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crimsondestroyer · 7 months

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Ryu Number: The M.C. from The Under Presents

Alright. I've done a few Ryu numbers in the past, but none as elaborate as this one, so for once, I figured I'd make my own post explaining the... elaborate, to say the least, path I took to get here. Several dead ends and a couple weeks of research later, here we are.

So. To those of you who don't know anything about the Under, hi. I'm crimsonDestroyer. One of my many hobbies is playing VR games, and one such game is The Under Presents, by Tender Claws, a game I play somewhat often and speedrun periodically. A while back, I wondered in passing if I could figure out a way to connect any of the Under's characters to Ryu, like, say, The M.C. This seemed like a simple question at the time, but, well, let's see.

To start off with, there's a fairly simple Limited route. One aspect of The Under Presents in the past was its live actors, in-game characters played by real people who would interact with mute player characters in the game's multiplayer areas. Unfortunately, the actor run has since ended, and though there's been brief returns of actors here and there, it seems to be mostly over. However, one such actor-played character was a skeleton going by the name of Amelia. As Amelia's lore would later highlight, she is, in fact, the one and only Amelia Earhart, prior to her death and entrance into the Under. There are many hints around the game's world that Amelia Earhart was in the Under in the past, but she herself is nowhere to be found - except for this live actor. Given this was, by its nature, a time-limited occurrence, this would give the M.C. a nice, clean Limited Ryu Number of 3.

However, Limited Ryu Numbers are lame. Can we do better?

One of the many locations you can visit in the Under is the Crob Pit. There, by solving a puzzle with some fellow players, you can summon a massive crab monster who will eat you, sending you to the Den, inside him. There, you can find an assortment of crab bones and other gruesome things, in addition to one peculiar fixture.

This is the only intact human skeleton in the entire game, within the stomach of an enormous crab. Now, given the fact that Amelia Earhart is mentioned excessively by props around the setting of the game, with items such as her plane and a banner for a show featuring her scattered all over the place, her physical absence within the Under is quite suspicious. Additionally, the actor-played character was created after the game released, and it's implied that the actor characters have some degree of the supernatural to them, meaning the existence of the actor in no way means that the character's physical body cannot remain elsewhere in the Under. Given the popular theory that Amelia Earhart's body was never found in real life because it was eaten by coconut crabs, this seems... intentional. If you consider this to be Amelia Earhart's body, the M.C. has a Ryu number of 3.

However, given the complete lack of any verbal confirmation or hints to this skeleton's identity, and this being solely based on context clues, I'm not confident calling it for certain, so let's keep digging.

One feature of the Under is the scripted stage shows, which play on loop on the main stage in the game's theater area. One such show features a man by the name of Sal Sisyphus. Sal's act consists of him rolling a boulder up a hill while giving a motivational speech that inevitably descends into nonsense after he slips and drops the boulder back down. That sounds quite a bit like traditional Sisyphus - endless torture, endless repetition, endless suffering, pushing a rock up and down a hill forever. Plus, as far as I can tell, the mythological Sisyphus has no second name given, so who's to say Sal isn't his first name? If you buy into that, the M.C. also has a Ryu number of 3.

But this one DEFINITELY felt pretty sketchy to me, so I went back to the drawing board once more.

Finding a way out of Tender Claws is... hard. See, Tender Claws has made three big commercially-released VR titles: The Under Presents, Virtual Virtual Reality, and Virtual Virtual Reality 2, all of which can be linked without much issue. A sentient skeleton named Tina works in both a stage act in the Under, and her namesake bar, Tinas', in VVR2's setting, Scottsdale. And, as a sequel, VVR2 features numerous returning characters from the original VVR. All you need is to find one character, just one, across those three games, and you have an out. There HAS to be something.

It was at this point that a friend mentioned that Elon Musk is in Virtual Virtual Reality 2, and I had to do a double-take.

Meet Elon. He's a talking onion. More accurately, he's an AI upload of a human consciousness who takes the form of a talking onion in the digital world. Between his name, his personality, his mannerisms, the fact that he was the second human to ever upload himself (after an extremely important character from the first game), and the fact that VVR2's virtual worlds are referred to as "metaverses", the implication as to who he is seems to be pretty obvious. I didn't know he existed, because I never finished VVR2 due to some technical issues. Regardless, here he is!

With a proper pop-culture figure in our hands, we can finally find our way out of Tender Claws. Elon Musk is still a relatively modern person, so there aren't many games with him in them yet, but with some clever googling and the help of TV Tropes, I tracked down an obscure little game called Good Pizza, Great Pizza, released for mobile and later ported to PC and Switch. In this game, you make pizza for an assortment of customers, real and fictional, which just so happens to include one Mr. Musk. From there, it was just a matter of tracing the rest of the way to Ryu from one of the other noteworthy characters who appear in the game. There was a tempting Dracula connection, but unfortunately, he's exclusive to a time-limited Halloween event. How ironic, that the first and last dead ends would both be time-limited characters. In any case, Albert Einstein will do the job of giving us our final two jumps nicely, passing through Mario's Time Machine, and finally bringing us home.

The M.C. has a Ryu number of 3/5, and a Limited Ryu Number of 3.

#the under presents #the mc #street fighter #ryu #ryu number

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megabuild · 5 months

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what is aoyuer? is that an acronym for something?

okay so i meant to make a big doc explaining what aoyuer is like months ago but then i started working on different projects and put it on the back burner.. and then i got ill and now i don't have much time to work on stuff at all. but not having the doc sucks and means anything i ever say about it is very confusing. so i'm so sorry anon for using your ask as an excuse to just dump as much aoyuer lore as i can without reasonably spoiling it but also thanks for reminding me that i have a lot of followers here who have never heard of it. a sobering thought

tldr; aoyuer (as of yet untitled empires rewrite) (sorry bree) is my au rewrite of empires smp that aims to connect seasons 1 and 2 as well as after life, new life, and a bunch more inbetween, with a major focus on pixlriffs' story. it also ties up a lot of loose ends and is generally darker and more adult-aimed than the original series. technically that's all you need to know but here's the no spoilers plot rundown for those interested

so aoyuer is built up of ~7 arcs but only 4 of them are like Super important

arc 0: this is just afterlife smp and a ton of early worldbuilding, the crash of the great stags, etc; what's most important from this is that oli exists and has for thousands of years, probably

arc 1: empires season 1! set in the 1500s, the world is going through a sort of renaissance period with massive technological advancements. pixlriffs the copper king (cprk) is working a boring little library job and spending most of his time kicking himself and being mad he hasn't done anything with his life (he is only like 30 but the idea of feeling old and unaccomplished even when you're young is a major theme for arc 1). enter fwhip! who is his annoying ex-roommate ex-bestie ex-boyfriend from university that left him on pretty bad terms. he has a way more accomplished job and as part of that he has been allowed to head The Empires Project which is a major journey intended to further some distant colonies while also investigating the land they're on. the land has some weiiird properties which fwhip thinks could be harnessed to create functional immortality (which was the subject of pix's thesis). he wants pix to come with him and investigate. pix feels weird about it but agrees to come along and be the "emperor" for the desert colony while he does his research... and then things get fucked up and scary! its a high fantasy that switches between a metaphorical dissection of their horrid will they won't they relationship and both of their issues aaand a more Literal dissection of the land and things living in it. including people and animals. at times. and also involves pix accidentally awakening a curse for a billion million years which sets the rest of aoyuer in motion.

arc 1.5 is sort of Not important but iwlike it a lot. there's not much to be said for it without major spoilers but it's set a little bit after arc 1 and comprises of fwhip being very upset about how his stupid project fell apart and trying to write up an Official Report on why everything fell apart while also coming to terms with him being the worst guy to ever have lived or something. much of aoyuer is like thinly veiled metaphors for mental illness but this one is just about mental illness

arc 2 sends us years forward into season 2 in the 1800s and our protagonist is professor pixelle riffs, lorekeeper (lrkp) who leaves his job as an archaeology lecturer to go and study the ancient capital and The Machiiine. because the machine set up WAY too much cool stuff to just ignore. sculk infection/possession is a big part of this arc. however while he's doing all this he meets oli! remember him? who has crash landed in S2 (basically the same way he did in canon) and is now regularly butting heads with pix. they eventually become friends and then umm something more :3 a lot of this remains the same as canon except the sculk arc gets a proper conclusion and ties into the ghost stuff. it ends with oli's finale where he still fakes his death (the goblin stuff is going to be changed but it's up in the air right now) and pix is devastated but pretty certain there's something not quite right so he picks greggory up and goes off in search of his lame ass boyfriend.

arc 2.5 actually takes place mid arc 2 because it's the hermpires crossover, which is less different dimensions and more different times (hermitcraft is our present and the rift facilitates time travel). when pixelle the archaeologist steps through the rift it causes serious time fuckery and so he sort of gets. forcefully ejected from his body and becomes a ghost possessing pixl riffs of the hermitcraft recap (rcp) who stumbles out of the rift very tired and very confused! there's a lot of fun mistaken identity stuff between him and oli and this is generally the most like. comedic and casual of the arcs though it still has some sweet moments.

arc 3 is just new life smp. where pixelle finally ends up in nl, finds that his lame ass boyfriend is still alive, and has relationship drama with him Except on top of that the land that new life is set on has similar properties to the land from arc 1 (functional immortality except it has some different effects, aka. going through drastic physical changes every time you "die") and so pixelle starts investigating that and maybe finds out that his whole life and his ancestors and descendants lives might be caught up in a time loop because of the copper king. forever and ever. this hasn't got much for it because i was going to work from new life canon as a base but then both pix and oli stopped playing on it LMFOHALDH but anyway.

aaand arc 4! final arc! which is set in the present right after pixl (the recap one) returns home from the hermitpires crossover. except the weird ghost voice of his ancestor in his head.. isn't going away? or rather its been replaced by a different one who is sending him on The Heros Journey. along with zloy and lyarrah and modern fwhip. this is basically the long awaited Conclusion to the curse that the copper king put in place and a lot of bullshit happens that icant really explain but it ties up all the loose ends and is generally just pix consistently having the worst time. hes the only pix who goes through hell without bringing it upon himself like he was just born.

and um. that's aoyuer! obviously there's more for all the arcs and i am happy to answer Basically any questions even though i get a little nervous sharing stuff about it because im shy. But iwhope thag explains at least a bit for everyone. My dream is to write this all into various fanfics but that looks kinda unlikely rn but it means a lot to me and you can kinda safely assume if I'm ever talking about or drawing empires there's a 99% chance it's actually aoyuer because I forget canon exists .AOYUER WORLDWIDE

#anon #asks #aoyuer

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ponett · 1 year

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it's been a bit, so here's another roundup of some slarpg-related questions from my retrospring! some about the cast, some about worldbuilding and lore, others about the process of making the game

since holly floated the idea in her own stream: Did Jodie forge her own grill?

you know what? sure. this is canon now

very important question did catherine just pop out of the cauldron fully grown like that or did she actually experience childhood. need this answer for a debate

like most people catherine was born a baby

Given that it's the day of the Big Game: How do each of the Novas (+ Faith/Beverly) feel about sports?

jodie likes sports and follows the brightport teams actively, but she's also too good of a sport to really hate their rival teams

allison's always liked the act of playing sports way more than watching them (although she was never good enough at following orders to play on a team as a kid). she'll watch the big games with jodie, though

beverly is a casual fan who will at least root for local teams but doesn't really pay that close attention

melody and faith don't follow sports but can be convinced to show up for a super bowl party type get together

claire can only get invested in a sport or team if there's a jon bois type documentary that gets deep into the nerd shit

Were there ever any other names other than SLARPG in the running? Or was it always gonna be slarpg all the way.

i always considered changing the name. i have a list of 75 different names i considered over the years in my notes, ranging from more generic fantasy titles to sillier ones to more unique ones. early on most involved melody's name. many later ones include "Reverie." i may share the full list someday (possibly good fodder for a patreon post), but the "serious" title i've mentioned considering before was Power Couple (or Power Couples). i still like that one

i debated over the title a lot for many reasons. mainly, people are weird about the title, either treating the whole game as a joke or assuming it's porn or whatever. some also assume that you just cannot play the game if you aren't a lesbian, a thing that people don't do with other fantasy things that happen to feature sapphic relationships without putting it in the title

the problem, of course, is that changing your title is often a death sentence. half the struggle with marketing a game is even getting people to remember it in the first place in an era where a million things are constantly fighting for your attention. people need to have seen it a few times before they create that mental connection of "oh, THAT game, i've heard of that." so changing your title massively undercuts that

in that regard, Super Lesbian Animal RPG is just way more unique and memorable of a title than the alternatives i was considering. it's direct and unambiguous about the content of the game, and it grabs your attention in a way that something like "Guardians of Reverie," for instance, doesn't. (that's not a title i was considering too seriously, just an example.) also it abbreviates to a unique hashtag, which i find convenient. also i can say that rock paper shotgun once referred to it as "brilliantly named," so like, of course i can't change it now

several of the names i considered are now in the running for an overall franchise name, though, since i have zero intention of naming a game Super Lesbian Animal Platformer or Super Lesbian Animal Visual Novel or whatever

Do werewolves exist in slarpg

yes, werewolves exist on reverie. i briefly considered including a werewolf character somewhere as a gag because i think it's really funny to imagine someone being extremely melodramatic about being cursed and turning into a wolfman in a world that has furries all over the place

what order would you rank The Novas (+ Beverly/Faith) from most to least internet/irony poisoned

claire

allison

melody

faith

jodie

beverly

hey! sorry if this is a dumb question, but a friend asked me if there were any canonically straight characters in slarpg as a joke and now i’m genuinely curious. are there?

catherine, probably? i mean really, the orientations and love lives of characters outside of the main cast just don't get commented on at all. is vicky straight? is sean? are amelia, fanta, jack, or senna? who knows. i don't

i do think it's extremely funny to be in a situation where any character being confirmed straight would be an after-the-fact word of god thing though. i didn't even do this on purpose

Are there any characters that are straight edge

beth and mary ena, canonically

Are Dragon's Beastfolk?

the ancestry of dragons on reverie is unknown. some believe them to be related to reptilian beast folk, but they're usually considered their own thing due to their unique abilities

Did melody get Brent enlargement surgery? Or is she just lucky

who is Brent and why does he need to be enlarged surgically

are class names standardized across reverie, or are adventurers largely free to call themselves whatever class name they'd like?

they'll have certain commonalities that are widely understood. you can tell someone "i'm a witch" and they'll get that means you're primarily a magic user with a curiosity in the supernatural. but there are no strict regulations about what you can call yourself, no. like allison's class is just "punk," and that isn't A Thing that you can formally train to be recognized as. that's just her vibe. some titles may come with more specific expectations - for example, paladins are supposed to derive their power from faith - but a lot of the time it just comes down to semantics. what's the difference between a witch, a mage, and a sorcerer? who fuckin cares

was the secondhand staff's bent design conceived before or after holly's creation?

before. the origin story for the bend is that when drawing melody for the first time i realized it was going to block her face, so i literally just bent it out of the way. (and also it makes the design more memorable and fits with them being undergeared first-time adventurers making do with what they've got)

is 1 gold equivalent to 1 uk pound or something like that? or is 1 gold worth a lot more than our silly paper money

1 gold on reverie is more like a penny. it would be a bit less cheery in greenridge if food cost so much that a carrot was $95

whats melody's cup size!

you know what? i have to admire your moxie for asking me this

Does fortnite exist in the slarpg universe or are they free of such silly things such as video games

allison is always cranking 90s

is melody a fan of kirby : )

i don't think melody plays a ton of video games but i think she would enjoy kirby

Which of the cast would be most likely to play a game called Super Lesbian Animal RPG?

claire

really loved the game :] which somic character do you think would blend in the most into the SLARPG world

blaze as sir percival in sonic and the black knight

do you know where the vocal samples in "B.A.D." came from? one of the best parts of those really fun bosses

i do, but i think bee might still be keeping it a secret to see if anyone ever figures it out

I love seeing all the casual outfits the main cast has in the Prologue comic but I also realized we only ever see Claire in her adventuring gear and work clothes. Do you picture her having any casual outfits or is she just always wearing her witch clothes?

claire has other outfits, but these days she's wearing her witch gear and guild tabard as much as possible because that's how she wants to be seen

How would you feel about someone making nice body pillows of the main cast

it's preferable to mean body pillows

Yoshi P signed a fan's FFXIV body pillow, are you as based as him?

i am also capable of signing an ffxiv body pillow, sure

PLEASE TELL ME FAITH AND THE PALADIN BRIGADE ARE NOT COPS

this is all but outright said in optional dialogue lol. they're not cops. they aren't allowed to arrest or kill people. they're the emergency response for magical emergencies

I've just been wondering this but are there weapon regulation laws in the SLARPG world? Just curious if only registered guilds can have them or can just anyone carry a weapon around anywhere they want? lol

this isn't something i've really explored. my immediate thought would be that it probably depends on the weapon. wielding (or selling) an Ancient Cursed Obsidian Blade of Death is probably heavily regulated, but in a world where you can get jumped by monsters while traveling there's probably less concern over people carrying around regular old swords

I'm curious, was there ever any cut plans to expand on other locations in this universe such as Brightport? Was curious about that one since several characters mentioned it in game

if you mean "were there ever plans to visit brightport in slarpg," then no

the scope of the game was always confined exclusively to the sapphire islands from the start. one of my goals with slarpg was to have a small setting compared to other globe-trotting RPGs, but to explore that setting and its cast of characters more intimately. (mother 3's nowhere islands were a big influence.) but i also generally think it's good for worldbuilding when there's more to the world than what you see within the confines of the story. it stokes the imagination and makes it feel more real. if anything, i would've liked to reference even more locations elsewhere on reverie and things happening there, but i focused on brightport since it's claire and jodie's hometown and also the nearest major city

brightport is a big, big city, and if i ever explore it i want to do it right. had i found a plot excuse to make it appear later in slarpg, it probably would've needed to be smaller than greenridge with fewer buildings to enter, due to greenridge already being over scope. (notice how the other two settlements have simple outdoor marketplaces while greenridge has four separate shops you can enter, all with their own bespoke interior art and music. that was not a thing we could keep doing if we wanted to finish the game.) at that point it's not doing the idea of a big modern fantasy city justice, so why even bother?

it also would've felt very, very weird if you could visit brightport but you didn't get to meet claire and jodie's families, not to mention other characters since it can't JUST be them, and there needs to be some kind of transportation infrastructure connecting the sapphire islands to the mainland, and on and on and on. you can see how the workload quickly spirals out of control. so it was just never a thing i even considered for the game

#slarpg #slarpg asks

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hermitcrossovers · 2 years

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[brothers au] something more lore than character centric for once

i mentioned the Immortal Council for Mortal Protection a bit ago and i wanted to expand on a few key bits of the lore

basically, the way the minecraftverse works as far as im concerned is as follows:

central hub and server portals, this ive seen other people do and i like it quite a bit, however, theres more than a few hubs actually, think of the portal world as a mix of the hypixel lobby and a minecraft overworld in hardcore mode. Hubs are usually divided by language, but some people who move around between worlds a lot might want to construct a personal hub, this is basically the save selection screen but cooler, while a public hub is more like the server selection screen

a fair few people live in the hub world, there's settlements all around, its usually older or retiered players, though a lot of travellers also tend to stay in the hub for extended periods of time, people who dont have a home server also tend to have houses or camps in the hub world. Grian, for example, spent a few decades travelling around the hub world after he left the watchers, and so did wilbur for that matter, its where he met sally, actually.

while the hub is the main way people get around servers, it's not the only one, a few servers are connected, hermitcraft 8 and empires 1 were, though if you were to try and go into them now youd find ruins, and not much more.

Now, on the Immortal Council for Mortal Protection:

it was founded a few tens of thousands of years back, after a war that happenned with a fair few of the gods and a big chunk of mortal populations.

the heads of it are chosen democratically by players of all kinds, currently, it is currently noxite at the head and scott and simon hypixel as the backups (im sorry my brain can find the proper word)

the council is massive, a lot of servers have a rep, though it is a bit restricted as there has to be a sizeable amount of immortals on the server or it be incredibly large scale.

X and Sap are reps for HC and DSMP respectively

Gods with large religions also are part of the council, as they kind of head a large group of people.

There is an important distinction here, however, not all immortals are Gods, while Mumza is a god, phil is not, he is a prominent immortal figure, sure, but as the angel of death he does not recieve the title of God, though a few have ventured to say that perhaps he should. G and Tech are both in the council, however, they rarely appear, as they have Kristin or X to relay messages, they fill in for them on occassion.

Immortals come in all shapes and sizes, Gods, Myths, vampires and sirens, demigods and chosen heroes, and, in the case of joe hills and to some extent cleo, people who refuse death.

While immortals arent exactly rare, most players are mortals, as a general rule of thumb most of the ccs are immortal, but this isnt always true, a lot of them started as mortal and just sort of became immortal at some point.

This world, after all, functions a bit like warhammer orks belief system, where the more people believe something the more true it becomes.

WATCHERS

Watchers have changed a lot through time, in the old days, there were only three we know, Xelqua, Doblas and Pix. Grian, Elrubius and Pixlriffs, though they weren't the original watchers, all three of them were taken from their homes in an effort to expand. The original watchers are known to do this, and some groups of them still do, though most watcher groups nowadays are a lot more agreeable as more and more of the taken rebel, there is still hundreds of watchers who follow the old way, and all three of the known ones have targets on their backs.

A few of the taken, who are not known to be watchers to the public include, Pearl, Vegetta777 and interestingly Quackity.

The followers of the old ways, the ones we usually think of when saying watchers, dont like the council that much, and thend to start shit. However, a lot of the taken who have actually managed to flee align themselves much closer to the council, though there are of course theo ones who don't take sides.

Watchers have a lot of interesting skills, mostly to with code magic and server control, theyre quite similar to admins in that regard, if a bit more powerful, as the magic comes from within them, and they dont just channel it from consoles and command blocks.

There is three large divisons of watchers, the followers of the old ways, where a vast majority of watchers are, they watch and they value discipline. The followers of Pixlriffs, also known as the historians in some legends, these watchers dedicate to archiving worlds and stories, they value knowledge highly. And finally, the modders, this group, originally started by Doblas, pride themselves on creativity, they shape the worlds around them in ways others could never, and share that with the world. Xelqua never did start his own division, he never wanted to be a watcher to begin with, and as time goes on, the name fades, only a few have the power to speak it nowadays, other titles fit the man better.

That is all for rn, because its 3:30 am here and if i dont finish it here it might all be lost to me passing out, sorry im sure this is stupidly long.

there is a central central hub that leads to different main hubs and everything in between; it continuously grows like a labyrinth, entrances to long forgotten-abandoned servers, alcoves, shrines that led to fun days exploring the heart of the world.

callahan should be the dsmp server rep since he is the second admin. like no offence to sapnap but he's not exactly responsible (several pets come to mind)

how does a life system work in this? some servers like the life series and dsmp have a certain amount of lives while others have infinite respawns

#hermitcraft #dream smp #minecraft #<- adding this because of the minecraft worldbuilding #grian and philza brothers au #sorry this took a while seasonal depression hits like a train #mc lore my beloved #i cant believe i forgot about mods

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leiflitter · 9 months

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As I am now 30 and apparently an Actual Adult and Twitter is exploding even more, I figured that before I get back to the last bit of ArtFight I'd do some Dolly Introductions because most of my characters exist in the form of very expensive, very large dolls rather than the far cheaper "just draw them" option.

This is because I have impulse control issues and just love these idiots so... Hey! LORE is below the page break, as well as their sculpts!

These are just the ones who are important in some way in the big ol' thing I have going on, there are MORE DOLLS. So many more dolls.

1. Callum Shelley - Dollshe David Kuncci - the man who made Frankie and his siblings. Married to Science and Science only; he's also very gay and very awkward, and so decided that his desire to be a father could only really be achieved through sewing a ton of bodies together and reanimating it using science and Arcane Shit. He's technically on the run, as Frankie was kinda made in a lab that was meant to be looking into ways to improve transplants and other slightly theoretical ideas rather than Maybe Magic Could Help Me Have A Child, but he's managed to embed himself into Harlan's weird little underworld and so they don't have to jump ship at a moment's notice anymore. He now lives in London, in one of the many buildings owned by the Twins- Harlan wrangled that, as it would be useful to have an actual doctor on standby, right?

2. Franklin "Frankie" Shelley - Ringdoll Frankenstein 2013 - Frankenstein's Monster if he was a mid-20s Horrorpunk Dirtbag with a heart of gold. Very family-oriented- it was him and his dad for a few years just after he was made and they're very close. Had a few wobbly times as he came to terms with Being A Bunch Of Corpse Parts and therefore not really being able to do stuff, but now they have a little niche he's having a good time. Would literally die for-

3. Poppi - Aimerai Scraps - a ragdoll that was brought to life via some fairly arcane shit. A literal cinnamonbun angel. Frankie's other half, and generally makes sure that Callum doesn't accidentally forget to eat while he's working on stuff. As she can't have children (she literally has no internal organs), she's also involved herself heavily in looking after Frankie's siblings.

4. Evelyn Shelley - Sugarble Night Miriam - Frankie's "little sister". She's about six and she's always going to be about six- she's a very sweet little kid, loves dolls and dressing up. She has that "Family Princess" confidence, and can often be found "making Frankie Pretty".

5. Valentine Shelley- 5StarDoll Aiden - Frankie's "little brother". Although he's technically younger than Evelyn, he's probably more akin to a 7/8 year old. He was made as a playmate for Evelyn as she was getting pretty lonely. Callum had honed his technique a little, hence Val not literally being blue like his siblings. He's always ready for some sort of adventure, but lets Evelyn take the lead.

6. Magdalen - Doll Chateau Oort -very old vampire. She's the tactician; although she's very powerful, she tends to direct her brother rather than get her hands dirty. She talks the most of the twins, but even that's not much. The twins function almost as one person, and are rarely far from each other.

7. Alasdair - Doll Chateau Cyril - also a very old vampire. He's Magdalen's muscle- if something threatened them, he'd be the one actually dealing with it. He barely speaks, but when he does it's generally something very important. The twins live in Highgate and do not appreciate any link between them and that Highgate Vampire business. Their home is a massive Victorian thing that has some minor glamours so it's not considered "the clearly haunted house".

8. Harlan Silver - Ringdoll K -puts the Whore in Victorian, he's here representing the Pansexual Slut Vampires. He's considered the "oldest son" to Magdalen and Alasdair, but his function is less as a child and more as their connection to the outside world. He brokers deals and access to the twins, sources... food for them if they don't feel like hunting and has shown them how to connect to the wifi about 5 billion times. He lives in a basement flat in London that would make any antiques dealer jealous. He also kinda has a... thing... with Callum, but it's less emotion and more mutual benefit.

9. Seraphine - Doll In Mind Marcellina - the precious baby daughter in the vampire family. She was brought to them by Harlan as a toddler in the late 1800s, and they have raised her the way they were raised. She is doted upon absolutely- however she's not as odd as the twins, mostly because Harlan has done his best to expose her to humanity and help her be as well-adjusted as an immortal creature can be. She's currently going through Vampire Puberty so she's spending a lot of time with Harlan because there's nothing more frustrating than having a teenage mood swing in front of the twins.

10. Siddiq "Sid" Shah and Noa Kim - Universedoll Tsukimi and iDoll Arnoah - long-term schoolfriends who grew up in the London Borough of Camden. They were both on the 'social misfit' side of things, and spent a lot of their time trading Stephen King paperbacks and watching crappy horror films, until they found a book at a car boot sale that was apparently an actual Grimoire of spells- and then their interest in witchcraft took off, and all that time speaking one language at home and another at school really helps when finding rituals that work. They describe their magic as "kinda like one of those buffet restaurants that serves, uh, everything? Like you can get pizza, curry and fish and chips if you want, but instead of getting food poisoning, you get results."

The two fell onto Harlan's radar fairly quickly because he's a nosy pest that lives pretty much opposite the little park where they do business. He's now got them "in" with the twins, and they're also the ones who managed to create Poppi. They're now pretty good friends with Frankie and Poppi, and are working on some Glamour spells because Frankie would really love to go to a gig at some point. Or even just to Nando's.

They often find themselves helping Callum, but mostly because he's a scientist at heart and although he's used magic before, he doesn't really... get it. They're also both on the twins' payroll, because witches are also very useful, and not as common as they used to be.

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12pt-times-new-roman · 2 years

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two thoughts, now that my facts are in order for the moon lore from Call of the Netherdeep.

First, the fate-touched. We're going way back and a little ways off the path here, so bear with me.

"The red moon of Ruidus watches, twisting the fates of those who have the power to shape the course of history." Throughout Call of the Netherdeep, Ruidus is referred to as a force that twists fate. And from the Tal'dorei Campaign Setting Fate-Touched background: "Many lives and many souls find their ways through the patterns of fate and destiny, their threads following the path meant for them, oblivious and eager to be a part of the woven essence of history meant for them. Some souls, however, glide forth with mysterious influence, their threads bending the weave around them, toward them, unknowingly guiding history itself wherever they walk... there are many communities that regard the status as a terrible omen, treating a confirmed fate-touched with mistrust and fear."

I was rewatching parts of early campaign 2, and something stood out to me in C2E32. When Caleb has another dream/vision about the beacon, he essentially sees a massive field of weaving golden threads, all moving. And sometimes, there are little bursts of light and a thread will change direction, leaving behind little shadow threads at its point of divergence. From this imagery, I personally think that that these are threads of fate, the bursts of light decisions made, and the shadow threads discarded timelines from which certain dunamancy spells draw (i.e. Resonant Echo, which draws "a version of the self from a discarded timeline," as Essek says).

Immediately after this, Caduceus looks at the beacon and very quickly picks up on the details that Caleb took so long to grasp (because Cad has spent so much of his life in meditation, in spaces like that of the beacon). He asks if the beacon "makes him uncomfortable," to which Matt responds, "no. It doesn't feel unnatural — it feels like a look behind the curtain."

Later that episode, we get this when Fjord looks at the beacon: "In that brief moment, you feel this momentary release, like a tether that previously had gone unseen is loosened. And there, in that brief bit of unexpected free-floating freedom amongst the darkness, that warm, gray, centered energy drifts towards you."

I think that what the beacon actually does when it gives people that mote of possibility is that it loosens the threads of fate that had been holding them, makes them malleable. To Caleb, the beacon felt warm and inviting, he had dreams about the beacon, so perhaps his thread was destined to be intwined with it anyway — but for Caduceus, the space felt cold, so even though he was in the presence of the beacon it perhaps wasn't a big part of the path the Wildmother set for him. And for Fjord, who at this time had literally been pulled on a thread towards Uk'otoa, felt a tether loosen, like the beacon has given him a chance to subvert that fate (which, in a way, it literally does by giving him a reroll). And we see this in the way the Kryn talk about the process of rebirth: they believe that the path of the Luxon, the path of consecution, is itself an act of defiance against the fates and destinies that the gods have set out for them (which makes a lot of sense for a society of drow, who were under Lolth's influence and design for so long).

The fate-touched background gives someone one luck point, used in the same way as the feat. The same thing that the beacon does when it grants a mote of possibility. The background also notes that these individuals "glide forth with mysterious influence," and if Ruidus is able to twist these threads of fate like the beacons can, perhaps that's what all this means — the Luxon bends fate towards freedom, while Ruidus bends it towards ill-omen.

and now, the moon's connection to Tharizdun:

From Call of the Netherdeep: "During the Founding, a time when the gods still walked the face of Exandria, the world’s divine creators discovered an unidentifiable power seeping through the fabric of reality. Legends assert that this alien influence was a threat to all life on Exandria, and the gods banded together to banish it... This cancerous incursion of dark power is said to have crystallized into Ruidus, the small, vermilion moon."

From the Critical Role Wiki (pulling from multiple episodes): "Tharizdun is depicted, if at all, as 'a creature of rolling, hungry ink and darkness,' a spreading cloud of lightless destruction. It is endless, black, inky, filled with teeth and malice, laughter and hatred. While the other entities in the Pantheon have different interpretations of how they are depicted in artwork, tapestries, and tomes, every record of Tharizdun is amorphous and without physical manifestation... Tharizdun is not best understood as a god like the others. Its 'mind' is profoundly alien, and does not carefully form complicated plots. It is a primal, subconscious force of annihilation that insidiously corrupts what it can to undermine everything, opportunistically masquerading in the forms of what other minds desire, and seeping in to twist those minds' intent and perspective toward Tharizdun's own destructive ends."

During the Founding, "the Primordials' slaughter of the mortal races the creator gods had formed drew the attention of the demons of the Abyss, who poured into the world to feast on the carrion. In the battles that followed, the Prime Deities locked Tharizdun away." That sounds a whole lot like "an unidentifiable power seeping through the fabric of reality" — unidentifiable because Tharizdun had literally just created it. They banished it by imprisoning Tharizdun, but they couldn't fully get rid of it, and so what remained of the power crystalized into Ruidus. Both that unknown power and Tharizdun are described as "alien, unidentifiable, threatening to all life, dark influences."

However, when Tharizdun was imprisoned during the Founding, it was imprisoned beneath Gatshadow Mountain in Tal'dorei. It was imprisoned in the same place after its release during the Calamity, and today, six divine shackles hold Tharizdun at the bottom of the Abyss. It isn't from the Abyss, it's believed by some to be older than Exandria itself (like the Far Realm), and it actually dreams the Abyss and its demons into existence. It created the Abyss. The Abyss is a prison of Tharizdun's own making, just like the Apotheon's Heart of Despair.

Tharizdun, above all else, seeks freedom. It wants to be released from its prison so that it can impose destruction upon the world. The Apotheon, the most powerful being we know of that has been touched by Ruidus (and therefore, in this hypothetical, Tharizdun), seeks the same thing: freedom from the prison that he dreamed into existence around himself. At the end of Call of the Netherdeep, if the Apotheon is released without being reconciled, he will "bring ruin to Exandria" by the light of Ruidus, which would remain full for "one year and one day," manifesting over the world as an inky, black cloud that would rain destruction upon entire swaths of continents at once.

The Apotheon was touched by Ruidus' magic, but its curse and corruption was something that twisted the Apotheon's own magic (which he got from the gods), using his emotional turmoil and need for freedom to change it into something corrupting and imprisoning. And if Ruidus' magic is, in fact, a crystalized form of Tharizdun's own magic, then suddenly all of those parallels — the prison of his own making, the yearning for freedom, the endless rage and roiling emotion, the corruption of ruidium — make sense.

The other powerful entities that we know were touched by Tharizdun itself are the Somnovem. It was Tharizdun's influence that shaped what Cognouza would become once it encountered the astral storm, and like the Apotheon, the Somnovem sought freedom from endless emotional torment, were able to dream things into existence, and — like Tharizdun's influence caused throughout campaign two — were hungry. Cognouza itself was a ravenous body separate from the tormented minds, somewhat like the Apotheon's duality of his body being a storm of roiling emotions while his mind was trapped helplessly within it. When Cognouza died and the Somnovem were released, Kingsley Tealeaf had a dream of the city surrounded in twisting black chains, that shattered as the city died with the sound of Tharizdun's primal scream echoing across the planes — representing Tharizdun's lost hold on the city.

From Call of the Netherdeep: "The gods agreed to create a tale about Ruidus to conceal its alien origin from the mortals of the world, informing them that it was a moon of ill omen, and its magical influence was always to be avoided. This tale concocted by the gods was not a lie, for Ruidus’s alien magic twists the fate of those who are born or embark on ventures while bathed in its vermilion light."

and my crack theory for the connection between the two:

No, I don't think that the Luxon is actually Tharizdun in disguise like the Angel of Irons was. Matt has presented the Luxon in a way that, to me, makes this very unlikely. However.

Tharizdun is... unknowable. It is a being, and yet it is a world. It is unfathomable darkness, hatred, hunger, and malice. It seeks to destroy and consume, to enslave and annihilate, to unleash chaos. It seeks to twist souls and fate, to manipulate and take and transform, so that those souls may release it from its imprisonment beneath Gatshadow.

The Luxon is... unknowable. It is a being, and yet it is the endless expanse, the world, within the beacons. It is unfathomable light, burning, blinding, the strength of a star. It seeks to know, to question, to free and to break the chains of fate. It seeks to make souls better, more knowledgable, so that they may release it from its slumber in the core of the world.

There is not light without darkness, nor darkness without light.

I think that Tharizdun, the Chained Oblivion, is to the Luxon as Tiamat is to Bahamut. Both massive, unknowable beings that themselves are not beings but worlds.

So, following this line, what if Tharizdun has its own version of the beacons? Beacons that are very similar to the Luxon, yet are twisted, ravaging, alien, just like Tharizdun itself is to the Luxon. What if that's the thing that Imogen is holding — something so much like a beacon, but not? And what if Ruidus is a massive fucking beacon of Tharizdun that sometimes rains meteors that themselves become smaller beacons, that has enough power emanating from it to twist the fates of those who are born beneath its full light?

#critical role #critical role campaign 2 #critical role campaign 3 #mighty nein #bell's hells #critical role spoilers #Caleb widogast #fjord #caduceus clay #imogen temult #call of the netherdeep #call of the netherdeep spoilers #ruidus #crack theory #I've connected the dots #I've connected them #this makes sense in my head #if it makes no sense in text feel free to send an ask

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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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anomaly00-archive · 3 years

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700 Follower Celebration: A Writing Journey (1/?)

Hey guys! So, to celebrate this milestone I’ll be doing a series of posts talking about how my wip has changed, their inspirations, my growth as a writer. though it’s only been maybe 2? years since I started writeblr, I’m pretty sure I, and my works, have undergone *many* a transformations. And speaking of transformations, this post is dedicated to the journey of my most fickle and ever-changing wip: When Comes the Dawn

The first WIP I ever introduced to tumblr – and my first multi-chapter project ever is When Comes the Dawn, a fantasy/court-intrigue tale featuring court politics, magic, death-defying princesses, and cloak-and-dagger schemes. It is the story I hold near and dear to my heart, even if I do have an on-again-off-again relationship with it. But the story you know now is vastly different to what it used to be. Really, the only thing remotely similar to WCTD and its predecessors are Charles and Fenice (and that’s just their names!)

WCTD started out as a very ambitious high fantasy AU fanfiction with a highly convoluted story line that existed, predominantly, in a 1,500 word prologue and hours upon hours of daydreaming. It did not help that, paranoid little gremlin that I was against people who might look over at my word doc by chance, I coded all of the names of these fanfic characters, keeping only the first letter the same. This eventually led to a detachment between the OG source material and my own work and I just ended up scrapping the entire thing and keeping my cast of (now original) characters. Thus began the era of Chronus. Or, proto-WCTD as I sometimes refer to it.

Chronus had very little connection to present day WCTD except for the name Charles, Fenice, and the three gods that created and watched over the universe. In WCTD, the Trinity were more akin to the gods we have today; igures of worship, omnipresent, with not a lot of proof for their existence except faith-- and I’m saying this as a Catholic. In Chronus, they were actual characters. The gods of Creation/Life, Destiny, and Time/Death (the latter being named Chronus so y’all know where I got the name) watch over the world and intervene when they need to. The lore of the story: through some convoluted circumstance, Chronus ends up dying which is a pretty big bummer since, y’know, his death left the entire universe in stagnation and nothing could die. Uh, the logic gets iffy around here but just understand that Creation and Destiny managed to save the universe but are forced to enlist select humans into being temporary gods of death in exchange for granting their desire. Fenice was one of these humans, Charles was a part of her “wish,” and...more convoluted plot stuff that I honestly can’t remember.

I hated how I spent more time trying to logic the entire plot and ended up scrapping the entire thing. After taking a few months break from this story, I started again by recycling characters and concepts I like. And once again we are left with Fenice, Charles, and the Trinity.

I recycled the backstory I used for Fenice and Charles which had them as royals; a prince and princess caught in the midst of a succession game a la War of Roses. Here, Fenice Alexandra and Charles Alexander were twins tied at the hip, on the run from their power-hungry uncles and planning a way to reclaim their birthright. I made it through a few chapters, a bit of outlining, and weeks of thinking before I found myself dissatisfied with this story and scrapping it once again. Around this time, I realized I wanted to add magic but not have magic and magical fights be a huge part of the story, so I feel like adding an adventure element would be counterproductive. I also got the idea of a world where everyone had magic, but one of the main characters did not.

I played around with Fenice and Charles’ relationship for a while. One had Fenice being the significantly younger sibling with magic and Charles the older and without (the opposite of where we are today). In every iteration of the story I always had Fenice as the main POV character, so with this set-up, to create conflict, I had the idea of Fenice not wanting the throne (despite being the chosen heir and more than qualified for the position) scheming to get Charles the crown instead (what Charles wants be damned). Others had this same setting but with Charles still being chosen as heir despite not having magic (which was apparently the number one unspoken rule of succession) which created resentment in Fenice...and made proto-Dantalion (called William at the time) look like a fool. But both these scenarios were just...not something I was particularly interested in. Fenice was insanely OP, everyone looked stupid to me, and honestly? It just seemed boring.

I knew I was close to a break through, so I decided to switch it. Fenice, the elder sibling without magic, who, by a tragic twist of fate, had everything that should be hers instead given to her younger brother. Then, I separated them; the elder lived away from court, the younger lived close to it to wipe away as much chances of them getting along. Then, I worked on their parents. Here, Dantalion, Illysandre, and Titania came into existence. Then, more characters, more plot lines; I connected relations, brewed up even more backstory and lore to make sense of this plot line, steeled myself from making a spin-off prequel, etc. etc. Finally, WCTD reached where it is today. I have no doubt that it’ll still go through massive changes in the future, but for what it is now? It’s the closest I’ve ever been to the story I want to tell.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #c.follower milestone #c.my writing journey #opera. when comes the dawn #mea. wip

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

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Humans are Space Orcs, “Crew of the Omen.”

A little bit from the other new alien species aboard the ship, as requested. I hope you like it :)

Tesraki

The Tesraki had all worked with humans before, but when they mean they had worked with humans, it was more like they had been around in the area where humans were working and mostly tried to stay out of their way. Between the two younger Tesraki Captio and Subit, they talked a lot about how the soldier Tesraki, Etium had been involved in the Drev war..

They weren’t entirely sure if that was true or not seeing as there were very few Tesraki who had actually survived an encounter with the Drev, but the chunk missing from his ear, and the way he seemed to show so much deference to the humans when they first stepped aboard the ship.

Than and he didn’t seem as afraid of them as the two younger Tesraki were.

And there was a lot to be afraid of

Stepping aboard the human ship, it became very clear that they were entering a different world.

They huddled together behind Etium, their ears drawn back to their heads, their tails tucked together as they stood before the massive room watching as large machines and hovering trucks rolled by. The human voices were raised, yelling up over each other in their guttural chattering call. They had been on the ship before of course, but this would be the first time the doors would be shut behind them.

A group of humans stepped past them, their large armored feet clattering against the ground, their bodies moving like lithe snakes.

There was a lot of money being moved here, and a lot of money being moved very poorly, though none of them were quite sure how to bring that up.

“New meat!”

They turned on the spot to see a human sitting cross legged atop a cargo crate. It showed them his teeth. The two younger Tesraki squealed and backed away hiding behind the older as they looked up at the grinning predator above them.

Etium seemed to be the only one who wasn’t concerned.

“M-meat.” One of them whispered

He wasn’t aware the word accountant meant something different in their culture… that being that they were going to get eaten.

The human slipped down from where he was sitting to land on the floor.

The Tesraki squealed again and backed away.

“Fresh meat is a figure of speech. Just means you are new on the ship. We don’t eat sentient lifeforms.”

They couldn’t help but notice that he left out the non-sentient lifeforms. When the humans looked at them, they looked at them hungrily, like maybe fresh meat had not been some sort of figure of speech like it was claiming. Still, they kept relatively quiet unsure of what to believe.

“Don’t listen to them, they just like to mess with people.”

The Tesraki turned in a sharp circle watching as another human came marching up through the ship long fur billowing about their head.

“They don’t mean any harm. It's just a social hazing ritual they like.”

“I am familiar.”

The two younger tesraki glanced at Etium ears pulled back.

That would have been nice to know earlier.

They looked back, watching as the doors receded into the distance, and knew they were walking into a den of predators.

Celzex

Everything here was big, very big, and it sort of managed to make them very angry. They marched onto the ship, though their marching didn’t get them more than a few feet onto the human ship before they almost got stepped on by a marching column of humans. They froze in place led by their leader who stood tall before them, the very real son of lord Celex, Lord Avex.

He waited, and they waited, for his great stature to attract the attention of the humans.

Of course, it did not take long until his presence stopped another column of humans bringing cargo in from the other side of the hanger. They drew to a halt just before the Celzex, their eyes widening in fear. A few of them made vocalizations of confusion and intimidation, that manifested as very high pitched squeals for a human. They lifted their hands before their faces and chest as if to guard themselves from the danger that the Celzex possessed.

“Lord Avex, we were told of your imminent arrival.” One of the humans announced bowing his head, “There was an…. Extensive briefing about how to treat your eminence.” They bowed their heads in that way humans tend to have to show difference towards their betters.

“Please, allow me and my comrades to escort you to your quarters.” The humans lowered themselves slightly towards the ground, dropping onto one knee, “As a sign of difference to your great status please use these men as your mounts, for the ship is large and we have a long way to go.

There was a silence as Lord Avex waited eyeing the humans with some concern.

They were a proud race.

From the corners of their eyes, the Celzex could see the humans shifting nervously, probably out of fear and awe to how great and terrible the Celzex truly were in such numbers.

“We will accept your offer, human.”

The humans prostrated themselves even further, lowering towards the ground so the Celzex could blimp aboard, first onto their knees and then onto their backs, and then onto their shoulders as they took back to their feet.

From the back of a human they were very high up, and very impressive.

Lord Avex was sure that their group cut a very imposing parade across the ship. The Celzex atop their human mounds, two of the most dangerous species in the galaxy.

And they did turn more than a few heads as they went, with wide eyes and open mouths the other humans stared and made similar sounds of awe and fear as had the others.

The humans on which they rode appeared more than smug, their head lifted pridefully clearly pleased at those they were able to carry.

It was a great honor after all, and who could blame them for thinking so.

The other humans must have been jealous to ferry along such important figures as the Celzex.

And of course they were eventually brought to their quarters on one of the middle decks. It had all the things that they requested, and promised access to a human 24/7 if required.

One of the humans bowed their head to lored Avex, “My lord, Admiral Vir was sorry he could not be here to witness your glorious arrival. He sends his deepest apologies and an invitation to a meal tonight as a human show of good faith. Also, due to his laxness and improper greeting he would be more than willing to act as your steed whenever you wish for his insolence and penance.

Lord Avex found this to be an agreeable apology.

Somewhere Adam Vir was quite pleased with himself for coming up with such a smooth reason to hold a Celzex, while continuing to maintain interspecies relations with one of the most powerful species on the planet.

Burg

Maverick was surprised to find people in the chapel when she walked aboard, less of people and more of an alien and a few people when she stepped in. She was even more surprised to find that this particular alien was not a Tesraki, or a Celex, but a bug-like creature with sharp mandibles, and an array of colorful wings.

“Burg!”

She said the phrase out loud, surprising herself and the burg, who nearly leaped out of it’s own carapace as it turned to look at her. Its wings were a pleasant blue color shot through with little streaks of brilliant green.

It rested a few of its front hands together and bowed to her as she pulled to a stop, “Greetings, I am Miran, religious scholar of the burg and a social envoy of the new king and queen of the burg homeworld. I am here to foster a mending of relations between our two species and contribute some of our knowledge and culture to your endeavors.”

Maverick lowered her hands.

“I see, I wasn’t aware that the Burg were part of the GA.”

The creature sat on one of the pews, “We are not, formally, but we have since updated our status as a protectorate of the GA while we attempt to mend things between ourselves. Forgive me for startling you so, but I had hoped that you might accept my help in your religious gathering room. During our time of war, the old queen tasked me with learning about your species, and in so doing I fell upon your thriving religious culture that reminded me of the stories of our own before the queen abolished much of our tradition.”

“A burg who is a religious scholar…. I would not have assumed that.”

“And what denomination do you frequent?” He wondered looking at her with expectant eyes and a surprisingly open face for a creature she had once thought to be hideous and gut churning. The butterfly wings helped she supposed, “A random flavor of Christian, though it’s not really important.” She walked over to sit next to the burg who was looking around their little chapel with great interest.

“Do you have a religion?”

The burg’s antenna twitched, and it clicked it’s mandibles, though the way it performs the action was less worrisome than the way that she had seen it in the past, “I do, I do. I follow the old religion, in a time where the burg believed in many gods. I Believe mostly in the gods of the east, the ones that frequent the tops of mountains and are connected with the ideals of honor, adventure, and scholarly pursuits.”

“Honor?” She asked in surprise

He sighed, “I understand it will take a while for your species to see us for what we really are rather than what our queen has led you to assume about us. But once upon a time we had a rich culture that was perpetuated on the ideals of honor and loyalty, though that loyalty was soon corrupted into the ability to hold grudges for a very long time and that bravery crossed a line into stupidity that nearly had our nation destroyed, but…. I had honestly hoped to talk about more enlightening subjects. Please, tell me more about your great culture and religious traditions.

Maverick smiled, “Where to begin…”

Finnari

The humans were so nice to them. At first they had assumed that the humans would be scary, and they had been right. The fins on the sides of their heads had flared in agitation as they saw the humans, and they had backed away in concern and worry as soon as someone had approached.

But as the humans stopped and bowed, they were surprised and the gentle way in which they moved, and even reached ou to touch the finnari in a kind way.

They were welcomed aboard the ship with open arms, and it was quickly accepted that here is where they would be safe.

Here they would be accepted.

The finnari are very trusting like that, and so had no problem when their quarters were proven to be situated right in the middle of the human quarters away from the other aliens at the center of everything. This had something to do with their role on the ship, working specifically with the psychological team (They were expected to be needed quickly) Two of them were healers, nurses by trade, and the other two worked with psychological issues, one of them was certified in a cuddle clinic as it was shown the Finnari ahd a similar impact on other creatures as the humans did.

They would be comfortable here, surrounded by all the humans where they would be safe. WHen you are friends with the wolves, there is nowhere safer to be than in the midst of their den.

And so they got to meet and to know their human comrades very quickly, invited to play games and to sit and chat, A few of the humans, less affable than the others might have attempted to be snappish or aggressive towards them, but they were quickly cut off by other humans who would not allow that sort of behavior.

They were going to get along very well aboard the ship.

Conn

There were more voices here than there ever had been before, and threw as a lot of work for him to get done. Conn had been pleased to learn that he was one of the reasons others were forced to sign a waver when boarding the ship. THey had to acknowledge his presence and tell the GA and the UNSC that they were not liable if Conn decided to share any of their personal secrets. They had to make sure that the UNSC or the GA could not be sued if Conn decided to do something stupid.

He was even more pleased to learn that many potential candidates had dropped out when hearing that he would be on the ship.

He was not, however, particularly pleased about their new mascot, a white Leviathan emblazoned on the side of the ship. The Admiral had argued that the thing had saved his life and Conn had argued that that thing had tried to eat his people in the past.

However when the Admiral pointed out that conn didn’t really care about them he hadn’t really been able to argue, and shut up despite his grouchiness.

Now he was fulfilling a role that the Admiral had given over to him rather silently.

The man hadn’t exactly asked him to do it, in fact he had specifically tried to avoid thinking about it when conn was around because he didn’t think the idea was particularly ethical.

Honestly, it was the whole reason why conn had decided to do it in the first place. If the Admiral didn’t want him to do it for ethical reasons, he was totally going to do it. In a way, Conn was sort of the defacto police force on the ship, monitoring thoughts and the minds of others as he went through trying to determine who was going to be a a problem and who was not though he didn’t mention these to the admiral just yet.

He sort of wanted to see what they were going to do, besides, the Admiral still needed to be punished.

He flated up the hall, reaching the familiar mind of the animal waffles, who he had come to familiarize hismelf with. She was very nervous when it came to leaving the commander now, worried that he was going to vanish for no good reason only to leave her alone like had done not so many months ago.

The Admiral did not plan on it, so he tried to sooth her animal mind just a little.

He floated onto the bridge and behind the man’s seat.

He knew when Adam sensed him.

And they both acknowledged each other

“Conn.”

“Admiral.”

‘Everything goes well?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

The Admiral seemed pleased conflating the fact that Conn would do something if anything was ACTUALLY WRONG.

Conn was annoyed to realize he was right.

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chaos-writes · 3 years

Text

Billy Loomis and Stu Macher: Ghost in the Flesh

Warning: 14+ Swearing. Gore. Word count: 1,688

No party was as good as the ones hosted by Stu Macher. An 18 year old Rich Bitch senior, whose parents decided they could trust him with the house while they went on vacation somewhere in the Bahamas. He was also a piece of eye candy, along with his buddy, the ‘Definition-of-Teen-Angst’ Billy Loomis. He's that one ride or die friend of the school. You see, these guys are popular. While they may not be the jock d-bags of the highschool superiority complex, they are known around here for being party animals. Stu is also the goofiest in the school, the class comedian, if you will.

Me? I’m just… there. Look, Stu is throwing a massive party tonight. I’m not gonna flirt or anything. I just wanna get some beer and bounce. No biggie. In’n’out.

Okay, I'm a little freaked out. I don't wanna bump into a dude named Randy Meeks, a guy who's built like a weasel and acts like one too. He's a horror movie fanatic who acts like school is an actual movie, well, a horror movie. I really have nothing against him, he's a good dude, but still. I'd rather not talk to him.

The whole school day I spent pondering about the party. I found myself daydreaming about Bill- err… watching the movie at the party. Casey and I couldn't stop talking about it. We’re best friends, so we do a lot together.

I rented out the Robin movie and skedaddle. Randy was screaming and I wanted none of that. I go home and put the movie on the counter. "Mom? Hey, I brought a movie home! I know you'll love it!"

School is over for the weekend and I head to the video store on my walk home. Randy is stocking shelves as usual. I look at the comedy section; ooh, my family will love this one! It's a Robin Williams movie! And there he is, Party Man himself. Stu Macher, picking on weasel dude. I see Billy, talking to a group of girls who swoon at his slightest movement (ewww).

It was getting closer to 8. I watched that movie with my parents and ate. I did my homework, cleaned my room, and showered. I set out for the 10-minute walk to Stu's house. Instead, I got a phone call. "Hey, it's Billy. Do you need a ride here?" Right, I gave him my number to help study.

"Well, the house is just a 10 minute walk away-"

"Why don't you just let me pick you up? Shorten that time."

"Uhm, ok then. You need my address?"

"N-... yea, I do."

A few minutes later, I see the car of one of the most popular guys at school pull up in front of my house. Gee, that was fast. "Hey, mom? I'm gonna hang out with my buddies tonight. I'll call you before I leave for home."

I'm in his car. I'm in his car. I'm in his car. Oh my god. Ok, he's cute. But I can't freak out like this. "You- ah, ok there?" He says. "O- oh, yea, I'm sorry, just zoned out." I stammer. His car smells like cologne and it's very clean. And he's right next to me. Billy Loomis. Sitting in his car. Next to a loser.

“Hey, you know Stu and I are close, right?” Billy said. “Of course I do! You guys are double trouble!” I giggled. He laughs. God, that laugh. It was so melodic, so… perfect. “Well, we’ve been thinking about getting closer with you. Y’know, we’re not very close. We wish that was different. You’re very kind, and you have such a great personality.” He admitted. I stare blankly for a second. Hey, did he take a back road? “I like that idea,” I said. He looked at me with those gorgeous brown eyes. “Yeah?”

I nodded and smiled. I can’t believe this! He smiles and giggles lightly to himself. A solid minute went by in silence before we pulled into his driveway. We got there early so we waited in the car a bit. “Hey, that ride took as long as the walk would've taken,” “well, i wanted to have enough time to talk to you,” He says.

“That’s okay, I like long car rides anyways.” I said.

I walked with Billy into Stu's front door. Wow, this place is, just, beautiful. Stu walks right past me, straight to Billy. They start quietly talking together, Billy tosses a glance at me and Stu looks and smiles at me, I had no choice but to smile back. I was a guest in his house after all; you're supposed to be polite to your hosts.

It made me nervous. Really nervous. I wasn't thinking at all. I walked into the kitchen to cool down, that was really weird. Stu walked over to me after the two were done talking. He was actually really nice to me and we had a really fun conversation about aliens and whether or not they’re real. He did impressions of what he thought they would look like. He's such a goofball.

He handed me a beer and sat me down on the couch, right next to him. Wow, he is tall sitting next to me. I took a swig and decided you know what? I can stay for more than a beer. It's all good. I’m not big into horror movies and Stu knew this, so he explained all the lore behind Halloween while we were watching it.

I think one of the boys said something to Randy, because he hasn't even looked at me, not once, the whole night. Not even during his little ramble about the "rules" about being in a horror movie, or whatever.

During the movie, Stu noticed that I was cold. He told me I could go upstairs to grab his sweater. So, I head upstairs very cautiously, looking for the sweater. He said his room, right?

I then feel swift footsteps behind me and an arm wrap around my throat. Shit! I'm in a blood choke! I couldn't get out. Everything just faded.

I woke up in Stu's bed, I must've been out for hours. I stumble and try to fight myself awake. I feel so weak. I stumble down the stairs and begin shaking at the sight.

The whole house was a bloodbath. Randy was tied up and soaked in blood, dead. Sydney was dead.

Casey, oh God, Casey, mutilated beyond recognition and hanging from a tree outside the house. I can’t breathe. I can’t imagine how scared she was. Did she call for help? Could I have saved her?

The only people left were me, Billy, and Stu. They were soaked in blood and covered in stab wounds.

The police were on their way. I tried my best to help Stu, he was practically mutilated. I put pressure on his wounds and moved on to Billy. He wasn't as bad but he was losing a lot of blood.

I don't know why the killer didn't finish me off after I was unconscious.

The wait at the hospital was long. There were police officers and social workers and doctors talking to me, asking weird questions, and it was all happening so fast and I was so scared. I couldn't think, my head felt like it was splitting open. Casey, what did they do to you? Oh God, I’m so sorry.

The boys were in emergency surgery. A nurse came into the waiting room. "Hey, the boys are out of surgery. You can go and visit them, although it would be a while before they wake up."

I get into the hospital room and there they are. A shared hospital room with 2 empty beds opposite of 2 occupied beds. They're both asleep, hooked up to oxygen, connected to wires and tubes of all sorts. It was almost as scary as seeing them drenched in blood back at that party. Well, massacre.

I drag a chair in between the beds, pull the dividing curtain back farther, and wait. I sit and think about the party, how Stu was so tall sitting next to me on his couch, how Billy just... offered me a ride. The ride itself. It seems a little insane but do they... have feelings for me?

After I moved to the woodsboro district, both boys broke up with their girlfriends within a week from each other. It kinda sucks because I liked Sidney and Tatum, and now they want nothing to do with me-

"Hmmm...?" Stu slowly opened his eyes and lifted his head. "I had no idea you'd be here." He said in a tired, raspy voice.

"Hi, Stu. I just wanted to check up on you boys. You guys were really badly hurt. I feel awful, I could've done more to help."

"Honey, it's okay. Besides, imagine how badass these scars are gonna look when they heal over!"

"You big goof!" I giggled. Billy stirred in his bed. He lifted his head, rubbed his eyes, and groaned. "Hey, how did it go ove-" he stopped mid sentence. Both he and Stu shared looks of horror between me and themselves.

Why are they acting so strange?

Oh no.

Oh God.

I felt my heart stop in my chest. They didn’t. They couldn’t have. Casey…

“You… you were the killers?” I said in a soft, shaky voice. Billy smoothed his voice, “Now what makes you think we were the killers?”

“The… the phone call, the conversation at the front door, the… oh God, Casey!” I broke into sobs. I couldn't help it. They killed my best friend!

“Hey, it’s not like that. We never meant to hurt you…” Stu pleaded.

Billy’s expression turned from amusement to horror as he watched tears slip down my cheeks. Both were silent as they leaned in from their beds and wrapped their arms around me. “How can we make it up to you, beautiful?” Billy asked.

Silence fell over what seemed like the whole world.

“Stay with me. That’s the least you can do.”

“Of course, sweetness.” Billy said.

#slashers #scream #scream 1996 #billy loomis #stu macher #stuart macher #billy and stu #billy x reader x stu #fic #slash-writes

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fandom-sheep · 3 years

Text

Eret 11 MAY 21

Cat and DSMP Part 1/1

Cat! Goose!

Goose my beloved.

Eret’s streaming very late for me again. So I’m not staying the whole time.

Hello Elaina. Enjoy Goose.

Fundy! Kinda...

Fundy hearing the donations. LOL.

Fundy enters a stream and it starts to scuffed. Scuffed just follows Fundy wherever he goes.

A wild my beloved on the cube.

The Drista stairs.

Wait what. Why is the tower gone?

I have missed some lore.

Ah... it’s part of the nightmare thing.

Eret offering Fundy housing like a good almost adoptive parent.

Sneeze? OH WOW SNEEZE.

Sounds like Fundy about lost a lung. Good gracious.

The bargaining between these two.

Cat, Handsome, said cube was massive

You know what that works.

It’s hard to keep the audio right for Eret’s stream for my headphones. It’s either too quiet or the loudest my headphones can go and my family can hear it.

On stream explosions. Noice.

Wow youtooz. Not super cool. Permission is usually a good thing.

Eret keeps on sizzling.

Getting dirt for scaffolding. Going old fashioned Minecraft for this.

“Why is the Cube kinda hot” cue Eret losing faith in her chats sanity.

Cube go poof.

Oh. Red stone. That’s dangerous.

I like this song. Oh klahoma. Gorgeous song.

Love joy is such a fun band. I want to make a plushy of the cat.

It’s kinda sad that Eret can’t see themselves the way chat and their little fandom sees them. Most all of us think they look fabulous.

Not Arson. Just bombing. A bit of anarchy by the king.

Demolition. Now there’s the word.

Controlled ish demolition.

Ah I’ve almost saved enough channel points for water. Nice. I’m not going to redeem it I’m just going to keep hoarding the points.

Flame Arrow. Nice.

Eret cleaning up the SMP eye sours.

Watch me attempt to sleep to Eret here in an hour or so, but keep getting distracted.

Explosion time.

Someone get ready to clip it.

Bye Bye Cube. Let’s go.

Gotta get a song that fits the vibe.

Hayloft. Time to go poof.

Turning up my brightness just to watch this explosion in the best way possible.

Still wearing the red dress I see.

I hope the music isn’t too loud to get this part muted.

Drum roll...

Drum roll continues...

Drum roll still going...

THERE GOES THE CUBE!

That was so smooth and good looking!

Overall a very good explosion.

Just a little bit of a hole in the other building.

Twitch Pr-

Poor being’s so confused with his hair. Someone help them.

Twitch bleep.

Everyone attempting to give hair styling advice. Everyone’s trying to help the being.

That bird is majestic. I remember seeing that tiktok.

Animals just decided Eret was the animal whisperer.

Yes! Disney Princess Eret fanart! Someone make it, I shall reblog all of it.

Likes to hug cute animals and cute animals like being hugged by her. Nice.

It’s alright. Names are difficult. I have to like put name tags on people to learn who they are. That or name tags on their space (like on campers bunks and door decs on dorms)

It does feel very February. But I’m very ready for summer because that means I get to do my favorite job.

Hooray. I hit 15k points.

Eret trying to prove to us a ponytail won’t work. Like we aren’t going to hype them up no matter what.

Gotta heart in the chat. All Eret’s chat does is hearts and encourage. It’s a lovely place.

Oh Eret forgot his cat ear sub goal. It’s alright I know I forgot.

Pride is next month. Nice.

Oh. We’re almost halfway already. Why does the world spin so quickly?

We forgot a dirt tower. Whoops.

I would wear Eret merch. I like it when people release merch around Christmas. Then I can ask for it as a gift.

Oh it wasn’t a dirt tower.

Just looking at Elaina’s stream in the stream selection screen it like very cozy.

All the way up the Drista stairs.

Look it’s the museum!

Eret’s got most of the builds around there. The museum. The fortress. Nice.

Some things are too historical to remove. Somethings are historical because they are being removed.

Oh no. L’sandburg.

It’s taking over the summer home.

Ah the lore is coming. It just seemed to be too early.

Hello unofficial ranboo Raiders.

Foolish making the awesome tall thingy!

Foolish’s builds are so neat. I want to watch Foolish’s streams more. Maybe just in the background but I start wanting to delayed liveblog and that requires attention.

Oh the giant portal turned out well. Sorry that was the lady’s foolish stream I watched.

Shulkers. The forbidden mob.

Eret with just a pit in the desert filled with llamas. Bones. And discus.

The mansion has been finished?

Alright is better than bad. It’s alright to be alright.

Lucky being not getting tired. I got the Johnson and Johnson vaccine and I was so so tired. I also had just no appetite.

Eret doing an smp tour. And looking at foolish’s builds.

Flickering the switch on the rainbow beacons.

Eret just knowing where everything is.

Kinoko is super pretty. Just for the aesthetic value of the kingdom I appreciate it.

Yeet. Just defenestrated himself out the window.

Oh? Spectator fly over the smp?

That would be really neat to like. Watch in VR. I think I’ve only used VR maybe twice.

Pretty Rainbow beacons.

The nurse who gave me my vaccine hid the needle from me because I mentioned to her that I was afraid of needles. It wasn’t a big deal at all.

30 minutes till I attempt sleep. Woo.

Goose my beloved. Someone make the gif because I’m not quite sure how to make it.

Oh yeah. Goose in Marvel. I hear MCU and think Minecraft cinematic universe. Not marvel.

Ghibli is so nice. It really romanticize small moments of life.

Yeah the characters are all really supportive in Ghibli movies.

Someone subbed for nine months “that’s enough to make a child” -Eret

That mansion is like a maze. I’m so lost already.

Everyone encouraging Eret and telling her she looks pretty. Good.

Eret needs all the hype and encouragement.

Antarctic empties flag. Yeah it does have a similar color pallet.

Michelle! Hello!

Fortress work. Nice.

Do it. I’ll listen the Eret play other games.

I don’t usually watch game play for non Minecraft games. But I’ll listen to it all.

Hbomb and Eret living in the same city feels like two worlds that shouldn’t meet. But it’s awesome that they have.

TOS means against twitches terms of service. Nice. Glad to finally have an explanation of what that means.

Look at our handsome and pretty streamer. All the hype.

I keep turning down the stream to hear the show my mama has on because I’m curious about what happens.

Yeah. Backseat gaming can be annoying. That’s part of why I share my thoughts here just in case I do start backseat gaming.

Almost to the sub goal. Hooray!

Ooo food.

No no. I see where they are coming from. Eret does give a bit of cat bus vibes. I can’t explain it but the vibes are there.

Creeper causing issues at the fortress.

Ed Sheepran my beloved.

I should draw more ferrets. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe I’ll draw us doing stuffs.

Actually I kinda want to make a little animatic of some heels walking across the screen followed by a hoard of ferrets. I think it’ll look cool. But I need the artistic ability and the ability to not scream making that.

Woop. Ad time. Off to the void of where ever the ads game me.

OH THE NEW VOID LOOKS COOL!

Bread. Flowers. Ted. Crown. And of course Eret.

We V O I D and get our streamer bits.

Hush the chat is V O I D and the occasional emoji or emote.

The void being centered looks good. Maybe that’s just the symmetry speaking but it’s good.

Oh. We hear the being. The being in void mode. And spooky mode.

Chat just starts yelling corpse.

Hydration. I try to stay hydrated. But I fail often if I’m not doing something active.

Tree!

Casually makes and snags tree.

Eret does read chat often. It’s strange. And it is weird how often it ends up being you.

You can tell I’m a tumblr peep. I may say stuff in chat but I’m fully not expecting or wanting to be noticed by the streamer.

Others hitting darkness o’clock and saying goodnight.

It’s sleep to the stream hours y’all. Whoop.

I need to visit the parks out west. I’ve only really seen the eastern US ones. But I have been to the Great Smokey Mountain park which is gorgeous.

Eret thinking of his friends triggers when naming his cat.

Eret’s builds are so casually pretty. Not like Foolish’s which are intricately pretty. Not like Phil’s or Sam’s which are complicated pretty. All pretty. Just different breeds of pretty.

Alrighty. It’s sleepy hours for me. As much as I love Eret I want to read some fanfiction and daydream a bit before I head to sleep.

Have a good rest everyone and may all your coming meals be delicious.

Wait no is it our turn with goose?

OUR TURN WITH GOOSE!

Eret honey that’s the ceiling.

Cat stream. Cat stream.

Sleepy kitty. A cat cam would be good.

Yeah. That happens with cats. Especially strays.

Goose captured the computer mouse.

Goose straight up chose Eret and Elaina.

Goose really just chose not to leave.

Oh my stream connection is acting sad. But I want Goose content.

I want to draw Goose now.

Maybe I’ll do water color for Goose. I know I tried to do that with Boots (Fundy’s cat)

Hopefully there will be some Goose face screenshots I can see. Maybe I can see him well in the Tiktok.

Artists just violently refusing payment. Sounds about right. The MCYT artists just kinda go “yeah give credit and we cool”

Cowboy cat. Nice.

I want to paint Goose in the cowboy hat.

Hype train! That we are zooming.

Bucket sponge?

WATER BUCKET FROM WET SPONGE! Tiktok people giving all the cool info.

Go Goose. Catch the computer mouse and the screen mouse.

Just sitting here at 11:30 at night getting screen shots of Goose for painting purposes.

Goose please. Look at the camera babe.

My phone is dying. And I can’t charge it and type.

Alright the camera is off the cat. The cat is also blocking the screen.

But no cat on camera means I’m getting some sleep. If I do any of the projects I’ve mentioned I’ll let y’all know.

Have a good rest everyone.

#eret #dream smp #dsmp #dsmp eret #why must this being stream so late #goose the cat #erets cat #delayed liveblogging

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felassan · 3 years

Text

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 4

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1, 2 and 3. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1-3. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one.

(Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

The Loghain sequences, where it jumps out of the HoF’s point of view to let the player see what Loghain is up to, were added quite late on in development. Some of the dream sequences (like the HoF’s dream of the Archdemon) were also probably added quite late. Those sequences were added as they felt that they needed to have more indication of the larger goings-on in terms of what Loghain was up to, since they had cut some stuff that was meant to have shown this. Cutting things can be funny like that as you’re then left trying to explain the holes.

An original Archdemon concept drawing had them as a lot more demonic as opposed to draconic, with blank all-black faces, a giant ornate crown, smoke, tentacles and a Cthulhu-esque feel. Things change a lot during the concept phase however. At the time, DG wasn’t sure if he liked the changing of the ‘demon’ into a ‘dragon’, but over time he digs it - it sorta implies some things about the nature of dragons in the world that they later decided “yes, that is probably the case”. They then worked that more into the lore so that dragons weren’t just there to be huge lizards. Given the difficulty the team had modelling things like tentacles and snakes, the original Archdemon concept would probably have been iterated on and would’ve had to become something else eventually anyway.

Having the party camp was probably always part of James Ohlen’s plan. Originally, there was going to be different camps in specific places around the map. They then made it a sort of ‘pocket area’ that the player always ‘took with them’, but here they had problems figuring out things like what would happen if the player rested while in an interior location as opposed to somewhere out in the wilderness, “like, does that change it?” For a while there was a complicated system where the party members would do things in camp that would give the player items and help out in such ways - like a party member who made potions, ones that could be interacted with and asked to craft, a whole crafting system relating to that, etc (this all got cut). This was supposed to act as a reason for the player to return to camp and have more interactions at camp; they didn’t want the camp just to be ‘the place you go just to talk to followers’. A good portion of the team considered dialogue to be boring and not an activity that was engaged in.

As soon as hair/beard hair came past the ‘clipping plane’ of the neck, they had real trouble getting it to move due to lack of proper cloth physics and the troubles they had with hair. Beards were rectangular strips that dangled from the chin with the beard texture attached to it. Sometimes certain points were connected to the chest which is why there’s the weird stretching if models move in certain ways. This happens with robes as well. The reason they did this is so that there’s no clipping. For some reason the BW animation team was so averse to clipping compared to other games from elsewhere which sometimes have a bit of clipping that they’re actually not fussed about. At one point they had a big fight on the DA team because the art team said “We need to make every entrance and doorway [including tents] about twice the size that it is, about Shale-size specifically, because of Shale” because they were worried that there would be scenes where Shale would clip through the wall, and about how this would look to players. Others responded that it’d be rare where Shale would be seen going through a door and also that nobody really cares (as in it’s not a big deal). DG half-seriously suggested that instead of making every door bigger, have it so that after entering the door’s texture at the sides and above it would look cracked and have an outline of Shale’s arms and head as if she’d just barreled her way through the stonework. In the end Shale’s size was reduced as a solution to this (so Shale was originally intended to be a lot larger). This is an example of a place where different parts of the team had different priorities in development. It was pointed out that in the end having giant doors may not have made much difference, as every interior in DA is massive in terms of floor and ceiling-space, as well as items (huge jugs of ale etc) anyway.

Weapons and staves hover on characters’ backs due to the team’s aforementioned aversion to clipping. Originally there were plans for scabbards and straps, but they didn’t have the resources for these and they were also concerned about staves clipping through straps, especially when being ‘drawn’ for combat, even though that would just be a second or so. So this is why we instead have floating magnetically-attached-looking weapons.

DG wrote Nature of the Beast including all of the Brecilian Forest, it’s possibly his favorite plot/questline out of the ones he wrote for DAO. It’s one of the plots that survived best from first inception to final result. One of the prominent cultural features of Ferelden is the werewolves, and so DG had to make ‘the werewolf plot’. All the initial plots were split up like that (the werewolf plot, the dwarf plot, etc). Originally there was a separate ‘elf plot’ but it got joined together with the werewolf one. DG had an idea for a being that was like male and female, terrible and kind, beautiful and horrible and so forth - both at once, like the way nature is. This was the vague initial idea from which this plot grew. The nature spirit encountered is the flipside of the being. The spirit of the forest is both male and female, or something akin to being bigender (both rather than neither). There’s not much difference between the Lady and Witherfang. DG finds it so weird hearing the DAO Dalish elves’ American accents (since their accents were changed for the next game). The American Dalish elf accents bugged DG enough that when they got to DA2, he said to Caroline Livingstone “can we just retcon this” and she was like “yeah”. “I think we underestimated how weird prevalent American accents in the game alongside the British ones would be”. Zathrian is voiced by Tim Russ (Tuvok from Star Trek).

The Cammen-Gheyna plot is a fairly ‘nothing-y’ sidequest relatively speaking, but is so complex in terms of how many options and paths through it that it has that DG got a big of a finger-wagging for it and some people were not happy. LE commented that this quest is “an extremely Gaider plot”, as the player can ruin everyone’s lives in it. Gheyna’s pronunciation of Andaran atish'an is incorrect. This phrase is one of the ones that got mixed up in the pronunciation guide and one of the ones that when they got to DA2, DG was like “ignore what we did before, here’s the new pronunciation files”. One of the first ‘images’ the team had of the Dalish was that they had reindeer-like creatures that pulled the aravels. In DAO aravels look more like standard wagons than the ones in the ‘images’, and they weren’t shown properly. Aravels are wagons but they’re supposed to have big sails (not naval-style sails on top) all over the place to catch the wind, so that they look like a bunch of ships being drawn across a field. They got closer to how they’re supposed to be in DAI. At one point the artists sat DG down and asked him what should set the Dalish apart visually. “Funny you should ask, I have some very specific ideas about what the Dalish should look like that have just never been done”. [I think here he meant hadn’t yet been implemented in the franchise] “Oh, we just thought they were ‘people with wagons’.” “Nobody reads documentation...”

The lamps in the Brecilian Forest are a bit random. They put light sources everywhere and it seems like the Brecilian lamp thing was art-asset use that boiled down to “guess it’s an elven forest?”. The Deep Roads were supposed to be properly dark. The team had a lot of conversations over how dark they could or should make the Deep Roads. They constantly had beams of light coming from above and it was like “this is supposed to be like a mile underground, why are there sunbeams coming through cracks in the ceiling” - the answer is it looks good and they didn’t want to do proper darkness. By DAI, they got closer to the ‘look’ the Deep Roads are supposed to have. This is a recurring theme in the DA franchise lol. “This was a weakness in our team and processes, that it took two titles before we got on board with each other and with the vision.” But they had plenty of good strengths too! DG wishes they had iterated a bit more on the werewolves’ look.

“Evil options” was always one of the big conversations that they had. DG wasn’t a fan of the evil options because they mostly boiled down to being a big jerk. The reason for this is a lengthy design discussion that relies on interface - proper, smart evil usually implies some kind of deception, and how do you indicate to the player that the option they’re about to take has a more cleverly-sinister aspect to it (as opposed to simple Intimidate options)? They didn’t really enjoy just letting the player run around being an asshole to people, “do we have to service this hyuk-hyuk-hyuk, particular type of enjoyment?” DG wishes they had figured out how to do the evil stuff a little better (feeling that in a game, doing good has less merit unless there’s temptation to do evil, and that evil paths should be more materially rewarding).

DG wrote The Dawn Will Come with some help from PW and Karin Weekes. It was the first song he wrote. Trevor Morris sent him the tune and he listened to it many times and wrote out the lyrics. PW and KW helped him make it “less awkward and cringey”. “They’re very good at that”. PW is good at poetry, KW is more musical and knows more about music. “If you get something which is as ridiculous as it is memorable, it’s probably Sheryl. If you get something that’s beautiful prose, it’s probably Mary. Something in-between is probably PW.” The DAI bardsongs were written by an external party brought in specially to do so. This required a fair bit of review and revision to make sure they followed DA lore. “It’s a problem we’ve always had trying to work with third parties, they tend to think that anything that falls under the umbrella of ‘medieval fantasy’ would fit in DA”. (Here DG groaned a bit thinking about Orson Scott Card.)

On the Grand Oak and co: “After I finished writing this I totally regretted it. It’s a big dialogue and there’s a lot involved in this quest. Do you know how hard it is to make somebody rhyme in a way that’s not completely cringey for the entire dialogue? I was three quarters into it and I so wanted to stop but I was past the point of no return. But I did it! And it worked out.” The Grand Oak should have been a LotR-style ent-like being in terms of animations and presence. When DG sees the Oak’s stationary pose he’s reminded of Silence of the Lambs. When he finished the Grand Oak and hermit quest he was like “I make way more trouble for myself than I should”. The Hermit cycles through random animations outside of conversation because he’s supposed to be twitchy and weird.

The haunted empty camp side encounter was a pain for the tech designers to make work because there’s no NPC to talk to. It was a pain whenever companions had to offer critical information like in these sorts of parts in fact, as they had to write 9 versions of each ‘line’ (1 for each companion).

There are certain spells/abilities in D&D that can make a GM’s life frustrating, such as teleportation, telling the future, resurrection. The fact that death is not permanent, for instance, should be a huge thing that affects society and how the people in it view death. This is why they were thinking stuff like “If every low-level mage in the setting had a skill like ‘Charm Person’, what would non-mages make of that?” This ties back to discussions in previous part/s where there are lore rules like no teleportation. DA was originally envisioned as a low-magic setting, but this didn’t last long [this subject is also covered in previous part/s]. The rules of magic didn’t really change though, they just weren’t really communicated that well to the other teams in the early days. They slowly realized that it was incumbent on the design team to explain and sell to the other teams the vision, not just expect them to read documentation. They were also constantly fighting against their own presuppositions of “DA is like D&D”.

Desire demons were supposed to be genderless. DG isn’t a fan of how the Fade turned out in DAO. The quests themselves were too long; they couldn’t do all the original plans they had for them so there was a lot of iteration, “then we ended up settling for something not very exciting”. Another big fight the team had was about whether they should have permanent death since DA was a more realistic world? One side’s argument was that ‘if you don’t allow for resurrection then we can’t have death in combat’. DG wondered if there was a different dichotomy they could get to but didn’t want to dictate how combat should work or tell combat designers how to do their job, as he wasn’t the one doing that work.

One of the best moves they made when working on DAI was the concept artist consulting cosplayers. This was good work not only in a fashion sense but also in that it led to making outfits for characters that someone could actually wear (contrast those with Sebastian’s outfit, which DG remembers cosplayers having trouble making functional/wearable and putting together). DG really wasn’t keen at all on Cole’s hat. When designing the clothing-clothing in DAO, the artists were trying to get the most variation for clothing out of assembling pieces. For the sake of variation they allowed pieces to go together that really shouldn’t go together. This allowed for a larger number of clothing options to be made out of a smaller number of clothing models/textures.

In Neverwinter Nights they added a “jiggle mesh” to the engine, it was used in only one place (Aribeth’s cleavage).

Writers are the first ones that jump onto a project, so when last touches and polish is being added to a game they’re often not aware of it. Once the writing is more or less locked down for a game, they start working on the next project. On every project at some point they had to have what they called the “profanity meeting”, where they decide what types of profanity exist in that world, what level of profanity they’re accepting, establishing the standard on this front, etc. This leads to fun meetings where they go through every profanity that they know and try to create new ones. “Maker’s breath!” and “Void take you!” are some of these kinds of things. They needed exclamations akin to “Goddamnit” but which made sense in this fantasy setting (“Goddamnit” implies the context of God, and the concept of damning, for example, so it doesn’t hold up) and weren’t just word substitution like “frack” instead of fuck or something.

The Grey Wardens gained their trademark blue and silver uniformed look for DA2. When the new art director Matt Goldman came on before DA2, he wanted to re-approach a number of things such as the darkspawn (mentioned in previous parts) and the Wardens. He wanted factions like the Wardens to be more uniform and easily identifiable at a distance by silhouettes and colors. He wanted factions to be more visually distinct and to introduce more color in general, as DAO was very brown and muddy. This was something of a standing mission of his when he came onto the project. He disliked the idea that there wasn’t anything unifying or distinct or ‘easily identifiable as a DAO screenshot’ about DAO screenshots, other than that brown muddiness.

Deciding how to design the Lady of the Forest was a long conversation due to the potential nsfw elements. It was a long haul to get her to look a certain way.

The thing DG found easiest/least painful to write was probably Zevran’s dialogue. He felt less pressure about it and had a bit more fun with it. Zevran has a certain story about trust that DG found pleasurable to build on; Zevran had grown up with a certain expectation of deceit and trauma, and when confronted with earnest feelings, that was the more puzzling part for [Zevran] to process. “When you expect everyone around you to deceive you, you’re kinda like, okay, this is life. But then to figure out, ‘oh, I guess it doesn’t need to be that way’, well how do you even... not?” DG remembers straight male players complaining on the forum after accepting Zevran’s massage tent-invite and not clocking that that was an invite of a certain nature. Overall Zevran was a more relaxed piece of writing for him. Shale came later but writing Shale was also a lot of fun. Like HK-47, “you can string together a few quirks that you find amusing and people will still treat that like a character and love it”.

In DA2 there was an entire subplot centered around the Carta and Varric. It spanned all three Acts. Mary Kirby had written it to completion and it was good. DG had to tell her it was among the cuts they needed to do because it was written a bit later relative to other stuff and because cutting it offered the most return according to the schedule and resources/subsequent downstream work. In cases like these they sometimes take the cut plotbeats and put it in a ‘box’, in the hopes that they may be able to use it for DLC or something later on. In practise this doesn’t happen very often at all. On DAO it did happen once with Shale. Shale was cut from DAO and had to be moved to become Day 1 DLC. Work on Shale therefore took place after most of the game had been finished. If they hadn’t done this, she would have been cut completely. It also sort of happened on DAO with Loghain. It originally had a whole plotline in Denerim involving him which had the player figuring out his background, motivations and interacting more with Anora. All of that got cut (requiring the cutscenes mentioned at the start of this post being added), and this is where the idea came of writing a novel (The Stolen Throne). This occurred in the period when the game had been delayed and DG particularly regretted that particular cut. He thought, “I could take this story that you were going to learn about the history of Loghain and his relationship with Cailan, and rescue it in a way.” [source]

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

#dragon age #bioware #video games #cole #spirit boy

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spoopy-moose · 3 years

Note

Here i am asking you for your postmodern interpretation of the dsmp, would you share with the rest of the class please?

Absolutely. Sorry for the essay ahead.

Bear in mind that I am in no way a literature student, I am literally a high school student who’s way too into this sort of stuff, like way more than I should be.

Postmodernist philosophy is basically a rejection of grand narratives, such as the narratives of ideology and such, so in postmodern literature, what most of them aim to explore is the connection of the text to the audience and the blurring of realities. It is most often characterised by non-linera narratives, metafiction, pastiche and irony, and temporal displacement.

In it’s whole, the Dream SMP is almost an entirely new way to tell a story. Because of the unconventional format, this sort of structure reflects the metaness of the story as a whole. Characters slip in and out of characters all the time, making the line between what is fictional and what is “real” blurry. Take Tommy’s streams for example, in his streams, what are joking bits and what are actual serious bits are distorted all the time, so much so that the “real” Tommy and the “character” Tommy blend together into one. This could be said of many other characters in the story of the SMP, where they slip in and out of character to such an extent that it almost becomes unrecgonisable. This is connected to the aespects of postmodern fiction of reader involvement and metafiction, which highlights a key aespect of this sort of fiction as being able to shift from different levels of being or different “worlds”. In this case, the world of the SMP and our own real world.

Another way is through the intertexual nature of the story itself. To interpret the story, one must have a baseline knowledge of other works that the content creators are in, some with little to no relations to the story. If we were to view the story in its whole, the audience cannot just rely on just the story of the SMP itself, the audience have to sought out connections to other pieces of media in order to create a deeper understanding of the source text. An example of this would be the relationship of SBI, especially that of Philza towards the rest. Philza did not become a character at all until Nov 16 and if one did not have any piror knowledge of the nature of his character’s relationship with the character of Wilbur, then Wilbur’s death scene would have been a lot less impactful than it was. Another would be Schlatt and Wilbur’s relationship before the SMP, if someone went into the SMP with no idea about Schlatt and his connection to Wilbur as a character, then they might not understand the full emotional impact of the second arc.

There are some smaller things as well which connects it to the genre of postmodernism. Like the useage of magic realism, where the inherent mythticism of the game is overlooked in favour of more “real” events. The blend of “high” and “low” fiction, wherein the epic story of a nation’s rise and fall exists within the context of drug brewing and dirty jokes. Temporal displacement comes in the form of us never actually knowing how old each of the character’s are, where lore around their ages and time and familial relationships constantly shift around. Parody in the ridiculousness of the whole plot, how generally over the top the plot is despite in its whole being a minecraft roleplay server. Pastiche in the mirroring of the eariler plot to that of Hamilton and the later plot to that from JD in Heathers.

However, I think that the overall philosphy and the circular nature of the plot has postmodern characterstics as well. The ideology that L’manberg was founded on, an ideology of freedom and sanctuary, didn’t exist as there wasn’t a tryant, only someone who tried to stop a drug trafficking ring. The ideology fought by those who consider themselves for the ideology of L’manberg too, then doesn’t exist and were founded on unfound grounds. And those who try to rebuild L’manberg were then, building it on empty grounds. I think a big idea presented here is that L’manberg never existed and those who are still fighting for it, whether it be Tubbo or Tommy or any of the characters, are then stuck in an romanticised version of their past. This then in turn has caused grief amongst the characters again and again, as they scramble to achieve something that was in a way unachieveable. That, I would say, adheres to the postmodern principles of a rejection of ideology and a rejection of reality pretty well.

But that’s just my interpretation of the plot, especially the last bit is literally purely my interpretation. And also, I’m not like fully educated on this subject, I’ve literally only been reading massive amounts of internet articles on this because I found this ideology a few days ago and now I’m actually obssessed.

Look all I’m saying is that if you put every last bit of the dream smp into a novel, not just like the main story arc, you’d get something at the general fuckery level of gravity’s rainbow

#i was going to do piano practice #Anonymous #but then i wrote a thought dump #let me infodump about dumb shit like this #this was so carthtic #ive literally throught about this for ages now #dream smp #dsmp #philosphy #mcyt #mcytblr #wilbur soot #philza #tommyinnit #tubbo

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thanksjro · 4 years

Text

Dark Cybertron Chapter 6: This Sure is a Comic I’m Reading.

The Dinobots are chilling out by the standing Titan, because Slag went and got his ass kicked by the super death wave a few issues back.

Excuse me, Slug.

There’s real-world context for this change- you see, in England, the word “slag” is often used as a derogatory term. Specifically, it’s either used as a stand in for “prostitute” or “whore”, or in more of a generalized “I greatly dislike this person” sort of way. It’s typically aimed at women, which is likely why Arcee said something to him as opposed to anyone else.

This little exchange is interesting, since Dark Cybertron Chapter 6 was published in 2014. Our boy Slug here first showed up in the original cartoon, back in the 80s, and was in the Marvel UK comics, where they didn’t change his name. A good portion of the IDW creative team, including 50% of the writers for this event storyline, are also from the UK. Seems like someone finally got sick of calling a whole-ass robot dinosaur a slut.

Not that there’s anything wrong with enjoying casual sex, or being a sex worker, but slapping labels on other people without their input is sort of a shitty thing to do, especially when you’re doing it in a franchise typically aimed at younger audiences, and with a surprisingly large following in the UK, where that term is used.

Anyway, while this conversation was happening, the Titan moved, and when it did, it kicked up a shit-ton of dust. Astrotrain, who is laying off to the side with his legs and an arm off, offers Swoop his binoculars. When asked why the hell he has binoculars- which doesn’t seem so strange to me, given that they’re standard military equipment in a lot of places- he tries to explain that he’s got shit eyes, and didn’t want Megatron to know about them. This would be an interesting glimpse into the inner workings of the Decepticons and how they view disability, if Swoop actually gave a damn.

But he doesn’t.

So it’s not.

Swoop sees with his special eyes that the guys who went down into the Crystal City have escaped, and are currently trying to outrun the Titan, and also the title of this issue.

Watch out, that typography’s gonna fuckin’ get you!

The Dinobots start firing on the Titan, which does fuck-all, and Prowl yells at them to head for Iacon, since that’s where the Titan’s going. Bumblebee, Skywarp, and Megatron are revealed to be MIA. Bummer.

Over on that weird water planet the Lost Light landed on a few issues back, the Rod Pod gang have puttered into Metroplex’s eye socket, and are currently making a Fantastic Voyage. Getaway asks where the hell Metroplex’s eyeball got to, but nobody has an answer for him, least of all Metroplex. Strange happenings on this weird water planet.

Ratchet gives everyone the skinny on Titan physiology theory- thank god he came along on the trip so I could at least get a little lore to feed my brain through this slog.

So, Metroplex’s spark could actually be out right now. Even though the lights are still on, that doesn’t mean anyone’s actually home, because the power of his spark needs time to actually travel through the body, and it needs a lot more time than the average robot, because he’s just so goddamned big. Humans also need time for their animating force… or, uh, blood to travel through the body. This is why we have a pulse. If it was instantaneous, we wouldn’t, but we’d probably also explode, because our squishy little bodies wouldn’t be able to handle that shit.

The gang starts scanning for life signs, even though they’re not even sure if they’ll be able to pick anything up. Brainstorm theorizes that the water could be causing degradation to Metroplex’s body. Getaway is still stuck on the Rod Pod existing. He’s having a moment. He’s been having a moment, really, ever since he saw the damn thing.

The results from the life-scan come in, and it looks like Metroplex might actually be okay, because there’s a blip for everyone in the Rod Pod, plus one! Hooray!

Nobody tell them about the hanger-on who’s basically glued himself to the ass of the Pod. We’ll let them have this little win, if only for a moment.

Ratchet suggests they head for the brain to check things out. Brainstorm reads back the report on the water sample he took, holding his data pad as precariously as he possibly can as he does. There’s admium flakes in the water. Nobody knows what this means, so they try to call Swerve, who is a metallurgist, for his professional opinion. The call goes to voicemail. Pity, that.

The fellas show up at the cranium, and there’s a small issue; Metroplex’s brain isn’t there. It wasn’t yanked out, either- it’s clean as a whistle in there, all things considered. Next stop- the spark. Hopefully they can get there before all the lights go out, because it’s beginning to look rather grim for ol’ Plexy.

Back on Cybertron, Starscream is asking about the fatality rate of the death wave, which is a bit funny to read now that I’ve typed it out. Tankor- who is our tie-in issue character today- decides he’s going to start some shit with Starscream, even as people are evaporating around him in the medical center he’s volunteered to assist at. Starscream takes the verbal stripping down with a straight face, because at this point, it’s just par for the course for him. Being head honcho of a whole planet kinda sucks, as he’s quickly finding out.

Flatline, who is also here, makes a crack at Starscream’s expense, and Starscream decides that that’s going to be the straw that breaks his camel’s back, as he starts getting dangerously sarcastic with the guy. Too bad this isn’t the time for that, however, because the Titan just showed up at the city limits.

Wow, Titan really said “fuck those two guys on the left in particular.”

Over in the Dead Universe, it turns out that the massive fiery laser blast from last issue DIDN’T kill everyone, and doesn’t actually seem like it was ever intended to. I suppose it was some sort of transport beam that Nova Prime used for his entrance, like the dramatic bitch he is. That’s neat, I guess.

Hardhead’s pretty upset by Nightbeat’s betrayal, not that Nightbeat really cares- being brainwashed tends to have that effect. Hardhead starts slamming his skull against the containment cube, living up to his name and also making himself look like a fool. Cyclonus is beginning to regret agreeing to this trip. Orion Pax punches the wall and starts yelling at Nightbeat for being a traitor, pretty much breaking his hand in the process. Rodimus tries to get him to chill out, and gets a knuckle sandwich for his troubles.

Also, this whole thing is a ruse. Orion managed to crack the cube, and he’s gonna try to get them out, but he can only do it if Nightbeat doesn’t realize what’s going on. Once Rodimus is let in on the plan, he tries to butter up ol’ Ikea Johnson, who notices the very mysterious something that’s on Rodimus’ palm. The thing that’s NOT his forcefield generator, that we don’t get to know about just yet.

Seeing the mysterious something makes Nightbeat fall to his knees, clutching his head in pain. At least, that’s what Orion says happened. I don’t know what happened or why, or why Orion would fucking know what happened or why. Or even, really, if it was Orion making the claim in the first place.

Not even any feet to try to connect to characters. I’m just guessing on previous panels.

“Dark Cybertron” makes me so, so tired.

Anyway, Nova Prime tells everyone to get on their knees, lest he shoot them with his big honkin’ back turrets.

Back inside Metroplex, the fellas have exited the Rod Pod and are on the hunt for Metroplex’s spark. Someone’s gone and drawn arrows pointing in the direction of the spark chamber, though who exactly is a mystery. Lots of mystery going on this issue. The boys decide to see where the graffiti takes them, leaving the Rod Pod to whatever fate might befall it while they’re gone.

Nobody likes the Rod Pod very much.

Also, that hanger-on from earlier is still there. This’ll turn out great, surely!

We get treated to a double-page spread of Escher proportions, as the gang tries to traverse the inner workings of Metroplex, until they hit an arrow that seemingly hits a dead end. When they brute force their way through the ceiling, it’s bad news bears; they’re right back where they started. Whirl, our most volatile friend, takes out his frustration on the Rod Pod, only for more bad news to reveal itself: the Pod’s been rigged to explode by the hanger-on!

And that’s a series wrap on the Rod Pod Squad! Let’s give ‘em a hand, folks!

Back in the Dead Universe, Nova Prime is busy deadnaming Orion, and generally just being an asshole. He notices Cyclonus off in the corner, and starts being an asshole at him too, because that’s how Nova interacts with the world. It’s all he knows.

It’s at this point that Cyclonus gives Hardhead the signal, and Hardhead bashes through the crack in the cube. Too bad it reseals itself directly behind him. Hardhead goes to punch Nova Prime, and gets his hand crushed into pulp for his troubles. Then he dies, because that was his forcefield hand.

And that’s a series wrap on Hardhead!

Nova Prime informs everyone that he’ll be taking them to visit a pal of his.

You know, this reveal would be a hell of a lot more poignant if I could FUCKING TELL WHO THE SHIT THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE.

#transformers #jro #dark cybertron #issue 6 #mtmte #issue 25 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #incoming analysis #overthinking about robots #comic script writing

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blowkiss-buttcheeks · 4 years

Text

I HAVE MORE SKY: COTL THEORIES (+ Mini theories and personal headcanons)

The mini theories are put in-between the bigger ones, and are colored.

They're put before a theory that might connect with them, and the title of the theory connected to the mini-theories are colored with the same color.

PART 1: M O R E THEORIES

people who makes these theories should get a PhD in Sky Lore

1. Sky Kids = Eden Elder Theory

Winged Light are left behind by Child of Light, who appears in the intro in the place for the Eden elder. In Eden before we die we give winged light to fallen skykids as replacement souls. If skykid souls are made of bits of the long lost Eden elder's soul, then you could say that skykids are all collectively the new incarnation of the Eden elder.

The reason we "shepherd the light through the storm" is because we need to bring all skykids back home so that the final star is reunited with the light.

In the intro the light that falls down to awaken the skykids is coming from just above where the Eden elder was, implying that this is when the king finally died, spreading some bits of his soul across the realms (winged light), while the rest of his soul pieces became the souls of skykids. When they say the Eden elder is beyond saving, I think he died a lot more recently than we expect: at the start of the game.

This theory also explains why Child of Light and children of light have such similar names: because they're parts of the same thing. Basically skykids are a result of the king relinquishing his past form and 'starting over' to bring an era of unity rather than selfishness.

Mini 1: Eden was a haven of civilization. Whatever happened in Eden lead to their downfall

Mini 2: Corrupted King/Eden Elder. In one of the Tomcepts (Concept Art by Tom Zhao) there is a drawing of a corrupted king. The King is corrupted by the darkness and is now in Eden

2. Project Ark Theory (somewhat connected to the Eden Stormlock Diamond Theory)

Based off of some concept arts, a massive ark was being built. An ark large enough to hold an entire civilization, so that they could all return home(to the stars/space/orbit). Since they were already used flying boats for transportation, why wouldn’t a huge ark do the same? The ark was planned to land in eden, because it was the highest point of the kingdom(it’s closer to their true home). To help power the ark, they built a massive diamond. Something went wrong and the diamond broke. Things turn black/red and everything falls apart.

If including the King…

The King watched over the ark project(like god watching over noah building the ark). Assuming that he cared about his kingdom, he wants all of his people to return to the stars. Maybe while the ark was being built, cities were also being built in eden(explanation of the presence of pipes and steel beams in Eden).

Some aspects of the concept art suggested that the King IS Eden. The King probably got greedy because of the abundance of light and materials produced from the ark project. He became corrupted possibly due to the dark stones ability to work with light and he turned into the Storm. Maybe there was too much light being added to the dark stone, more than it could handle.

The King becomes the Storm, the ark project is abandoned, and so was eden. The dark stones become more corrupted and turn red. The stones gain the ability to suck light out of things. Eventually, the huge diamond that was built becomes corrupted too and splits , spurting out dark energy.

3. Stormlock Diamond Creation

The Creation of the Big Diamond Eye

The spirits/elders wanted to create something more powerful than the blue diamonds. Blue diamonds needs to be powered with light to function. The blue diamonds cannot harness light itself. The blue diamonds have to be recharged manually repeatedly.

The spirits only had so much light(only what’s inside themselves and inside creatures of light). Where/How are they gonna get more light?

Where did light come from initially? The Megabird.

The Megabird is linked to the kingdom through a giant beam of light reaching up from Eden. The beam has likely been there since the beginning of time and is a source of infinite light. For a long time, no one had been able to tap into that much raw energy because it’s extremely powerful.

Whoever created the Diamond Eye wanted to siphon that infinite energy/light directly into a diamond to be stored and used like a giant battery that could power the entire kingdom. Maybe they believed that since civilization has advanced so much, they would be able to create something stronger than any diamond they had built before. As a backup measure to prevent the Diamond Eye from overflowing, they created concentrated forms of darkness(red crystal rocks) and attached it to the Diamond. The darkness would suck out any extra light that the Diamond couldn’t store. They thought it would be enough to stop a potential surge of energy from pouring out of the Diamond Eye. But of course, they were wrong. The red crystals didn’t just prevent the Diamond from exploding, they actually caused the Diamond Eye to siphon light at a faster rate than it could handle, resulting in a huge explosion of massive energy, scattering shards of red crystal and shockwaves of darkness that spread throughout the kingdom, corrupting creatures and killing the ancestors(currently spirits). After the explosion, an infinite vacuum was created(taking in light and everything around it, stirring in a huge storm).

4. Rebel Wasteland theory (possibly connected to the Two Shields Theory)

Golden Wasteland was the second most industrialized realm (first would be Eden) in the sky world and possibly the most militarised one (four out of six spirits are military, and there are soldier statues at the entrance corridor to the broken temple).

For it’s potential to be a threat, especially due to its proximity to Eden, the King fills the realm with his statues (there are 9 in total - 2 of them broken in half - not counting the turrets atop the GW temple) as a way to assert his position of leadership over the land.

Then the anti-power diamond movement started and, considering the polluted water, it must have been stronger in Wasteland than any other realm. So the people there start a strike on diamond mass production, threatening the entire line of production, and, when the king send his men in to end it, the GW spirits are backed by their Elder.

There starts the civil war with GW troop’s winning at first, and it ends with the king using his giant diamond to level wasteland (the level of destruction there is comparable only to Eden, and hardly was caused by only men-to-men combat). But by doing so, the king corrupts his giant diamond, leading to the eventual fall of Eden and the spread of darkness to all the other remaining realms.

PART 2: PERSONAL HEADCANONS AND THEORIES

1. The krills are corrupted whales. No proof except that they look similar

2. The darkness is slowly killing the krills and dark crabs.

The krills have dark particles dropping from their body, and the dark crabs have the same particles on their body. These particles are very similar to the one we see when our Skykids are dying in Stormlock Eden, after we lost all of our Winged Lights.

After we die, the dark particles drop down to the ground and disappear.

This makes me believe that these particles are slowly killing the krills and crabs.

3. The King is just the Prince on a mech.

You see this?

Look at the King's head.

It's just the prince on a gigantic mech.

GET IN THE ROBOT ALEF

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