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drew-mga2022mi5016 · 11 months

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Research | Personal Branding - Initial Realisations

This module has us think about who we are as people, what we want to do and how we want to represent ourselves. Who am I? What makes Drew (that's me), Drew?

First, I analyzed my current portfolio and art style to try and identify any strengths and weaknesses, a SWOT analysis if you will. As mentioned earlier, I plan on focusing on 2D animation and illustration and mixed media artwork for now, so my work mainly capitalizes on these aspects. I realised that my art has a certain flavour; sketchy, with a soft palette and somewhat simplistic art style, but still packed with details. In my work, I enjoy adding smaller intricate designs and easter eggs, one could think of it like an onion (admittedly, I stole this phrase from a friend of mine in our Visual Communication department who follows roughly the same work ethic as me. Sorry, Dulana). Furthermore, I am also fond of the process that goes into making art, so I've included process work from concept sketches to the roughs of all my pieces.

The most glaring weakness in my portfolio however, is a severe lack of work that I can tangibly showcase. Although a lame excuse, the reason for this is my investment of time in the degree programme, however this would change with this semester, as the focus is to find a decent internship.

With that done, I now come to the question of what makes me? Why would people want to work with me? Am I a person who is part of a larger machine, or am I the pilot? Am I even related to the machine? Maybe I'm just some painter on the side of the road? I see myself as a creative force of nature, so to speak. I do not think I could merely be one part of a larger project, I'm more like a spontaneous burst of energy on a whim. I do recognize that due to my activities in the Student Chamber at AOD and my previous position as Vice President that I do have a certain skillset that pertains to leadership, communication and consistency, however I feel that in the future I want to make things that are successful because of what they say, not because I made them. In other words, I do not want to chase fame.

At the end of the day, I want to be an independent creator, which is a difficult journey for sure. In order to get there, I need to learn the skill of selling people my ideas, which is essentially (dreadfully) marketing (what a BORE). I'll need to foster an entrepreneurial and narrative mindset for this. At the end of the day, it's simply a means to an end. I also asked the question of where I would proliferate myself, and to that I do not have a solid answer as of yet. Off the top of my head, the first and easiest thing that comes to mind is social media like YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Instagram, anywhere people interact. Furthermore, I would love to proliferate in real life as well, through some form of design campaign (AR perhaps?). These are merely initial speculations, so I will have to properly think about this and the feasibility of it as time passes.

Finally, I asked myself what my story was. What got me where I am now? Right now, nothing of note comes to mind. I studied English Literature at school, and on a whim, decided to drop out during my Advanced Level examinations and change gears to the arts. I had realised that the education system in schools are extremely flawed, and wanted a new, non conformational change of scene. I'd always been an artists (in a sense, I wrote novels and drew anime characters from time to time, and my mother and I have a string background in music) and I felt joining the Motion Graphics and Animation programme on campus would help me become a better storyteller. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the visual arts again and as of now, I'm on a trajectory to combine my love for literature and art going forward by creating books, graphic novels, short films, table top games (maybe?) and essentially creating my very own universe with all these interconnected characters and stories.

This made me realise that maybe to get where I need to go, an unconventional internship may benefit me here. As a creative, broadening my scope could possibly help me get where I need to be in the future. For example, an internship in finance could help me learn how to actually price my work, lots of creators ask the question "how do I price myself?" Art is hard to quantify as it is, but we need to do it in order to make money (I'm not saying I want to intern in finance, God no, but it illustrates what I'm trying to say about a different sort of internship). In my case, maybe I could look at places with strong connections to art and culture, or hone in on my strengths of music to learn how to create a multisensory experience through my work? I believe now, it's time for a bit of self reflection.

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kindofwriter · 3 years

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Hey there! My group of friends have been hardcore considering turning a passion project of ours into a real podcast, and I was wondering if you had any advice for newbies putting together a show. We’re a small, young team, but we have a lot of passion for our concept and some writing/sound experience under our belts. Do you have any tips regarding finding actors, the process of plotting, sensitivity readers, or anything else you’ve had experience with in your projects? Thanks for reading!

Ok, finally ready with this! Thank you so much for the question, I will try to share my ~wisdom~ in the following post, but feel free to ask any further questions!

How to start a podcast: 1. when you’re new and/or 2. when you have money!

1. It’s easier than you think! My first advice is to just go for it! Even if it doesn’t quite go as planned you’ll have fun, and it’ll give you great experience for whatever you want to work on next!

Casting:

I’m going to assume this is an unpaid project (hence the former part of this advice being for free podcasting!) but if that’s not the case please skip to section two!

When I can’t offer any form of payment for a project I like to use friends as a cast. Not because my friends deserve any less payment! But because I can pay them in free chips and credentials for their portfolios, and it makes me feel slightly less bad!

Ways to go about deciding which friends to cast: I was lucky enough to do a lot of theatre work in my first year of uni, so I already knew a lot of people who were interested in both acting and production work. You’ll probably come across several actors who think voice acting is beneath them, but who wants to be friends with those people? What I’m trying to say is: if you have friends who are interested in theatre they’ll probably be interested in this! Especially given the past year.

I also poached people from my DnD group, because I could already gauge their acting specialities from that, and I knew what kinds of things they were interested in based on which DnD campaigns they enjoyed best.

If you know anyone who is interested in public speaking, whatever you all those reading awards where you read aloud dramatically, or something like radio and TV presenting then they’ll probably also be interested and do a great job! The great thing about podcasts is that all you really need is someone with a good voice - they’re free to do whatever they like with the rest of their face as long as they’re reading the lines!

You can, of course, also put out a casting call. It’s very important that you make it clear that it would be unpaid work. Even if you plan to set up a kofi, patreon, or kickstarter (info in the money section!), if you don’t have the money to begin with you shouldn’t promise it to people.

There are up and downsides to both. Casting people you know means you’re more likely to be comfortable working with them, there’s less pressure to offer payment, and your cast are more likely to have free time specifically for this project. However, you won’t have the draw of casting known industry voices, and (like I found!) your cast may not have any social media engagement whatsoever!

If you put out a casting call you’re more likely to get a pool of diverse voices, it will likely be people invested (even if not plugged in) to the industry, and you can request that they have their own equipment! However, you then have to work with people you don’t know, a level of professionalism that isn’t usually present on first time projects may be expected, and unpaid casting calls are not wildly well received.

Personally, for your first show, I’d try to use as many friends, or even friends-of-friends as possible. That being said, if you want advice on putting together an audition pack let me know!

Plotting:

It depends on what kind of show you’re aiming to write, but in general plotting a podcast is kind of like plotting a TV show. First of all you should plot out what’s going to happen in a season. Then plot out what’s going to happen in each episode. Ideally each episode will have its own arc, but things don’t always work out like that.

I like to plan things out in a fair amount of detail beforehand (this is especially helpful if you’re writing collaboratively.) Start with what’s going to happen in each episode. Once I know that, I then like to write how it starts and finishes, then the content in bullet points. If you ever can’t think of anything then don’t worry! A lot of things really come together when you’re actually writing.

The most important thing is to not worry at all about the first draft. Just get it down, editing is much easier and more fun once you have something to work with!

There are definitely much more qualified people than me out there giving advice about writing and plotting though; even if it’s directed at prose and script writers it’s still more than applicable!

Sensitivity readers:

If you have the option of sensitivity readers they’re always a great idea! But asking someone to read your work (usually for free) is both time consuming and potentially risky if you don’t know and trust them.

Tumblr, the writeblr community specifically, is a good place to find a sensitivity reader. A lot of people want the practise and are willing to do it for free if you put a call out.

One of the best ways to get feedback on your work is to cast/find people who are appropriate for the roles and then ask for feedback. Obviously they don’t have to, but you’ll find that usually they want to. You can aid in this by giving them some way to give feedback anonymously - maybe a google form - as no matter how chill and friendly you are as the prod team you will always be seen as In Charge.

If you don’t feel right asking someone, especially from a marginalised group, to read and comment on your work for free, you can always just ask general questions in forums or on social media. This isn’t as reliable, as people can lie online, but if you find the right communities and explain you just want to portray characters as accurately as possible there will always be people willing to offer some help. Reddit, for all its flaws, builds great communities, though remember to check the rules to make sure people outside of whatever group they’re aiming to support are allowed to post.

Of course, the first step to writing anything outside of your own experience is a tonne of research. The sensitivity reader should be picking up on small things, not telling you the basics of their experiences. And everyone’s experiences are different, which makes this even tougher! You can get things so spot on for a handful of people whilst inadvertently offending others. Be prepared to be adaptable and take on criticism, but also remember that you don’t have to bend to everyone’s whim; one person saying ‘but this wasn’t my experience!!’ doesn’t mean you’ve done a bad job.

Equipment:

I know you didn’t ask, but this was what I found scariest when I was Brand New.

If you have the money and you’re very serious about this I haven’t encountered a single person who wouldn’t recommend a Blue Yeti mic. However when you’re just starting out, and especially if you’re not planning to have all of your cast together record together/separately but with the same mic, blowing over $100 on a mic is huge, scary, and not always feasible.

I have three small desk mics that I loan out to my cast when needed. They cost ~£30 ($40) from (ew, I know) Amazon. You don’t need a mic for each cast member - you don’t even need a mic for the max number of character speaking in a scene at once. You could probably do it all with one mic, but the time that would take and the affect it would have on scenes may be worth the extra cost! These obviously don’t produce the crisp quality a professional recording mic would, but they have a pop filter and a windscreen and seem to do a good job at reducing background static.

Further noise reduction: Mr Alexander Jalexander Newall, when starting his podcast empire half a decade ago, got it in one: blanket forts.

If you can build a little fabric den for your cast to record in: perfect! If not, tell them just to stick a duvet over their head. This increases the risk of moving duvet sounds, but reduces everything else! And if they shift under the blanket you can always ask them to get comfortable then read the lines again.

And, info courtesy of the McElroys: you can also record in a wardrobe or a room with plenty of bookshelves if you don’t want to build the world’s most bangin’ blanket fort.

The most important advice you will ever receive:

Don’t be scared to ask for help! Join Facebook groups and ask questions! Join discord servers! Message people on Twitter and ask for advice (certain ppl are much more amenable to this than others, but this is pretty clear from their Vibe)! Heck, you can message me on Twitter (or here. Or send another anon. And if I don’t know the answer I’ll ask someone who does!) Everyone just wants to help everyone else, and if they don’t they’re probably not the kind of people you want to associate with. Good luck! And let me know once you socials are up, so I can follow and get excited!

Now, onto 2. Money stuff!

A lot of the info stays the same, but money kind of raises the stakes. Once money’s involved, especially once money and people you don’t know so well are involved, suddenly you have to operate like a business.

Casting:

If you’re planning to pay actors proper wages from the get-go you probably want to put out a casting call. Paid work will attract professionals, and professionals will not only do a great job, but will also help you gain an audience (and have their own equipment!)

You get to decide what the hourly rate is, but usually, depending on where you’re from, there is an average hourly rate voice actors get paid, and if you’re nowhere close to that people will be put off.

You should also make clear what the hourly rate includes: whether it is just recorded audio hours, or includes table reads and directorial time. A lot of people just have every actor record their lines separately, sometimes without direction, then edit them all together. This certainly saves on cost, and makes for a quick turnaround, but it’s no fun, and sometimes makes the show kind of soulless.

Kickstarters:

You can run a kickstarter on an unpaid project, in the hopes of eventually paying the cast and maybe funding future seasons. But I’m going to assume this is advice for ‘I can pay the cast, but what is a kickstarter for?’

Well, that’s up to you! It can be for equipment, for better editing, for podcast music, for podcast art, for a pay rise for the team, for bonus content. Depending on how many stretch goals you have, it can be for all of these things!

In short: backers give money, and get things in return, for example $5 might get you a pin badge, while $100 might get you a signed poster. When the kickstarter reaches a certain goal, maybe $5,000, then the team may then have enough money to produce a holiday special, for example. At $10,000 everyone on the team may get a 10% pay rise.

This is a great way to get people invested in the show, and a great way to make money! But if you want a really great kickstarter you’ll probably want to hire someone with experience in this area.

Contracts:

Money means contracts! Usually two will suffice, they just need edited for each individual team member:

An NDA, to prevent people from discussing the show in any inappropriate situations.

And a literal workplace contract.

You’ll be able to search how to draft these online, but it’s useful to have the help of a lawyer. There are people who do this specifically for podcasts who’ll be able to help you out, but again: you have to pay them!

Equipment:

As I said, actors will probably have their own equipment, but if you want them all recording together: you can rent a studio! They’ll already have all the equipment for you, which is The Dream!

Or you can convert a room into your own studio! Get some soundproof panelling on the walls and invest in a good mixer. I’m afraid I don’t have much advice on this, as I cannot afford anything close to a good mixer! But there are plenty of articles online with helpful information.

I wouldn’t recommend making a paid podcast as your first project, as it’s a lot of pressure, and would almost definitely mean bringing new people onto even the production side of things. There’s always the option to work on another project first, something smaller-scale, to work out any roadblocks you may run into during the paid show. But I’m not telling anyone what to do: if you’re ready, go for it!

Anyway, this was very long and quite rambly, and is probably filled with things you don't actually need to know! But I hope at least some of it was useful! Please feel free to ask any other questions - now or in future, PM or anon - and again: best of luck! I'm so excited for you!

#audio drama #writing advice #writeblr #podcast #anon

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ravnicaforgoblins · 3 years

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Ravnica for Goblins

Exciting Planeswalker Visitors

(Caution: Before we begin, this post is going to be much more opinion-based than previous ones. These are my own homebrew ideas, use them as/if you wish, discard/dismiss them if you prefer.)

Planeswalkers are an integral part of MTG Lore, as well as several of its most iconic characters. Put simply, a Planeswalker is an individual with an inherent gift for traveling between planes, or worlds. The gift does not appear at birth, but is usually triggered by some manner of incredibly emotional (usually traumatizing) event. In addition, each Planeswalker displays a unique aptitude for a particular style of magic; be it plant growth, transformation, becoming transparent, illusions, invulnerability, summoning beasts, structural analysis, setting things on fire, etc. Whatever their specific brand of magic is, it’s usually on a higher level than an ordinary person can hope to achieve.

Planeswalkers, as a general rule, are wanderers by nature. They may have a home plane, or even an adopted home plane, but being able to traverse the multiverse leads many towards lives of constant adventuring/shenanigans. Add in the fact that Planeswalkers cannot bring anyone else with them on these travels (except in very rare cases), and you end up with a special breed of super-powerful magical loner. They show up, make a name for themselves with their big magic, and depart when they feel like it. Did you say, “Instant Adventure”?

Ravnica has a few native Planeswalkers among its citizens; Ral Zarek, Vraska, and Domri Rade. In addition, it has several Planeswalkers who have at some point or another (depending on your timeline) devoted enough time & energy to be effectively considered citizens; Azor, Tezzeret, Kaya, Dack Fayden, Dovin Baan, Gideon Jura, and Jace Beleren. Some of these are currently dead, missing, or magically barred from ever returning. At one point, Ravnica had more Planeswalkers on it at one time than any plane in the multiverse has ever or will ever see. If you are going the War of the Spark direction, good luck. You'll need it and so will your players. For everyone else, which Planeswalkers you choose to include in your campaign (if any), should be based on who will work the best for the story you’re trying to tell. A recommendation; if you find their lore too distracting and complicated, stick to the main beats. A lot of these figures can be boiled down to simple ideas, and you don’t want to bore your party with the entire novel of these usually dramatic/tragic lives. Trust me, the base concepts are enough.

With that in mind, here are four Planeswalkers that I, a random person on the internet, believe would work great for a Ravnica campaign. My choices are not based on who has canonically already spent time in Ravnica, or who would be the most powerful/dangerous to suddenly appear in the city. Several Planeswalkers have their own prior commitments on other planes that are pretty central to their character, and BAMFing them to Ravnica for a quick Bad Guy to take down wouldn’t do them justice. These four characters would slide into various aspects of Ravnica beautifully. These four would be the most exciting visitors to Ravnica.

Ashiok, Dream Render

I don’t think any MTG character could be as good a fit for a Ravnican Guild as Ashiok is for House Dimir. Ashiok is almost literally a walking shadow of secrets and intrigue. Their origins, their age, their motives, their face; hell, their gender is a secret yet unrevealed. Ashiok’s power is creating living beings born of the greatest fears stolen from people’s nightmares. Literally.

It’s like if the Dimir stopped half-assing the art of stealing thoughts and turned it into a weapon of mass destruction. Because even the mightiest of Ravnicans are afraid of things. Ask Niv-Mizzet about the Nephilim sometime, see how quickly he changes the subject. What’s better, for a Guild that prides itself on always having the up & up on everyone, Ashiok is inscrutable. They have no past that can be divined, no secrets that can be stolen, no previous encounters to prepare any for their arrival. Neither Lazav nor Etrata can claim such anonymity, despite their best efforts. Ashiok is a true enigma and a dangerous new weapon for House Dimir.

Ashiok also comes with the ability to create minions and NPCs from out of any PC’s worst nightmares, making encounters a great combination of roleplaying & combat. Fighting them is specifically facing one’s deepest & darkest fears made real. Can you say, “character development”?

Ashiok’s arrival could spread this new magical art to other Dimir Agents for a longer campaign, but it might be best to confine it to Ashiok in order to allow for a cleaner victory. Ashiok is not a fighter, cornering them into a direct confrontation should be enough to make the Nightmare Sculptor run for the hills. The mind is powerful, but also very squishy.

Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded

You know how the Cult of Rakdos are technically Chaotic Evil but generally just a bunch of artsy hedonistic nuisances? Tibalt is to them what a gallon of gasoline would be to a lit stove. Good for fire, bad for everything else. Tibalt is an empath specializing in Pain Magic. Quite literally, he loves hurting people for fun. Drawn to pain like a magnet; physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological, etc, he is sadism personified.

His brief time on Ravnica during War of the Spark was enough to make a strong impression on the Rakdos.

“I like this one’s energy.”

This is because they do not realize how bad Tibalt would be for the Cult. There is a fundamental difference between the Chaotic Evil the Cult practices and the Chaotic Evil Tibalt delights in. The Rakdos have survived 10,000 years by taking in the freaks, the rejects, and the crazies, and giving them a place where they can live out their most depraved hedonistic fantasies. They are the voice of the outsiders bringing all figures of power & authority down a peg. They always punch up, never down. Tibalt is a young man with no home, no friends, no job, and no interests or hobbies beyond inflicting pain in as many people as possible. Tibalt punches everyone. The most important distinction between the two is that the Cult of Rakdos is a culture, a way of life for people to embrace; it might be crazy, but it welcomes & accepts people no matter how insane the world says they are. Tibalt does not care about anyone but himself. Following his example would see the city turned into the largest, bloodiest, and most destructive riot in its history; with Tibalt inciting and sicking every monstrosity he can find onto the city at once. He will burn the Rakdos candle at both ends and leave them to suffer the consequences of his fun. The aftermath being the city in ruins, the Cult wiped from the face of existence, and him moving on to his next project. In short, Tibalt will hurt the Cult of Rakdos as much, if not more, than the rest of Ravnica. Because that’s how he gets his kicks.

The one thing standing in his way will be Rakdos himself. As the single largest diva on the entire plane, Rakdos does not tolerate anyone who tries to steal his spotlight. As a 10,000+ year-old Demon Lord, Rakdos is in a league of his own, and Tibalt is just a hotshit little pain mage with a few tricks. It’s not a fight, it’s either an exit or a curtain call for the Planeswalker. If Rakdos is around, Tibalt’s spree will be very short-lived. If, however, Rakdos is doing his usual thing of hibernating for weeks, months, or years at a time, that’s a different story. Tibalt is good for if your campaign wants to bypass politics & intrigue and go straight to killing Cultists & Demons. He’s bad for anyone he comes in contact with.

Garruk Wildspeaker

In case I haven’t made my contempt for Domri Rade clear, I hold Domri Rade in utter contempt. As a character, as a Planeswalker, and most of all as a Gruul, he’s a failure. Scrawny, weak, gullible, and stupid. My chief grievance with Domri is that he fell short in all the areas the Gruul Clans idolize. He couldn’t survive in the wilderness on his own without his Planeswalker abilities, he couldn’t fight for himself except against weaker opponents or with herds of animals as backup, and he acted on orders from someone else who wasn’t Gruul. For a Guild built on independence and survival of the fittest, he failed both completely.

Garruk is the real deal. Gigantic, strong, savage, and cunning. Here is a man who, on a fundamental level, has embraced animal savagery as a way of life. He lives like a predator on the hunt, an alpha of any pack, and a fierce threat to all who intrude upon his territory. On a plane like Ravnica, where civilization has encroached on the untamed wilds almost completely, Garruk would be a gamechanger. Not only could he feasibly fight Borborygmos for leadership of the Gruul, he could win, and he could unite the Gruul under his howl of reclaiming the wilds from so-called “civilization”. Garruk would bring animal strength to the Gruul in ways they’ve only begun to tap into, and he’d do it in their language. Because Garruk understands the Gruul, and they understand him. They have so much in common with each other that it’s hard to think of any Planeswalker who could be welcomed so readily into a Guild. They would become so much more than rock-smashers and anarchists, they would become Ravnica’s reminder that nature will survive when all traces of society have crumbled away.

As if taking on the city itself wasn’t big enough already, Garruk has also taken to hunting other Planeswalkers, and can actually track them across the Multiverse. Meaning a few high-ranking members of Guilds and even the Living Guildpact have to take his threat seriously. He’s got a particular grudge against necromancers, dislikes talking, and has a special gift with animals of all varieties. All of which provides plenty of ideas to build from. He’s an 8ft tall Human Druid/Barbarian who willingly chooses animal savagery over intellectual reasoning, can there be anyone more perfect for the Gruul?

Did I say Ashiok was the most perfect fit for an MTG character in a Ravnican Guild? Yeah, scratch that. Garruk is.

Sarkhan Vol

Most Planeswalkers have a theme to their abilities. For some, that theme extends to their personalities as well. And then there are Planeswalkers who can be adequately summed up in a single word. For Sarkhan, that word would be “dragons”. Sarkhan sees dragons as nature’s purest & most destructive form, and carries a fascination with them that is perfectly healthy for anything with wings and scales that breathes fire, but generally less healthy for everything & everyone else.

One of the things that makes Ravnica unique is the distinct lack of dragons (emphasis on the plural). Ravnica has a dragon, Niv-Mizzet the Firemind, who made the executive decision thousands of years ago that he alone was sufficient to represent his entire species. Ravnican dragons are considered more intelligent than dragons on other planes, Niv himself being a prime example of this. Around the original signing of the Guildpact, Ravnica’s Godlike dragons were hunted to extinction, with Niv leading the hunt against his own kind. They were not entirely successful in this endeavor, but what few dragons do remain in the present day survive by staying as far off Niv’s radar as possible. Some dragons live by carrying out Niv’s will under constant supervision, or by hunting in the untamed wilds outside the city, or as sideshow attractions for the Rakdos (usually with their wings cut off to prevent escape). They are effectively stripped of anything that would identify them as “dragons” for the sake of their own existence. Since dragons are such a notoriously touchy subject for the Firemind, few have the nerve or fire immunity necessary to speak out against it.

Sarkhan would be horrified. If he thought the extinction of dragons on his home plane of Tarkir was bad, seeing them living like this would infuriate him beyond words. What would Sarkhan do once the initial shock of seeing his spirit animal (in more ways than one) reduced to pitiful scraps of life as lab rats, scared prey, and freak shows wears off? Let’s make it a game! Do you think Sarkhan will:

A. Cry.

B. Throw up.

C. Embrace this as a plane’s reality that he has no right to get involved with.

D. Scream.

E. Set something on fire.

F. Set everything on fire.

G. Bring back the dragons.

H. Burn the city to the ground with dragons.

I. Kill Niv-Mizzet.

J. All the above except “C”.

If you selected Answer “J”, then congratulations! You’ve just won a free trip to a BURNING METROPOLIS! Sarkhan will absolutely make it his life’s goal to bring dragons back to Ravnica and destroy the whole wretched city down to the last brick. How he would do it is up to you, but it’s a solid bet that even if every other Guild treats him like an apocalyptic madman, the Gruul might side with him over some shared beliefs in smashing the city apart with ferocious animal savagery. They tend to lean towards such ideas with uncharacteristic willful compliance. Ravnican dragons are primarily red, with the most prominent breed still remaining being the Utvara Hellkites beyond the city limits.

Oh, and Sarkhan can turn into a dragon, too. Have fun with that.

#ravnica for goblins #ravnica #goblins #d&d #dnd #dungeons and dragons #dragons #planeswalkers #mtg #campaign #roleplaying #tibalt #sarkhan #ashiok #garruk #fun ideas #guilds

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finnskeeper · 3 years

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Critical Role - Campaign 1 (Thoughts Machina): Episodes 112-115

AKA: THE END IS NIGH

ROFL Scanlan with a 31 Charisma check...God Tier

DO NOT KILL J'MON

Is that a fucking DRACOLICH MATTHEW??

A million plans, none of them work. Peak D&D

ROFL Kiki rolling a 1 on her Stealth check then full on crossed arms Dracula falling into the earth as an earth elemental to escape is so good and I love her for it

VEX YOU HAVE THE GATE STONE. VEX. YOU HAVE THE GATE STONE.

Well that definitely happened

Vax don't go back. If you go back to the door, Vecna will know where the door is!

I love the mental image of ethereal Vex jumping around the sword's location as earth elemental Kiki searches frantically

All of these failed investigation checks - I'm convinced this is why Marisha made a high Int character for C2

Sam what are you wearing on your head?

Cosmic Bear!

Hey there Delilah...

AND SYLAS?

BITCH BYE

Man, Grog seriously needs to stop talking to swords

It's such a trip to hear them talking about Artagan

Marisha in C1: Maybe Artagan will help us! He liked us before! Marisha in C2: If I see Artagan, I'm going to punch him in the face.

"I wish to strangle you until death." Entire table loses it.

"This is so fucked up." MATT YOU DID THIS

Oh god...Liam is doing goodbye stuff.

Oh, this guest PC is cool

Fuck you Delilah!

Hey Sylas got away. Surely that's not going to come back to bite them.

Undead Delilah!! That is terrible and great

Aldor?!? NOOOOO

Oh god...is Lyra okay? WHAT ABOUT ZAHRA AND KASH?

MATTHOLOMEW

Oh...oh no...Kaylie and Cassandra...that is super fucked up

Laura is a WRECK

MATT YOU ARE EVIL

WE JUST FIXED THAT TEMPLE

Okay, but that sundered map is dope

Oooohhh...poor Velora. We can fix that later.

Travis: "Matt, Matt, let's just...call a truce."

LET'S GOOOOOOO....I'm so glad Kash and Z are okay

Aaaaaand they're gone

WHAT BABY, ZAHRA??

Man, it would have been so cool if Matt could have figured out a way to kaleidoscope all of the season's guest stars into the finale. I know it's not feasible, but my nerd heart can dream.

How in the world is there still an hour and a half to go?

"I was gonna save Vax." awww...Scanlan...bud-dee

LIAM STAHP

ROFL bye Arkhan

Oh Kash...I have missed your quirky sense of humor

Uh...Grog? You maybe wanna put that sword down?

Do we really need to think about Sylas right now? You guys just defeated a god. Take a breather.

Oh god...it's gonna happen soon...I'm not ready

PIKE!

Oh here we go...Marisha is already a mess

Percy no...that's not...

Liam has begun his goodbyes....how long can I maintain composure (it's a trick question, I never had it)

MATT'S CRYING...GODDAMMIT MATT I CANNOT HANDLE THIS ALREADY

"I will tell your mother that you say hello." I am now a blubbering mess.

Level 20 baby

"I know it's arcane. Shut up, it's fine." ROFL I love Allura

GROG

I love Matt's face. He was not prepared for this.

ROFL, you pulled the worst card but it's the last ep so we'll just gloss over that and say you're okay. EPILOGUE TIME

Scanlan and Pike HEA? More likely than you think.

Tary!

ROFL Marisha's face when Grog turned himself in...

Man, I was mostly okay until LIAM started crying...

"And every day that raven comes to visit" is such a badass closing line to this campaign. Well done.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

So much more of the fandom makes sense now, as do some of the C2 jokes. My friend is just starting C2, and she posts all of the jokes and nods to C1 and I totally get them now! All in all, I’m kind of glad I watched C2 first, but I am also glad to have experienced C1. Though I do wonder what my reaction would have been to the Artagan reveal had I known who he was from the beginning.

Next up for me is getting caught up on all of the one-shots and smaller sesh stuff like Undeadwood.

#critical role #vox machina #campaign 1 #vax'ildan #vex'ahlia #percy de rolo #keyleth #grog #scanlan shorthalt #pike trickfoot #thoughts machina

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davidmann95 · 4 years

Note

Hey David? Why is ours such a cruel and merciless God?

mirrorfalls said: (If you don't know what I'm talking about, your inbox should be filling up with more specific deets riiiiight about now.)

cheerfullynihilistic said: THE SNYDER CUT

Anonymous said: You don’t seem to think Superman’s public rep will take another beating from the Snyder Cut coming out. Honestly I thought you’d be way more upset than you seemed on Twitter.

Anonymous said: So uhh, against all thoughts and logic the Snyder cut is being released? Maybe as a mini series? Thoughts?

Anonymous said: SNYDER CUT!

Bullies. Jocks. Guys angrily asking if we know who their father is. Assorted dudebro nerd-oppressors of America:

You have failed us. You have failed us so hard. What else do we even keep you around for if not to head this shit off at the pass? Shame on you.

Okay, so seriously: I’m actually gonna put most bitching and moaning under a cut, because I know firsthand there are as many as several non-slavering maniacs out there who dug Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and who are simply and entirely reasonably excited that they’re getting this movie after all. I don’t feel like throwing a wall of text at them shitting all over this, so I’ll lead off with I think some fairly even-handed commentary on the real-world circumstances here, rambling speculation regarding the production, and some cautious optimism about the actual movie/s. THEN I’ll get to what I imagine most of you are here to see.

So totally in a vacuum: this is a cool, good thing. I’m the notorious theatrical Justice League-liker, but at best it was a compromised product due to the original creator - who like it or not clearly had an incredibly ambitious personal vision for these characters and their world - suffering a horrific tragedy forcing him off the project, and leaving his final stamp on blockbuster culture and a world he’d devoted years of his life to a flop with his name on it when he couldn’t even truly call it his own anymore. At worst, said tragedy was taken advantage of by suits to ditch him in the home stretch so as to try and shove out something ostensibly more marketable. But now because of a...very loyal fanbase, the man’s getting the opportunity and resources to rise like a phoenix and see at least some of his vision through in a huge way. That’s pretty remarkable.

Not in a vacuum this is fucking horrifying. I’ve already seen folks poo-poohing the reflexive fears that this will ‘set a precedent’, and they were right enough that I deleted my initial tweet on the subject because I didn’t think I could express my own opinion with any nuance in the space of 280 characters. Yeah, nerd whining definitely shaped Rise of Skywalker (another movie I enjoyed in spite of the circumstances of its creation). Hell, Sonic the Hedgehog crunched its CGI team prior to unceremoniously firing them to redesign his model thanks to outcry. That’s already a market force, and just to be clear upfront, if we can’t agree the predominant mode of operation for #ReleaseTheSnyderCut has been a toxic nerd harassment campaign when they spammed posts memorializing deceased actors and chased Diane Nelson off Twitter, we’re not gonna be able to have this conversation. And director’s cuts are you may have noticed also already a thing. But this isn’t changing direction on a project that’s already going to exist no matter what, this is turning back 3 years later on a commercial flop and dumping tens of millions of dollars into it, explicitly in response to that harassment campaign. It’s not *actually* going back and, say, remaking The Last Jedi, but by god to the naked eye it’s gonna be as good as for plenty of fanboys, and probably to some shortsighted execs as well. This is a new thing, and in this context it is a very, very bad one. Hopefully one that won’t amount to anything.

As for the movie itself: what the hell is this thing going to end up being? I assume with this sort of cashola being pumped into it we’re not getting any slapdash greenscreen or storyboarded sequences, but four hours? Is it really just going to be an expanded and revised version of what we saw in theaters, or is this including content that would have been in the originally planned Justice Leagues 2 and 3? My understanding is that those were already compressed into a single Justice League 2 before plans collapsed altogether, were they maybe filming side-by-side and this’ll be the whole shebang? If not is Snyder going to hedge his bets and end this on a clean note, or keep it ending on a cliffhanger in hopes HBO will throw another $250 million his way to keep going? Does DC want to keep going? Would they give into fan pressure on releasing after all what was widely publicized as the first film of a duology or trilogy with dangling threads if they weren’t going to be at least watching the numbers to see the feasibility of returning to this in a bigger way? Not that I think WB execs would piss into Snyder’s mouth if he were dying of thirst at this point if he simply asked to be able to do Justice League 2, but if he floated that if they instead just give him a liiiiiiiitle more money he can finally deliver unto them their very own Avengers - one that they can work on even during quarantine since it’s mostly just VFX work left - and hey if it works out he’s got a sequel or two cued up and ready to go? Maybe they look at their scattered plans and say the hell with it and end up giving this a theatrical release and sequel with Snyder holding the reigns again if this ends up a killer app; stranger things have happened, if not many, and somehow this is already happening in the first place after all. Alternatively, if this succeeds, could they go “thanks and good on ya, totally do another, but it’s gonna be an HBO exclusive so you’re only getting a hundred million, figure it out”? Would Ben Affleck return? How much reshooting will he be willing to commit to even for this? And most importantly, since this is potentially going to be serialized as six ‘episodes’, will We Got This Covered count this as another ‘win’ since their bullshit rumor mill algorithm spit out “Justice League HBO TV show” recently?

As for the project itself: I ain’t subscribing to HBOMax for this bad boy, but once it becomes more widely available I can’t claim I won’t probably watch it. It’s basically a new movie about the Justice League, and if there’s anything I WOULD wanna see Zack Snyder do in the DCU, it’s the movie finally moving past pseudo-realism (aside from some of those dopey costumes) and leaning all the way into godlike superbeings bludgeoning each other through continents. I absolutely wanna see his aesthetic take on the Green Lantern Corps, and New Genesis, and time travel, and all the other weird promises of where his movies were going to go climaxing in a ridiculous super-war across all spacetime. It’s the same reason J.G. Jones was an exciting choice for Final Crisis before he had to leave, seeing a guy known for his work in an ultra-real grungy superhero style starting there and building up to seeing his version of absolutely wild cosmic spectacle. And no, to respond to one of the initial asks, I’m not worried about the impact on Superman. Everyone seems to have accepted this is its own distinct thing whether they like it or not, I think him getting to complete his ‘arc’ will quiet down many of the folks who like to yell at every other version as retro nonsense since now they’ll be able to be smug about having had the best take rather than pining for a lost finale, and I’m not interested in further Superman movies at the moment anyway with Superman & Lois in the pipe (which I was originally paranoid would be endangered by this when rumors first started floating, but if it’s been brewing since November then if they wanted to strike that down to ‘make room’ according to their Byzantine ever-shifting rules, they would have by now). Far as I’m concerned, as long as the other DC movies get to keep doing what they’re doing during and past this - even Pattinson in his corner, however that works - then totally let Snyder work out all his Wagnerian superhero bullshit for another flick or two. If nothing else, maybe we’ll learn what the hell that diagram up there is supposed to mean. And a plea I want to clarify upfront is wholeheartedly sincere: we’re already down the rabbit hole, so let Snyder to literally whatever he wants with his non-theatrically released Justice League. Zero input or veto power from outside parties. If he wants Flash to hang dong or Superman to say fuck or Batman to learn he’s Steppenwolf’s secret dad or Cyborg to learn he needs to eat babies to fuel his machine parts, let him go for it. Whole point is this is now his thing for people who want his thing.

Okay, beneath the cut the filter comes off, so go ahead if that’s your jam.

Hahahahahahaha this is gonna be such a fuckin’ shitshow you guys, Jesus Christ.

They’re giving the dude who did BvS and wants to make an Ayn Rand adaptation someday $30 million to take another crack at this monstrosity! 30 goddamn million smackaroos for four fucking hours of by many accounts roughly the same basic movie, except now presumably with what little coherency, fun, and clean character work the theatrical cut managed to pull off excised in return for weighty staring, ponderous pseudo-philosophical musings, hackneyed symbolism, aimless mythology teasing, and Steppenwolf I understand being decapitated by Wonder Woman at the end rather than taken back to Apokolips. I didn’t even spoiler mark that shit because don’t you dare pretend you care about the fate of Steppenwolf. I won’t have it.

I used to wonder if I was indeed missing the forest for the trees with these movies, that I was so inflexible in my personal image of these characters - even though I appreciate plenty of alternate takes on them and even some stories that bend or break what I consider their ‘rules’, just not these - that I was incapable of grasping or appreciating these films on their own merits as works of art using those archetypes in wildly different ways; even I could see there were good moments and interesting ideas on display despite seemingly failing to come together. No matter how much I personally deconstructed how and why it wasn’t working, I couldn’t do it to my own satisfaction to the point of stamping out that niggling little worry with how many folks whose opinions I respect love ‘em. Until I finally remembered that the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited is totally the same basic story as BvS, centrally driven by an even worse take on Superman, and that’s still one of the best superhero stories of all time. These just stink by any merits, and while I think Justice League absolutely has the potential to be the most *entertaining* of the bunch, it’s not going to magically become *good* in the eleventh hour. Not to lift up Joss Whedon of all people as some kind of savior, I’m on the record that my love for Justice League as-is is some kind of inexplicable alchemical accident, but I promise that there is not going to be one single addition to this movie that’s going to make up for the removal of “Just save one person”.

Also I’m already not looking forward to dudes tweeting “whoa, he’s splitting it up into a serialized narrative, reflective of the sequential nature of the characters’ primitive native pictorial medium! Or mayhap in ode to the pulp film adventure serials which inspired those in turn! Even the Justice League children’s cartoon for dumb babies, which was itself...made up of episodes! That’s three references in the structure of the thing alone! The man’s operating on an entirely different level!” “God, isn’t it amazing how much better he understands the source material than you”, they shall say, about a man who I understand just very confidently referred to Doomsday in his livestream as having destroyed Krypton in the comics. Again, don’t you say they won’t, just the other day I saw folks tweeting they just realized that since Jor-El wears armor over his bodysuit that technically means Superman’s whole costume is underwear which means Snyder’s totally honoring that without putting him in ugly dumb red panties so checkmate, dorks.

(Okay, in fairness, I know Snyder was saying that’s his take on what happened to the moon in the past of the movies and maybe I only misheard that he thought that also happened in the comics, and it’s trivial information anyway. Still sucks though, that seeming out-of-nowhere Jax-Ur shoutout was like the one thing I liked about that otherwise interminable Krypton sequence. And why is there a second Doomsday? You did Death of Superman already!)

And further SPOILER thoughts below on the reported plots of 2 and 3:

It’s also an amazing, perfect sort of narrative synchronicity that the hypocrisy of Man of Steel in presenting Superman as a savior would (will?) be matched by the movies also rejecting that promise long-term. In there, Jor-El’s musings on the capacity of every living thing being capable of good, the closest the film has to a singular moral statement, are proven wrong when Zod has to be put down like a mad dog, and rather than the one who’ll bring us into the sun, Kal-El’s presence draws ruin from beyond the stars to our world. And again in BvS with Doomsday. And again in Justice League 1-3, where in spite of claims by Snydercutters that it’s okay for Superman to be a really lousy take on Superman because it’s totally supposed to take several movies after putting on the costume and calling himself Superman, including his own death and resurrection, for him to really, like, become Superman, man, he remains a liability to the end. His death lures in Steppenwolf, the Kryponian matrix in his genes is Darkseid’s goal, he becomes the villain of the first act of Justice League 3 - possibly of his own free will depending on which version you’ve heard about - and at the final showdown, it’s Batman who sacrifices himself to stop Darkseid and save the world and inspire the rise of superheroism, because Batman, you see, rules, whereas Superman, stay with me here, drools. A letdown given BvS was just about the one major story of the last 30 years to unambiguously conclude Superman is better than Batman, but not a shocker. None of what I understand goes down in these - iconography from the likes of Fourth World, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Death and Return of Superman, Rock of Ages, Final Crisis, and Injustice reused but stripped of all context and thematic weight that gives it meaning (even Injustice is built on the premise of having a ‘good’ Superman to contrast the dictator); Lois being the ‘key’ because of her connections to two men, one she married and one she bears; time travel that even by the very generous suspension of disbelief applied to it in a genre like this operates by two obviously completely different sets of rules in its only two uses, and is then used to write the entire second movie of the trilogy out of continuity in the first act of the third, making one and a half of these movies pointless - is shocking. It’s just more empty notions and unfulfilled promises offered up to a fanbase staking everything on the idea that all the tampering, all the wild swings, all the meandering, it’s all building UP to something, not possibly just a dude who doesn’t understand these characters but wanting to look very clever with them before building up to one more rad punch-up. So yes, make these movies. Let what can be gleaned from them as worthwhile be revealed, leave the rest of it up for examination to be judged as it deserves and let it, finally. Finally. Be done.

#Justice League #Snyder Cut #Zack Snyder #DCEU #Worlds of DC #Superman #Man of Steel #Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice #Superman & Lois #DCTV #Analysis #Opinion

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queerpontmercy · 3 years

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pick four characters and then roll a d4 for each of these numbers to determine which char to answer for: 1 4 5 6 17 22 24 26 39 27 51 57 60

tumblr did me so dirty but I finally got all of these in one doc, thank you <3 I decided to alternate between my Beam Saber pilots for character #4, so we have Solace “Trash Panda“ Altiora the infiltrator, and Dr. Finch Tandem, the officer/cat herder. Put under a cut because fuck this is so long...

What does Solace typically keep in his pockets?

I rolled a 3 for Leucien, but I already described his pockets, so...Solace is messy and generally keeps a tube of lipstick within easy reach, which means inevitably he’s also got a few tissues stuffed in a pocket from the last time he had to apply blot it. Other than that, he always has at least one knife on him, and that could feasibly be in a pocket. No, he’s not just happy to see you.

Other than that, you know he’d never tell but honestly? I think he keeps his old prayer beads on his person, despite having left the Cenotaph both physically and spiritually. There’s something grounding about them: something organic in a world full of unforgiving machinery and vastly unknowable AIs, perhaps. It’s still soothing. Shut up.

4. If Tanith was a work of art, how would you describe her?

This is such an interesting question for Tanith-- the most important bit for her would be that it’s something functional and beautiful, made lovelier still by use. A well-loved sea shanty with lyrics that keep time out on the water, a handsome medicine chest with fanciful carvings of beasts on each wooden panel…oooooh maybe a set of three nesting clay pots/jars! The first one is big and solid, rough gray-green with a fitted lid and decorations like barnacles and limpets, and below that is one with blue and brown glazes, pooling and mixing into each other, and the last (smallest) one is delicate and porcelain, almost opalescent from within where the light hits it, with the most simple, graceful curved shape It’s meant to house something rare and precious.

5. How does Tanith express she’s comfortable?

She doesn’t like to sit in her emotions or thoughts, and spends a lot of time trying to transmute them into practical action. You’d know she’s comfortable if she let herself be still, taking in the world with quiet acceptance, and told you what was on her mind-- what she saw, or remembered, or was thinking about, without worry, just being.

6. How does Fen express that they’re uncomfortable?

Fenestra argues about stupid shit-- pedantry in particular is such a refuge. Having a hill to die on helps her feel slightly in control, since feeling powerless is definitely one of the things that makes her most uncomfortable. She’d never admit to it, but it’s also a way to knock Threats down a peg or two.

17. Does Leucien swear? What’s his favorite phrase/word?

For sure, but since Leu is 3 feet tall, he almost certainly got the “ohhhh i had no idea, you’re so iiiiinnocent~” treatment after saying one (1) fuck word. I was tonight years old when I learned he’s partial to “oh balls,” which is decidedly not one of my (Sketch’s) phrases, but I guess it makes sense intrinsically? Most swear words are either profane, sexual, or insulting/derogatory. Gnomes in this campaign aren’t religious, culturally speaking, and he’s not the kind to start a fight.

Now that means there’s actually a good chance that he has at least once, in a fit of extreme frustration, blurted out “Aerum’s b--” before very hastily correcting to “face, face, I was gonna say face.”

I’m shocked I have so much to say about this, but...he was an academic, and I also have a strong hunch that he had a terrible little pretentious phase where all his swear words came from Old Gnomish or Dwarvish or oooh, maybe languages his old friend Aza had picked up, but...at this point he reasons it’s better to say the things in Everendian/Common if you want people to know what you’re saying.

22. What kind of person would Finch never side with?

Finch would never side with a landlord cop bully. Well, definitely not a landlord or cop either. But man, the kind of leader who throws their weight around for the sake of it and intimidates innocent people into carrying out their orders? They really, truly despise ‘em. And leaders who treat the individuals under their wing as pieces of a calculated risk rather than full people. They’d honestly rather die than become that kind of leader.

24. What’s a controversial food opinion Leucien would have?

Pineapple on pizza is good actually you guys are just mean

Leu thinks the fact that there’s such a thing as “controversial food opinions” is fascinating. He’ll try anything once, so point-blank disregarding something as disgusting feels like snobbery to him. And even badly-cooked food can tell you so much about the people who make it, so and that learning’s a pleasure in and of itself.

26. What would Tanith want for her funeral?

In Tanith’s culture, dying orcs are dressed in burial clothes, shrouded, and left to make their “final voyage” on their own in quiet contemplation. She would uphold this tradition. Burial and scattering of ashes at sea are common, but I actually think Tanith might want to be buried at the “interfaith” shrine she established on the mainland post-campaign-- Ishka willing, to be its guardian and perhaps, in a way, guide the lost on their journeys after her death.

She would certainly want her dear friends and party members to speak in her memory at a ceremony, especially Cae and Avris, who saw her through so much. Nothing prepared. Just what comes from the heart in the moment. Perhaps she has also transcribed an old Orcish lullaby for her beloved Anya to play at the end, with the music drifting through the air and quietly dissipating, like sea foam as it hits the shore.

27. If they were a ghost, how would Solace haunt in the afterlife?

Solace would be such a chaotic asshole ghost but he’d have the time of his (after)life. He already has such a great time being a local cryptid as it is, convincing people that an abandoned amusement park or shopping mall might be haunted. It’d be even worse in death. The thing is, if he was a ghost and knew nothing could hurt him, he’d be even more unsubtle, he’d really want to see the impact of his tricks and shenanigans for once after a lifetime or lurking.

39. What does Finch believe their party lacks?

Finch knows that their squad has each other’s backs in the practical way-- they’ve seen teammates trauma out or take major damage protecting each other. But they think that what the Intrepid is missing is emotional vulnerability, and it’s important? If we’re not honest with ourselves, how can we be honest with each other? It keeps them up at night sometimes.

51. What makes Tanith a hypocrite?

She’ll forgive everyone except herself, obviously. Since she was able to get some closure with her ex Kleiya, who didn’t die but was transported to another plane, she hasn’t been nearly as consumed with guilt over who she used to be, but still? She’ll tell someone not to burn out all at once, she’ll tell someone they’re good just as they are, and never believe it herself. :/

57. How does the way Leucien acts seemingly contradict his ability scores?

FitD scores don’t translate as well, so...Leu it is!

He’s got +3 charisma, but he’s the most awkward man in all of existence and can’t be normal for even two seconds. I actually don’t think it’s that contradictory; charisma is a force of personality, after all, and Leu’s got that. He became an object of cult worship in a matter of months, after all...But also I do think he’s got an endearing, bookish, understated charm, and hey, that’s a kind of charisma. D&D often makes charisma out to be the smooth-talking seduction stat, but I really enjoy when it can be more than that.

He’s also got decently high wisdom, but I’ve been playing him with small dog energy. We’ll figure it out, I suppose.

60. Who does Fenestra go to when she needs to bounce ideas off of someone?

Fenestra has a littol greyromantic wtf-is-this crush on Eli, another of the Oracle’s apprentices. :3 They have honed different ways of seeing the future. Fen captures big fragmented portents that don’t make sense until later, whereas Eli is a lot more scrupulous, and tends to focus on details and possibilities, mapping out the pieces of a butterfly effect. They really respect his different way of thinking; it’s been incredibly helpful, and if she were feeling mentally stuck Fen would go to him, no question. He’d listen.

#dnd asks #tanith #fenestra #leucien #solace #finch

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utilitycaster · 4 years

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i know you've mentioned this somewhere before but what classes/subclasses would you like to see the cr crew playing in the future?

I haven’t actually, other than that it’s really hard to figure out classes for Marisha and Taliesin because they’re both I would say the most versatile and interested in pushing things to the absolute limit.

Things I took into consideration here:

Player preferences. People are allowed to have preferences for certain classes or mechanics and I want to honor that.

Party management; I don’t think they reveal classes to each other unless they share a session zero and/or are married to each other but I do think Matt takes the class balance into consideration.

Laura: Wild Magic Sorcerer. I am sure about very few things, but this is one. I think Laura in particular would do a great job with a class that would allow her to be a battle caster and I would argue is one of the harder ones to RP long-term and make sympathetic - Ally Beardsley and Bryn Monroe have both managed this, Matt obviously ran a great recurring NPC in Gilmore, and Calianna is a delight but also a short term character. Like, you’re charming and you wake up with effortless magic powers - how do you make this person interesting and complex? Anyway Laura would knock that out of the part. I also want to see her lean into the chaos but also have a little less control over it than she does as Jester.

Liam: Cleric; any subclass but I am particularly intrigued by either being a cleric of Erathis (GIVE ME THE ERATHIS LORE I DON’T KNOW WHY I WANT THIS BUT I DO) or the forge subclass (dwarven cleric of Moradin? also an opportunity for many dwarven forge jokes). Liam tends towards clerics and fighters in his one-shot characters and I would love to see him explore the cleric class in more depth.

Travis and Ashley are difficult because I want to see them both play bards, but for different reasons and also two bards seems like a lot (it’s kind of great in Fantasy High Live and I know that’s the premise of Sirens of the Realm but: it is a lot). So I’m giving you my bard option and back up for both:

Travis really likes melee and I don’t want to take that from him, but I’d love to see him play a more traditional casting class, and he’s got a musical background and can clearly do a great job with high charisma characters, so College of Swords or Valor seems like an obvious win. For a backup - Matt has drastically rewritten the Blood Hunter. Travis seems to really want to be a fucking werewolf. Song of the Lorelei was amazing but too short and pre-revamp of Blood Hunter so let him have another crack at the class.

Ashley mentioned she’s interested in the bard class and is very musical. I should note that I do not want to see Yasha as a bard multiclass, even if it were more feasible, and I love bards, but I think people can get hung up on musical instrument = bard when that’s explicitly not the case! You can just love music without tapping into the music of creation and I love seeing characters who have hobbies that aren’t their primary thing and that don’t do anything mechanically, because it makes them seem more real! You don’t need to turn all your passions into spell slots, or whatever. That said, campaign 3, absolutely. Any subclass; I think lore is classic for a reason but glamour would be a lot of fun to see too. For backup I think a rogue would be cool, perhaps either the inquisitive or mastermind - one of the ones who does a lot of work through talking and investigation and analysis.

Sam: I want to see Sam have little or no magic (he has always played a character with some arcane abilities but I don’t think he’s terribly invested in having arcane abilities; I think it just shook out that way) and be a tank. Battlemaster Fighter would be interesting and my first choice since we’ve only had a fairly nontraditional fighter build in Percy, plus Sam can be pretty strategic and I’d love to have that show up as part of his character.

Marisha: my main thing here is that I want her to play a character with no fucking wisdom. I mean Beau makes a decent number of poor decisions but just: Marisha make wisdom your dump stat. It’s hard to find something just because she’s so versatile and Keyleth could kind of play every core role (tank/melee, ranged/caster, support). I kind of want to see her play a paladin actually, if only because we haven’t seen Marisha play a high-charisma character beyond her brief foray into bard as Hazel nor have we seen her use a sword much nor have we seen her play a character who’s super invested in the gods or faith - Keyleth was explicitly “they exist but nature is better”, and Beau is technically in service to Ioun but doesn’t like, visit temples or pray regularly. Also, while I think a journey into a paladin role a la Vax and Fjord makes a lot of sense I kind of want to see what Marisha would do with someone who was a paladin from the start, since I love how she approaches characterization and backstory. As for subclass; either devotion or ancients, depending on a few potential future things that I’m not going to say for fear of tempting fate.

Taliesin: I think we all want to see a horizon walker ranger at some point, because it’s just such a cool and weird class, and I think it’s worth giving Taliesin a class often seen as underpowered to see what he does with it, since he is probably the best at min-maxing (in that he does it at all, and also that he does it in fascinating ways. Caduceus is a very strategically built character, and also an amazing character who does not come off as strategically built until you dig into it, vs. some min-maxed characters who are very clearly an unstoppable but boring force). Also, I think he will really lean into the planar weirdness in a cool way, and also I can’t get enough of Taliesin playing a weirdo who lives in the woods, or a ranged fighter, so why not combine them and add some super weird magic?

Also I should note: for balance reasons I have not included any warlock or wizard classes here since I’m already including both a bard and a sorcerer. That said, I love the arcane casters a whole lot, and I would be thrilled if anyone played a warlock or wizard again next campaign.

#critical role #Anonymous

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mitigatedchaos · 4 years

Text

(~1,500 words / 6 mins)

google Zarus

- @contemplate-everything

Hah, I had forgotten about him, but when it comes to "The Gods are Racist," he isn't what I had in mind. (I'll tag in @samueldays and @morlock-holmes as well.)

To put it simply, in any fantasy setting in which there are multiple sapient species (to call them 'races' suggests a smaller difference between them than there is, in my opinion), we must wrestle with the question of why there is any species less intelligent, less kind, and shorter-lived than the smartest, kindest, longest-lived humanoids.

There are a whole lot of different perspectives we can take on this, which makes it a fertile creative territory.

There are, broadly, four major reasons a species can be evil (or 'evil') in a fantasy setting: environment, culture, innate, or selected.

1. Environment.

In a friend's setting, orcs are not less intelligent or inherently more bloodthirsty than humans, but have been pushed onto more marginal lands that have less productivity, making it harder for them to develop 'civilized' agricultural states. They end up more likely to raid as well, as their economic production for advanced goods is lower.

A species could also be otherwise normal, but are widely hooked on evil magic drugs that just aren't available in other areas, or have a local environmental pressure that murders kind people.

2. Culture.

A species may worship an evil god and exist within a culture of self-sustaining evil norms, where social approval is based on being evil and altruistic people are considered exploitable morons. A member of that culture has, as their entire life experience, expectations formed on this basis.

3.A. Innate (Body)

A species may have a fundamental evil resource conflict with another species. For instance, a vampire who must murder one human a year to survive would have to be crazy moral in other ways (such as, I dunno, holding closed a gate to the infernal realms?) not to come out, on balance, quite evil just by surviving.

Alternatively, a species that has a very high fertility might quickly exhaust local carrying capacity and come into resource conflicts with neighbors more often.

3.B. Innate (Mind)

This is basically an AI safety argument. A species could be designed to enjoy cruelty more, or to be more xenophobic, or more paranoid, or to have more bloodlust or less inhibition, just as an AI could be designed to be a paperclip maximizer. In a fantasy setting it can be an absolute binding, but it could easily just be an increased frequency. Imagine having an implant in your head that rewards being a bad person.

A species might also not be innately more evil, but have greater risk factors, such as a natural craving for power and complexity, or an ability to consciously control their own sense of empathy for others.

4. Selected

A species (such as fiends) may be impossible to become or impossible to remain as without being evil. Thus, the entire population of that species consists of evil people, or people who were once extremely evil.

I actually like all of these, as they provide a rich palette to paint with and can be used to create morally-challenging scenarios when used together. Giving orcs the capability to be good but having a tougher time of it will tie the clerics and paladins in knots - but also more clearly separates them from the neutral and evil characters.

And let's give four reasons for their existence as well.

1. Evolution

In our world, humans ended up being the only sapient species, but in a world with magic, evolution might go in very different directions. It could be simply that no one made goblins on purpose, but a sapient species with short lifespans, small resource usage, and high fertility has an evolutionary edge in many regions, particularly when technology levels are low.

On the flip-side, elves living for such a long time allows them to access more magic and more complex magic, resulting in a feedback loop in environments where magic resources are rich. Same for intelligence, which is used for developing and casting spells - but also for finding mutually-beneficial arrangements.

In a magic-evolutionary environment, it's possible that the species create the gods rather than the other way around, so they tend to (probably accidentally) create deities that reflect their strategies and tactics, which then reinforce them both culturally and environmentally.

2. Evil Deities

Evil deities are, well, evil. In the interests of spreading their evil influence, it would make sense to create evil sapient creatures, even if a handful of them will defect to good. The suffering of these creatures matters little to their creators, as evil deities are evil. This seems to be the usual reasoning.

3. Divine Ecology

If gods need prayers, then a logical thing to do is to deliberately create sapient species that will worship you. Creating an evil species is like creating a brainwashed population, only it's down to the innate level so it's even more effective. This evil species also won't have moral objections to spreading your worship by conquering the rest of the planet.

Alternatively, species may not be equally easy to create. Creating an elf species might cost Divine Points, which then can't be used for shaping mountains or adding oceans or building temples or something. It might also be high-risk - long life may mean low fertility, which could be devastating if there's some kind of depopulation event.

4. Mortals & Evil Mortals

In this scenario, both the long-lived species (like elves) and the short-lived or 'evil' species (like goblins) were deliberately engineered on purpose, probably by evil wizards. Who was going to stop them? Paladins? That sounds like a quest!

This situation may have occurred much earlier, in a more advanced body-hopping fantasy-transhumanist civilization, where elves were high-end 'sleeves' and goblins were cheap and expendable bodies that people would exit once the time period was up. Then that civilization collapsed, and the body-hopping technology was lost... until now...

This gives us multiple options for a "The Gods are Racist" campaign.

1. Undoing the Dark Gods' Handiwork - A group of adventurers set out to remove the evil influence that the Dark Ones exert over orcs and goblins, and possibly increase their lifespan and intelligence to be similar to that of humans (or even elves). The Good gods support this quest.

BRANCH: The Dark Ones do exist and do corrupt the orcs, but the original technology used by the body-hopping civilization to create orcs is discovered, calling into question just who or what the good deities are, since this is completely incompatible with the creation mythology.

BRANCH: Removing the evil influence is possible (and successful), but increasing the lifespan is not, imposing a moral dilemma.

2. Undoing the Gods' Handiwork - A group of scientific-rationalist transhumanist adventurers challenge the deities, which in a more Greek god type way, have made the different species different without appropriate moral evaluation.

BRANCH: Turns out the Greek gods are just very powerful and very obnoxious wizards that have become full of themselves over the millennia. No higher entity is discovered with certainty. Subsequently voluntary species-change technology is introduced; only thanks to vanquishing the wizards is its energy cost economically feasible.

BRANCH: Turns out the Greek gods were once mortal and they would really like to retire from this deity thing. They scout the adventurers as their replacements, who end up having to make a lot of similar decisions due to similar resource constraints, just like the last batch and the batch before that.

3. Elf Supremacy - A group of adventurers find a magical device able to turn other sapients into elves. They discover this when they accidentally use it on themselves.

BRANCH: This is part of a plot by the Elf Deity (who is Evil) to transform everyone into elves, thus taking all worship in the entire world for himself. The party must root out and stop this vile Elf Conspiracy; unfortunately being an elf is considered so desirable that the conspiracy has many backers and this proves difficult. They end up having to take assistance from rival evil deities.

BRANCH: At first they use this device for immense profit, because so many people want to be elves, before discovering the effects are contagious, unleashing the (involuntary) Elf (Transformation) Plague. It turns out this was why the technology was not used before, and they must embark on a quest to stop it on behalf of the Elf Deity, before the other deities go to war.

BRANCH: As a subversion, it turns out there’s nothing especially dangerous about the technology at all. The adventurers spend the rest of the campaign increasing their opportunities for their company, Elf Inc., to make huge amounts of money, and occasionally being challenged by conservative elements in other societies as they expand their markets.

4. Newly Unequal - All the species were equal until just a few hundred years ago.

BRANCH: This was the result of an elf supremacist wizard using magic to transfer other species' positive attributes to elves. The quest to stop him failed. Fortunately, this power is concentrated in a series of physical artifacts that can be destroyed. Elves aren't even a 'real thing,' but rather are descendants of a specific kingdom at the time of the switch, which has used this transferred power to subjugate the other 'species'.

BRANCH: Every kingdom in the world is still trying to figure out what happened as the global political situation has been rapidly destabilizing. It turns out that actually, this is what the species are normally like (in the absence of intervention), and a series of magical stations built by an ancient empire drained energy from more powerful species and transmitted it to less powerful species for the benefit of ideology and political stability. The adventurers face a moral choice in reactivating it, not least because the effect will rapidly kill some of the oldest members of the high-power species.

#dnd cosmology #dnd tag #longpost

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oneshipress · 4 years

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We’re counting down the to the end of the Kickstarter campaign for Mr. Guy, Act 1 and the Origins Anthology! So we had our pal DeusNova42 talk to Mr. Guy’s creator, Jayel Draco, about both collections! They also chatted about why Oneshi Press values collaboration over competition, how we select submission for our anthologies, and what’s coming next for Mr. Guy!

What inspired you to publish comics anthologies that feature the work of other creators alongside your own?

Well, originally we were hoping to get our projects, like PACK and Tracy Queen, published by one of the larger traditional companies. After a lot of shopping them around and talking to people in the industry, we realized that coming in hot like that with projects that don’t fit the mainstream wasn’t really feasible. We also realized that there are a lot of fantastic creators out there whose work breaks the mold, but doesn’t fit the heavily gated shelves of the industry. Not being easily discouraged, we decided to build our own platform for our properties and share it with others who have stories that we believe need to be told and don’t fit with what’s being sold.

What is it about “collaboration over competition” that means so much to you, and why?

As far as the anthologies are concerned, the idea of working together with other creators to fill a worthy collection is a co-op model. As such, it requires a collaborative spirit. The thing is, we can tear each other down to beg for scraps from giant empires who are stuck in their ways from times of old…or we can join forces on these creative endeavors and together be big enough to pull our own weight and carve out a space for ourselves on those shelves. As far as the ideas of larger ongoing team projects like Children of Gaia, for example, I’ve always believed that together we can create far more than the sum of what we can create on our own.

Can you tell us more about Oneshi Press Comics Anthology (OPCA) #10—the Origins Anthology?

OPCA #10 is what we’re calling the Origins Anthology. The loose themes that we play with are often interpreted in pretty fun ways. For example, a story that tells about how something literally began could fit the theme just as well as a story that explores the cyclical [nature] of the greater universe. I don’t want to give too many spoilers about OPCA 10, but there are 13 shorts altogether, featuring a complement of over 2 dozen creators, which provide quite a good mix of takes on the concept of origins. Some are ongoing stories that have been in previous anthologies of ours already, and some are one-off shorts.

What are the most rewarding and the most challenging parts of working with other creators to bring these anthologies into the world?

The most rewarding part of working with so many different creators on these projects is knowing that we helped these creators all grow their audiences by sharing ours with them, as well as them all sharing each other’s audiences with one another and with us. The fact that our contributors keep the rights to their contributions and Oneshi Press foots the cost of printing, giving contributors a chance to buy printed copies wholesale and sell them full price, is a sort of vicarious wish fulfillment. When we started off, we wished someone could have done that for us, but no one did… “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” right?

The most challenging part is honestly administrative tasks, keeping track of what’s coming and going, getting creator bios from everyone for crediting everyone appropriately. Making sure that every page from over a dozen different stories all conform to the same standards for printing. Keeping track of sales versus cost of goods sold. This isn’t our forte, nor is it something we ever wanted to do. It’s just necessary for us to do this for now until we can get some magical unicorn to do it for us one day… Long story short, it’s just so much administrative work.

What do you look for in submissions to the anthologies?

What we look for in submissions to our comics anthologies, aside from the obvious skill in technique from the creator(s), [is] the heart of a contribution and [whether] it feels like it matches our tone. That said, we’re looking for progressive stories that tell things from a different angle than the common tropes. We love stories that aren’t just clever, but also try to give the audience a meaningful takeaway. Expanding one’s perspective is a path to inner peace and peace with others; art has that power. Sometimes that means exploring kindness and compassion; sometimes it means exploring pain and even the concept of wrath. It’s not always what you’re used to or what you like; we’re not providing lip service for the masses. We’re exploring ourselves together. We’re providing catharsis for the masses.

That said, we’re not into shock for the sake of it, we are not into punching down, and we will never accept bigotry of any kind. We’re sex-positive feminists who believe love is equal, black lives matter, trans rights are human rights, and being a jerk isn’t cool. If all that fits with you, you’re who we’re looking for—let’s share our stories together.

How can creators apply to be featured in your anthologies, and what is the selection process like?

Everything you need to know about submitting a contribution to our comics anthologies has been carefully curated and posted on our submission page here. Lynsey and I both receive mail from the contact page and are happy to answer any additional questions.

The selection process is done in three columns:

We consider the skill level in techniques employed both for writing and visuals, and for our preferences there, for column one.

The second column is the heart of the story, how important do we feel the story is, are we going to feel right knowing that we chose to include this story over that one? The heart of the story is broad and difficult to quantify in simple terms: Does it portray an underrepresented character? Does it convey a moral that fits with our values? Does it explore something that is often neglected in the mainstream?

The third column is the theme of our anthology. How well does the submission fit the overall collection? We do always try to round this out and not be too redundant. However, we also try to avoid being too far-reaching.

At the end, the projects that are highest in all three columns are prioritized over the projects that are lowest in all three columns. Sometimes we might have a project that’s high in the first two but really just doesn’t fit the theme we’re going for as well as some of the other submissions, in which case we may consider it for future anthologies.

You mentioned in your last interview that your latest venture, Mr. Guy, is an “art-thology.” Can you explain what that is and how it differs from an anthology?

Typically, a comics anthology is a collection of short comics from multiple series and often from various creators, which are generally bound together under the common theme. For example, our 10th Oneshi Press Comics Anthology is the Origins-themed anthology. Mr. Guy: Zombie Hunter, however, is one continuous narrative all written by myself, but each chapter (or arc) is illustrated by a different artist. So it’s really only an anthology where the art is concerned. Hence the word art-thology!

Did you always envision Mr. Guy as an art-thology? What influenced that decision?

If you’d have asked me 20 years ago, I’d have said that one day I’d illustrate the whole thing myself. I made some early attempts and, having no idea what I was doing, put them on ice. About 10 years ago, I was toying around with the idea of Kickstarting a pilot episode for a Mr. Guy cartoon. Chris Covelli, my long-time creative partner and co-founder on Children of Gaia, even did some CGI of Mr. Guy walking around and toon-shaded. At the time, though, even the workload for a pilot was a bit beyond our scope, and the more we looked into Kickstarter, the more we realized we didn’t quite have the internet reach we would need, nor the understanding of how to run an enticing campaign.

All these years later, as co-founder of Oneshi Press, I’ve helped put out 9 anthologies, and the 10th one is on its way. Mr. Guy was already written in 8-page arcs, each one with a different vibe. It just felt right to want to see each arc done by a different artist. Sort of like a DTIYS (draw this in your style), but for a whole chapter.

How did you approach creators about working on Mr. Guy, and will there be opportunities for other creators to participate in similar projects in the future?

So, the first artist for Mr. Guy, Act 1 is me! That was easy. I just turned to myself and said yes. The next 3—Walter Ostlie, Diana Camero, Jacey Chase—were already on our roster of people we’ve worked with in the past for the Oneshi Press Comics Anthologies. Depending on how well the campaign for Act 1 goes, we’ll decide when to start nailing down the details for who will be working on Act 2, and then eventually Act 3. We do have some artists tentatively penciled in for Acts 2 & 3, but those may change depending on availability as we get closer, and there are still a few open anyway. For most future projects where I need to hire artists in general, I’ll probably start with asking people who have already contributed to our anthologies before doing an open call.

Where can people find Oneshi Press anthologies and other publications?

Oh, I know this one! People can find Oneshi Press Comics Anthologies and our other works right at oneshipress.com.

Visit the Kickstarter campaign to support our creators and Jayel Draco with a pledge or a share!

Mr. Guy Creator Jayel Draco on Collaboration, Art-thologies, and Indie Comics We're counting down the to the end of the Kickstarter campaign for Mr. Guy, Act 1…

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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yeah if you wanna talk realism then there's no way jason and tim got to bruce's and dick's levels so quickly. especially jason. bruce trained for most of his life and dick was raised as an acrobat and then spent the rest of his life training martial arts. tim and jason couldn't have reached that in the few years they spent as robin. so lets not bring realism into it cause then we all come off as asshats and it's not nice.

I mean, its just so dumb to me. I’ve never once been tempted to try and diminish Jason or Tim’s skills compared to Dick by citing the time frames their training took place in….especially given that those time frames IMO were basically random numbers writers with no real experience with any of those skillsets themselves just pulled out of their asses, because they honestly didn’t care whether it was believable or not. Like sure, one could feasibly make that argument if they really wanted to, but….why? What’s even the point? At the end of the day we’re still talking about child superheroes the entire DC fandom just accepts as being able to outlast, outmatch or outperform every child superhero with actual superpowers, just as their dad can do the same with literally every adult superhero, as far as most people are concerned.

Realism is just such an absurd argument to bring into this IMO, whether its in the name of propping up a character or diminishing a character, because like….by all means, I’m right there with anyone who wants to argue real world implications or ramifications to comic book stuff, because as long as a comic book is a mirror of our world to any degree, those things don’t go away just because something happens in a comic book instead of real life.

But its an entirely different thing when you’re trying to argue real world logistics as applied to comic book stories, because the very nature of the medium is a kind of absurdism. Like, its literally the point? Its larger than life, four color shit from the bottom to the top, solely for no other reason than it CAN be, that the medium ALLOWS for it to be. Superhero comics are literally the place where anything goes, so long as you can justify it in-story. Absolutely I think you still need to have internal consistency. The things you claim happen in a story should make sense according to the internal logic or rules set forth by that story, otherwise its just…plot holes. But that’s got nothing to do with realism, its purely how….storytelling works.

Like, I use the “Dick started as Robin at eight” timeline for literally no other reason than its the version of events that gives him the most time with Bruce for the much talked about and always referenced strong bond they have to form, and it gives him the most time and experience as a trained vigilante, which in turn, to me, accomplishes the far greater task of justifying Dick’s extreme and undisputed competence in the eyes of basically the entire superhero and supervillain communities, by the time he’s an adult and Nightwing.

I mean, that’s literally the only reason I go with that, and the reason I prioritize ‘what age he debuts as Robin makes Dick’s reputation and experience as an adult hero seem most plausible’ over ‘what age he debuts as Robin seems most plausible’…..

Is because there’s literally no childhood age where if you ask me, the things that are expected of and taken for granted with any and all of the Robins in either the comics or most fics…are remotely plausible.

Like, it doesn’t weird me out to write Dick starting as a costumed vigilante at age eight, because…..if I’m honestly viewing things through that lens…..then….him, any of them, starting at age ten isn’t any less ridiculous? Starting as a vigilante at age twelve isn’t any less ridiculous to me? Fourteen is barely plausible but stretching it, and still would require leaning heavily into the idea that the teen vigilante still had a literal lifetime of training under their belt in at least one of the relevant skillsets like acrobatics or martial arts….I mean ‘realistically,’ if we’re really trying to play that game, I would have trouble taking literally any story about any Robin ‘seriously’ unless they were at least sixteen or so….

And if you have them all start out as Robin at age sixteen or more, then….not only does that put a serious cramp in how much history/bond/partnership Bruce can develop with any of his Robins and y’know…family….in a comparatively vastly reduced time frame….but also, that pretty much negates the entire premise and point of Robin in the first place. Seeing as how IMO Robin basically exists as the quintessential youth empowerment archetype, heavy emphasis on youth….as well as at least in its early decades, doubling as the embodiment of childhood joy/innocence/potential as superpowers unto themselves.

*Shrugs* Bottom line is I honestly don’t think any one of us would be here if we were really dependent on viewing any of the Bat characters through any kind of ‘realism’ lens. The very nature of Robin’s existence kinda expects a suspension of disbelief regarding a child’s ability to go toe-to-toe with skilled foes with powers, resources and experiences far beyond anything he can comparatively match….and yet still walk away or come out on top most of the time anyway. And again, you ask me, the second you buy into that premise to any degree, you’re kinda sacrificing your right to play the ‘but realism!’ card, no matter what age we’re talking about specifically, so like….I honestly have trouble seeing where one specific ‘c’mon now, seriously?’ age is any more or less believable than any other.

And this actually really ticks me off, lol, even though its not that deep, because like…..the fact is I fully believe anyone who is able to conceptualize and word things as well as I know the particular poster whose post annoyed me is in fact capable of….like, they damn well know this themselves, and is just willfully pretending otherwise for the sake of making a bullshit argument they know is bullshit and yet are still making anyway because it suits their bullshit agenda….which in the context of an argument like that, like…it isn’t even “oh I don’t like this character or his stories and here’s why” which I mean, I get….but instead this kinda thing is “and also you shouldn’t like this character and his stories either and here’s why, even though I absolutely would never apply this same logic to any one of MY faves.”

I mean, I know its same shit, different fandom, and a lot of this is just carried over irritation after six years in TW fandom where people like…fucking ran strategic military campaigns committed to making sure as few people liked the main character as possible, lmfao….but its just, nothing about this kinda thing is remotely novel or original and I’m soooooo tired of people being so blatantly fake about their intentions, when its like….who even fucking cares?

Did you win a prize for pretending you didn’t hate that character you actually hate? Did you score all the points by being so slick that nobody caught on that you SOUNDED like you like this character even though you actually only posted to drop in these five different reasons people should actually hate that character instead? Is literally anything anyone gains from this kinda fake BS worth the time and effort they put into pretending they have a different opinion than the one they want people to actually internalize and agree with, because the fake opinion they’re pretending to have is actually one that they hate?

*rolls eyes so much they fall out of skull*

LMFAO, sorry, you didn’t set me off, just…..this kind of behavior is just such a pet peeve of mine. Its like hearing nails on a chalkboard for me, just gets under my skin, lolol. And also its lame and boring and dumb and what if people didn’t work so hard to be so fake all the time, I’m just wondering. For like. Science and stuff.

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thessalian · 4 years

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Thess vs Further Analysis

So it finally occurred to me why your companions stand around like lumps and don’t help you outside of combat in Baldur’s Gate 3:

They’re counting on the co-op and going way too far the other way in an attempt to rectify some of the mistakes made in Divinity 2.

There was ... an issue, with Divinity 2, where the companions had a surprising and almost glorious amount of agency ... except for one tiny problem. That being, “Sometimes the companion would just straight-up murder someone you’d need for a quest later”. Sure, you could reach your objective in an entirely different way, but it was frustrating if you wanted to do something in a certain manner but weren’t allowed to do it because ... as a for-example, a really creepy companion asked to speak to your target first and then, with no warning, stabbed them to death, with no option to talk them out of it.

This frustrated people. I know it frustrated me. So I guess Larian Studios just went, “Okay, we won’t let that happen again; companion agency is not a thing anymore”.

Dear Larian Studios: there is such a thing as going too far when it comes to fixing an identified problem. I mean, yes, I’d really rather the angry githyanki not go around murdering everyone she doesn’t like, but at the same time, actions that are a) actually helpful to the player while b) avoiding an immediate Game Over would still be nice to have when you’re not playing co-op.

Because ... a few things about the co-op:

Honestly, there aren’t really that many of the companion characters I’d want to play. I like to pick and choose who I want to play. That’s what RPG means to me - to play my character. Yeah, you can still do what you want with the character you pick, but ... it’s not the same.

Sometimes - hell, often - co-op just isn’t feasible. Even in this time of quasi-lockdown, trying to mesh up a timetable is ... well, have these people ever tried to put together a D&D campaign and keep it running? Ever? The timings alone are a mess to try to cope with. Maybe you won’t find enough people and will have to have at least one AI companion. Maybe someone’s internet is going wonky. Maybe there are time zone issues. You don’t know.

Then there’s the “sometimes, people just want to play single player”. Not everything has to be always-online co-op focus. I get that’s Larian Studios’ shtick just now and that’s fine, but if they’re going to have the option to play single player only, they need to find the right balance.

CO-OP PLAY ISN’T EVEN AVAILABLE AT THIS STAGE OF EARLY ACCESS. We’re on our own at this point and if you’re going to release in early access, you’d better have the balance set up for something that’s a bit more friendly to the single-player experience!

I think I’ve more or less given up feeling bad about nit-picking Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s in early access. It’s only just barely past open beta (or, y’know, closed beta with the conditions of entry to the beta being ‘pay money’). Flagging up the issues is kind of a part of that. I should, of course, probably be doing that on a forum designed to make feelings on that matter known, but ... forums scare me. Mostly because arseholes. I read Reddit from time to time. That’s bad enough.

Also thanks to @slightlycrackedteapot for the answer to my question about modifiers. I did wonder why the target number changed from time to time but was sort of missing the ‘why’. As a way of handling it, it makes sense. Still, it’d still be nice if they made that clearer, just from a psychological perspective - just put in brackets after the actual target number “[usual TN] - [modifier]”. Psychology is important in UI.

#Thess plays video games

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thouartsohot · 4 years

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For the shipping bingo thing, here's some CR 2 ones to choose from: Fjorclay - Fjord/Caduceus (because I like it) Widojest - Caleb/Jester (because it seems to be controversial) And Beayashter - Beau/Yasha/Jester (because doing a throuple might be fun)

Just gonna jump in, I never really thought I'd be into fjordclay, just cause I didn't really know what the dynamic of it would be like?? But after seeing some art done by a few people I think it's very cute, and would love to see these boys. I don't see it actually happening but that doesn't stop me from reading found family fic where these to are occasionally an item.

I know caleb/jes is very controversial for many reasons, so I'm just putting my stance on it: I don't like it, I feel like it has a tendency to make it about jester somehow "fixing" caleb and her being the saviour he needs, but my main reasoning is the age gap. We don't know jester's age but we do know she's most likely in her early twenties (like 21/22, probably 23 at the oldest) and caleb is in his mid-thirties. Regardless of anything else, the age gap alone makes me dislike this ship (and, for the same reason, fjord/jester, because although seeing two people who actually have the chemistry irl convey it in game, there's that gap in age that's kinda disturbing)

lastly we have beauyashter, aka jestyabeau, aka beau/jester/yasha. i think in the beginning of the campaign i was big for yasha/beau, just because I'd never seen one, let alone two wlw main characters (pcs) in a big thing before, and i was just searching for some content, but it died down, as I don't tend to actively ship things, and so it became about the whole found family dynamic (my fav. trope and one of the reasons i love dnd) however i saw someone shipping jes and beau together and instantly got on board, and then i saw these three? and honestly, the idea that a polyam wlw trope could actually feasibly happen in something??? and something as big as /critical role/????? i wouldn't be disappointed at all if it didn't happen but the fact that there's even the smallest chance it actually could is wild to me and i love it and would definitely love to see it play out if the ladies of cr chose to take it in that direction

#long rambles again #hiya it's me k loke to talk #wren #cr #thanks for your patience

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awesomelephuoclocblog-blog · 4 years

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Brett Ingram is a lofty merchant from the outrageous mechanized business community Jvzoo. With various extended lengths of association with the publicizing

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https://lephuocloc.com/pixamattic-review/

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sirjustice2011-blog · 4 years

Text

Poor economies

Alternator Generator and E-vehicles as machines eliminates oil completely as well as artificial made oil for oiling machine parts and thats the major economic activity of Nigeria as a country thus a finished economy as well as her cooking palm oil finished by artificially made 1 where a little amount poured on water in a bucket then many sprinkle water and boom its formed. By the above now, even the machines and vehicles they made the other African nations have learnt the same so are plunged into shivering as how they will feed their population, so looking to settle their population in other nations using people they sponsored to disturb in pretense of monitoring peoples food so they see if u can share your food once the above happens. Rather they could left Kebi and Not play part in Amon’s death to think now the innovation remain to them only, so can pride themselves with slogan such as proudly made In Nigeria. Not bad off as now gadgets u don’t buy but just looking 4 food like from Cameroon, the next nation next door, do not worry dude, eat less now to save 4 ya poor population or create a fund 4 the same or make artificial supplements to save ya nations export. Other feasible solutions to evade war or public disgust as people trusted on ya a long time as u r geared towards justice yet now u join the bad side and help Mr white-man to down play other black men, if u had rocket and internet as far as 2015, why hide it, u could have told Mr Hindu to back off, but better of u shy people away from Christianity because many deemed ya more Christian than others to follow ya

The white Canadian women eyeing very well the money Kebi claimed to leave, which if he does the same they came up with excuses again that his money in the bank. Folks hard to explain, how can i tell them, my intention wasn't money but equity to all, if i take that cash they claim the same and adds to their ego of finding me which i want not cause am another fellow altogether as above. They want people with money yet proclaim they are helping Africans who are poor as with my case taking it back and forth. Then they wanna say i wanna live big, so bring kids around, i cant live that way myself yet i challenge them, can we go to the bank i give ya that cash to a big group of people u put to investment, me i only take $ 1000 4 my toilet and fake electronic like phones and computer to be using to save me cyber money, they want not but want it all alone. They want to eat my corpse saying am Jesus, if u partake such like they did in blood donation previously u became innovative which aint the case as show with every world nation making gadgets yet they have not eaten my corpse or blood while the Kenyan counterparts doing the same yet they lag behind in their innovative quest than nations like Nigeria or Ghana who have not done such cheated acts by the Germans or Americans. Eating corpse wont help ya if u dont practice what is described in tumblr a/c sirjustice202.

Another they want to exhume my grave 4 the above trying to kill me or make me take my life, which if i say, the hole be dug deep and heap of concrete added they are left stranded as well as me being cremated. Thinking that they can do that to my head then take other parts, led me be immersed in hot metal b4 people as i will pay that then stranded again and if that fail they want me oversees to frustrate me in snow or use a coin that cut the leg to amputate my appendages to make much corpse out of it to be eating forever as the remainder always make much as well as the initial, can even be eaten 4, 1 century to delude not knowing folks that the gateway to be innovative in machines to make it a culture to get many to hell as seen by ya hand fingers, kinda, pulsing up and down. Or get me to jail take blood samples and do the same as well as shooting me as astray bullet or knocking me down on roads to loose part of my appendages 4 the same above.

For better big car, when hurling cold water as described above using bottle nozzles as with sanitizing bottle or syringe, u can mix the water inside with strawberry or animal blood. U may not know of this but improves the car image as durable or not durable just the same with place ices on the offerings as dough, grain,hay, chaff or on sewer water b4 the above done. If u think its a lie then if u know how to make machine parts try and compare the products with or without the same. Let it be diluted dude and tell me whats up homie!!!!

For more they even aid with local people if u inquire of their machines online, bad character dude, they r of Kamba blooded as well as Germans so alias dude and even Canadians. Worker and vineyard parable to bring reality dude, wanna remain in this world alone, is that true dude, not wanting it 4 others as u want it 4 ya self.

If u got the below gear, u can locate an old car and buy such 2 and connect to make ya own movable E-car esp the 1 tied with the motor and 1 without 4 it to be more soft, stop spending much on already made e-car, make yours today and save much a big time

https://www.alibaba.com/premium/Speed+Reducers.html?XPJAX=0&product_id=60750472126&tagId=c146910&pcate=146910&cid=146910&src=cpm_fb&ver=76w_20190529&account=DPA&campaign_id=6114792212116&campaign=mc_pc_pclp&ad_set_id=6114792213716&ad_set=pc_mc_completenewpclp&source=fb&placement=Facebook_Desktop_Feed&ad=mc_pc_newpclp_frame&fbclid=IwAR00s52JEI72fmQgGiACeJW_tOpTD9M-K8Ce6rUzYz7R2MLBQwZSsaT2N5M

Overseas shipping details in the link below

https://www.facebook.com/imailkenya/

Do adhere to Govt set rules even if u know they are heading no-where, just try not to get into the hands of the police by just appeasing them, anyway covid medication is grown ginger and many have bought such to cure them, the reason why such cases have diminished even if the govt is playing dice. Most such pretenders are of Kisii blood who just follow things to benefit and its a blessing in disguise as they are known that way. Always almost these people when they triumph, they can be tyranny or of bad character. U’d rather oppose such to portray a character of wanting development to many as opposed to the former case.

I need a spinje like the Jerry joe in the link below

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Surround-Stereo-6-5-Big-Power_60584981171.html?spm=a2700.pcdrm.normalList.241.feefKYoaKYoaNR

Uganda as well claims they have known to build roads and structures such as buildings they way explained in tumblr a/c sirjustice202 as in the link below trying to explain

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1618395448308920&set=pcb.1618395504975581

https://www.facebook.com/kiiramotors/videos/179889533365237

Nigeria made hexacopter in the link in below

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=804971810011442&set=a.563821404126485

1st Ghana made aircraft in the link below

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fkantanka.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F06%2Fghana-airways-1024x702-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fkantanka.net%2Ffirst-ghana-made-aircraft-takes-to-the-skies-3%2F&tbnid=nofkJZBegIhrdM&vet=10CJwBEDMorQFqFwoTCLj01dTb1ukCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAP..i&docid=Ib-gPB3a58J6mM&w=1024&h=702&q=kantanka%20military&ved=0CJwBEDMorQFqFwoTCLj01dTb1ukCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAP

In the link below is made in Ghana train

https://www.facebook.com/398698357548638/photos/pb.398698357548638.-2207520000../619818148769990/?type=3&eid=ARASO2wOo8XqtxcsrAXwlgXqJVhDnyxPX42dgPkmutUR6A-6hw4kiFmSxWUiqaJD52mo3eOXW_Rz7x8a

http://kantanka.net/first-ghana-made-aircraft-takes-to-the-skies-3/?unapproved=1100&moderation-hash=52a29b059f94c9dd7324bc8985f0f393#comment-1100

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana_Railway_Corporation#/media/File:Train_In_Accra_005.jpg

Nigeria launches space rocket in the link below as Germans buying their boats to affirm quality and forging alliance to finish Kebi utters delanu, my buying me food friend.

https://www.africanmilitaryblog.com/2019/10/race-to-space-nigeria-launches-homemade-rockets?v=65d8f7baa677

https://www.africanmilitaryblog.com/2020/05/germany-buys-nigerian-epenal-boats?v=65d8f7baa677

Made in Rwanda Laptops in the link below dude, just click and get a glimpse

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FCVHahh1WIAAm44b.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fngwata_%2Fstatus%2F671558160453357568&tbnid=BFMjvfMZvFRpoM&vet=12ahUKEwiXzPj24tbpAhUhAmMBHasGBdgQMygNegUIARCFAg..i&docid=9IGQVcTXnls_WM&w=1024&h=768&q=train%20made%20in%20rwanda&ved=2ahUKEwiXzPj24tbpAhUhAmMBHasGBdgQMygNegUIARCFAg

North Korea 1st made airplane and South Korea fighter jets in the link below

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rnz.co.nz%2Fassets%2Fnews%2F84349%2Feight_col_plane.jpg%3F1475560645&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rnz.co.nz%2Fnews%2Fnational%2F314906%2Fchinese-firm-flew-nz-made-plane-in-north-korea-show&tbnid=gqk4Th2J-7Jd3M&vet=12ahUKEwjXnPWv5NbpAhUR9OAKHVHhD5oQMygIegUIARD3AQ..i&docid=gLgJ7A7n64dtNM&w=546&h=341&q=airplane%20made%20in%20north%20korea%20images&ved=2ahUKEwjXnPWv5NbpAhUR9OAKHVHhD5oQMygIegUIARD3AQ

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/06/29/south-korea-unveils-first-images-of-kf-x-design-with-european-missiles/

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.rappler.com%2Fimages%2Fkorean-fighter-jet-20130130.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rappler.com%2Fnation%2F20754-ph-to-buy-12-south-korean-fighter-jets&tbnid=ySCDyCeMq0jHLM&vet=12ahUKEwiRheaQ5dbpAhUS-4UKHRQPCFoQMygKegUIARD9AQ..i&docid=o1ZJyEg6aQ3KqM&w=640&h=360&q=south%20korea%20made%20airplane%20images&ved=2ahUKEwiRheaQ5dbpAhUS-4UKHRQPCFoQMygKegUIARD9AQ

1 note · View note

abundantchewtoys · 5 years

Text

HS Epi: Meat p12 reaction

Back to Earth C presumably.

I gotta say, I'm curious to find out the final page count of Meat. The way we liveblog, the experience is stretched out, so with theories surfacing and such, we might be caught off guard when things are really over. There's only so far that things will be taken, though I guess we're still in for those "original Male/Female characters", I guess. :P That shouldn't refer to the new Reload timeline John created, I think, with copies of all the people mentioned in the rest of the character list. So, uh, yeah, guess the reason Arquiusprite wasn't mentioned in there was because he remained unseen, voided out if you will. And I guess we shouldn't expect an alternate Equius to have a talking role, either?

---

==>

Well! Talk about jumping straight into the action, this page opens with a dialoguelog! Back to Dave, Karkat and if my eyes didn't deceive me, we'll get some lines for Jade, too! Supportive Jade will be supportive.

"hit jane right in her neoliberal austerity measures" ... Hah. Well, I didn't think that would get referenced again at all, but it seems after all these years since John's 18th birthday Dave still has issues with the ol' N.A.M. So, Jane's a neoliberal AND a fascist now, Dave? Is that... even feasible?

"DAVE: now shes gonna spin some shit about supply side economics but we cant let her control the narrative on that one cause the first thing thats gonna happen once she begins deregulating the baking industry is that some sweet dumb crocodile down in consort land is gonna start putting sparkle glue in the cupcake mix which isnt even the real issue thats just surface issues KARKAT: RIGHT. JADE: definitely" ... Like, Dave I admire you're getting so into this, but you realize they aren't following, right? Also, why would Jane want to deregulate the baking industry if she's the leader of the foremost power in said industry, as well as running for president? Plus, Jane can't control the narrative because Caliborn is already controlling it! :mspa:

"DAVE: i mean earth c has just been play acting capitalism the last five thousand years while we timeskipped ahead to live rad lives as gods without bothering with any of the boring shit that goes into making a civilization DAVE: which is fine i mean you cant really expect a bunch of teens who didnt finish middle school to set up a sustainable form of social democracy that isnt just blatantly ripped off whatever we incorrectly thought obama god rest his soul was doing back in the day" ... Gee, Dave's given this a real lot of thought. Props to him, but I hope that aside from becoming 'an activist' he's also got some legitimite action points to improve Earth C's situation.

Guess Sburb really does a number on players, huh? "Congrats, you won, you're all gods now, and also, here's this whole civilization on the brink of collapse, have fun with that. Don't mess this up, I need those people to start the apocalypse in say, 2000 years, k thx bye." (The fact that this civilization, being outside of the Green Sun's influence, may never implement Sburb, is a bit besides the point since I think the trolls would have had the same issue tossed onto them had they actually gone through the victory door.)

Right, but the trolls had their home planet already effectively run by children, I wonder if that will come again? Even though they had carpenter droids at their disposal to run some things for them, they might actually be a bit more self-reliant than the humans!

"DAVE: but janes got this old school mentality you just know she wants to restrict grist alchemy for the sake of “growth” and when that goes down itll take three seconds flat for some nobody in new dersetown to drop the earth c communist manifesto" ... New Dersetown, I like the ring of that. Would call it New Dersey for short, though. :P Again, valid points there, Dave! If any revolt started, it doesn't have to be in the troll community, it could just as much be an angry carapace uprising! They're only docile if there's no one to rally behind.

Blaperile has this idea that the new society in a universe is not supposed to be seeded with the remains of the session nor the universe that came before it. That's actually a valid point; the only reason this society got kickstarted was through the cloning apparatus that was on the meteor! The consorts and carapaces seem like they would be able to reproduce biologically though, so I'm not sure how Sburb normally ensures the planet is a clean slate for a new species to emerge. ... Okay, so the planet itself doesn't really need to be the place where a new Sburb-playing species rises, true. There's a whole new universe out there.

Maybe through "importing" old Sburb technology, the "alpha" planet designation went to Earth C automatically, though.

Or maybe First Guardians are expected to 'cleanse' the planet from outside influence normally, but since this society's outside of the Green Sun's influence, that ain't happening. And Jade won't be going Thanos on Earth C.

"KARKAT: OH YEAH. JADE: of course DAVE: are you two even listening or are you just making noises with your mouths" Dave realizing he's monologuing? What character development is this. :O

"KARKAT: I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M BEING ACCUSED BY DAVE STRIDER, REIGNING EMPEROR OF SPEWING ENDLESS VERBAL DIARRHEA DIRECTLY INTO MY INNOCENT HEAR DUCTS EVERY DAY OF MY FUCKING LIFE, OF MAKING THOUGHTLESS MOUTH NOISES. KARKAT: JADE, ARE YOU HEARING THIS? JADE: im scandalized JADE: especially when JADE: there are much better things we could all be doing with our mouths....." ... Jade, your animes are showing again. ... I think that maybe Jade doesn't want this relation to be going where Dave and Karkat want it to go.

"It’s been a really nice day they’ve been having, and then Jade had to go say something like that. The air in the hive changes in a way that is palpable, in a way that she can’t seem to accurately gauge despite having both superhuman and superdog senses." ... Ah. So I guess maybe Jade just can't get a lid on some of her more... canine inclinations, at time. Welp!

"Elements of her outfit resemble her god tier jammies: peasant skirt, sparkly flats, and a bold choice in striped tights." Nice! That's only the third person who created an outfit based on her god tier outfit that we know, aside from Meenah and Rose.

"the couch where she crashed last night, and the night before that, and the better part of the seven years before that." It would seem Jade has the wanderlust then, she's more like the vagrant dog that comes visiting from time to time? More GCAT in demeanor than Becquerel, in practice. Heheh. Good for her, after being isolated on an island and then a battleship for so long, she's finally going out & seeing things!

"There are other personal effects of hers in the living room too: plants on the windowstill, her bass guitar sitting in a corner" Cool, so when she comes over, she typically lounges here then. Guess the flute never made it over, though. :p

"a horrific-looking periodic table that Dave made her for her seventeenth birthday pinned above the stairwell. He typed it in Comic Sans, and then deep-fried it to oblivion with JPEG artifacts." ... Next up, on For Fans By Fans...

"And Dave, with his preternaturally perfect timing, sweeps a hand over his tablet to bring up a new PowerPoint slide on the TV. He returns to his Comic Sans-written political presentation, gruesome artifacts and all" Dave, Dave that isn't professional at all!

", with the grace and proficiency of a man who has diffused an awkward situation in his own household many times per day, every day, for many years." Well, okay, that is really mature. But when Dave is the adult in a situation, the situation is very awkward per definition.

"DAVE: alternia: brutal eugenics based space dictatorship KARKAT: NOT UNTRUE." Succinct, brutal, but not dishonest.

"DAVE: troll homeworld: lord of the flies nightmare scenario where kids murder each other just to get the chance to get to grow up and murder other aliens instead KARKAT: IT WASN’T THAT BAD." Karkat. Karkat that isn't a valid rebuke.

"KARKAT: YOU MADE THAT LAST ONE UP. KARKAT: ALSO, IT WAS DISGUSTING?? KARKAT: GROW THE FUCK UP, YOU UTTERLY CONTEMPTIBLE, POTTY MOUTHED *CUNT*." ... The irony is stark.

"JADE: also you know trolls dont actually have two dicks dave thats an offensive stereotype" Are we really doing troll anatomy? Well, I guess it's good to know that the fan theory about Sollux at least isn't applicable to the entire species.

"DAVE: trolls: literally ate babies KARKAT: ONLY THE DEFECTIVE ONES. DAVE: like you my dude KARKAT: ...YEAH. DAVE: so thats why our campaign can work" Yeah, Karkat ate grubs, though they weren't troll babies. Also, yeah, Karkat was a mutant, but I wonder if that would really help his case here.

"DAVE: btw im gonna be giving a long form exam at the end of this to make sure youre retaining info because this is only like the most important thing weve ever done collectively" Well he ain't wrong.

"KARKAT: ARE YOU ASKING ME WHETHER I’VE HEARD THIS EXACT SPEECH ALMOST WORD FOR WORD, INCLUDING REHEARSED VERSIONS OF BOTH THE COLORFUL METAPHORS AND “JOKES,” TEN OR TWENTY TIMES ALREADY? KARKAT: BECAUSE THE ANSWER WOULD BE KARKAT: YES, OF COURSE I FUCKING HAVE." Poor, poor Karkat.

"Karkat elbows Dave in the thigh, a move that is obviously meant to be an action of pure, brotherly jest. But instead it comes off as affectionate and overly intimate. Jade’s clever eyes don’t miss this. Her pupils follow the motion of Karkat’s arm, and then they follow the movement of Dave’s mouth as he smiles in what he probably thinks is a totally neutral expression that reveals exactly 0% of his true feelings toward Karkat Vantas. In reality, his veneer is as thin and transparent as cellophane. He is the only person who can’t see through it.

Jade does some calculations in her head. Two kinds of calculations, in fact: mathematical ones and personal ones." So, is Jade reading too much into their relationship, or are the dudes just... Both too shy?

"JADE: soooooo JADE: do you want a projection of her first years hit on the economy down to the decimal with a 0.3% margin of error JADE: because thats a thing i can do if itll make you stop talking about this stupid election for ten minutes" I didn't know that were First Guardian powers! :p I suppose it might be her natural intellect though, but we've only known her as the hands-on science type until now.

"She proceeds to dazzle the two boys with explications on complex math utilizing taxation rates, GDP figures, and some damned thing called the “Laffer curve,”" Dang, Jade is as much committed to this as Dave! (Or maybe she learned all this because it means so much to him, that could be it too!)

"The thing about Jade Harley is that she’s not as good at personal things as she is at other things. Like science, or mastering fraymotifs, or kissing, the last of which she has definitely put a lot of levels into over the past few years because, well, what else are you supposed to do with immortal godhood once you hit the age where the dog hormones start kicking into overdrive?" Guess for dogs, kissing isn't that personal. :p And well, I guess Jade's only now learning the real consequences of turning into a real-life furry. At least she won't have had lack of candidates to practice kissing with. She might even have become the Witch of Spacing Out Young Adults.

"Her high-prescription lenses make her eyes look anime-huge. They might literally be glittering, she’s so completely serious about the issue she is trying to stress." And the fan artists rejoiced for all the new descriptions they have to work with!

" JADE: im about to lay out some cold hard evidence so pay attention! KARKAT: OH, HANG ON, LET ME GET A PEN." You can't live together with Dave for years without learning when it's time to start taking notes and grab a fucking pen.

"JADE: evidence about..... JADE: our relationship! KARKAT: FUCK" Pfff, okay, never mind. I think Jade might have hit a wall several times over before, trying to either define their relationship or take it to the next level. These dudes are really sensitive about their feelings, after all.

But it would be interesting, learning Jade wants to know where they stand just as much as the outside world does.

"JADE: you let me live in your hive when im in town KARKAT: I CAN’T BELIEVE... JADE: im preeeetty intimately entwined in both your lives KARKAT: THAT YOU’RE JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS? JADE: AND you dont disengage from about 86.234% of my flirtations KARKAT: WAIT, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU KEEP TRACK OF SOMETHING LIKE THAT? JADE: so....... are we doing this or not?" So, just like with taking on Lord English and acknowledging the lit fuse that is Earth C society, I guess the coming around of April 13th 2019 is when Jade had enough of all this silly business and wants to know what's what. (Also, I suppose the level of intimacy they shared on beforehand will be left to speculation.)

"KARKAT: DOING WHAT?! JADE: dating dummy!!!!!!!! KARKAT: OH. KARKAT: THAT IS KARKAT: THAT IS... A COMPLICATED TOPIC IN MY CULTURE THAT I’M NOT SURE HUMANS ARE EQUIPPED TO TALK ABOUT." Smooth, Karkat, real smooth. Maybe Karkat fears commitment will lead to some of their relationships shifting into other quadrants. And he wouldn't like to be moirails or auspistices with either of them.

"DAVE: also totally unrelated to the economy" ... Nice try Dave, but I think this can't be steered back into that track.

"DAVE: which not gonna lie is the only thing i want to talk about for uh DAVE: for however long it takes for this other conversation to stop happening JADE: so say no!!! DAVE: well KARKAT: UHHHHH JADE: im not just forcing this conversation for my sake! its for you two as well JADE: i mean after all this time have you two even kissed yet?????? DAVE: wha" I think Dave and Karkat might actually have been both content to stay uncommitted and fearful to put a label on it. Also Jade's question will presumably remain unanswered, it's already surprising it's confirmed she hasn't seen them kissing. And that is ignoring the matter of whether either Dave or Karkat kissed Jade before. I guess it's only fortunate for this situation that this instance of Jade never dated Davesprite, it would only complicate things further.

"DAVE: wha KARKAT: WH-WHY WOULD DAVE: uhh KARKAT: WHY WOULD WE KISS?? DAVE: thats KARKAT: THAT’S... YOU... I MEAN, HE’S... HE’S DAVE. DAVE: we KARKAT: AND I’M KARKAT." PFffffffff, hilarious! I can just see them blushing like tomatoes right now. Can't keep staying in denial bros!

"JADE: yes hes dave and youre karkat and everyone we know always calls you that JADE: “dave and karkat”" Hah! Yeah, but they also think you're part of the item, Jade. Care to shed some thoughts on the subject?

"JADE: i cant remember the last time i heard anyone mention one of you without the other JADE: the two of you have basically been together since your days on the meteor its SO obvious" Jade has turned this from a personal matter into a fandom matter. "Everyone and their dog knows you're dating, guys! Stop pretending otherwise!" It's interesting to note the different ways Dave has been seen handling relationships. When he dated Terezi in the GO timeline, it went south due her troubles in the black quadrant. When Davesprite dated Jade, it went south due to unresolved Dave issues, presumably having to do with his bros. With Karkat, Dave's been in a stable-ish thing for the longest time, though.

" KARKAT: VERY CLOSE FRIENDS WHO UNDERSTAND AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER ON A DEEP AND EMPATHETIC LEVEL THAT GOES BEYOND HATE OR PITY. YOU COULD EVEN SAY THAT OUR RELATIONSHIP... KARKAT: ...TRANSCENDS QUADRANTS." ... PFfffffff, so this could have been what it was like for the Sufferer and the Disciple, then! They were just never ready to commit? That would actually be funnier than it being this deep and fulfilling relationship. It would also make Doc Scratch' misgivings on the relationship even more hilarious.

"JADE: yeaaaaaah not gonna lie karkat but that sounds totally kinda gay KARKAT: UGH YOU HUMANS AND YOUR UNFATHOMABLE GENDER BASED QUADRANTS." ... Heh. Actually. Too trolls, the whole gender-based romance thing we have going must indeed be as unfathomable as leprechaun romance.

"Jade faceplams." Well that's a new verb. ;) What part of the body is the 'plam', exactly?

" KARKAT: ANYWAY WEREN’T YOU... DATING THAT CARAPACIAN COUPLE? LAST TIME WE CHECKED?" Lolwut. Jade. Jade are you... are you being a Ms. Casanova, a paramour or two in every city you frequent? If WV and PM turn out to be alive for the sole purpose of dating Jade, I'll choke on my drink.

" DAVE: wait you saying we arent fun JADE: whens the last time either of you left the house??????" I know Jade means it as in, she'd like to date them for keeps. But I also fulheartedly believe Dave and Karkat can sustain themselves on delivery pizza and chinese chow.

"In her other hand, she tries to grab Dave’s wrist, but he flash-steps to the other side of the couch." Well that's a new use of the power, guess Dave must really have felt alarmed. :p

"JADE: i wanna try dating for real KARKAT: HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED KARKAT: SORRY IF WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY TOTALLY BLOWS YOUR MIND KARKAT: DATING A SINGLE PERSON, FOR MORE THAN HALF A SWEEP, FOR REASONS OTHER THAN INITIATING THE CONCUPISCENT EXCHANGE OF FLUIDS?" Karkat is trying to throw the issue back into Jade's face by saying she should try dating for a longer period of time. But that's exactly what she's trying to do here! She knows who she wants that with! That poor little troll, he's not getting out from under this.

"JADE: third of all karkat arent you from a culture where people are expected to engage in romantic relationships with up to like five people at a time?? KARKAT: THAT’S NOT KARKAT: THAT’S NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL." If he's trying to avoid getting dragged into quadrants with people, he should stop upholding the validity of the quadrants to hold people off. :p

"DAVE: ok jade i think theres a flaw in your approach here cause you seem to think winning an argument on super clever logical grounds is gonna get a couple dudes to break down and fling themselves at you in like, a sexual way JADE: wellll it usually does ;B DAVE: oh my fucking god" So she swoons people by way of her big brain. Jade's got CLASS.

"This earns Dave a look. A long, sad one that has Jade messing with her glasses again so that she can peer right at him and apply some more of that faulty personal math to his facial expression." Just confirmation here that Jade isn't necessarily correct in all her assessments due to not being objective.

"JADE: dave are you in love with obama? DAVE: jade jesus where do you get this shit from JADE: is it about jesus then??????" Aaaaaand this has been derailed again.

"DAVE: no! DAVE: jesus wasnt even real JADE: i know he wasnt real! JADE: wait... JADE: are you saying JADE: obama was real? DAVE: ... DAVE: yes" Wut. Wai- I- Jade. Honey. Please. Guess for all her involvement in politics since, those isolated years on the island sheltered her WAY too much.

"DAVE: obama was real DAVE: he was the president KARKAT: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA JADE: all this time i thought obama was like JADE: an aspirational fictional character that you modeled your life after KARKAT: AHAHAHAHA I CAN’T AHAHA BREATHE... JADE: like snoop dog or nicolas cage" ... Jade. Jade no. You're just making this worse on yourself. For Jade, there would have been almost nothing in Homestuck she'd have seen as a reference to 'real life', would there?

"senary numeral systems that allow me to do complex equations in my head" ... Why is Base 6 good for complex equations? I'm probably not good enough at math to know.

"KARKAT: WHY IS IT LIKE SOME SORT OF *TRAGEDY* HOW SHE WAS RAISED? KARKAT: BECAUSE SHE WAS RAISED ALONE BY AN ANIMAL?? KARKAT: *I* WAS RAISED ALONE BY AN ANIMAL!" There! It's getting acknowledged again, how Jade's upbringing more resembles a troll than a human's! Becquerel the lusus.

"There’s a ripple in the room that makes it clear their god tier powers have just clashed against each other. He shifts his arm through time and Jade warps the space around them so that she’s the one holding the tablet. This is not the first time that they have rearranged the fabric of reality for a petty reason like this. Karkat has permanently sworn off playing board games with them." ... Lol. First real use of the god tier powers in Earth C, and it goes like this! Wait, couldn't Jade have snapped... Right, no, she actually wouldn't have First Guardian powers anymore now, I forgot. Still, what did Dave try to do, move the tablet to another point in the timeline?

"The moment Jade brings the paint program up on the television, Karkat stops laughing. KARKAT: NO!" Oh boy. Time for the Penis Quadrant scene, this time with three people. ... This would actually fall under both definitions of a "sketch", actually.

"He tries to grab the tablet from her, but she’s hovering well above the ground and he simply is not tall enough to reach. With a shit-eating grin and deliberate care, Jade begins to draw a grid." He's going to jump up to grab her leg, to disturb the drawing, isn't he?

"She gives Karkat a pair of fuzzy, angry eyebrows" Now I'm starting to think of the Karkat expressions in that one Paradox Space.

"all he accomplishes is turning the redrom trajectory between her and Dave into a redrom loop-de-loop." This is all I could want from a reprise of this scene.

"JADE: see me and karkat have great black chemistry! KARKAT: IT IS NOT BLACK CHEMISTRY YOU HORRID NON-CHITINOUS WINDBAG!" A+ denial there, Karkat, props on the response.

"JADE: and now that daves all chill hed make a great auspistice" Jade just wants all Karkat's quadrants filled by the three of them, somehow.

"JADE: because you and karkat are kind of like moirails DAVE: no JADE: and you and i JADE: well yknow its always been pretty flirty DAVE: jade JADE: EXCEPT!

Jade finishes drawing a shaky heart directly into the paint program. It’s so big and bright on the TV that it fills the entire room with red light." She's putting all these names and symbols to the relationship, it might just be too much for these poor boys to handle. :p

"JADE: i call this political arrangement: JADE: fully automated luxury polyamorous space-time communism!!!!!!!" That is not the shipping name I would've chosen, but it's the shipping name we deserve. And hey, communism! Get it? Cause Karkat had a sickle.

I wonder what Karkat's take on polyamory outside of the ashen quadrant is, actually.

"Jade rolls her eyes and tosses both the tablet and pen over her shoulder. Dave flashes across the living room to catch his very expensive computing device in both arms. The pen bounces off his forehead." This. Entire. Scene.

"JADE: i have to go talk to roxy and callie about the election anyway" Well, she's going to let them stew on this for a while. But I'm eager to find out who Roxy & Calliope would back. You might think Jane's a given, but if she's been busy maybe they have grown closer to Jade & Dave!

"Jade clicks her heels together to propel herself back into the air and actually winks at them before absconding through an open window." Think happy thoughts! Also, I just realized becoming a god sadly never gave Karkat the powers of flight.

"Dave and Karkat both stare after her, silently caught in their own private rationalization spirals.

Karkat needs to verbalize part of his out loud." Ah, but can they stay in that spiral or will they have no choice but to break out of it?

"KARKAT: WANNA PLAY SOME TROLL TONY HAWK? DAVE: hell DAVE: yeah" Yyyyyeaah, they are not going to have changed when Jade comes back, will they?

So even Karkat calls it "Troll Tony Hawk", not whatever absurdly wrong name it'd have on Alternia, and not whatever Tony Hawk's duodecimal name in Alternian would be. :P

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #upd8 #reaction #spoiler alert #jade harley #karkat vantas #dave strider #homestuck liveblog

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