a joke 🤣🤣🙈)
ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka
Aggretsuko
Akatsuki no Yona
Arcane
Bananafish (old manga reader here 😭👋)
Black Lagoon
Candidate for Goddess
Castlevania
Corsair
Cowboy Bebop
Cute High Earth Defense Club Love! 😂
DBZ
Detective Conan (yes I still read/watch that 😂💪 I’m more or less up to date)
Digimon (childhood memories go brrr)
Durarara
Erased
Ergo Proxy
Free
FMA
Gangsta.
Given 💖✨🎵
Ghibli movies 💖
Grand Blue (not Fantasy! The other one.. the stupid one 🤣 👌👌👌)
Great Pretender
GTO
Gurren Lagann
Haikyuu
Hajime no Ippo
Hellsing
Initial D
Kuroko no Basuke
Madoka Magica
MahoYome
Makoto Shinkai Movies ✨🌈
Most manga by Ogeretsu Tanaka (as you might have guessed 😂🙈)
Orange (if you really really wanna cry, watch this 😭😭😭)
Ore Monogatari (So! Adorable! 😤💖 Fight me!)
Pokémon (been there since day 1 you could say 😂😂😂🙈)
Rage of Bahamut
Several manga by Rihito Takarai
Rose of Versailles
Run with the Wind
Rurouni Kenshin (including the live action movies! ✨)
Sk8
Spy x Family
Sword Art Online
Sword of the Stranger
Tamen De Gushi
Tsurune
Umibe no Etranger
Vampire Hunter D
Vinland Saga
Wotakoi!! (Seriously! I’ve never felt so attacked yet represented by an anime 😤💖)
Yu-Gi-Oh! (At least as long as Atem was still there XD And Jesus…. I still know how to play the game, but at some point I lost track of all the new cards with their crazy effects so I couldn’t build a decent deck to save my life.. so rip 😂🙈)
Yuri on Ice 💖
Yuru Camp (Most wholesome thing ever!!!! Change my mind 😤💖)
------------------------
Games:
Animal Crossing (I play it like a cat lady happily cultivating my island in precious solitude 🤣🤣)
Ace Attorney (various titles)
Final Fantasy (esp. FFXV)
F1 (2021-2022 🤣🤣 Just time trials for fun on the weekends)
Legend of Zelda (various titles)
Mario Kart (lololo is that even a “fandom”? But I’m actually not bad at this game ^^ I even won two tournaments at big LAN parties a few years back 🤣💪)
Pokémon (various titles)
Yakuza (I LOVE this series!!!! 💖💪🔥)
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HHHHHRRRRRRrrrrrrr
Ok.. this list feels random af 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I'm certain that I forgot super important stuff, I swear 😩🙈
And I probably even screwed up the alphabet at some point 😆
Ofc I watched the usual popular Shonen stuff as well, but I won't put all of these to the list since I’m not that invested anymore (stuff like One Piece, Naruto, etc. etc.)
Sooo... I have no idea if this is what you hoped for anon 😅
If you still want to specifically know if I like a certain anime, manga, game, movie etc etc, (that might now not be in the list) just ask away!
But anyway! 😆
There you go!!
#dokidoki asks#my best shot at -fandom- lists.......#this post is a mess XDDDDD#but I tried my best to be honest :D
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#ShareYourProgress Tag Game!
Tagged by: @saedoeswriting and I think @ashen-crest (like 20 years ago) thank you both! This is a really neat game!
Tagging: @spacetimewraithwrites, @abalonetea, @idreamonpaper, @sleepy-night-child, @winterandwords, @kaiusvnoir, @writeouswriter, @writer-on-time, and anyone else who sees this who hasn't done it! I know I'm late and you may have already been tagged in this, but I'd love to see everyone's process! (As always, please don't feel pressured or rushed!)
Rules: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag others. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!
I'm going with Time Borrowed since it's my most recent creation
Inspiration
So this idea started hitting me in the fall of 2021. I was working a job I really hated (I'm talking REALLY hated), and it was making me miss an old job and coworkers I had as security personnel. As we all know, the last few years had been shit, and the wip I was working on at the time was a little too dark and heavy. So I tried to think up something lighter and funnier. So I took inspiration from that previous job, which was my first job with coworkers who were really like a ragtag family, and went for a futuristic hopepunk future.
I was an idiot at my first job, I had no idea how adult world things worked, but I had a great work family to help me out. And I thought, wait, instead of a teenager, what if we played with clueless robot tropes? It's futuristic. It's fun. It'll be cute. And that's where we started, with Beau.
Preparation
I'm gonna be honest, the preparation wasn't its own step (never really is), I usually like to jump in with absolutely no idea where I'm going or what a plot even is. I just wanted to do something fun. Preparation was mostly Character Creation –that was is. No worldbuilding, no plot, just jotting down random ideas that popped into my head, trying to dig up really funny bits and things, and then building a world around it. My main goal was to have fun as more escapism than anything.
Art process
I stumbled across these Fictober prompts and dove head first, making things up as I went. Scribbling out scenes, finding the natural flow/voice of characters, and really trying not to place stress on things. Just have fun. By the end of October, I had a rough plot I wanted to use, but I still wasn't sure how I wanted it to end.
I went into NaNoWriMo and really started to put it together. I started posting snippets and excerpts and really got motivated with feedback! I started really fleshing out worldbuilding and as the new year rolled around really got hit with extraterrestrial ideas to drive home the Sci-Fi aspect.
I finished the first draft in May, and I've let it sit for a while and hope to get back to it shortly.
Thoughts
I love, love this story, which I love most everything I write, but this one is a little bit special. Every step of the way has been fun and comforting, and it doesn't seem daunting or impossible to complete. It might be my first attempt at publishing, and may have ideas for a sequel!
But I hope everyone enjoys reading the bits and pieces I've posted as much as I've enjoyed writing it! The community here has helped in a big way, so thank you to you guys too!
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💭📚for the fic writer ask game?
riaaa ty for the ask!!
💭 What inspires you and your writing?
honestly anything and everything does! i've pulled inspiration from just about everything you can think of - other shows/movies/books, posts i see, stories people tell me, something i hear someone say, things that have happened to me personally, poetry i read, songs i listen to, random objects i see out in the wild, things i'm feeling.
all i need is something that sends a spark into my brain and then i'm off.
📚 Is there a fanfic or fanfic writer you recommend?
ooh, okay i looove reccing fics and writers so this is a great one. however, i feel like most of the writers that i would normally rec are our friends or writers i know you've already heard of lol, sooooo i will give a couple of fics this time instead!
first up:
someone else's favorite song by @fastcardotmp3
i am currently about halfway through this one and it is absolutely gorgeous. a beautiful exploration of grief and friendship and love and what that all means when it gets tangled up and the edges start to blur. literally anything by dot is a masterpiece and this one is no exception to that!!
heed the ominous warning of talking heads by audacity_of_bluejays
this one was SO good omg. i know you're picky about your time travel lol so before you see that tag and go hm not gonna chance it, it's important that you know that it's not really time travel per se? it's more like steve gets transported to an alternate universe that exists because he made one decision instead of another at a previous point in time to show him how his life would be if he actually does that. and he has to like figure out how to get back to his own universe so he can make sure this one doesn't happen for him. it's a really good one and the platonic stobin in this one is also sososooo good, they are ride or die in any universe in any circumstance and that's so nice to see here.
your cosmic call sign by @nancywheeeler
okay i know i recced this one on the server already after i finished reading it but im reccing it again bc holy fuck it's so good and i love it so much. the vibes in this one are off the charts. it's got sci-fi, it's got bowie, it's got radio dj eddie, it's got a homemade documentary, it's got aliens, it's got everything. oh and the format of the fic is SO cool, like it's got radio show excerpts and newspaper article pieces and things like that interspersed through the actual story that add SO much and it's just so awesome and so creative. also the fact that super 8 (aka my favorite movie) is mentioned in the beginning authors note is just. an automatic win for this fic bc that movie is my favorite and it is so underrated and the fact that it was an inspiration for this fic is everything to me sdkfs.
hours and hours by @steddiesupportgroup
i read this one a while ago but it has been on my mind sooo much the past few days lol. it's a pwp lmfao, bc what is friendship if not reccing pwp's to each other right? but yeah it's got a lot going on but never in a way that makes it feel overwhelming as a reader, and it all melds together very well. it's heady, it's languid yet purposeful, it's passionate, it's fun, it's full of care. a very very good read!!
noise by @viagoh
i'm sure nico is probably tired of seeing my name pop up in their notifications but i cannot not gush about all of their stuff. their art is everything to me but this fic!! this fic is sooo good and sooo beautifully written!! a glimpse at steve and eddie's relationship and a brief exploration of steve's parents and what they meant to him. a trip down memory lane but in a way that's sort of bittersweet. tw for some memory loss but it's more of an allusion to it, like it's not quiiiiite happening yet but it's something that will happen later down the line. but yeah, the characterization in this one is just sooo spot on and i love the way that steve and eddie's dynamic was written here, it's so good.
fanfic writer ask game
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Hey!! Random ask time bc I wanna learn more about people’s WIPs!!
What’s your current absolute favorite thing about your primary WIP? It can be a teeny little detail, a massive part of the plot, a character, anything. What is it, and why??
Hey, thanks for the ask!!
God, even though I've only just introduced him in the first chapter, I've gathered that Dev is going to be a fun character to write mostly because of his kid-like tendencies lol
Here's what he looks like (art credit to @sizzlin-system, because it's his character!!)
There's an excerpt of where he appears in the chapter!
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12 and 18 for the writer ask meme?
12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?
i suppose there's a couple, but overall i've hit most of my targets! i do want to write sloppy drunk sex, if that counts as a trope? and i'd love to try my hand at a royalty type type that has ladies in it (shoves blood will have blood under the bed) so i can have fun with the devotion of ladies in waiting...
18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.
OKAY SO WE'RE GONNA GO BACK IN TIME FOR THIS ONE BC IT REMAINS ONE OF MY CROWNING ACHIEVEMENTS
(uh. pedestal spoilers ahead. a fic that is 11 years old...)
throughout the ENTIRE fic, there was the warning of the dark-haired monster, and later on, we had nick's famous black hoodie. (separate things, but related in what i pulled off - bear with me!) pedestal was sparse on physical description, but what we did know: that nick wore a black hoodie, that nick had black hair, that the narrator looked like his little brother, and that lola dressed like a goth and had black hair.
this was set up in the 10s-20s of a 160 chapter fic.
fast forward to after nick goes evil - we catch a handful of incriminating glimpses of a figure in a black hoodie. the narrator is repeatedly warned about the dark-haired monster, too. the narrator, and the readers, assume these to be the same person*.
cue the finale.
lola is the figure in the black hoodie; she's one of the big bads. seriously, that reveal - the foreshadowing of a GOTH TRAINER but everyone was sooooo focused on nick, readers and narrator a like - still fills me with golden light. i can't 100% say with certainty that it was planned from the beginning, since pedestal was written so long ago and had zero outline for most of the fic, but i am good at accidental foreshadowing like that. or maybe my subconscious hoards details like that to pop up in my conscious mind later. i don't know how it works, but i love it!
it didn't get as much reader attention, but at the very end, des (pedestal), the narrator's starter, watching the approaching moral event horizon - i'll just put an excerpt here.
"You are going to stop the dark-haired monster?" Des questioned, voice low and even more frightening.
I looked back down at Lola. Pitch black hair, always had that dark of hair. She had been behind this all. She had twisted Nick, put him up on the white thing's pedestal just to help him fall again. He had died because of her. "I am."
"No." Des shook his head and took a step towards me. He reopened his eyes and they were hard. Resigned. "I am."
"...What?" No. I wasn't going to let him do that—but in my surprise, he had taken a couple more steps towards us, until he was so close I could have reached out to touch him.
I started forward, intent on wrestling him back if I had to, but he told me simply, "My color eyesight is not very good."
I paused, set back by his bizarre and random statement.
Des turned on me and physically pushed me out of the way, placing himself between Lola and I. "To me, your hair looks as dark as hers. I will not permit you to do this, Trainer. Not to her, not to anyone. Can't you see what she is trying to do?"
as i said, it didn't get as much reader attention, but given the comparison with nick's brother (and a very lively art community, so there were canon character designs), the narrator could've been the dark-haired monster, too. not black hair, but dark brown - and what does it matter to a starter pokemon?
i'm still very proud of pedestal, and those plot twists are still high up on my heart pedestal of Written Things To Be Proud Of
[ask me more things here!]
#sorry this was late#ask#ask meme answer#anonymous#i know that answer was long but OH GOD am i proud of that twist in pedestal#the lola one was bigger#but des quietly accusing the narrator of being the monster from the future is near and dear to my heart
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Introduction!
Hi yall! Name is Bell F. Archer, but you can call me Archie and I'm a writer who has decided to make a blog for my work! I've never made one of these so here we go!
I post mostly on Instagram under @writersprocrastinators but I hope to post longer works here, updates on my WIPs, any random prompt I see, and hopefully receive tons of asks and prompt requests. I'm 26 living in the US, I enjoy many different TV shows, but I loved shows like Chuck, Bones, Castle, most of the MCU works, iZombie, Family Guy, the 100, Wynona Earp, Motherland: Fort Salem, Lucifer, ATLA, Walking dead universe, honestly the list is never ending it would be easier if yall asked if I've seen it and I'll say yes or no lol. Hope you enjoy this intro!
I'll follow your accounts from this account seeing as its my only and main account.
I however will not follow if you're under 18, or if you have no age on your blog. As another warning, this blog will contain some material that may not be suitable for underage viewers, nothing too intense but better safe than sorry. I am not responsible if you read something you should not have, and all mature content will be marked as such!
♤ About me ♤
I'm relatively new to setting up a blog on Tumblr for this purpose so if there's any tips, please send them my way!
I like fictional works ranging from crime dramas, romance, fantasy, and others like dystopian works. Honestly, I don't read nearly as much as I could, but I write a lot and enjoy fan fictions! I find fan writing to be fun to read because the writing styles tend to feel very different between all writers, for the same base content. Reading each authors twists on a particular moment is pretty inspiring! It's hard to explain, but I I love to read it, but I don't particularly write it and would love to chat about it! I'm always looking to follow blogs that post anything writing related.
♤About this blog♤
This blogs purpose is for any and all of my writings/poems/stories and whatever else I write. I'll hopefully start doing some OC introductions, world building, or any art that can connect to my works. For example, one of my WIPs has a map that I've been working on, and I've also been trying to teach myself how to draw in order to draw the OCs out (it's very hard and I'm having a hard time lol).
I'm open to asks, prompts, questions, and messages, but do keep it respectful, I don't find wasting my time to be something I enjoy. If you have any advice or recommendations please also let me know! If you'd like something written for you, in a fictional sense not an essay or something lol, I will gladly look into it!
All writing done here is entirely my own, written by me and for me. Please do not copy my work anywhere else © copyright notice is below and on this page. I hate that I even have to say this, but people steal content so often and I just dont want the headache.
♤How my writings will work♤
Not all of my work is connected, but a lot of them are part of the same "series", specifically the poems are. They’ll be tagged as the same series. The WIPs are not connected, but they both have tons of similar callbacks and subtle author references.
Most of the poems are within a part of a series, and the characters for the "conversations" are generally the same people unless I say otherwise.
♤What you can expect to see♤
On this blog you can expect to see plenty of poetry, prose, short works, and maybe even excerpts of my WIPS. Let me know what you prefer to see!
♤About my WIPS♤
Whatever Means Necessary (working title)
This is a crime drama fiction, that is by far my oldest work. It's got a dash of romance but for this one it's less and more subtle, due to its nature. Part 2 has a bit more of it, but that WIP is very far from happening. It's been in progress since 2011 about, and I have yet to finish it, hence the procrastinators part. This one is about 3-5 chapters from being done! Its all the editing that's gonna get me.
I would rate this as a new adult fiction.
Some tropes in WMN are spies, futuristic weapons, angst, life changing family news, discovering family, family nemesis, casual drug and alcohol use, slow burn (like glacial), found family, betrayal, symbolism, and besties.
Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, attempted SA, death, cursing, sexual scenarios
Fallen (working title)
This is a fantasy/dystopian & adventure fiction that is newer and has many more moving parts, lore, descriptions and OCs. This one is not even close to being fully written out, but is plotted out fairly well. I learned my mistake with no outline this time around.
I would rate this again, as a new adult fiction. But too mature for young adult, not quite mature enough to be adult.
Some tropes in Fallen are enhanced human abilities, zombie-esque creatures, mythical creatures and beings, monsters, reinvented military, dystopian governments, utopian governments, romance, not so slow slow burn, extreme angst, character death, defying destiny, defying fate, mental health exploration, race discussions and combating aggressions, found family, gender and sexuality exploration, positions of power, morally grey characters, betrayal, and symbolism.
Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, mentions and attempts of SA, major and side character death, cursing, sexual scenarios, murder, illness, heavy casual drug and alcohol use. This work is considerably grittier.
Hope you enjoyed the Intro! First post is coming within the next few days!
Have a beautiful one, Bell.
© Bell F. Archer, Tumblr and writersprocrastinators, 2024.
#creative writing#writing#author#poets of tumblr#poets on poetry#poets on tumblr#poetsandwriters#poetscommunity#poetsclub#sad poems#work in progress#writers on tumblr#blog intro#intro post#writersprocrastinators#short poem#short story#poems and prose
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Hi. Call me Spicee (pronounced 'Spicy'). I will accept any pronouns except he/him.
This is my writing side-blog, where I post excerpts from my Quotev account, write based on prompts, random characters/info, and reblog writing memes.
I'll try to tag each accordingly, but if I forget, here's a list:
(#spicee samples) for excerpts of a longer story, will typically come with a link to if applicable.
(#spicee orders) for prompt based works.
(#spicee dishes) for character information.
(#spicee sides) for memes and other random stuff. This one is inconsistent.
Any other tags beginning with Spicee are the different projects I'll post.
Below here is a simple 'know the author' bit.
Hi. I'm Spicee. I write for fun more than anything else. I have a torrential output of ideas to distract from my life. I am in college. Not any of the arts, I'm a mechanical engineering major.
Anyways. I got my start with Wings of Fire fanfiction. It wasn't good but it was a start. You'll see a lot of its influence in one of my projects, as well as a very specific musical that I'm not going to tell you unless you get it right. (The Project is Salamandalos).
I also have one I've been working on for... Almost six years now? Yeah. It's a fantasy story about a wizard I came up with after thinking Wizards and Witches being gendered was stupid. It spiralled from there. (The Project is Lerinhold).
And the third often changes. My attention flits from one thing to another, but the main one I'm trying to actually finish writing right now is "Cosmos", my 'Terraria' fanfiction. Only in quotes because the. It's Terraria. It's basically just a free background I care about and I get to make player character OCS. Anyways I've been thinking it up for two years now and I'm like 5/8ths of the way through the whole thing. Which is solid.
Anyways. See you.
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oooooooh my god so random of you to ask I'd love to tell you
ok so the card itself was supposed to be part of an art thing about yami yk dying again drama drama everyone's sad that's the context
the title of the card "we say that once there were two" is a quote from the poem war of the foxes (from the book war of the foxes) by Richard Siken love the poem do read it at some point the whole book is up on genius lyrics for free
so the poem itself starts with this fox trying to eat two rabbits and they talk to each other
" Pip: We're doomed.
Flip: We're not.
Pip: Are you sure?
Flip: Yes. Here, hide inside me.
This is the story of Pip and Flip, the bunny twins. We say that once there were two
and now there is only one. "
that's the excerpt of the poem I'm specifically referencing in comparing the relationship of yami and yugi with yami literally hiding in the other for his own safety they become one to save themselves
(you could also argue that this is in reference to the puzzle the big triangle thing but that's a whole other can of worms of hiding bodies in bodies
(also it's a light monster yugi is the light one in the relationship yada yada that's just for myself mostly)
than BOTTOM TEXT BOX
in the top brackets is the kind of monster the card would be in this case
[ SOMEONE HAS TO LEAVE / FIRST ]
pre slash is the king of monster it is
it's a shorthand for knowing basically what kind of thing is going on with this card
in this case it's telling you the main crux of this quote is about loss
the second half of the / is basically what the monster does it's either normal and has no fun ability or effect and it does
in this case the / is both emphasizing the word first obviously but it's also saying it's referencing yami due to him being the first cuz the post / is a way of sorting the two (ish) kinds of monsters in this case it's sorting the two characters first (yami) second (yugi)
"this is a very old story / there is not other version of this story"
this quote is mostly referencing the tablet of memories which is a literal stone tablet made about yumis OG death so it is both a very old story (he's like 3000/5000 year sold depending on where you look) and there's also no other way this could have ended yami was always meant to die but not even in the normal way in the way that every choice he made in the show was to get him closer to finally being able to pass over to the afterlife and his death is literally carved into stone
#the second quote is from the worm kings lullaby also good#and the atk/def is just their ages which i just thought was fun#sand#adam fucking around
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“You forgot to bring the umbrella,” Edgar says, knowing he had called Scriabin to bring him one before making the drive home.
“I didn’t forget anything,” Scriabin replies, an amused expression on his face. “Since when do I do whatever you want?” he added rhetorically.
Edgar sighed.
“You could’ve just waited for me to get inside. Now we’re both gonna get wet,” Edgar reasoned. “We can’t afford to get sick.”
“Stop being such an old man. Getting a cold is the last thing you should be worried about.”
#edgarvargas#scriabinvargas#zarla#vargas#scriabin wants attention edgar#singing in the rain#random excerpts to go with art is fun#not quite a kiss#all the blushies#this was fun#mischief is afoot#jthm
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Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development
This is the Mass Effect version of this post.
[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]
Note: Drug use is mentioned.
Cut for length.
Mass Effect 1
ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003
Codenamed “SFX”
Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game
Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies
By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel
Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures
By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP
They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.”
The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game
In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer
An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2
Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt
As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game
CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”
CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes
Tali used to be called Talsi
On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity
There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them
Early versions of Asari had hair
Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)
The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians
BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”
The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”
Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached
The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera
The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art
A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?
Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol
Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky
Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones
Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos
The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.
The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)
Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)
Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc
The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”
They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”
Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”
BioWare Labs
As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs
Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years
Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)
Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy
Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story
Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better
Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved
Mass Effect 2
Player choices carrying over was a first for BW
Dirty Dozen-inspired plot
Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)
Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel
There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”
“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM
The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”
When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes
Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence
Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”
Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”
Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”
At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive
Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs
BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics
CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens
Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything
Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book
Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off
Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3
They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO
Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively
Mass Effect 3
“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”
ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”
Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players
JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel
The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali
MP chars were voiced by cops and military people
The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver
The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”
Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase
ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console
FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art
To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since
Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made
Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead
“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”
Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’”
This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued
Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”
The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″
For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient
Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers
Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’”
There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.”
Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime
“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”
AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”
As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”
Mass Effect: Andromeda
By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise
Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail
“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster
MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray
“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”
Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”
Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”
One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact
Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration
German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde
Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine
Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”
Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)
Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements
For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA
Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures
– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development
#mass effect#mass effect: andromeda#bioware#video games#jade empire#Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development#Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development spoilers#Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development spoiler#spoilers#spoiler#lul#dragon age#garrus vakarian#best boy#feels#anthem#long post#longpost#drugs for ts#drugs mention#drugs cw
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This is a master list of important links containing categories for organization. Please keep in mind when they are updated. SFW. No curse words or explicit material. Header by me. Picture source.
Relevant as of 07/30/2022.
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