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verobatto · 3 years

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Destiel Chronicles

Vol. CXXV

It was a love story from the very beginning

Loudly In Love

(14x10/14x11/14x12)

Hello my friends! After Purgatory we have a cute and dummy sweet Dean-bean in love with Castiel. As we'll see int this meta summary.

You can find the links to my metas from these episodes following this links: X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, and X.

There's something in my throat

At the beginning of episode 15x10 we can read a shop's named BERENS' KWICK TRAP.

This takes another symbology now, with the horrible ending of the show. In which we could say Berens settle a trap to the C*W and he gave us 15x18 Castiel's love confession anyway.

Before talking about Dean's mating tap dance, let's talk about Dean vomiting again. Because it's relevant again, due to the shitty ending and how C*W silenced him.

Throughout the whole season 15, we had vomits, gagging situations. And in this episode we had two important scenes related to this symbolism:

One was Dean literally vomiting, and the second was Dean datin: "I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY THROAT"

Gif credit @agusvedder

What had Dean stuck in his throat? Maybe the ILY TOO to Castiel that never happened. But writers gave it it's relevance by writing it like this.

Maybe they were trying to day we will never have it.

They silenced him, for real.

Baby Castiel and Color Symbolism

I wrote this in one of my metas...

Baby Sam was dressed with a yellow ascot. Accurate. And Baby Castiel was dressed in blue. Accurate too.

Bess was dressed, and pay attention to this..., She was in pink (happiness) green (Dean) and light blue (purity)... She said to Dean that Cas was looking at him with love. Right? The happiness and purity in Dean was telling him Castiel looks at him with love in his eyes! Now... Dean said Cas baby kept looking at him weird. And Sam (who knows) said JUST LIKE CAS DOES.

And then Castiel's eyes glowed and Dean said... I think he has something for you to Bess (symbolically representing Dean's happiness and purity) GOSH IT WAS PERFECT!

This is something too cute, because finally, they talked about the Destiel eye-love-making and the fan-service with some SAMMY KNOWS.

Gifset credit @subbydean

Another important reference was Garth. When he went to rescue the boys, Garth was playing Castiel's mirror. And when Garth breaks that lock (Just like Castiel will do in the incoming episode) But mostly because Dean's reaction to it was priceless!

DEAN: You're so strong! He's so strong!

This is, literally, what Dean thinks about Castiel everytime he's in BAMF mode.

Numbers

Just a brief travel through the repeated numbers in the narrative in this episode (you can find the extended version of this in the links I put in the top of this meta)

Basically, we had number 7, 5, 17 and 40 repeating in the dialogues and the visual narrative. Some examples of that are the following scenes...

The Beren' kwick trap had a poster naming "7 days per week", then this one...

Dean eating 7 pieces of cheese.

Biblically talking, number 7 is the perfect number, represents God and knowledge. And it talks about Chuck then, knowing Chuck is writing this. But it also is what it means KNOWLEDGE.

Now, number 5...

Also at Garth's house, the address said 75

In numerology talks about socialize, and self-knowledge in masculinity and sexuality... Hello Dean!

But number 5 also represents in Bible the grace God concedes to David to defeat Goliath, the giant, written on the first book of SAMUEL (yes, Samuel) chapter 17.

Gif credit @agusvedder

17 means HOPES,it's what TFW keeps alive go defeat Chuck.

Now, number 40...

GARTH: Yeah, better than I ever thought I’d get. I mean, hunting – I figured I’d be dead before I’m 40. You know, go out young and pretty. But now I’ve got a great wife, great kids. I guess...sometimes things work out.

Putting to a side these had been also Dean's old thoughts... writers really got me here...

40 years old, but 40 is a common biblical number that talks about self-knowledge and growth. It talks about CHANGES. So so accurate with Dean and that caterpillar/butterfly wall in episode 15x04.

I really thought back then we will have the huge change in Dean through his love confession to Castiel. I mean, we had a change in his own way to see himself, thanks to Castiel. Let's keep that as a consolation prize.

An ABO fic plus Mating Dance

This episode had an ABO fic hudden as it also had the learning lesson about MATING FOR LIFE.

The visual narrative and the dialogues pointed at it.

Garth hugging g Dean as he said: YOU SMELL GOOD, remember Garth is a werewolf, and he was smelling Dean's pheromones because this episode happened after Purgatory, Dean is facing the knowledge about his romantic love for the angel, and it shows.

The swan's statues in one of the rooms in Garth house. Swans are birds that mate for life, and males swans can mate with another males for life. Hello Destiel. (Also, the room where these statues were placed was color BLUE)

The tap dancing and the suggestive lyrics of 'Let's Misbehave' was perfectly settled as a mating dancing I'm which Dean invited Castiel (the lamp) to Misbehave with him. Showing us that there's not just sweet and innocent love in Dean's heart but also a passionate fire and a desire to make love with him. That's what the song says, and that's why Garth mentioned colonoscopy, as a medical tool to health control, because cavities are related to Colon Cancer.

The wolf puppy is back

And following the same topic about ABO, the scene in which Jack is back with his family was similar (if not the same) as a wolf pack behavior documental.

Dean checks on Jack's eyes and immediately after that he checks on his pack mate, Castiel, to see if Jack is Jack. Beautiful

Gifset credit @thelordoftherings

Bi!Dean and Tolstoy

There's more info in my links at the top, but let's see why Dean called himself "Tolstoy" in that bar in front of that greek goddess in episode 14x11.

Okay, we had the singer from 'Let's Misbehave' (Cole Porter) a queer man, and now we have Tolstoy, a bisexual man...

DEAN: I'm Tolstoy

So much love

I will only speak about this scene:

Gif credit @agusvedder

There's more analysis about the dialogue here related to the storyline about Chuck, Jack and TFW. But because these are the Destiel Chronicles, I know I have to talk about this particularly Destiel heart eyes scene.

Because Dean is loud, his eyes and his face, he is yelling how proud he feels about Castiel, but it also, the ways his eyes just lingered to him, full of love, it's perfect, and no one can tell me these are not two men in love.

Look at how Csstiel turns his face to him, with a small smile, trying to hide his joy for being praised by the man he loves and also for share this moment with him. And the feels are of an old married couple that still love each other so much.

I just wanted to finish this meta with this "Good Omens" like scene.

To Conclude:

Dean reaffirmed he is in love with Castiel, and he wants to spend his life with him, as a couple. He loves the angel romantically, and he also desires Castiel with passion.

We also had several confirmations of Bi!Dean and some fan service with Sammy knows.

Hope you like this meta, see you in the next one.

Tagging @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @weird-dorky-little-d @michyribeiro @whyjm @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @savannadarkbaby @dea-stiel @poorreputation @bre95611 @thewolfathedoor @charlottemanchmal @neii3n @deathswaywardson @followyourenergy @dean-is-bi-till-i-die @hekatelilith-blog @avidbkwrm @anarchiana @dickpuncher365 @vampyrosa @authorsararayne @mybonsai1976 @love-neve-dies @dustythewind @wayward-winchester67 @angelwithashotgunandtrenchcoat @trashblackrainbow @deeutdutdutdoh @destiel-shipper-11 @larrem88 @charmedbycastiel @ran-savant @little-crazy-misha-minion @samoosetheshipper

@shadows-and-padlocked-hearts @mishtho @dancingtuesdaymorning @nerditoutwithbooks @mikennacac73 @justmeand-myinsight @idontwantpeopletoknowmyname @teddybeardoctor @pepevons @helevetica @dizzypinwheel @horsez2002 @qanelyytha

@destielle @spnsmile @shippsblog @robot-feels @superlock-in-the-tardis @superduckbatrebel @belacoded @madronasky @anon-non2 @cea1996 @lisafu02 @asphodelesauvage @deancasgirl777

If you want to be added or removed from this list, just let me know.

If you wanna read the previous metas from this season, here you have the links:

Vol. CXXI, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXIV.

#destiel #destiel chronicles #destiel meta #supernatural meta #season 15 meta

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tabletoptrinketsbyjj · 4 years

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Running the Numbers: On Balancing Homebrew Masterwork Weapon Bonuses

Hey folks,

My name is JJ and since March 2017 I’ve been working on this blog of D&D related homebrew content for your looting needs. I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback from people and I’m very appreciative of everyone who has written to me or shared the tables on their own blogs or with friends and gaming groups. I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has taken the time and energy to read through my tables, I know people lead busy lives and homebrew content is everywhere online. What I would like to talk about right now is balance for this blog’s homebrew material and how I decide what to include or not include in the tables and how that might help a DM justify using homebrew my homebrew material in their campaign without breaking the game or providing a wild power imbalance between their players.

To start off, I’d like to say that I have a decent background in RPG games in a variety of different systems with most of my time playing, Pathfinder, D&D 3.5 and 5th Edition. For balance purposes for this blog I have tried to be system neutral, talking about skills, benefits and mechanics in general terms so that the trinkets (Especially magic objects) can be easily worked into D&D, Exalted or Numenera alike. For general bonuses and negatives I have taken language from 5th edition D&D, namely the Advantage/Disadvantage system because I find it simple and straightforward. Since I primarily play D&D 5e now I gear a lot of the wording of objects towards it and d20 systems in general. Although this article can be used to talk about balance in a number of different systems, any specifics are usually aimed at D&D 5e.

While I'd like to talk about all of the different types of trinkets I have on my blog, this post will focus exclusively on Masterwork Weapons. While this concept was standard in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder (And similar ideas can be found in other systems), it does not exist in 5e, which I find disappointing because I like the idea of an exceptionally crafted weapon that is mechanically better than average but weaker than a +1 weapon. To talk about masterwork weapons we should also talk about magic weapons so we have a clear comparison. Magical “+1 weapons” are a staple in D&D and are an easily benchmark for what a “standard” magic weapon looks like. A +1 weapon has four different bonuses that set it above a typical weapon, It grants a +1 on accuracy rolls to hit, a +1 on damage rolls, it counts as magical for bypassing the resistances of enemies and it is much harder to break or damage. When the concept was used in 3.5 and Pathfinder, a masterwork weapon gave a +1 on accuracy rolls to hit. In my interpretation, this means that the value of a masterwork weapon was about ¼ of a +1 weapon and I have tried to keep that in mind while writing. It is no accident that the first four masterwork bonuses are each different aspect of a +1 weapon. While researching what other people have done for their version of a homebrew masterwork weapon in 5e, the common theme I've found seems to be a +1 on damage rolls. Due to the bonded accuracy in 5e, a +1 on accuracy would be to strong and we’ll talk more about this later. A +1 to damage rolls for a price of 100gp (Which is the same price as getting a weapon silver plated) seems like a fair enough trade, especially if masterwork weapons are rare and can only be purchased in large cities or commissioned from master weapon crafters, requiring a side quest or roleplay scene. In short, I found a general consensus that a masterwork quality that grants a +1 on damage rolls is balance and therefore it will serve as the benchmark against which all the other masterwork bonuses are compared against.

Keeping “+1 to damage rolls” in mind as a benchmark for how strong I wanted a masterwork bonus to be, I created and cannibalized more than a dozen options for DM’s to use for introducing masterworks into their own campaigns. I will be going point by point crunching numbers to show how each bonus lines up with one another. For those that want to do your own math, feel free to use https://anydice.com/ or http://rumkin.com/reference/dnd/diestats.php to double check the work. I will be using 1d8 as an example for most damage rolls to make it a little more standard. For context going forward, a d8 has a minimum damage of 1, a maximum damage of 8 and an average damage of 4.5. Please note that with one or two exceptions these benefits only affect the default weapon damage dice themselves, not additional dice such as sneak attack, divine smite or spell effects.

I will be going through one at a time through each Masterwork Bonus I currently have written up and talking about them and showing you how their specific benefit effects damage rolls so you as a DM have a better idea on how strong it actually is. To save space I have cut out the fluff descriptions of the Masterwork Bonuses but they can be read here if you’re interested.

Keep reading for a point by point analysis of the Masterwork Bonuses.

This paragraph outlines the Advantage / Disadvantage system from D&D 5e, because some of the bonuses use it. If you're already familiar go ahead and skip this. When a character is given help from a tool, other character, magic effect, etc. they gain Advantage on the dice roll made to accomplish the task. This means that they roll 2d20’s and pick the higher result to determine the outcome, thereby increasing the overall dice roll, slashing the chances of critical failing and boosting the opportunity to critically succeed. Disadvantage is the opposite, the player rolls twice and has to use the lower result increasing the odds of failing. The real great parts about this system is if a character has advantage and disadvantage, they cancel out and only one roll is made so you cannot get “super advantage”. If the character is gaining advantage or disadvantage from multiple sources he still only rolls twice and picks the higher result. This makes circumstantial bonuses very simple to apply on the spot and prevents players from having to calculate a +1 or +2 from half a dozen different sources at a time. Personally I like it because it’s quick and simple allowing everyone to roll fast and move on, in a game where play time is often hard to schedule. Plus, bonuses and deficits just cause the player to roll more dice in a game where players typically love any excuse to roll dice.

1, Precise: Grants a +1 on attack rolls to hit targets

In many systems a bonus to accuracy rolls can deal more damage than a boost to the actual damage rolls. Logically, more accurate attacks hit more often and all damage resulting from a hit that was only successful because of the +1 accuracy bonus can be considered extra damage. In D&D 5e this would bonus would probably be considered the most powerful due to bonded accuracy (Which you can read more about here) and would probably end up doing more damage than the +1 benchmark, especially if the wielder had class features such as sneak attack that further increased damage on hit.

2, Balanced: Grants a +1 to all damage rolls.

The simplest and most reliable damage dealing bonus. A flat +1 damage increases the minimum, maximum and average amount of damage that can be dealt by the attack by 1, making it a nice choice to quietly provide a small benefit for the player that can be added to the damage roll’s math and otherwise forgotten about. For damage bonuses, an average damage increase of +1 is what we are looking for in terms of power and serves as our benchmark.

3, Spellbound: The weapon is considered magical for the purposes of overcoming resistances, damage reduction and other defenses.

This provides a nice compromise to DM’s who want their players to go up against more varied enemies that might have resistances or immunities to non-magic weapons but who don’t want the players to have a full +1 weapon yet. The weapon’s bonus will only provide a benefit when dealing with a small number of enemies (Like elementals, ghosts or fiends) that have that resistance. On the resistant enemies it effectively doubles damage (Compared to a non-Spellbound weapon whose damage would be halved by the resistant monster) granting the wielder and player the time to shine in combat. Against the majority of low and mid-level enemies such as humanoids and beasts who aren’t resistant to non-magic weapons, the weapon provides no benefit at all and is just as useful as a regular weapon.

4, Impervious: The weapon is five times more durable than normal, never breaks, chips or dulls as a result of casual use and is all but impossible to break or damage as a result of combat, even when targeted by enemies who attempt sundering or weapon breaking techniques.

This allows a player to feel comfortable in the knowledge that their sword isn’t going to explode on a natural 1, leaving them unarmed and useless in combat. Furthermore it encourages players to use the sturdy weapon outside of combat for roleplaying or problem solving reasons. Perhaps a war pick is used to dig a foxhole in rocky terrain, a warhammer is used to break down a door, a quarterstaff is wedged against a door to brace it, or a sword is used in place of a crowbar to pry open a stuck chest. Other than resisting being broken in combat, this bonuses has no real offensive capacity making it a great thing to give to your players with almost zero risk that it will upset the team’s power balance or make them too strong in combat.

5, Relentless: Instead of a single damage die when the wielder successfully hits a target, the player instead rolls two dice that equal the value of the original damage die and add the results together.

This grants the player the ability to roll two dice when they would normally roll one, which will probably increase their level of happiness right there. This is a good benefit for raising the minimum damage the wielder does, and in the event of a critical allows the player to roll a multitude of small dice, further raising the minimum damage dealt. If our 1d8 example die is turned into 2d4 with this, the weapon now has a minimum damage of 2, a maximum damage of 8 and an average damage of 5. This increases the minimum by 1 which is nice but only provides an average damage bonus of +0.5 which is not much, but can allow players to feel like they are getting more from the weapon than they normally would. Since this average damage increase is less than our benchmark +1 damage this makes it a balanced addition to the masterwork bonus list.

6, Superior: The weapon’s damage dice increases by one step to the next largest die.

This is a nice and simple benefit with a clear but small increase in damage potential. If our 1d8 example die is turned into 1d10 with this, the weapon has a minimum damage of 1, a maximum damage of 10 and an average damage of 5.50. This increases the maximum by 2 which allows for slightly bigger hits and provides an average damage bonus of +1. This has a slightly higher than normal damage cap but with the drawback of no increase to the minimum damage. Overall the average damage is increased by +1, the same as our benchmark and thus of comparable balance.

7, Cruel: Whenever the player roll a 1 on a die to calculate the weapon’s damage, they can reroll the die until they receive a result that is not a 1.

Like the flat +1 damage, this bonus was also very common on homebrew sites discussing how to implement a masterwork mechanic. Raising the minimum damage the player can deal on hit is a good things for them, since nobody wants to roll a 1. Applying this to our 1d8 example gives it a minimum damage of 2, a maximum damage of 8 and an average damage of 5. This increases the minimum by 1 which is nice but only provides an average damage bonus of +0.5 which is not much, but can provide the player a great sense of relief and excitement when they do roll a 1 and can reroll it into a much higher number. Since the average damage increase of +0.5 (Which is the same regardless of the size of the die) is less than our benchmark +1 damage this makes it a balanced addition to the masterwork bonus list.

8, Defensive: The weapon grants +1 to the wielder’s armor class / defense value / dodge rating or other system mechanic that decreases the chances of being hit with an attack.

Similar to Precise, making homebrew changes to the accuracy and armor class system can be risky for the mechanical balance of the game. In D&D 5e, a +1 to armor class is a big deal and hard to come by and the potential damage prevented by virtue of being harder to hit can add up. This kind of bonus is meant to evoke the idea or a parrying dagger, sword breaker or boar spear, deflecting attacks and keeping enemies at bay by nature of their design. Although it doesn’t directly compare to our benchmark +1 damage, a Defensive weapon can be a Godsend to a squishy melee striker like a rogue or bard who would definitely appreciate the increased armor class.

9, Vicious: Whenever the player roll a 1 or a 2 on a die to calculate the weapon’s damage, they can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2.

D&D 5e players should be familiar with this bonus because it is taken straight from the Great Weapon Fighting style. Due to this, lots of other people have done the math in detail and you can follow this link for nice graphs about the statistics. In short, this bonus on our 1d8 example keeps the minimum damage at 1, a maximum damage of 8 and an average damage of 5.25. That is only an average damage increase of +0.75 which is lower than our benchmark value of +1. It is important to note that the damage changes based size and number of dice and that if the weapon dealt 2d6 damage (Which has an average of 7) was affected by this, the average damage would be 8.33. An improvement of +1.33, which is slightly higher than our +1 benchmark.

10, Brutal: Whenever the player rolls the maximum result on a weapon damage die (I.e. a 6 on a six-sided die.), they can roll that die an additional time and add both results to the total damage dealt. This ability can trigger multiple times per turn but only once per attack.

This is one of the swingy bonuses that either provides either a lot of extra damage or none at all. Based on the concept of “exploding dice” from Shadowrun and some White Wolf systems, if you roll the maximum result, you’ll be rewarded with another die to add to the damage total. I like the idea of having a slim chance to do extra damage since it’s like a mini critical hit. On our example d8 there is a 12.5% chance (One in eight) to trigger the Brutal effect, which adds an average of +4.5 damage (Another d8) to the damage roll. This means that a triggering hit deals a minimum of 2 damage, a maximum of 16 and an average of 9 damage. Although this seems like a lot, remember that the effect only happens on 1 in 8 attacks, so if we take the 4.5 extra damage and average that across of 8 attacks it’s only an average of +0.56 damage per hit. This trend holds steady for different die sizes as larger dice deal more damage but less often and vice versa for smaller dice. A d12 grants an average of +0.54 damage per hit while a d4 grants +0.63. It is important to note that this math is conducted in a vacuum and wielders with the power to reroll damage dice (Especially 1’s and 2’s) can make this bonus more lethal. Though even if on a d8, if the wielder was capable of rerolled all 1’s and 2’s, it would still be 4.5 extra damage once every 6 attacks which is an average increase of +0.75. Since the average increased damage bonus will always be less than our +1 benchmark, I feel like this is a reasonably balanced effect. This can be more fun than a flat +1 to damage because it trades the dependable and boring damage would be represented by a 1d8+1, into an unreliable and therefore exciting 1d8+?, with the possibility on every damage roll of getting an 8 and having your damage explode into high numbers.

11, Mighty: Whenever the wielder scores a critical hit with the weapon, the player can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice one additional time and add the result to the damage dealt by the critical hit. This is in addition to the standard bonus damage of a critical hit.

Drawing on weapons mechanics from D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder this is essentially the idea of an “increased critical multiplier”, which allowed weapons to deal more damage on a critical hit. In terms of damage output on hit, this is similar to Brutal but provides even less average damage per hit because critical hits are rare. In a d20 system where you only critically hit on a 20, you have a 1 in 20 (5%) chance to critical hit on every attack. If you use the example die, you turn the regular critical hit from 2d8 damage (Minimum 2, maximum 16, average 9) into 3d8, (Minimum 3, maximum 24, average 13.5) which does increase the average damage by 4.5 on a critical, but across 20 attacks it averages to +0.225 damage per hit. Comparing that to the benchmark’s +1 damage per hit, this masterwork bonus is very weak but makes up for it with spikes of high damage on critical hits.

X, Inexorable: Whenever the player rolls to determine the weapon’s damage, he may roll the weapon’s damage die twice and choose either result to use.

This bonus allows the player to effectively roll damage twice and choose the higher amount, essentially granting advantage on damage rolls. On our example d8, this bonus keeps the minimum and maximum at 1 and 8 respectively and changes the average to 5.81 damage. Although the minimum and maximum don’t change, the increased average damage by 1.31 per hit, which is slightly higher than our goal of +1. The improvement to damage is magnified by the size and number of dice. On a d12 it grans an increased 1.99 damage per hit and on 2d6 it’s a 2.34 increase. This bonus would also affect the additional damage dice from critical hits making this benefit very powerful.

Inexorable by our +1 damage benchmark is actually too strong to be a Masterwork bonus. To be honest, I added it in here originally to pad the original Masterwork list out to 12 entries so it could be rolled on a d12. Since it doesn’t belong here I have moved it over to the Minor Weapon Enchantments Table (Which was nowhere near ready at the time the Masterwork table was introduced), where it’s magical theme and stronger bonus better fits in.

12, Silvered: The weapon’s business end is covered in a durable layer of alchemically treated silver of incredible quality. Although unnaturally processed, the metal is pure and effective at dealing with undead, lycanthropes and fey creatures. The weapon’s grip also sports discrete bands of intricately worked silver which prevents the wielder’s supernatural enemies from handling the weapon and using it against him.

Silvering weapons is a staple in most RPG games that have monsters that are vulnerable to the metal. This benefit is similar to Spellbound as it really only has any benefit when used against a certain set of enemies and otherwise has no effect on a typical attack. The only change that this blog provides are the silver bands on the grip, preventing monsters from wielding it properly. If your system already has rules for silvered weapons you can just use those instead. See Spellbound for how it compares to the +1 damage benchmark.

13, Tactical: Using an action equivalent to making an attack or casting a spell, the wielder can attempt to perform one of the previously mentioned combat maneuvers. Whenever the wielder could make an attack with the weapon, he can instead perform one of the previously mentioned combat maneuvers... Furthermore, the wielder is able to take advantage of lucky blows and turn them into skillful maneuvers rather than simply powerful attacks. Whenever the wielder lands a critical hit, he can choose to cause it to be considered a normal hit instead and immediately perform one of the previously mentioned maneuvers (With advantage because of the weapon’s design) on the target.

I really like the idea of combat maneuvers, tactics and strategies in RPG’s that contain more than just mindlessly attacking the enemy. A frontliner who effective at tripping, disarming or grappling the enemy can be just as, if not more effective than a wizard specializing in battlefield control, because the fighter can do it more often. Unfortunately it can sometimes be hard to justify attempting maneuvers, as it’s often far more efficient to just focus on dealing damage, especially when both take the same type of action. This bonuses grants players an incentive to attempt maneuvers because they automatically gain advantage and gain access to a larger range of said maneuvers. Furthermore they can trade the extra damage from a critical for the chance to disarm / grapple / trip / etc. the target, which can let a player think strategically and provides some new combat options. As a roleplaying experience it can allow for better teamwork, granting a supporting bard a better chance of tripping an enemy, allowing the two handed fighter to attack the prone target at advantage as well as reducing their chance of escaping. This bonus doesn’t deal damage directly so it doesn’t compare to our benchmark +1 damage, but it does grant the wielder a few benefits and options at the cost of making a regular attack or additional critical hit damage.

14, Poisoner’s: Even a bludgeoning weapon that is normally difficult to poison effectively can benefit from the grooves, allowing it to deliver the offending material with ease. The channels are always positioned in such a way that a creature can apply a solid or liquid material (Such as but not limited to: poison, holy water, flammable oil or animal venom) in them without any risk of accidentally poisoning themselves (Even if they are not proficient with poisons) and taking no more time than usual to coat an object with poison. Furthermore, the recessed pathways protect the material from the elements, keeping it from drying or spoiling and after it’s applied, the material remains potent for an additional hour longer than normal before becoming inert. Lastly and most importantly, the virulent trenches are divided and spread out, allowing a single dose of poison to be delivered normally and effectively while still having some leftover in a separate groove. The number of strikes the weapon may make before the poison is rubbed off is increased by one. Alternatively to being spread out, the blighting substance can be confined to a single groove which will deliver its payload in a single concentrated strike which causes the victim to suffer disadvantage on the save against the material, or the PC can roll the poison’s damage twice and choose the higher result. The bearer who applies the poison chooses whether the material will be spread out over multiple strikes or if it will be concentrated into a more lethal hit (And if it applies disadvantage or increased damage) when the material is applied.

This bonus provides a few benefits in order to allow a lower level PC better make use of expendable items like flammable oil, holy water or poison before magical weapons and stronger spells render them too inefficient to use in combat. The DM should feel free to adjust any parts of this bonus to better fit with the specific poison mechanics of their game. Personally I love the idea of poisons, oils and alchemical coatings appealing as concepts but at low levels they are often too expensive to buy and once you have the money you’re usually better off buying magic items since a large number of enemies are either resistant or immune to poison.

In D&D 5e for example, a vial of “basic poison” can coat up to three slashing or piercing weapon or up to three pieces of ammunition. Applying the poison takes and action and on hit the target must make a fairly easy save (A Con DC of 10, about a 50% chance of failure on average) or suffer as much poison damage as a dagger deals. Once applied, the poison retains its potency for 1 minute before drying. Overall pretty weak but could definitely be useful in many situations, especially ambushes rewarding players who prepare and think ahead. However this vial of three-use poison costs an exorbitant 100 gold pieces, the same value as a suit of scale mail and a greatsword combined. A PC with 100 gold at low levels might get a silvered weapon (Which is also 100 gold), get better quality armor, buy healing potions or adventuring equipment or weak magic items. The 5e Player’s Handbook list’s the cost of a hired mercenary at 2 gold pieces per day, so you could hire a bodyguard to fight for you for 50 days (Or an army of 50 for one day) for the same price as one vial of basic poison. At mid-levels, enemies will pass the save more than not, taking no damage and even if they roll poorly and fail, a dagger’s worth of damage is not a substantial drain on their hit point pool.

If we apply this masterwork quality to a warhammer (Since it uses our d8 example die) in conjunction with 5e’s basic poison we can look at the benefits. Normally you wouldn’t be able to poison the warhammer at all (It deals bludgeoning damage) but now you can and without risk of accidentally harming yourself. Rather than drying out in one minute, the poison will remain potent for 61 minutes, a fantastic improvement, allowing the player to apply it with a greatly reduced chance of it being wasted due to drying out before the next fight begins. The wielder can also choose to spread the material out among multiple grooves, turning a three use-vial into a six-use vial of poison, making it much more cost effective. Alternatively the player could choose to force the victim to suffer disadvantage on the saves to resist the poison or roll the poison damage twice and pick the more lethal result, making the poison more viable at higher levels.

In short this masterwork bonus provides a number of small benefits and options to allow a PC to make poisons and alchemical weapon applications more fun and a viable strategy that offers the player a range of options, rather than an ineffective money sink. As this weapon does not deal damage directly it is hard to compare against the benchmark. The goal of this masterwork is to increase the damage deal by poisons and similar materials but it is weighed against the fact that the player has to expend gold or resources buying and using the poisons to actually make use of the benefits (As opposed to the benchmark “free” +1 damage on every hit) so it seems balanced to me.

15, Bypassing: A wielder who makes an attack with a weapon with this bonus ignores any and all defensive benefits that an opponent’s shield would normally provide.

This bonus attempts to reflect the real world weapons such as the flail, sica, shotel, and war pick, all designed to get around armor and shields in order to reach the tender flesh of the enemy. Although this benefit does affect accuracy rolls rather than damage, I would compare this more to the Spellbound or Silvered bonus rather than Precise. In my experience as a player, I rarely run into to humanoid enemies wielding shields and typical bestiaries and monster manuals don’t have a lot of shield using enemies. If your PC’s are mostly fighting undead, elementals, beasts and aberrations this bonuses will probably not help them. In the rare instance when they do come across a heavily armored fighter or blackguard paladin or other hard to hit foe, this bonuses will let the wielder bypass some of those defenses and let that wielder shine. Handing out this kind of weapon in a military or war campaign where it would be used regularly, would be comparable to handing out a Silvered weapon in a werewolf heavy campaign. Since it doesn’t deal damage directly I doesn’t compare to the benchmark and you can refer to the Spellbound and Silvered for how this bonus works in play.

16, Resounding: Whenever the player rolls a damage die he must roll a second confirming die of the same sort. If the second die is the same result as the first, the player is considered to have instead rolled the maximum possible result for that type of die instead of the current result.

As the fluff description mentions, getting a resounding blow that triggers the maximum damage is rare. The value of this bonuses is odd to calculate because as the maximum damage output of the die increases, the odds of actually rolling two of the same number to trigger it goes down proportionally. Over the course of 64 successful attacks with our example d8 (every variation of the damage die and confirmation roll), the effect only triggers 8 times (A 12.5% chance) and only 7 of those times actually benefit the wielder since rolling two 8’s is already the maximum amount of damage possible. Over the 64 hits, the total increase in damage resulting from the bonus is 28, an average increase of 0.44 per hit with most of the damage coming from when the player rolled low and would have done very little damage.

This table is a chart of each result of the 64 hits possible with a d8 Resounding weapon. The leftmost column is the damage roll while the top row is the confirming roll with the middle being the actual damage dealt. The bottom roll is the sum of the total damage from that column which is compared to 36, which is the sum damage total on a non-masterwork d8 over the eight possible hits.

To demonstrate on a smaller die over the course of 16 successful hits on a d4, the effect triggers 4 times (A 25% chance) and the total increase in damage resulting from the bonus is 6, an average increase of 0.38 per hit. The sum of the total damage on a non-masterwork d4 is 10 over the 4 possible hits.

On a larger die over the course of 144 successful on a d12, the effect triggers 12 times (A 12% chance) and the total increase in damage resulting from the bonus is 66, an average increase of 0.45 per hit. The sum of the total damage on a non-masterwork d12 is 78 over the 144 possible hits.

In summation, this bonus gives the occasional burst of damage at the cost of providing no benefit most of the time. It grants an average damage increase of 0.45 per hit (on a d8), which is well below our +1 benchmark in terms of balance.

17, Chargebreaker: If the wielder has not moved yet on his turn he can take up a defensive position, which causes his speed to drop to 0 until the end of his turn. While in this stance, the wielder is able to make an attack of opportunity with the readied weapon against an enemy that enters his reach. The bracing stance ends if the wielder moves, attacks or at the start of the wielder’s next turn.

Much like Tactical, this benefit rewards players who think strategically and offers them options in combat, like the ability to plant themselves and defend a key position rather than just rushing the enemy and attacking. This does potentially allow the wielder to make an additional attack per round, possibly doubling the number of attacks they can make. However these extra attacks come at the cost of all of the wielder’s movement during that turn, which can trap him in an inconvenient corner of the battlefield, not be able to move to reach allies, render him unable to retreat or not be able to place himself between the enemy and the more fragile party members. The wielder gains no additional benefit against creatures already within his reach and is potentially worse off against ranged attackers and mobile enemies, since bracing himself means that he is not closing that distance.

18, Parrying: Using an action equivalent to an attack of opportunity (See Note) the wielder may attempt to parry an incoming melee attack, increasing his armor class or physical defensiveness as if he was properly wielding a shield. The wielder may benefit from the armor class bonus (Typically a +2) even if he is already wielding a shield. —Note: If your system doesn’t use attacks of opportunity use the following rule: Once the wielder parries an attack he is no longer able to do so until the start of his next turn.

Similar to Precise and Defensive, this is a bonus that deals with armor class and attack rolls. Unlike defensive however, this bonus consumes the wielder’s resources in the form of costing an attack of opportunity to use. A player could use this ability every time he is able to but doing so forcing him to give up on attacking fleeing enemies or striking when they are vulnerable. Furthermore, the benefit only applies to one melee attack per round so the wielder is still just as vulnerable to multiple attacks and ranged attacks. This bonus doesn’t deal damage so it doesn’t compare against the benchmark, but I feel that it provides a benefit to player’s without being overpowered due to its cost and limited use.

19, Strategic: These modifications greatly improve the wielder’s ability to resist trips, feints, grapples, pins, being disarmed, pushed, shoved and other combat maneuvers... Whenever the wielder is targeted by one of the previously mentioned combat maneuvers, he can use an action equivalent to an attack of opportunity (See Note) to grant himself advantage on the roll made to resist the maneuver. —Note: If your system doesn’t use attacks of opportunity use the following rule: Once the wielder uses the weapon to grant himself advantage on the roll made to resist a combat maneuver, he is no longer able to do so until the start of his next turn.

Much like Defensive and Parrying, this bonus deals with making the wielder more resilient when facing combat maneuvers like grappling, tripping and disarming. These tactics can be brutally effective when used against PC’s and can make enemies orders of magnitude more threatening. A monster that can attempt a grapple or trip check with every successful attack can be far more deadly than one that deals an extra 1d6 damage on each hit. Like Parrying, this bonus consumes the wielder’s resources in the form of costing an attack of opportunity to activate which helps to balance out its use. A player could use this ability every time he is able to, but doing so forces him to give up on attacking fleeing enemies or striking when they are vulnerable. This bonus doesn’t deal damage so it doesn’t compare against the benchmark, but I feel that it provides a benefit to player’s without being overpowered due to its cost of an attack of opportunity.

20, Adaptable: When the wielder attacks, he may choose to have the weapon deal either bludgeoning, slashing, piercing or nonlethal / stun damage (See Note). Otherwise the weapon keeps its usual statistics and this does not change anything about the way the weapon operates other than its damage type.

This is probably one of the weakest bonuses on this list and provides more fluff and equipment management ease than anything else similar to Impervious. A PC now only needs to haul around their masterwork weapon and be capable of dealing several type of damage rather than a golf bag of different weapons for different resistant monsters. Like Silvered or Spellbound this would only be beneficial in a small number of situations. Even then, it’s not hard or even that expensive for a fighter to carry a mundane warhammer, longspear and longsword, (Plus one or two ranged weapons) it’s just annoying to have to for purposes of overcoming resistances.

21, Twinned: Whenever the player rolls a damage die he must roll a second confirming die of the same sort. If the second die is the same result as the first, the player adds both dice to the total damage rolled.

This bonus is very similar to Resounding in the form of the confirmation roll for extra damage. Similarly to Resounding, getting a twinned strike that deals the extra damage is rare and the value of this bonuses is odd to calculate because as the maximum damage output of the die increases, the odds of actually rolling two of the same number to trigger it goes down proportionally.

Over the course of 64 successful attacks with our example d8, the effect only triggers 8 times, a 12.5% chance. Over the 64 hits, the total increase in damage resulting from the bonus is 36, an average increase of 0.56 per hit with most of the damage coming from when the player is doubling their high roll.

This table is a chart of each result of the 64 hits possible with a d8 Twinned weapon. The leftmost column is the damage roll while the top row is the confirming roll with the middle being the actual damage dealt. The bottom roll is the sum of the total damage from that column, which is compared to 36, the sum damage total on a non-masterwork d8 over the eight possible hits.

To demonstrate on a smaller die, over the course of 16 successful, the effect triggers 4 times (A 25% chance) and the total increase in damage resulting from the bonus is 10, an average increase of 0.63 per hit. The sum of the total damage on a non-masterwork d4 is 10 over the 4 possible hits.

On a larger die, over the course of 144 successful, the effect only triggers 12 times (A 12% chance) and the total increase in damage resulting from the bonus is 78, an average increase of 0.54 per hit. The sum of the total damage on a non-masterwork d12 is 78 over the 4 possible hits. Although DM’s may have some reservations on seeing the higher scale of this chart, remember that rolling two 12’s to deal 24 damage is 1 in 144 or a 0.69% chance.

In summation, this bonus gives the occasion burst of damage at the cost of providing no benefit most of the time, with an average damage increase of 0.56 per hit (on a d8), which is well below our +1 benchmark.

22, Quickdraw: The bearer is able to draw the weapon as a free action whenever he rolls initiative as long as he physically capable of doing so… In the first round of combat if a hostile creature comes within the wielder’s reach (Or 20 feet for a ranged weapon) he is able to make an attack of opportunity against that creature but suffers disadvantage on the attack roll. Lastly, drawing and stowing the weapon is considered a free action.

This bonuses is supposed to allow PC’s to be able to evoke the incredible training and reflexes that come from a lifetime of having to react quickly to violent ambushes. For an easy comparison of what I imagine this looking like, take a look at Star Wars or Firefly. Characters like Han Solo or Malcolm Reynolds carry their pistols in a low slung gunslinger’s holsters along their hips and are able to draw and fire within a second. This allows them to even out or even win fights before they have a chance to properly start. For a real life example look at videos of Bob Munden, a real life exhibition shooter has the title "Fastest Man with a Gun Who Ever Lived" bestowed on him by Guinness World Records. This Masterwork bonus enhances the PC’s ability draw the weapon as a natural reflex and instinctively (If not skillfully, hence the disadvantage) lash out at an enemy within reach. If as a DM you are fond of ambushing your party, they will appreciate a weapon with this kind of bonus.

Damage wise, this bonus grants up to one additional attack at disadvantage per combat which may hit for some extra damage. Depending on the length of the fight, this may exceed the +1 benchmark or add nothing at all.

23, Unforgiving: When the player scores a critical hit with the weapon, he rolls all the dice associated with the damage as normal. After rolling but before damage is dealt to the target, the player may select any single rolled damage die of his choosing and that die will be considered to have rolled the maximum possible result for that type of die instead of the current result. —Note: This affects the weapon’s damage itself AND other sources of additional damage such as sneak attack, divine smite or spell effects.

I have seen this kind of this effect proposed as a variant critical rule for D&D, wherein anytime any PC or creature critically hits, the extra weapon damage dice are simply added in at their maximum result instead of being rolled. As it stands in D&D 5e, a player can score a critical hit and roll low on the dice resulting in a “critical hit” that deals less damage than an average hit. This makes the rare critical hits more potent by guaranteeing a high minimum damage. This bonus is all about raising the minimum damage on a critical hit, so that the wielder never rolls low and experiences a disappointing critical.

In a d20 system where you land a critical hit on a roll of a natural 20, you have a 1 in 20 (5%) chance to critical hit on every attack. If you use the d8 example die, Unforgiving turns the regular critical hit from 2d8 damage (Minimum 2, maximum 16, average 9) into 2d8[Dropping the lowest]+8, (Minimum 9, maximum 16, average 13.81) which does increase the average damage by 4.81 on a critical, but across 20 attacks it averages to +0.24 damage per hit. Comparing that to the benchmark’s +1 damage per hit, this masterwork bonus is very weak but makes up for it with guaranteed high minimum damage on criticals, making each one a truly powerful blow.

24, Reach: Melee weapons with this bonus add 5 feet to the wielder’s reach when he attacks with it, as well as when determining his reach for opportunity attacks with it. Ammunition, ranged and thrown weapons all add 20 feet to their normal and long distance attack ranges. Melee Reach weapons are cumbersome in close quarters and the wielder suffers disadvantage on attack rolls against targets within 5 feet of himself. Ranged weapons and projectiles...cause the wielder to suffer disadvantage on attack rolls against targets within 10 feet of himself.

Again drawing from D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder here is a weapon quality with a trade off in terms of benefit and drawback. Melee players who play a more mobile, kiting style with an emphasis of never being too close to the enemy will love this bonus. When surrounded by enemies however it forces them to attack at disadvantage or to drop the Reach weapon and fight with an inferior backup weapon. PC’s specializing in ranged combat will be able to hit targets father away but when in tight quarters such as dungeons, caverns or buildings, there may not be the option of being 15 feet away from the target in order not to suffer disadvantage on the attack roll because they’re too close. Even if that is possible, it forces that ranged PC to become more separated from the melee, leaving them open to ambushes, being surrounded or cut off from the rest of the party.

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okashiras · 5 years

Text

Notes: Supplementary reading and a sequel of sorts. Enjoy.

KPOP AU PART 1

ao3 link

30 March 2014

If you had told me 4 years ago that Sasuke and Sakura would never officially confirm that they’re dating but would instead, out of nowhere, announce their engagement, I would have laughed my fucking ass off.

Anyway, I’m briefly back from my hiatus. Cheers to all of us! We did it. :’) (Or rather, they did it?)

tags: #CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!??!!, #I CAN’T BELIEVE ITT, #text post

cherry-shadow asked: you are a fandom high priestess!! ur blog is like my sasuke x sakura bible. i missed ur blog, thank u for bringing it back. bless you!!! have a nice day!! :-*

You’re very kind! Thank you!

tags: #cherry-shadow, #ask

sumuwu asked: sandy here, i’m not even that big on kage or kunoichi but i’m so glad for them and for you guys!! i support their mutual hotness. i’m sure they’ll have beautiful and talented babies in the future!!

Thank you so much for your support for our favorite couple!

PS: I love SuMu sibs, too. I just haven’t posted about them (because I’m always on a SS high). Looking forward to their comeback.

tags: #sumuwu, #ask

Anonymous asked: OH MY GOD YOU’RE BACK!!!!!1 will ur inbox be open for info/translation/general questions?? Asking for a friend. Lol ok bye!!! I love u ;A;

Haha, yes! For now. I just needed an outlet for all this excess energy and excitement. Thanks for still having me! I’ll try to reply as much as I can. But no promises that I can answer them all. ;;

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

Anonymous asked: now that they’re confirmed to have been dating for years (!!!!), i couldn’t help but want to review their interactions. do u recall moments in shows and such where it looks like their members are teasing them??

The members of Kage and Kunoichi have been kind of friends in varying capacities since before they even debuted so they’d always greet and bow to each other during shows and events. Nothing really special there. Unless we reach. Which, as you know, is exactly what this blog is for.

Since Anon specifically mentioned members (plural), I will only address moments where multiple members do the teasing.

(2007) Kiba and Naruto are rowdy hype men while the three members are more reserved, except when Sai does weird dances at select performances. Which is why when Kunoichi did their first performance ever at the KChart Music Awards, we can see Sasuke in this fancam (link) looking like he’s reprimanding Kiba, Naruto, and Sai because it distracts him from watching the girls (or just one girl?) perform.

(2010) This Kunoichi fancam from Konoha Music Awards in November (link) shows the girls standing while Rock Lee performs on stage. On Sakura’s side, you can see members of a boy group who keep moving and shuffling around. Another fancam (link) revealed that it was actually Kage members trying to switch places with each other.

So the member order was as follows: Tenten, Hinata, Ino, Sakura, Kiba, Sai, Sasuke, Naruto, Neji. When Kiba realized who he was next to, he walked away and tried to get in between Sasuke and Naruto. The two finally budged after a while, but Kiba was still unsatisfied because Sai was still between Sasuke and Sakura. So he went back and whispered something to Sai who promptly moved away and followed Kiba to stand between Naruto and Sasuke. Sasuke is now beside Sakura. Mission accomplished, guys.

(2011) In this Kunoichi fancam reaction to Kage’s stage on the KChart Music Awards (link), everyone was standing up. Unfortunately, the members were situated at the back, and Sakura, wearing combat boots, was at a height disadvantage. But the members came to her rescue when it was Sasuke’s turn in the spotlight. Ino who was the tallest member of the night thanks to her sky-high platforms, and Tenten the actual tallest member were whispering to Sakura, and looked like they were reporting and giving her a blow-by-blow account of what was happening on stage.

(2013) In this fancam of Kage’s reaction (link) to Sakura accepting the Best Female Solo for Courage at the Golden Leaf Awards, we see Naruto and Kiba who are smirking as they turn to a decidedly blank-faced Sasuke. Neji turns to their direction too, looking mildly exasperated.

tags: #masterpost, #Anonymous, #ask, #all of naruto’s teasing warrants a post of its own tbh

Anonymous asked: “#all of naruto’s teasing warrants a post of its own tbh” DUDE??!! please make that post a reality!! please!!!! i’ll give u my first born!! :)))

Haha! Okay, since there’s a bunch of you asking in my inbox: yes, the Naruto masterpost is underway. It’s gonna take a while but please look out for it if not by the end of this week then next week. Kinda swamped with work at the moment.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

Anonymous asked: love you’re blog! :) Just wondering, who’s you’re bias in Kage??

Thanks! My bias is Neji because he’s the most fabulous.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

Anonymous asked: hi!! do u have a link to the interview where they talk abt that line from shadows?? thanks

There were different articles with varying quotes from that interview (during SAGE album promotion, the one held in Konoha Mountain Villa back in March 2012) so I’m translating by combining the info from these articles: (x,x)

Q: Naruto, was the line “You are the sunshine in spring” from “Shadows” written for someone in particular?

Naruto: Uh, that’s— It’s not my place to say, sorry. Sasuke?

Sasuke: No comment.

Q: Is it perhaps about Hinata? She has the ‘sun’ character in her name.

Naruto: She does?

Sasuke: I wrote that line.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

SS movie date in Wave Country (2012)

I just needed to update this post in light of new information.

In the Kage Konoha Mountain Villa interview 2012 (the one I linked in the previous post), Sasuke was recorded saying: “I like classic action movies. The most recent one I saw was In a Grove (藪の中 Yabu no Naka).”

Two months prior, Sakura uploaded a video of the instrumental ‘Prologue’ originally from the soundtrack of a film Rokurota. Both In a Grove and Rokurota are films by the director Makino Chikao which led people to speculate if the connection ends there or if there’s more. So I did a little investigating.

Sakura posted the video on the evening of 31 January 2012. During that time, Sakura was in Wave Country where she was a guest performer for Kage’s show in Sector D District. I searched the cinemas around that area and found one that at the time was having a director Makino Chikao retrospective. (You can check out their site here: link) I wasn’t able to see the list of films exhibited to confirm but I have no doubts that both In a Grove and Rokurota were screened there, especially since both films are critically-acclaimed and universally loved. And it’s likely that Sakura and Sasuke went to these screenings together.

Furthermore, you know what’s in front of Kaiza Theatre? An Owson grocery mart, aka the same one where those pictures of Sasuke and Sakura were taken the same year (link). See the side by side comparison (link) and note the same shelves and wall paint. And of course, those photos led to Danzo’s damage control denial of the dating rumors, and then Sasuke’s infamous “[KGE] is just a workplace” statement. Y’all know the rest.

tags: #text post

Anonymous: any opinions on danzo? lol

None. Hope he enjoys retirement.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

yrzra asked: Hi! What’s your favorite Sakura era/hairstyle?

All Sakura is good Sakura to me! But if I have to pick one, I’d say when she came out with chin-length hair on her solo debut. It signified a new era, a new sound, and I was honestly blown away when I first saw it. That’s why it holds a special place in my heart.

tags: #yrzra, #ask, #little known fact: i prefer sakura’s solo songs, #but i still love kunoichi very much, #ino can step on my neck anytime

Anonymous asked: Wasn’t there an analysis of Heaven and Earth mv about Sakura’s romantic relationships? Or do you know the post I’m referring to?

Hm, sorry, I don’t remember that.

tags: #Anonymous, ask, #i personally don’t think it’s about her relationships at all?, #just about striving for self-improvement?, #which is a common theme in her lyrics

Masterpost of notable moments of Naruto being the SS fan club president

Note: As promised, here it is. If you have anything else to add, please don’t hesitate to reply/message me.

Let me preface this with a little background on Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto and Sasuke are the closest to each other in Kage not only because they are the two youngest members of the group, but also because they started training in KGE in the same year. The other trainee who started the same year they did was none other than Haruno Sakura. The three of them were said to be friendly even after they debuted in their respective groups. And it’s because of this that I believe they are privy to each other’s lives and relationships, and would, like any regular friends, every now and then tease the crap out of each other.

(2007) [VIDEO STAR] - Naruto talks about Kage members + colors 20070728

Naruto’s first solo guesting in Video Star variety talk show. There was a part where he was asked to describe the members of Kage via color association. (@ 2:11)

Izumu K: So black for Sai-kun, red for Kiba-kun, white for Neji-kun—

Naruto U: Yeah— Oh, no, not white. Ivory. Neji is very specific about this, you see.

Kotetsu H: Right, right.

Izumu K: What about Sasuke-kun?

Naruto U: Sasuke is... pink. Yeah. Pink. Pretty and memorable color. Lots of energy. (laughs)

Kotetsu H: Pink? For Uchiha Sasuke-kun? Really? Isn’t that a bit— (laughs)

Naruto U: Oh, you know what, scratch that. He’s gonna send me angry texts if he sees this. Okay, I’ll change it. Let’s see...

Kotetsu H: (laughs) Why would he?

Naruto U: Got it! Green. Nice, refreshing green.

Izumu K: Konoha green.

Naruto U: Yeah, yeah. Sure, green. (turns to the camera) I changed it, Sasuke! If you’re watching this, don’t be mad at me. (laughs)

Kotetsu H: Sasuke-kun, please take it easy on Naruto-kun.

Izumu K: Okay, what about you?

Naruto U: Orange, of course!

Pink is too obviously referring to Sakura/her signature hair color which is especially obvious since Kunoichi just debuted around the time of this interview, so Naruto changed it to green to prevent Sasuke’s wrath. But you know what else is green? Sakura’s eye color. Thanks, Naruto! Your subtlety is unparalleled.

(2007) KAGE reaction to KUNOICHI performance - MINDBLOWER + BLOOM @ Konoha Music Awards

Sasuke is a famously stoic cold city guy at award shows, especially when sat beside Naruto who dances exuberantly to every other performance. That is, until Kunoichi debuted. Sasuke would begin showing signs of life whenever Kunoichi performed, like foot tapping, some head bobbing here and there, and some stray finger flicking actions during the Mindblower chorus.

Anyway, in this particular performance, Naruto elbow nudges Sasuke on his side (pretty hardly, if Sasuke’s annoyed expression is anything to go by) just as Sakura’s verse is about to come on. (@ 1:32)

(2008) [FULL/ENG SUB] [HD] 080805 Idols Weekly EP 56 - KAGE Part 1

KAGE’s appearance in Idols Weekly where Naruto said he would join Kunoichi because his group kept betraying him, and then he said he would drag Sasuke along with him. He didn’t get to elaborate on why exactly because he was cut off by Sasuke’s glare.

Okay, this is kind of a reach but they were all just previously nailing the Bloom choreography, and then Naruto was dragging Sasuke specifically to join Kunoichi. Why just Sasuke? All of Kage are on friendly terms with Kunoichi members. That’s why I’m inclined to believe Naruto was teasing him because Sasuke has eyes on someone in Kunoichi. And we all know who.

(2009) [Music Bank K-Chart] 2nd Week of January - SN, Sound5

Sakura had the opportunity to host Music Bank for January. At the time, Sasuke and Naruto were promoting their subunit single “The Valley.” On the one episode that month where they performed, during the K-Chart announcement part, you can see Naruto subtly (not really) pushing Sasuke to his right. When the camera switches to wide shot, it appears that Sakura was on standby from hosting duties a few feet away over at Sasuke’s right side the whole time. (@9:42)

(2010) Sasuke was in Snow Country on a personal schedule and posted a rare picture of himself. Well, kind of. It was him looking like a hypebeast cryptid wearing multiple layers of winter clothes and scarves, against the backdrop of flower trees in Land of Spring (Snow Country’s capital). Captioned: ”wish you were here.” (My god he is so basic sometimes, I can’t.)

Anyway, on the said post, Naruto left a comment of around 15 cherry blossom emojis.

Cherry blossom = Sakura. King of subtlety…

Sasuke deletes this post five minutes later (which would have been suspect if he wasn’t such a serial post deleter). But luckily, we still have a screenshot which includes Naruto’s comment.

[IMAGE: @sasuke_deleted]

(Also note that a month prior to the announcement of their engagement, Sasuke and Sakura were reported to have had a rendezvous in Snow country. That place must be significant to them and Naruto being in their inner circle probably knows why this early on.)

(2010) [20102310] Naruto’s KLIVE Chat

Naruto was promoting his solo mini album and did a KLive broadcast where he called some Kage members. During his phone call with Sasuke, out of nowhere, Naruto mentioned Sakura. (@ 40:07)

N: Anyway, Sasuke, aren’t you preparing for your final show this week?

S: Mm.

N: All Kage members are supporting you. Not me, though. But the rest of them do, apparently.

S: Make yourself useful and promote my show.

N: I’ll do you one better. I’ll call Kunoichi and ask them to come to your concert.

S: What?

N: Yeah, I’ll personally pick Sakura-chan up and make sure she’s there.

S: [unintelligible]

N: Sasuke, what?

S: I said you’re an idiot.

(2011) Sakura was reported to have fainted from exhaustion after the last set at Kunoichi’s concert late October 2011. (This was the third time it had happened [that we know of!!!] and it honestly says a lot about what little regard KGE had for their artists.)

Meanwhile, Kage was doing their second to the last fanmeet scheduled in Earth Country. But on that night, Sasuke and Naruto took a red-eye from Iwa to Konoha. There are no pictures, only some K-netizens reports of Sasuke and Naruto entering Konoha General at around 8 am. (Some eyewitness accounts said that Sasuke appeared to be bringing a pillow.) At 10 am the same day, Naruto was spotted in his orange BMW convertible hanging around the KGE building, while Sasuke was nowhere in sight.

It can be surmised that Naruto, being a good friend, accompanied Sasuke so he can visit Sakura. But there’s more.

Konoha General to KGE building is a one-hour drive, but seeing how Naruto got his car and a new set of clothes, he most likely headed to his apartment first, which would add more or less 30 minutes to his journey. If he arrived at 8 am in Konoha General, but was already in KGE building by 10, that would mean he only stayed in the hospital for about 15 to 30 minutes at most.

I imagine what happened was: Naruto accompanied Sasuke from Iwa to Konoha, probably said hi to Sakura for a bit (if she was already conscious by then), and then promptly left them alone to have their moment. :’)

(2011) 30 October. Sasuke’s K-D Magazine photoshoot previews were released. Sakura liked one of the posts from the K-D account. Later, she posted a cute video selfie with heart eyes filter with ねぇ聞こえますか？(Can You Hear Me?) an old love song, playing in the background. Her timeline was probably filled with Sasuke’s pictures that she just had to post some kind of lovey-dovey reaction to it. A few hours later, Naruto commented with a (very knowing) smirking face emoji.

[IMAGE: @narukage_likes]

(2013) 8 August. Naruto posted a picture of two mochi (pink and blue) from Amaguriama, with the caption, “Look how sweet my friends are.” He tagged Sasuke in the blue one. Who else could the pink one be?

[IMAGE: @narukage]

That’s all I know for now. Naruto hasn’t updated his account with anything SS-related since the engagement was announced, which is really odd for him. (Maybe he’s still busy partying because his OTP is canon?) When he posts something, I’ll update this accordingly.

tags: #masterpost, #text post

bl00m asked: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT MASTERPOST!! My life is significantly better because of it! But just wondering, since Sakura and Ino refer to themselves as best friends, do we have an Ino-teasing-Sakura-about-Sasuke moment, too?

Seems to me like Ino is much too professional to tease so I only found a couple. Hope that’s okay.

(2007) K-D Kunoichi Feature (magazine issue published around the time after Kunoichi’s debut):

Q: Out of the four of you, Ino and Sakura were the first ones to sign under KG and become trainees. What were your first impressions of each other? Has it changed now?

Sakura: I thought Ino was full of confidence and charisma and that hasn’t changed until now.

Ino: Sakura used to be really shy and quiet but clearly she has bloomed since then.

Sakura: Having someone my own age really helped, I think. We pushed each other to work and get better. It was kind of a friendly rivalry.

Ino: Yeah, rivalry, not just in terms of work, though. I used to have a crush on another trainee at that time, and then one day, Sakura announced that she—

Sakura: Oh my god! Can we not?

They didn’t outright say that it was Sasuke whom Sakura and Ino were crushing on, but it’s kind of general knowledge that Sasuke was quite popular with the KGE trainees not only because he was the younger brother of Akatsuki’s Uchiha Itachi but because he is good-looking and talented, so it’s not a stretch to assume Ino was talking about Sasuke and was teasing Sakura about it.

(2009) [VIDEO STAR] - Kunoichi (FULL EP) (@14:23):

Izumu: Any music you’re currently listening to?

Tenten: Believe it or not, I’ve been listening to a lot of trot music recently, like Might Guy, and stuff. I like the joy in it and I would like to also bring that kind of energy on stage someday.

Sakura: Creation , the album by Tsunade. I’m interested in albums that have some sort of narrative or a theme that makes everything cohesive, as opposed to trying to make hits after hits and then just compiling them all in the end. She’s certainly not the first to do something like it, but I thought it was groundbreaking for a pop artist, so…

Ino: We like Kage, too, don’t we, Sakura?

Tenten: (laughs)

Sakura: I— Well, everyone likes Kage for sure.

Kotetsu: Right, you did collaborate with them on a song in their album last year.

Sakura: Yeah.

Ino: (quietly) Is that what the kids call it these days?

Tenten: (laughs)

That innuendo, though.

tags: #bl00m, #ask

Anonymous asked: it’s funny reading your posts now and realizing how much it all makes sense like how did no one else (but us) seE THIS COMING??? we’ve endured being called DELUSIONAL for years!!!! i feel so vindicated now so i’m literally never gonna shut up about this LMAO

RIGHT?! I’m sure I’m not the only one who has remained quiet and kept to myself when I’m with other fans because I’m in the minority for shipping Sasuke and Sakura while most of them shipped the boys with each other. I don’t really mind it, but, you know, when it’s real, IT’S REAL.

And it feels so good to be right.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

Anonymous asked: how’s life for a grown ass adult still projecting on other people’s relationships like ur 13 lmfao

How’s life for someone who has to type with only 2 brain cells?

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

kageyah asked: gawd, what a rude anon that was. don’t let those lowlifes bother you. i’ve been enjoying your recent posts a lot and it’s so fun to see you back again on my dashboard. i missed you sm. ^_^

Kags!! Thank you! I missed you, too! Nah, don’t worry. Sasuke and Sakura are getting married so I’m unfazed and unbothered by virtually anything. Haha!

tags: #kageyah, #ask

lildonut: i love your blog!!!! that masterpost gave me life!!! i was wondering if you have any fic recs?? Thanks <3

Thank you! I don’t really read fics, sorry. I have a very little scope of imagination so reality is enough to keep me interested. But maybe someone here can help you? Anyone?

edit: Thanks, @darliang!!

These, our bodies, possessed by light by RikkudoS — “‘Tell me we’ll never get used to it.’ Sasuke and Sakura through the years. Canon.”

Cherry Bombs by xXxFullMoonxXx — “Double dates are easy enough. That is, until you end up falling for the wrong person. High School AU.”

Of Demos and First Kisses by sugimura — "5 times Sasuke and Sakura wrote songs together and the 1 time they didn’t. Canon."

Under the Same Sky by msshkshmt — “Uchiha Sasuke expects to die in battle. But seeing this pink-haired girl cry for him (again and again), makes him wish that wasn’t the case. Ninjas AU.”

tags: #lildonut, #ask, #fic recs

Anonymous asked: Do you have any idea as to when and how exactly Sasuke and Sakura started dating? Other than the 5 years that Sasuke mentioned in his fan page message? Thanks! Love your blog!

Thanks!

By the way, I love how Sasuke is known to be very private with his personal life and relationships but would, intentionally or not, obliquely reveal details like how they’ve been dating for 5 years already.

Anyway. Well, I can’t really say anything with certainty but if I were to extrapolate and make an *educated guess*, I’d say they probably started dating officially mid to late 2009. As far as I can recall, that’s also when dating gossips about them started popping up. Also the fact that they started wearing matching white gold bands late ‘09-early ‘10 (I’ll make a separate post about this later) just solidified to me that they really did start dating in 2009.

Prior to my projected time, their collaborations have been frequent, starting with Sakura helping to write a song for Kage, and then both of them being featured on each other’s solo projects. And even before that, it’s kind of general knowledge that they’ve been fairly close as trainees (not to mention, Sakura has allegedly been crushing on him before), so they already had that foundation. There’s that mutual respect for each other and each other’s talents that, over the course of their collaborations, probably grew into something more.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

Anonymous: re: how sasuke and sakura started dating, i would also like to add that since they are the most hardworking out of the members of their respective groups, they are probably the trainees who used to work overtime the most and got close because of it, probably helped and looked out for each other too. sakura used to say dancing wasn’t her strongest suit while it came naturally for sasuke so maybe he helped her with that. conversely, since sakura is reportedly an A+ student, she must’ve helped him with studies as well. they probs already have a mutual understanding but couldn’t be official cuz of the dating ban. ^_^

Ah, I’m actually not entirely sure if the dating ban is real, but what you’ve said is possible. Can’t say anything conclusively, though.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

Anonymous asked: wher do sassuke and saura have sex???

How tf would I know lol

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

List of alleged Sasuke x Sakura couple items

These are only the more important, more unique items. So don’t bother sending me pictures of them holding identical paper bags from Sannin. They aren’t the only idols who shop from that brand.

***

(2009-2010) White gold band

Sasuke is not that big on accessories. If we do see him fully accessorized, it’s because he is styled for promotional materials, and stage or music video looks. Otherwise, he doesn’t wear much accessories other than a standard watch, etc. That’s why it was so glaringly obvious when he started wearing a white gold band on his left pinky finger (note: pinky = pink = Sakura, lol!) in December 2009, which led fans to speculate if he is in a relationship. Everyone was suddenly on the lookout for a similar ring worn by idols and celebrities. Especially Sakura whom Sasuke was rumored to be dating that year.

Sakura accessorizes quite a bit but has never been seen wearing the said band. That is, until she had a fan meet in March of 2010. Sakura fansite First Love took HQ pictures of her in the event. In one of them, she leaned over while signing an autograph for a fan and consequently revealed the necklace she’s wearing inside her blouse, and behold, the white gold band hanging on it. It took quite a lot zooming in and adjusting the photograph which is why the legitimacy was contentious among fans, but you can see it for yourself here.

[IMAGE: White gold band]

[IMAGE: Sasuke Konoha airport pic white gold band]

[IMAGE: Sakura necklace zoom in]

***

(2011) Chair

Sakura posts a picture of her succulents by the window of her house, the chair from Sasuke’s Heavenly Hand music video is seen in the corner. It’s a one-of-a-kind modern chair by Konoha master carpenter Kanna, so it couldn’t have been a duplicate.

[IMAGE: MV screenshot]

[IMAGE: @sakurah]

***

(2012-2013) Ceramic vase

Sasuke posted a picture of a Hanasaki-style ceramic vase by Masho’s protégé ceramist, Kanyu, which was exhibited and auctioned at Leaf Gallery, and captioned it (now deleted) “Mine.”

[IMAGE: @sasuke_deleted]

The following year, Sakura posted a photo of her bed after a concert tour with the caption “Home Sweet Home.” On the bookshelf on the right side, the same vase is seen. Note the pure white color and cracks on the surface that resemble intertwining flowers.

[IMAGE: @sakurah]

Did he give it to her or was she able to procure an identical one? I’m inclined to believe in the former, but either way, cute.

***

(2013) Chambray shirt

Sakura was photographed at Konoha airport wearing a chambray shirt, which is similar to a shirt that Sasuke was wearing in the behind-the-scenes photo of his album back in 2009. The shirts have an identical tear at the left collar.

According to fashion fansite SakuraCloset, this shirt is from Sannin Men’s chambray shirt. This is how it originally looked on the runway. No tear.

[IMAGE: Sannin RTW F/W 2006]

So it’s either a huge coincidence that Sasuke and Sakura have identical tears on the same brand of shirt, or it’s just the same shirt that they share for some reason*.

*They were dating.

tags: #masterpost, #text post

Anonymous asked: you forgot the beanie that often sasuke wears at airports which was spotted worn by sakura.

You mean in the Road of Life webisode from last year? No, it’s the same color but they’re different. Sakura was wearing a fisherman beanie, while Sasuke usually wears a slouchy one.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

mindbl0wn: do you know what the strong 100 will be about? Love ur blog ^_^

Sorry, it took a while to answer this. According to these articles (x,x), it’s gonna be a heist film with an all-female cast. Sakura’s appearance will be brief (a cameo maybe?) but apparently she does her own stunts.

tags: #that’s my girl, #mindbl0wn, #ask

Anonymous asked: lol i still keep seeing antis tryna say sakura might be doing it for attention and sasuke is just pity marrying her or using her as a beard to cover up another relationship or sth man i can’t with them anymore

I really worry about people who spread stuff like this. Like, please give your faves the credit they deserve!

Sasuke “ I-take-relationships-very-seriously” Uchiha marrying someone for shits? They can’t even make him forego his IG feed aesthetic to promote his group/members’ stuff, let alone force him to marry someone out of pity or publicity or whatever.

And Sakura. Why would she marry for publicity? She’s already famous and influential on her own, and not to mention, rich from all the songwriting royalties among other things. She doesn’t need clout. Least of all from Sasuke or the Uchiha. Like 90% of the hate directed towards her come from ugly Sasuke/Hoekage stans and weirdos who have conglomerate boners. She need not subject herself to all that.

They are also, by the way, at the height of their respective careers. If they cared all that much about their image, wouldn’t they wait until they’re in their early 30s to marry like most idols? They could potentially be throwing away endorsement deals from brands who prefer celebrities who are single to appease the fans who feel like they have some sort of ownership towards idols.

And yet! And yet despite everything, they chose to make their relationship public in their own terms.

(Also, note the timing of their announcement. It’s a few months after Hatake Kakashi became the new CEO. It’s like the management up until then has been the main reason that has kept them from coming out with their relationship, which is why the ‘secrecy’ of it felt kinda half-hearted and they’ve been [knowingly or not] dropping hints.)

Clearly, they just didn’t care and they couldn’t wait to spend the rest of their lives married to each other. It’s not that deep. You don’t have to like it. But if you love them as you claim, then respect their decision and stop spreading rumors like that.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

WAIT WHAT

tags: #text post

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

tags: #IS THIS REAL, #AM I DREAMING, #GUYS!!!!!!!!!!, #text post

THEY REALL YDID IT OH MY GODD!!!!11 ;;;

tags: #text post

Un-Follow Me Now, This Is Gonna Be the Only Thing I Post About For The Next Week. Ive Wanted This For Years Fuck. What The Fuck.

tags: #text post

Anonymous: Lol theres still a few months before the wedding date so they might still cancel it and break up lmfao xD

I delayed answering this to avoid jinxing it but guess what, babe:

BREAKING: UCHIHA SASUKE AND HARUNO SAKURA OFFICIALLY GET MARRIED

July 17, 2014

Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura have made it official!

Yesterday, the two were reportedly spotted at the Konoha offices to file for their marriage registration. On July 17, the two officially got married in a private ceremony.

The couple initially announced their engagement last March, with the wedding that was supposed to be held November 5 later this year.

Representatives say that the newlywed couple “opted for a small and private wedding along with their loved ones, in favor of donating the expenses that was supposed to be for their ceremony to the pediatric ward of Konoha General Hospital.”

Uchiha Sasuke is best known as a member and the primary lyricist of boy group Kage under KG Entertainment. Haruno Sakura is known as a member of girl group Kunoichi under the same company. Both have gone on to have successful solo careers.

Congratulations to the happy couple!

source: knewsdaily

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

Sasuke and Sakura: We will get married on November 5 this year.

Also, Sasuke and Sakura: sothatwasafuckinglie.jpg

tags: #WHEN WILL THEY LET ME LIVE!!!!!, #text post

I’M SHAKINGG;;

tags: #REFRESHING EVERY 30 SECS FOR UPDATES, #text post

SAKURA IS SO BEAUTIFUL

tags: #THAT’S IT, #THAT’S THE POST, #text post

Attendees’ social media posts (so far)

Kakashi: posted a photo of the still empty venue, but everything is prepared already. The flower ceiling is especially striking. (There appears to be not more than 30 chairs for the guests. I guess it really is a small wedding.)

“I’m on time for once. #SasuSakuCouple #AmIDoingThisRight #lol”

[IMAGE: @kh_tactics]

Ino: posted picture of Sakura holding a bouquet of Baby’s Breath flowers, smiling contently.

“My baby girl is married! I’m so emotional right now and can’t even form a proper message. I’m proud to have seen you blossom right before my eyes, and I feel lucky to get to call you my best friend. I wish you all the happiness in the world. I love you!”

[IMAGE: @xxinoxx]

Sai: posted a video of Naruto and Kiba having a dance showdown at the reception.

“#lit”

[IMAGE: @sai_00]

Hinata: posted a picture of the flower arrangement at the table.

“Congrats”

[IMAGE: @hinata_hyuuga_official]

Kiba: posted a group selfie of the Kage boys being rowdy, Sasuke and Neji looking unimpressed in the back.

[IMAGE: @kibakage]

Tenten: posted a group selfie of Kunoichi being cute.

[IMAGE: @10ten]

Neji: posted a photoset of miscellaneous aesthetics of the wedding (floral ceiling, the food, the lights, details of Sakura’s veil), and a selfie.

“S/S 2014”

[IMAGE: @neji_]

Itachi : posted (1) a photoset of the groom’s and bride’s parents—first photo is a formal one, on the second one, they’re doing finger hearts.

“#familyphoto”

(2) a picture of the silhouettes of Sasuke and Sakura facing each other, seemingly in a happy conversation.

[IMAGE: @itachiuchiha]

tags: #no update from naruto yet, #king of being late, #masterpost, #text post

I know it’s a private affair and I respect that but...

But would it seriously be too much to ask for a proper picture of the newlyweds??

tags: #i love you itachi-nii but what the heck was that??, #do you need your eyes checked perhaps?, #or am i too pedestrian to appreciate the high art-ness of it, #probably that, #in any case: i need the pics PLEASE, #i’ve been a good person, #i deserve this, #text post

Anonymous: do think it’s possibel that sakura is pregnant that’s why they were so quick to marry. Pls reply

Highly unlikely. She would’ve been showing by now and looking at the photos we’ve seen, her stomach is very much flat. Moreover, she was just shooting an action movie where she does her own stunts. You think they’d allow a pregnant woman to do that?

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

Anonymous: YO DID YOU SEE SAKURA’S UPDATE JUST NOW?!?!??!!111

YES!!!! I’m translating it but I’m trying to wait if Sasuke posts something so I can translate that too and (rightfully) post them together.

tags: #Anonymous, #ask

SASUKE

tags: #text post

Sakura and Sasuke post-wedding social media updates

Sakura posted a pic of their hands with the rings, a bouquet of flowers visible on the side, with the caption:

“Today we got married.

We had deviated from our original plan because we wanted to do something meaningful and more like us. As a result, we have decided to just keep the ceremony quiet but, rest assured, full of love.

I’ve never felt so loved as I do at this moment and that’s in huge part because of all of you who have been congratulating us warmly, and have been so patient and understanding of our decisions every step of the way.

Please continue to look kindly upon us as husband and wife. Thank you.

- Sakura“

[IMAGE: @sakurah]

Sasuke, of course, never does what you expect so he didn’t post a message. Instead, he cleared out three rows of his feed with plain white tiles to have a single picture of Sakura looking beautiful in her wedding dress in the middle. The colored picture especially stands out in his generally grayscale feed.

Moreover, he is now following 1 account: @sakurah.

[IMAGE: @sasuke]

tags: #text post

Masterpost of notable moments of Naruto being the SS fan club president

Note: As promised, here it is. If you have anything else to add, please don’t hesitate to reply/message me.

EDIT: Naruto posted a photoset: (1) the newlyweds smiling arm in arm, Sasuke gazing warmly at Sakura, (2) same as the first but they’re looking at each other and smiling, (3) Naruto gets in the picture to pose with the two.

“Why I believe in love”

[IMAGE: @narukage]

Tags: #MY JOB HERE IS DONE, #update, #masterpost, #text post

END

#apparently u can't underline on tumbl......#so maybe reading on ao3 is cuter but do whatever u please #fic poop #kpop au #this is uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #sasusaku

54 notes · View notes

ragebound-classpecting · 5 years

Text

KNIGHT of RAGE

What a better way to kick off this blog than an analysis of my own classpect!

Ah the Knight of Rage, a fascinating classpect. They all are, but of course I am biased towards my opinion of it.

The Knight is the active utilization class and tend to wear a mask of their aspect. They weaponize it and protect with and from their aspect. They are never fond of showing off who they really are. The counterpart of Knights is the Rogue while their passive counterpart is a Page.

The Rage aspect represents fear, anxiety, determination, single-mindedness, and anger itself. It is strongly associated with “negative emotions” being one of two aspects directly related to emotion; the other being Heart. The counterpart of Rage is Hope.

So a Knight of Rage would start off hiding behind a mask of anger and anxiety. Any attempt to pry off this mask by an outside force may be met with violence and anger. They may prevent themselves from enjoying outings with friends and beginning relationships because of the anxiety they often present. They will act in fits of anger at the smallest thing and be very defensive in cases where they really shouldn’t be. They may have one or two close friends that they trust, but they usually still do not get to see the real side of the Knight.

As they grow, the Knight of Rage needs to remove the mask and stop defending themselves with their own anxieties and start focusing on protecting their party (I will often refer to a sburb/sgrub session as a “party” because I like D&D). The mask will slowly but surely make its way off and they will begin to show their true colors, as is the quest of the knight. Usually, underneath that mask they are not as angry and anxious as they appear. The Knight of Rage can become an excellent person to speak to about your own anxieties and fears and can even assist in refocusing your goals in a way that could protect you from anything you’re worried about. Instead of being defensive of themselves, they will begin to protect others and start showing their more caring side.

The power set or “tool belt” of the Knight of Rage is very fun. Not only can they protect from Rage, they can also weaponize it. Knights are incredibly physical attackers as generally, they aid in the Space player in the breeding of the frog. They can protect the Frog and the Space player from their own fears or anxiety and can utilize their determination and increase it. This can make the Space player much more focused on their task.

As for attacking and physical moves, the Knight can weaponize their own Rage and turn it into a melee weapon like a sword, a bat, a club, etc.. They can also invoke determination, as said before, in their party around them. With their passive counterpart being a Page, I believe Knights also are able to give off their aspect, even if only a little, but not to the extent of the Page. This level of determination can make defeating enemies very easy as they are unencumbered by fear. Another perk of being a Rage player; Rage mode would be something that the Knight of Rage is very fond of utilizing. They become a physical powerhouse, more so than they already are. They can easily decimate a horde of enemies before calming down.

I am also a firm believer in that the whatever the Knight’s aspect is, the session lacks. For example, Karkat’s (Knight of Blood) lacked stable relationships throught their time in the game. Latula (Knight of Mind), her session lacked group ideas and ended up being doomed because of the the actions and morals of Meenah. Dave (Knight of Time), his session lacked actual time. They were rushed through the game and when the Alpha kids piggybacked into their session, they also were rushed through.

So a Knight of Rage’s session may affect their party’s determination. They lack the will to keep going, so the knight must step in and aid the party in their lack of focus and make them move forward. I often refer to the Knight of Rage as the “pushers” because they’re going to be the ones that inevitably kick the parties ass into gear and get them moving forward.

Finally, before I cover the Lands, the unhealthy side of this needs to be addressed. An unhealthy Knight of Rage is one who refused to remove the mask. They feel safe behind it and literally fuck anyone else who tries to see past it. They are angry, bitter, and violent. Eventually, they will push away their session and could possibly go grimdark, if they begin rejecting their role. Their Grimdark is the Rogue of Hope, one who would displace the the feelings of faith in their party members, making moving forward incredible difficult. The best way to aid a Knight of Rage who is unhealthy is to slowly attempt to get that mask off. They need to learn that not everyone is out to hurt them.

Now onto the Lands. In sburb/sgrub, your land name represents your quest, as well as a colorful word to describe the land itself. Rage players are often linked to colorful and whimsical lands. Unfortunately, we only have one canon example of Gamzee’s Land (Land of Tents and Mirth). Some of examples of a Knight of Rage’s Land could be

Land of Bismuth and Silence - LOBAS (this is actually my land :o))

Land of Kaleidoscopes and Fanfare -LOKAF

Land of Whistles and Zealotry - LOWAZ.

As for Fraymotifs; most would focus around dealing mass amounts of damage through their rage as well as protection. Example of such would be

Anger’s Fortissimo - Enhancing a weapon with pure rage to increase damage dealt by said weapon. Can be used on only the user.

Anxiety’s Lament - A wall of protection from damage against enemies. May look like a shield. Can protect the whole party for 10 seconds as long as they remain behind it.

Invoked Chorale - An increase of focus to either to the user or to another party member. Concentration checks become easier as well as if they are building or creating something, the quality of such increases.

I believe this sums up the Knight of Rage! Any specific questions about the knight of rage or other classpects can be directed here!

#rage bound #classpecting #knight #homestuck #hiveswap #classpect #analysis #knight of rage

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letsoveranalyzerickandmorty · 6 years

Text

Episode 1: “Pilot”

At the behest of absolutely no one, I have painstakingly gone through the entire first episode of Rick and Morty with the express purpose of transcribing every line and jotting down every action that fell within the following categories. The purpose of this information is to serve as either a topic of character analysis or as a reference for fanwork.

For both Rick and Morty, I’ve organized various lines and actions into the following categories:

Every Stutter: This category includes every time a character stumbled on at least one word. For example: “Y-you realize that nighttime makes up half of all time.”

Every Reworded Sentence: This is a little different from stuttering, because it includes times in which a character intentionally interrupted themselves and started wording something in a different way. For example: “Morty! You’ve gotta- Come on.”

Every “Rick”/”Morty”: Pretty self-explanatory. This category includes every time Rick said Morty’s name and vice versa.

Every Swear Word: Again, pretty self-explanatory. This category includes every time Rick and Morty use a swear word.

Every Friendly Contact w/ Rick/Morty: This category makes a note of every time Rick or Morty make physical contact with the other in a friendly or gentle manner, such as shoulder touching, hugs, etc.

Every Aggressive Contact w/ Rick/Morty: This category makes a note of every time Rick or Morty make physical contact with the other in a more aggressive or painful manner, such as shoving, manhandling, hitting, etc.

The character-specific categories are as follows:

Every Belch: This category is unique to Rick, and includes every time he belches in an episode.

Every Drink: This category is also unique to Rick, and includes every time he can be seen drinking alcohol.

Every “Oh Geez”: This category is unique to Morty, and includes every time he utters “oh geez” in an episode.

I’ve organized all of this information into nice, bulleted lists below the “Read More,” but if you’re not interested in the data itself and just want a low-down on the results, here are the main things I noticed:

Analysis of Rick

Rick’s speech is noticeably worse the drunker he is. His lines towards the beginning of the episode during the classic “I had to make a bomb” scene involve far more stuttering and rephrasing per sentence than his dialogue in the rest of the episode. In addition to being more frequent, he appears to get stuck on words for longer stretches of time. Regardless of sobriety, I noticed that he frequently stumbles over words like “I,” “you,” and “what.”

As far as rephrasing of sentences goes, Rick stops mid-sentence to reword what he’s saying far more often than Morty does. I recorded him doing this about 14 times this episode.

Rick says Morty’s name many, MANY more times than Morty says Rick’s. In this episode in particular, it was practically every other line, and oftentimes multiple times in a single sentence. Most of the time, it comes at the end of the sentence.

Rick swears a lot less in this episode than I would have thought. He says “Hell” a grand total of three times, and “ass” exactly once.

Rick belches several times throughout this episode, often in the middle of a word. Most of the time, it appears to be on a vowel. Sometimes, he’ll attempt to repeat the word he belched on, but other times (particularly on one-syllable words), he’ll just continue on talking.

Rick makes two successful attempts to drink straight from a bottle labeled “XXX” at the beginning of the episode while visibly intoxicated already. He briefly pulls out his flask close to the end of the cold open (that is to say, shortly before the opening song) but passes out and drops it before he can bring it to his lips. This is the only appearance of his flask in this episode.

In terms of positive physical contact, Rick is basically always the one to initiate. When it comes to being gentle or supportive, Rick will frequently place one or both hands on Morty’s shoulders, occasionally kneeling down so their eyes are level. Twice, he places his hand on Morty’s back in what appears to be a supportive gesture, once as they’re about to go through interdimensional customs, and once while Morty is catching his breath. Near the end of the episode, he places a hand on Morty’s shoulder and pets his hair several times while talking to Beth and Jerry.

On the flip side of that coin, Rick also has a tendency to manhandle Morty a lot. He spends a lot of time forcefully dragging Morty around. Sometimes it’s because Morty is falling behind, but other times it seems it’s just because Morty is hesitant to go somewhere. On multiple occasions, he grabs Morty tightly by the arms and shakes him around, even to the point of physically lifting him off of the ground. If he wants Morty to look at something, he doesn’t just point; he’ll physically push Morty in the direction that he wants him to focus his attention. He also grabs Morty by the shirt a lot, both from the front and from the back. When he grabs Morty by the front of the shirt, it’s generally to pull him closer, whereas grabbing him from the back is typically to drag him along somewhere.

Analysis of Morty

Morty appears to stutter more when he’s frantic, be that from anxiety, pain, or fear for his life.

Morty doesn’t seem to rephrase his sentences a lot, at least not in this episode. I only counted one instance of it here, and that’s close to the beginning of the episode when he’s absolutely exhausted and informing his parents that he didn’t get a lot of sleep the previous night.

Morty says Rick’s name a lot, but not nearly as often as Rick says his. Typically, he’ll use Rick’s name after short, simple phrases such as “That’s it,” “Oh man,” or “Oh geez,” whereas Rick will scatter Morty’s name throughout much longer sentences.

Morty doesn’t swear in this episode, or if he does, I missed it.

Morty says “oh geez” a grand total of seven times in this episode. Four of those times were right before someone’s name. (Interestingly, the first time he ever says “Oh geez” is not an “Oh geez, Rick,” but instead “Oh geez, Frank!”) Of those four times, one was before Frank’s name, two were Rick, and one was “Oh geez, dad!” in reference to Jerry. Two ended in “okay,” and one was said in the midst of the mega seeds taking away his motor functions.

Morty doesn’t initiate friendly physical contact with Rick even once throughout this episode unless you count clinging to Rick for his life while hanging from a ship. On the contrary, there are two occasions in which he shoves Rick off of him or bats his hands away, in addition to the one time he attempts to wrest control of the ship from Rick before Rick blows up the Earth with a neutrino bomb. Notably, even when he’s fighting Rick for control of the ship, his kicking doesn’t appear particularly hard; he doesn’t seem to be attempting to cause Rick any lasting harm even in the face of certain doom.

Another thing I noticed that isn’t entirely related to any of these categories is that Morty is EXTREMELY quick to forgive Rick at this point in the series. When he breaks his legs and ends up writhing in pain on the ground, he seems incredibly angry at Rick initially, only to immediately thank him and be happy to help once the bone-healing serum is administered and the pain goes away. Despite everything, he goes out of his way to verbally defend Rick from his parents’ wrath at the end of the episode.

If you’re interested in seeing me do this for more episodes, feel free to follow; I set up this side-blog for that exact purpose. In addition, if you are, in fact, interested in seeing all of the exact lines that I transcribed either for reference or for your own analysis, you can check them out below the cut:

Rick

Every Stutter

“Y-you gotta come with me.”

“What d’ya- What d’ya think of this fffflying vehicle, Morty?”

“I had to- I had to do- I had to- I had to- I had to make a bomb, Morty.”

“I-I get what you’re trying to say, M-morty.”

“Listen, I’m not- Y-you don’t gotta worry about me tryin’ to fool around with-with Jessica, or mess around with Jessica or anything.”

“I’m-I’m not that kinda guy, Morty.”

“You-you-you don’t have to worry about me getting with Jessica, or anything.”

“It- She-she-she-she’s all for you, Morty.”

“She-she’s probably nothing but trouble, anyways.”

“Get o- Get off of me, Morty!”

“Wh-what’s gotten into you?”

“I’ll-I’ll-I’ll land.”

“I don’t- I don’t know.”

“Y-you know what, Mo-”

“Y-you realize that nighttime makes up half of all time.”

“I’ll tell you som- I’ll tell you how-how I feel about school, Jerry.”

“G-guy up front says ‘two plus two,’ people in the back say ‘four,’ then the- then the bell rings and they give ya’ a carton of milk and a piece of paper that says you can go take a dump or something…”

“I mean, it’s a- it’s not a place for smart people, Jerry.”

“I’ve got an errand to run in-in a whole different dimension!”

“I mean, we got- we gotta get-get the Hell out of here and go take care of business!”

“They’re-they’re- (belch) They’re incredibly powerful, and I need ‘em to (belch) help me with my research, Morty.”

“I ne- I’ve never seen that thing before in my life, Morty!”

“Breathe that- Breathe that fresh air in, Morty.”

“That’s-that’s the smell of-of-of a whole different evolutionary timeline.”

“Wh-wh-what the Hell is that thing?”

“It doesn’t even- It-it-it defies all logic, that thing.”

“If we woulda done what-what you wanted, I never woulda never of found them, because you’re so in love with school!”

“You really d-did a number on your legs right now.”

“It was- It was a leisurely breeze.”

“Y-yeah, I can see that.”

“There were a lot of attractive women there, Morty, and they-they-they-they all wanted time with me!”

“W-w-well, somebody’s gotta do it, Morty!”

“Th-th-th-these seeds aren’t gonna get through customs unless they’re in someone’s rectum, Morty!”

“A-and they’ll fall right out of mine!”

“Y-y-you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and your anal cavity is still taut, yet malleable!”

“What new- What new machine?”

“Y-you gotta get those seeds out of your ass.”

“Y-your parents and I are very disappointed in-in-in this behavior.”

“Wh-what-what are you guys doing with my stuff?”

“Wh-wh-what are you nuts?”

“I-I-I don’t know what you mean by that!”

“C-c-could you be a little bit more specific?”

“Morty, t-tell your parents the square root of pi.”

“He-he-he needs to keep hanging out- H(belch)elping me.”

“Y-you really wear the pants around here.”

Every Reworded Sentence

“Morty! You’ve gotta- Come on.”

“When I drop the bomb, I don’t- You know, I want you to have somebody, you know.”

“Listen, I’m not- Y-you don’t gotta worry about me tryin’ to fool around with-with Jessica, or mess around with Jessica or anything.”

“It- She-she-she-she’s all for you, Morty.”

“I’ll tell you som- I’ll tell you how-how I feel about school, Jerry.”

“When you’re wearing these things, babe- These babies, you can basically just walk on any surface you want, Morty.”

“You- Look, I turned mine on.”

“But do you think you’ll still be able to help be ge(belch)t my- collect my seeds, Morty?”

“It- I was fascinating to them.”

“But I spent so much time there, my interdimensional portal device- It’s got no charge left, Morty!”

“The- It’s not gonna work anymore, Morty!”

“He-he-he needs to keep hanging out- H(belch)elping me.”

“Rick and Morty forever, and forever, a hundred years, Rick and Morty some- things!”

“Me and Rick and Morty, running around and Rick and Morty time, it- all day long, forever, all- A hundred days!”

Every “Morty”

“Morty!”

“I’ve got a surprise for you, Morty!”

“I’ve got a surprise for you, Morty!” (Not a mistake; this phrase was repeated.)

“What d’ya- What d’ya think of this fffflying vehicle, Morty?”

“Morty!”

“I had to- I had to do- I had to- I had to- I had to make a bomb, Morty.”

“I’m gonna drop it down there, and just get a whole fresh start, Morty.”

“Come on, Morty, just take it easy, Morty, it’s gonna be good.”

“And so that’s the surprise, Morty.”

“I-I get what you’re trying to say, M-morty.”

“I’m-I’m not that kinda guy, Morty.”

“It- She-she-she-she’s all for you, Morty.”

“You know what, Morty, you’re right.”

“Get o- Get off of me, Morty!”

“Alright, alright, Morty.”

“I’m gonna park right here, Morty.”

“That was all a test, Morty.”

“You know what, Mo-”

“There you are, Morty!”

“It’s pretty obvious, Morty!”

“I need your help, Morty!”

“Come on, Morty!”

“Do you have any concept of how much higher the stakes get out there, Morty?”

“I’ll do it later, Morty!”

“Alright, come on, Morty, let’s go!”

“It’s dimension 35-C, and it’s got the perfect climate conditions for a special type of tree, Morty!”

“They’re-they’re- (belch) They’re incredibly powerful, and I need ‘em to (belch) help me with my research, Morty.”

“Listen to me, Morty.”

“Now if you just stick with me, Morty, we’re gonna be-”

“Holy crap, Morty, run!”

“Run, Morty, run, Morty, run!”

“I ne- I’ve never seen that thing before in my life, Morty!”

“We’ve gotta get out of here, Morty!”

“We’re gonna die, Morty!”

“Ah, Morty, take a deep breath.”

“Breathe that- Breathe that fresh air in, Morty.”

“That’s the smell of adventure, Morty!”

“Morty, you see this?”

“You see what we just stumbled upon, Morty?”

“That’s right, Morty, the mega trees!”

“And that’s what I’m talking about, Morty!”

“You ask a lot of questions, Morty.”

“Just take these shoes, Morty.”

“When you’re wearing these things, babe- These babies, you can basically just walk on any surface you want, Morty.”

“You have to turn them on, Morty!”

“Morty!”

“You know, you’ve gotta turn the shoes on, Morty, for them to work.”

“But do you think you’ll still be able to help be ge(belch)t my- collect my seeds, Morty?”

“Hold on just a second, Morty.”

“Don’t worry about it, Morty.”

“Not that you asked, Morty, but what just happened there is I went into a future dimension with such advanced medicine that they had broken leg serum at every corner drug store!”

“The stuff was all over the place, Morty!”

“There’s just one problem, Morty.”

“The dimension I visited was so advanced that th(belch)ey had also halted the aging process, and everyone there was young, Morty.”

“I was the only old person there, Morty!”

“There were a lot of attractive women there, Morty, and they-they-they-they all wanted time with me!”

“But I spent so much time there, my interdimensional portal device- It’s got no charge left, Morty!”

“It’s as good as garbage, Morty!”

“The- It’s not gonna work anymore, Morty!”

“There’s ways to get back home, Morty, it’s- it’s just-just gonna be a little bit of a hassle.”

“When we get to customs, I’m gonna need you to take these seeds into the bathroom, and I’m gonna need you to put them way up inside your butthole, Morty.”

“W-w-well, somebody’s gotta do it, Morty!”

“Th-th-th-these seeds aren’t gonna get through customs unless they’re in someone’s rectum, Morty!”

“I’ve done this too many times, Morty!”

“You’ve gotta do it for grandpa, Morty!”

“Come on, Morty!

“Please, Morty!

“You have to do it, Morty!”

“I don’t like it here, Morty.”

“You’re a good kid, Morty.”

“It’s gonna be great, Morty!”

“Run, Morty!”

“Oh, nice, Morty!”

“I need to type in the coordinates to our home world, Morty!”

“They’re just robots, Morty!”

“It’s a figure of speech, Morty!”

“Just keep shooting, Morty!”

“Come on, Morty, we’ve gotta get the Hell out of here!”

“Come on, Morty.”

“Oh my goodness, Morty!”

“What are you trying to say about Morty?”

“Morty, t-tell your parents the square root of pi.”

“The square root of pi, Morty!”

“Morty, tell your parents the first law of th(belch)ermodynamics.”

“Morty’s a gifted child.”

“Full disclosure, Morty; it’s not.”

“And once those seeds w(belch)ear-wear off, you’re gonna lose most of your motor skills, and you’re also gonna lose a significant amount of brain functionality for 72 hours, Morty, starting r(belch)ght about now.”

“I’m sorry, Morty, it’s a bummer.”

“And then we’re gonna have to go on even more adventures after that, Morty, and you’re gonna keep your mouth shut about them, Morty, because the world is full of idiots that don’t understand what’s important, and they’ll tear us apart, Morty!”

“But if you stick with me, I’m gonna accomplish great things, Morty, and you’re gonna be part of them!”

“And together, we’re gonna run around, Morty, we’re gonna do all kinds of wonderful things, Morty!”

“Just you and me, Morty!”

“The outside world is our enemy, Morty!”

“We’re the only (belch) friends we’ve got, Morty!”

“It’s just Rick and Morty!”

“Rick and Morty and their adventures, Morty!”

“Rick and Morty forever, and forever, a hundred years, Rick and Morty some- things!”

“Me and Rick and Morty, running around and Rick and Morty time, it- all day long, forever, all- A hundred days!”

“Rick and Morty, forever, a hundred times!”

“Over and over, RickandMortyAdventures.com, www.RickandMorty.com, w-w-w, Rick and Morty Adventures, all hundred years!”

“Every minute, RickandMorty.com, w-w-w, hundred times, RickandMorty.com.”

Every Swear Word:

“Hell”

“I mean, we got- we gotta get-get the Hell out of here and go take care of business!”

“Wh-wh-what the Hell is that thing?”

“Come on, Morty, we’ve gotta get the Hell out of here!”

“Ass”

“Y-you gotta get those seeds out of your ass.”

Every Belch

“C(belch)ome- c(belch)- It’s important!”

“They’re-they’re- (belch) They’re incredibly powerful, and I need ‘em to (belch) help me with my research, Morty.”

“It makes you kind of a (belch) under(belch)- underfoot figure.”

“But do you think you’ll still be able to help be ge(belch)t my- collect my seeds, Morty?”

“The dimension I visited was so advanced that th(belch)ey had also halted the aging process, and everyone there was young, Morty.”

“I(belch)t was like I was some sort of, you know, celebrity walking around.”

“Y(belch)ou’ve gotta put these seeds inside your butt!”

“I’m gonna be able to do a(belch)ll kinds of things with ‘em!”

“A(belch)ll kinds of science!”

“Morty, tell your parents the first law of th(belch)ermodynamics.”

“He-he-he needs to keep hanging out- H(belch)elping me.”

“Okay, Jerry, you drive a hard bargain, but (belch) what am I supposed to do? Say (belch) say no?”

“We’re the only (belch) friends we’ve got, Morty!”

Every Drink

“XXX” Bottle

2 Successful

Flask

1 Attempted

Every Friendly Contact w/ Morty

Rick touches Morty’s shoulder.

Rick puts his arm around Morty’s shoulders and touches their heads together.

Rick kneels down and puts a hand on Morty’s shoulder.

Rick places one hand on Morty’s shoulder, then kneels and places the other hand on the other shoulder.

Rick places a single hand on Morty’s shoulder, then keeps one hand on Morty’s back while walking forward.

Rick puts a hand on Morty’s back while Morty catches his breath.

Rick puts an arm over Morty’s shoulder.

Rick places his hand on Morty’s shoulder and strokes his hair.

Every Aggressive Contact w/ Morty

Rick drags Morty out of bed by the ankle.

Rick pushes Morty off to prevent him from wresting control of the ship.

Rick tightly grabs both of Morty’s shoulders, yanks him closer, and shakes him.

Rick grabs Morty by the wrist and drags him away.

Rick grabs Morty by the head and pushes him forward to make him look at something.

Rick holds Morty’s eyes open.

Rick grabs Morty and shoves him to the edge of a cliff to look at something, then pulls him back away from the cliff before releasing him.

Rick grabs Morty by the front of the shirt to pull him close, then shoves him back and releases him.

Rick grabs Morty by the arms to pull him close, lifting him up off of the ground in the process, and gently shakes him while talking before putting him back down.

Rick grabs Morty by the shirt, then shoves him away hard enough that Morty appears to fall over.

Rick grabs Morty by the back of the shirt when he’s running too slowly and drags him along.

Rick grabs Morty by the back of the shirt and yanks him along through the portal.

Rick grabs Morty by the arm and drags him away from Jessica.

Morty

Every Stutter

“It’s-it’s the middle of the night!”

“Yeah, Rick, it’s-it’s great.”

“That-that-that-that’s absolutely crazy!”

“Wh-wh-wha- No, you can’t!”

“But-but-but forget about that, because you can’t blow up humanity!”

“Y-y-y-y-y-”

“I-I’m taking charge of this situation, buddy!”

“I’m- I’m pu- I’m-I’m-I’m- not gonna stand around like some sorta dumb-dumb person and-and just let you ruin the whole world!”

“Th-they’re both great!”

“L-let’s give this a shot!”

“Uh, I-I-I’m just doing my best!”

“I mean, you know, y-you kinda had things handled without it!”

“Wh-wh-wh-what’d you do to Frank?”

“I-I can’t leave school again!”

“Wh-what about Frank?”

“I-I can’t believe this!”

“Y-you-you’re a monster!”

“Y-you’re like Hitler, but-but even Hitler cared about Germany, or-or something!”

“Th-thank you!”

“Wh-wh-what’re we gonna do?”

“I-I have to be back at school right now!”

“H-how are we gonna get back home?”

“I mean, you know, I-I-I don’t wanna shoot nobody!”

“Uh, yeah, well, you know, my-my Ferrari’s in the shop!”

“J-just kidding.”

“C-come on!”

“Y-you know, that’s a lot to drop on a kid all at once.”

Every Reworded Sentence

“I just- I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

Every “Rick”

“What, Rick?”

“Yeah, Rick, it’s-it’s great.”

“What are you talking about, Rick?”

“That’s it, Rick!”

“Oh, geez, Rick!”

“I don’t know, Rick.”

“Oh man, Rick!”

“Oh man, Rick!” (Not a mistake; this is separate from the last one.)

“Alright, Rick, look, how much longer is this gonna be?”

“Yeah, Rick, I get it!”

“I’m in a lot of pain, Rick!”

“That’s it, Rick!”

“Wow, Rick!”

“Sure thing, Rick!”

“Wow, that’s pretty crazy, Rick!”

“Oh, geez, Rick!”

“Oh, geez, Rick!” (Not a mistake; this is separate from the last one.)

“Yeah, Rick.”

“They’re not robots, Rick!”

“Rick just needed my help, is all!”

“Aww, come on, Rick, you know I can’t.”

“Holy cow, Rick!”

Every Swear Word

(Morty doesn’t swear in this episode.)

Every “Oh Geez”

“Oh geez, Frank!”

“Oh geez, Rick!”

“Oh geez, okay.”

“Oh geez, okay.” (Not a mistake; this is separate from the last one.)

“Oh geez, Rick!”

“Oh geez, dad!”

“Oh man, oh, oh geez, oh!”

Every Friendly Contact w/ Rick

Morty clings to Rick as Rick clings to a ship.

Every Aggressive Contact w/ Rick

Morty shoves Rick away from him.

Morty climbs on top of Rick in an effort to wrest control of the ship from him, repeatedly kicking Rick (albeit not particularly hard) in the process.

Morty smacks Rick’s hands away from him.

#rick and morty #rick and morty episode analysis #rick and morty episode 1 #rick and morty pilot

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frederickabberline · 6 years

Note

Hi! I loved your recap post about your thoughts on the current arc. :) I rambled in the tags about the few things I personally interpreted differently but I had a few questions about some parts of the arc you didn't address if that's okay? What do you make about Tanaka's apparent lack of surprise about the twin in ch130 and what do you consider Lizzie's role to be exactly regarding the blue sect? Lastly if we consider that the guy who killed Agni was Polaris, why do you think he was so strong?

Thank you so much!!! Yes, I saw, and I was going to reblog with your tags to respond because I need discussion on my points so I can refine them, but since you’ve sent me an ask I’ll do it here -

I absolutely agree on the twins looking like Cloudia and that being what Othello is referring to, but I don’t think I mentioned it (because it didn’t feel relevant to the post and it wasn’t something I could back up). As for the lockets, I’m not sure about Gilbert either but I go with that date because it’s so close to Albert’s death. In the case that it was during the 80s, then there’s a couple of other dates that it could line up with, but… We’ll see. As for Emile, I don’t mean to imply that he was definitely a citizen of France. After all, Druitt is French, and by extension, Redmond has French ties, but I wouldn’t consider Redmond himself French, right? I should have been clearer about that.

I’ve also been assuming that Grelle would theoretically recognise UT based on a multitude of factors such as his scythe, height, weight, hair colour and length, extraordinarily pretty face, possibly even his voice after he dropped the act during Campania, and the fact that if she knew somebody matching this general description and skill level who had deserted, it wouldn’t take much to put the pieces together, provided Dispatch isn’t bleeding out like fifty new deserters every year or something. Lastly, they only started this method of blood collection this summer, if you recall that they’re attached to the Phoenix society who had that hospital and all those slaves and ex-patients who were experimented on by Rian and UT, they had access to a lot of people before this point. It was only this summer that they had to drop the hospital, too, since I’ll bet that operation has collapsed following Campania.

Moving on!

To be honest, I’m not sure if I’m really worth asking about these things, because I have a very limited focus and my method of analysis is a) does it relate to something that happened or was mentioned in the anime b) does it relate to a real life event c) can I see a pattern otherwise d) is it to do with William or the other reapers. I’m in the dark as to what’s going to happen with Lizzie, she’s not “my division”, so to speak, and neither is Polaris;;; I know you don’t really jive with the anime as a source material, I checked your blog, but I still reeaaallly want to point you to [my very long post] about the parallels, because it’s where I come from as a theorist even if it’s a weird way to go about it. I respect that others don’t view it the same way, but it’s my grounding, you know?

But I’ll start with Polaris, just to also say I have literally no clue who the other lords are, none whatsoever, not the foggiest. No clue where they came from or why Blavat has them (or rather, they have Blavat,). I’m not sold on them being characters we already know, but that’s only because I really have no idea who they could be. I do think Polaris is the one who killed Agni. Now, if John Brown is supernatural (which, he is, let’s be real) then Polaris can’t be John Brown, as Polaris is receiving blood and is therefore most likely human, unless one of the Vega twins actually has the blood type Polaris is supposed to have, and so the blood collected for him is going to one of them, but that’s just too convoluted at this point.

Polaris…. could be the being who collected RC’s body, which I think is that cloaked figure, but… Well, the supernatural thing comes up again. Because Sebastian killed every human. (…and there’s a part of me without concrete evidence that suspects the figure to be John Brown anyway…)

If he isn’t supernatural, then we have a collection of very strong humans so far as well, and if he’s been brought back to life then he could have been physically enhanced as well. Like Agni is so strong because he was so dedicated to Soma, and perhaps Polaris has a similar thing going on, maybe that’s his whole deal too? I’ve not really thought about it.

I also haven’t really thought about Lizzie, but she’s definitely being used as a pawn by whoever is running the Blue Sect. Probably it’s worth noting that this is the same arc we see Othello, so named because of that game of pieces switching sides. It’s an isolation tactic against OC, and my personal belief is this arc has a good chance of leading to him becoming isolated, confused about his revenge, and stripped of his title as he was near the end of the anime. I don’t know if that will definitely happen at the end of this arc, but I think this arc has a good chance of being at least one of the factors that would lead to this. Lizzie survived the anime, but then again so did Agni, so her becoming mortally wounded isn’t out of the question. Either way, isolation tactic, and her being a good guard is probably a side benefit for the Blue Sect.

Tanaka, however, I can get into! He knows so much! This is where I get anime on you again and point out that he knew the entire time who killed Vincent and didn’t say anything to Ciel because it was against Vincent’s wishes. Further, Tanaka and Ash were on friendly terms, even if it was just a one-off gag. Tea with the enemy. Same thing revealing itself here, Tanaka is very aware of the truth at all times but he keeps it all to himself because he’s got a strict non-interference policy. I think he wants the twins to live truthfully, at that, based on his being so active in wanting OC to slowly and gently heal in the Green Witch arc. He knew OC wasn’t RC, he knew this was the facade falling down, and he wanted it to stay on course. Based on that same non-interference vibe, though, I don’t think he’ll explicitly take RC’s side against OC except in the matter of RC technically being master of the house (and therefore commanding his service). I can’t see him attacking OC, is what I mean.

Tanaka has seen the deaths of Vincent, Cloudia, and RC, even if RC is technically back, that makes it three generations he’s watched fall. The Phantomhive butler cannot die before their master indeed. This is the point where I point out that Alex B.’s locket puts his death date (1854 April 20) as not only just a couple of years before the Second Opium War, but the same year Japan was forcibly opened to trade with America (that part of the expedition was 13 February 1854 ~ 11 July 1854, with the treaty that opened trade happening on March 31). Tanaka is so related to all of this, he’s inextricably woven into this whole political mess that the twins are inheriting, but he’s so secretive that we only have a sliver of the full story regarding him. In short, it would be more surprising for him to be (openly) surprised, because there’s no way he hasn’t known to some degree what’s been going on, and he’s maybe hoping that what’s happening now will be a solution.

#analysis #txt #reply #mine #the parallel theory #I'm sorry I can't give any really creative answer for your questions #I'm only just now getting into gear and arranging all the info so I can make conclusions #even though I've been in this fandom for years #I wasn't bothered enough to focus on anyone but Will #but since I noticed the anime parallel thing.......#thank you sm again for your feedback in your tags!!#I hope I didn't miss anything important...#and I hope you don't mind me publishing this #midnight-in-town #ask #clear don't look

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chariflare · 6 years

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abe ichizoku (supplementary translation note post)

This story by Ringo Ohgai is mentioned by name, in Uesaka Sumire’s 文豪でGo! (a song I am translating), once. Here’s the plot synopsis and cultural background because I’m a fool. CW suicide; enjoy.

Required Terminology:

Meiji era: 1860 - around WWI. Beginning of Westernisation in Japan after it fully opened up to the outside world. Followed a massive amount of bloodshed over restoring the emperor to power.

Seppuku: Suicide by stabbing yourself in the gut with a sword; a samurai practice.

Junshi: The Meiji emperor had died the year before this story was published (1913) - and shortly afterwards, Nogi Maresuke, a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, committed seppuku in response. This was according with another samurai practice, junshi, where you committed suicide to follow your master to death.

Synopsis (translated from the Japanese Wikipedia article): "In 1641, as the condition of daimyo of the Kumato clan, Lord Hosokawa, worsens, his close associates one by one ask permission to commit junshi. His old retainer, Abe Yachiemon, also asks for permission; however, Hosokawa, who had always disliked him, writes in his will for him to "live, and find another daimyo to help", and thus dies without giving permission. Hence, while all the other retainers commit junshi around him, Yaichiemon continued his work as usual.

But after hearing how he's judged by the whole family [TN: not sure whether Abe or Hosokawa] about how much he values his life [TN: i.e. when he should have committed junshi], he gathers the whole clan, and commits seppuku right before their eyes.

However, because this was against Hosokawa's will, instead of treating the Abe family as the bereaved of a man who had committed suicide (as per his duty), the family is punished by having their status removed. The oldest son grows resentful; at the Buddhist service for the first anniversary of Hosogawa's death [TN: presumably which he has snuck into], he cuts off his topknot (a rude gesture), is arrested, and then hung as if he was a common thief.

With the shame repeatedly inflicted upon the family by the Hosokawa clan, the whole Abe family, beginning with the second son, prepares themselves for the worst, lock themselves up in the family mansion, and, fighting to the death with attackers sent by the Hosokawa clan, are ultimately all eliminated.”

Themes, etc.:

General Nogi’s death appeared to have greatly affected the zeitgeist. This story was a response to it; a discussion/critique of the event. Quote the Japanese Wikipedia article, "at the time, there were many debates about whether it was right or wrong".

My shitty analysis: To do with Nogi’s reasons for suicide, there seems to have been an element of being “past your time”; being torn between modern Japan and the rapidly disappearing past. At least, that’s how it appears to have been interpreted; personally I don’t think anyone would commit suicide unless either seriously depressed or brainwashed into believing in some sort of “glory of death” (usually for creepy nationalistic reasons, e.g. kamikaze pilots). To my knowledge, the age of samurai had sort of already ended with the start of the Meiji era in 1860, when Nogi was a young adult. Though in the case of Abe Ichizoku, it seems the story is less about modernity, and just about seppuku/Duty being kind of shitty (or at least exploitable) but you never know (Edit: If you want analysis from someone who seems to have actually read Ohgai’s works, read this blog post. It seems like he supported the tradition... but only in very limited circumstances.)

Natsume Souseki (also mentioned in Bungou de Go) also wrote about the death of the emperor, and Nogi’s suicide, and someone killing themselves in response to Nogi’s suicide, in Kokoro. You can read more about the themes on the English Wikipedia article. The last paragraph of the “Critiques” section is highly relevant.

As someone who is pretty invested in the history of the era this is kind of wack. I can't believe this happened. In 1912. Were people in Meiji Japan like, okay. Because it sure doesn’t seem like it

References

English Wikipedia articles for General Nogi, Kokoro, Souseki, and Ougai

For a full list, see the 文豪でGo! post.

Side note: I wanted to check whether the books mentioned in the song were on the high school curriculum, but unfortunately the documents were too long and impossible to search. The authors are all well-known though - at least well-known enough to be put into Bun//go St/ray D/ogs lmao

#frida's translations #writing all of my translation posts with proper capitalisation is killing me

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Short-Sellers Fear for the Future Wall Street’s skeptics are suffering Short-sellers have long been some of Wall Street’s most reviled villains. But the recent “meme stock” frenzy — in part, a concerted effort to squeeze such investors — has left many fearing for their livelihoods, The Times’s Kate Kelly and Matt Goldstein report. Short-sellers have been battered by the bull market. Hedge funds that primarily bet against stocks were down 47 percent over the past year. “Short-sellers have been beaten up and left for dead on the side of the road,” said Jim Chanos, the investor who famously bet against Enron ahead of its collapse. Now they are worried about new challenges: The GameStop frenzy shows that internet-enabled herds can bet en masse on companies, driving up their stock price and saddling shorts with huge losses. “I see dead hedge funds,” one user posted in a Reddit forum. Washington lawmakers are holding shorts up as potential market manipulators. “We must deal with the hedge funds whose unethical conduct directly led to the recent market volatility,” said Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat, the head of the House Financial Services Committee who will oversee a Feb. 18 hearing on the meme stock mania. Crowded trades and a bull market have “destroyed what’s left of short-sellers,” said Marc Cohodes, a veteran investor. Some worry about their personal safety, too. Fahmi Quadir, who runs a $50 million hedge fund, shares her GPS coordinates with a colleague. And Gabe Plotkin, whose Melvin Capital was specifically targeted by Reddit traders, had to hire security after his family was threatened. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING A setback in the fight against Covid-19. South Africa halted distribution of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine after a preliminary study showed that it had limited effect against the coronavirus variant first identified in the country. President Biden presses for a huge stimulus measure. The president defended efforts to pass a $1.9 trillion package with only Democratic votes, rejecting calls for smaller proposals. In related news, Democrats plan to unveil a $3,000-per-child cash payment. Democratic senators propose rewriting a tech legal shield. The “SAFE TECH Act,” proposed by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, would establish limits to websites’ immunity from legal liability on user-posted content. It has encountered resistance from groups that say smaller tech platforms could be hurt more than giants like Google and Facebook. SoftBank’s Vision Fund posts a huge quarterly gain. The Japanese company’s tech investment fund reported an $8 billion profit in its latest quarter, thanks to portfolio companies like OpenDoor and DoorDash going public. SoftBank as a whole reported an $11 billion profit, surpassing estimates. The best of the Super Bowl. Sure, Tom Brady solidified his status as the greatest quarterback of all time as he led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a blowout victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. But let’s talk about the ads, which included pleas for unity (Bruce Springsteen for Jeep), nostalgic weirdness (Timothée Chalamet as the son of Edward Scissorhands for Cadillac) and just plain old weirdness (Toni Petersson, the C.E.O. of Oatly). Andrew’s favorite: Jason Alexander, in a manner of speaking, for Tide. Where do you get your financial advice? As lawmakers and regulators investigate the meme stock frenzy, they are taking a closer look at online forums and social media accounts. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said yesterday that she wanted to “make sure that investors are adequately protected.” Disclosures and disclaimers are in focus. The trader known as “Roaring Kitty” put a disclaimer on his popular YouTube videos about GameStop, recommending that potential investors consult an adviser before acting. But an analysis of more than 1,200 TikTok videos by 50 “StockTok” influencers found that 14 percent encouraged users to make trades without a disclaimer, according to the cryptocurrency trading platform Paxful. Those videos, some of which were flagged by TikTok as “misleading,” have garnered 28.4 million views. Regulators have been here before. During the dot-com boom, the S.E.C. kept tabs on chat rooms for signs of manipulation, as in the case of Jonathan Lebed, a teenager who posted messages touting stocks he owned. In September 2000, he settled with the agency by agreeing to pay back $285,000. There’s an ETF for that: The asset manager VanEck is starting a fund that scours Twitter, forums and blogs for stocks with a lot of online buzz. “The elements in the new system consist of central computers, an automatic communications network and desktop terminals.” — On this day 50 years ago, the Nasdaq booted up the first electronic stock exchange, which The Times called “the most revolutionary innovation in the history of the over-the-counter market.” Microsoft’s president talks politics After the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, companies have been rethinking their political donations, as we detailed this weekend. Microsoft, which has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent election cycles to Republicans who went on to challenge the certification of votes after the storming of the Capitol, said late last week that it would cut them off. In the first in-depth interview about the decision, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, spoke with Kara Swisher on the “Sway” podcast. One donation came as a particularly unpleasant surprise, Mr. Smith said, referring to a gift to Senator Josh Hawley, who led Republican efforts to question the election result. “When I learned in January that that donation had been made in the early part of December, it did not bring an enthusiastic beginning to my morning,” said Mr. Smith, who leaves day-to-day decisions in this area to the company’s PAC department. Microsoft has redefined its PAC policies. Mr. Smith said the company would now more explicitly consider issues like whether politicians “are good for democracy.” There is still a place for the corporate PAC, Mr. Smith argued. Although the point of a corporate PAC is up for debate, “I think we have one for good reasons,” he said. Those reasons, namely, are because crucial matters of privacy, security and competition are “going to be decided in the world of politics.” The serial SPAC sponsor Alec Gores strikes another deal The blank-check company Gores Holding VI is acquiring Matterport in a deal that values the real-estate technology company at $2.3 billion. The merger also includes a cash infusion of $640 million. Alec Gores was early to the SPAC game, notably with his firm’s 2016 deal for Hostess. The firm also boasts the biggest SPAC deal to date, taking United Wholesale Mortgage public last year in a deal worth more than $16 billion. Gores Holding raised its seventh SPAC last month, helping January set a record for SPAC fund-raising, with blank-check I.P.O.s worth nearly $26 billion. Today’s deal was the first by Gores since Justin Wilson and Ted Fike joined from Softbank’s Vision Fund, suggesting a tech shift for the firm’s SPAC business. Matterport makes spatial data technology that helps create 3-D visualizations of properties like homes and event spaces. The week ahead Corporate earnings continue to come in better than expected, defying initial forecasts of another pandemic-fueled decline and forcing analysts to upgrade their expectations. Blue-chip companies hoping to keep the streak alive this week include: Fox, KKR and Twitter on Tuesday; Coca-Cola, G.M. and Uber on Wednesday; and AstraZeneca, Disney and PepsiCo on Thursday. Bumble is scheduled to make its market debut midweek, and is predicted to raise about $1 billion in an I.P.O. that values the online dating company at around $6 billion. And finally, the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump starts on Tuesday. Will Biden curb the ‘curse of bigness’? The Biden administration must choose between taking a progressive view of antitrust regulations, using the law to rein in or break up big companies; sticking with the laissez-faire approach that critics say has led to extreme concentration; or trying to find some middle path. The pressure on the president from the left comes from those who argue that a tougher approach simply hearkens to the past, when the authorities recognized what Louis Brandeis, who went on to become a Supreme Court justice, called the “curse of bigness” in the early 20th century. “Monopoly power is a causal factor in our most serious economic challenges,” states a new report from the American Economic Liberties Project, an antimonopoly nonprofit, shared first with DealBook. The group argues for a new-old ideological regime that reins in consolidation, proposing dozens of actions for the Justice Department, F.T.C., F.C.C., Congress and many other official bodies. “This is a major project,” the group’s executive director, Sarah Miller, said. The need to “reject old ideological underpinnings” is a unifying theme throughout the report, she added. “There is not just one silver bullet.” A new lens is needed, Ms. Miller said. For decades, antitrust reviews have employed a “consumer welfare standard” that examines mergers for economic efficiency, mostly focused on the effect a deal has on prices. But people aren’t just consumers — they are also workers, voters, entrepreneurs and community members. In practice, Ms. Miller argues, as industries consolidate, consumers sometimes pay less for products, but wages also stagnate and entrepreneurship falters. “America’s concentration crisis did not emerge in the Trump years,” but it deepened during this time, according to the report. The group compiled a downloadable database of more than 1,300 significant mergers during the Trump era, noting that “basic, usable information” about M.&A. is mostly unavailable to the public. THE SPEED READ Deals In SPAC news: Elliott Management is reportedly considering raising $1 billion for a blank-check fund; SoftBank is seeking $630 million for two SPACs; and Danny Meyer, the founder of Shake Shack, is planning to raise $250 million for a fund. (WSJ, Bloomberg) Oatly, the maker of plant-based dairy products, is reportedly seeking a $10 billion valuation in its I.P.O. (Bloomberg) Politics and policy Donald Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 presidential election have cost federal, state and local governments an estimated $519 million. (WaPo) Tech Best of the rest Bill McGlashan, the former TPG executive embroiled in the college admissions scandal, will plead guilty to two charges. (Bloomberg) Jeff Immelt accepts some blame for G.E.’s stumbles — but offers a lot of excuses, too. (NYT) Clawing back pay for misconduct is hard, so some companies are forcing top executives to set aside share grants for at least a year, even after they vest. (WSJ) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Orbem News #Fear #Future #ShortSellers

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vorthosjay · 7 years

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Magic Story 2016 in Review

I don’t usually do reviews, as most of you know. At most, I tend to recommend or not recommend certain novels and stories as worth someone’s time versus reading a summary. I try to avoid them because Magic’s story is inextricably tied to the process of developing the card game itself. It’s a rather unique situation even for properties with established lore (like D&D or Warhammer) which also tell stories about the universe (more like a video game than a table top game’s story). I’m also just generally not a fan of literary reviews, as I find Tolkien unreadable but unabashedly love trashy Sci-Fi novels.

So instead, I’m going to tackle 2016 as a SWOT Analysis for the state of Magic’s Story overall, not really for individual stories or writing quality. Don’t know what a SWOT Analysis is? Basically, it’s just a method of dividing feedback into four areas: Strengths (things that are being done well), Weaknesses (thing that could be improved), Opportunities (things that could enhance the overall experience), and threats (things that could hurt the overall experience).

Keep in mind that I don’t know anything about the inner working of creative, and there may be perfectly good reasons for the weaknesses I describe, and plans in place to address the threats I identify. This is just, like, my opinion.

Side Note: I realize that I teased this piece after the 2016 story summary. Sorry, I forgot about it and it sat in my draft folder for the last couple weeks.

Unholy Strength by Terese Nielsen

Strengths

Expanding the Roster While the core writing team has largely remained the same, bringing in Alison Luhrs, Mel Li, and Michael Yichao for more stories has been a welcome addition to the rotation. Alison and Michael both previously wrote Commander 2015 stories, Mel previously wrote the BFZ story summary and one of the Checking In articles. Whether they’re members of creative moved into a slightly different role or members of other teams brought in for their skills, it’s been a good thing.

Hiring Veteran Talent Bringing on Chris L’Etoile, an industry veteran who was not previous involved with Wizards of the Coast in another capacity (as much of the creative team was), signals a pretty strong commitment to continuing to improve the story with the new paradigm. Chris hit the ground running with Homesick, which along with another story I’ll mention in a moment was one of my two favorites this year. I believe we’ve started to see his influence with Kaladesh, and I hope we continue to see plenty of it going forward - word counts be damned.

Hiring Consultants It means a lot when we see outside consultants for expertise in areas the creative team lacks. Reading between the lines of some comments that have been made after Conspiracy: Take the Crown and Kaladesh were revealed to have used consultants, I think we’re likely to see more of this going forward. While it’s not always going to be perfect (Kaladesh had some major flavor misses), it’s a huge step in the right direction, and for that deserves real credit.

Ken Troop’s Blackmail I don’t know what he has on the rest of the team that they let him get the good stuff, but Ken consistently steals the show. He’s only got three stories in 2016, but they’re all fantastic and big story tentpoles. The Promised End is my second favorite story from last year, and The Blight We Were Born For is a close third.

This piece goes on a bit yet, so I’m putting the rest behind a keep reading line.

Hunt the Weak by Raoul Vitale

Weaknesses

Characterization The biggest part of the story that suffered in the new two block paradigm is characterization. Now, to be fair, character complexity is something hard to get across when you’ve only got about 5,000 words a week and a very broad focus. Stories like Homesick helped establish the characters better, but going forward I think it’ll be important to show more sides to the different characters. For instance, if someone hadn’t read Agents of Artifice, they might think Tezzeret is a rather one dimensional character because of his portrayal in Kaladesh. Chandra has seemed to regress as a character, feeling more like an ADHD caricature than the young woman we’d gotten to see grow through The Purifying Fire and her various other appearances. I don’t know entirely how to fix it, but I think taking more moments for the characters to breath and interact will be helpful.

Pacing Given the new serialized structure, it’s harder to get a sense of the timing of events. In Shadows Over Innistrad, was Jace on Innistrad for days? Weeks? Months? It’s not clear, but the story did a whole lot of hopping around with him to different locations all over the plane. Finding a balance between how Magic Story used to be (a series of relatively unconnected vignettes with the occasional important story piece) and the new serialized structure is going to be a major hurdle in 2017. We also got a number of stories unconnected to the main stories this year (or no stories at all), which can be jarring to the pace of events. Now that the team has a few blocks behind them, I think they’re starting to find the right pace.

Community Outreach Last year was weakest in terms of the accessibility of the creative team that I can remember. There was a big call on Tumblr for question for the creative team that have never been answered (at least, not in any venue that I’ve seen). Doug Beyer’s blog has been mostly abandoned, and interaction with the team has largely been limited to official events and Twitter (where 140 characters isn’t a whole lot of room for lore talk - but shout-out to Kelly Digges and others for trying). This was the first year I can remember where a well-known member of the creative team wasn’t hugely visible in responding to the community, as before we’d had Ask Brady or A Voice for Vorthos. These outlets were immensely popular, and I’m hoping the new podcast idea that Blake Rasmussen mentioned on twitter turns out to be a good new successor to that legacy. This criticism comes with the caveat that I’m not sure the creative team’s workload has ever been higher, and I’m sure they’re still trying to find a groove in the new paradigm.

Opportunity by Patrick Faricy

Opportunities

Reconnecting to Older Lore Kaladesh has major story ties to older story lines, and with the Gatewatch established it’s probably time to return to more of the plot threads left dangling over the years. For perspective, it’s been eight real-world years since Liliana, Jace, and Tezzeret were all in Agents of Artifice together. It’s been almost as long since Chandra and Gideon’s story began back in The Purifying Fire. Continuing to connect back to older lore in a meaningful way will help keep older vorthos interested and invested.

New Mediums for Outreach I mentioned earlier that Blake (of Daily MTG fame) dropped the potential for a new story team podcast. This is an exciting opportunity and will go a long way to fixing that big gap I mentioned in weaknesses. Podcasts are the format of choice for many people online these days, and don’t require the same equipment and software intensive set-up as video formats do. Given the success of Maro’s Drive to Work, I don’t think this podcast would be lacking an audience. In this same vein, the recently announced initiative to move the Magic IP in different directions could be great for us Vorthos. I loved being able to experience the story through different media, and Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015 was a fun was to share the plot developments of Magic 2015 - and to get players interested in the story.

Official History With the plot moved to free serialized web stories, there’s a rather huge demand from new vorthos interested in what came before Magic Origins. The success of my own articles and those of my fellow vorthos out there is a testament to that demand, and while I’m certainly not going to complain, even the most popular among us don’t have the same reach among the community that the mothership does. In 2014 and 2015, we got “Checking In With the Planeswalkers” articles, which served as a sort of update and history for the uninitiated and invested vorthos alike. Prior to Scars of Mirrodin and Return to Ravnica we got brief histories to catch people up. Now I think we need those kind of background pieces more regularly, because as neat as it is to see Agents of Artifice and The Purifying Fire references in Kaladesh, most newer readers were scratching their heads about the various references.

Threaten by Pete Venters

Threats

Accessibility of Older Lore This runs parallel to some of my other comments. How well can a new reader inference what they need to know about Magic’s past for a story? The experience of Kaladesh is fairly different for someone who has read Agents of Artifice or The Purifying Fire. Chandra monastery at Keral Keep is heavily influenced by Jaya Ballard - an ice age character whose lore is entirely locked into two out-of-print novels... one of which goes for about $40! Making sure that new readers can access the older stories they want is going to be critical going forward, especially if you want to keep older fans invested, too. Granted, these novels are likely locked behind contracts with publishers, but as the story continues to expand and older lore continues to be referenced, there’s a risk of alienating new readers. In some cases, it’s as simple as continuing to post story summaries once a block concludes - we got them for BFZ but not for SOI. As the two-blocks a year structure continues to pile up, we’re going to find newer readers significantly less interested in reading every article between Magic Origins and the latest block.

Mismanagement of Expectations This happened a couple times last year, and I think it’s important to address because fans need to know what to expect. When things are going to deviate from the norm or when we have gaps between the different set stories, that should be made extremely clear to the audience. November 2016 is a good example, as we got no Commander 2016 stories and no catching-up article - both of which we’d gotten in that same slot in previous years. I don’t think these breaks are a problem - but fan expectations based on previous years resulted in disappointment and resentment.

The Expanding Multiverse While I mentioned that the newly announced IP initiative is a great opportunity, it’s also a threat if not managed properly. Non-canon lore from early Duels of the Planeswalker games are still problems to this day - especially the ‘racist Nissa’ misconception. Keeping up with an expanding universe is going to be a lot of work, and it also has the potential for alienating fans both new and old. The creative team will need to stay on top of everything to avoid problems that will haunt them for years to come.

That’s about it for today. I hope you enjoyed my perspective on what worked and didn’t work in 2016, and how I hope 2017 can improve on that. Overall I’m optimistic for the future!

#vorthos #archive trap blog

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sailorrrvenus · 5 years

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Debunking the Myths of Robert Capa on D-Day

I want to give you a brief overview of an investigation that began almost five years ago, led by me but involving the efforts of photojournalist J. Ross Baughman, photo historian Rob McElroy, and ex-infantryman and amateur military historian Charles Herrick.

Our project, in a nutshell, dismantles the 74-year-old myth of Robert Capa’s actions on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the subsequent fate of his negatives. If you have even a passing familiarity with the history of photojournalism, or simply an awareness of twentieth-century cultural history on both sides of the Atlantic, you’ve surely heard the story; it’s been repeated hundreds, possibly thousands of times:

Robert Capa landed on Omaha Beach with the first wave of assault troops at 0630 on the morning of June 6, 1944 (D-Day), on freelance assignment from LIFE magazine.

He stayed there for 90 minutes, until he either inexplicably ran out of film or his camera jammed.

During that time he made somewhere between 72 and 144 35mm b&w exposures of the Allied invasion of Normandy on Kodak Super-XX film.

Upon landing back in England the next day, he sent all his film via courier to assistant picture editor John Morris at LIFE’s London office, instead of delivering it in person.

This shipment included pre-invasion reportage of the troops boarding and crossing the English Channel, the just-mentioned coverage of the battle on Omaha Beach, and images of medics tending to the wounded on the return trip.

When the film finally arrived, around 9 p.m., the head of LIFE’s London darkroom, one “Braddy” Bradshaw, inexplicably assigned the task of developing these crucial four rolls of 35mm Omaha Beach images to one of the least experienced members of his staff, 15-year-old “darkroom lad” Denis Banks.

After successfully processing the 35mm films, in his haste to help Morris meet the looming deadline Banks absentmindedly closed the doors of the darkroom’s film-drying cabinet, which inexplicably were “normally kept open.” Inexplicably, nobody noticed that Banks had closed them.

As a result, after “just a few minutes,” that enclosed space with a small electric heating coil on its floor inexplicably became so drastically overheated that it melted the emulsion of Capa’s 35mm negatives.

Notified of this by the horrified Banks, Morris rushed to the darkroom, discovering that eleven of Capa’s negatives had survived, which he “saved” or “salvaged,” and which proved just sufficient enough to fulfill this crucial assignment to the satisfaction of LIFE’s New York editors.

That darkroom catastrophe blurred slightly the remaining negatives, “ironically” adding to their expressiveness. Furthermore, as a result of the overheating, the emulsion on those eleven negatives inexplicably slid a few millimeters sideways on their acetate backing, resulting in a visible intrusion of the film’s sprocket holes into the image area.

Robert Capa, D-Day images from Omaha Beach, contact sheet, screenshot from TIME video (May 29, 2014), annotated.

That standard narrative constitutes photojournalism’s most potent and durable myth. From it springs the image of the intrepid photojournalist as heroic loner, risking all to bear witness for humanity, yet at the mercy of corporate forces that, by cynical choice or sheer ineptitude, can in an instant erase from the historical record the only traces of a crucial passage in world events.

Jean-David Morvan and Séverine Tréfouël, “Omaha Beach on D-Day” (2015), cover

Moreover, it represents, arguably, the most widely familiar bit of folklore in the history of the medium of photography — one that appears not only in histories of photography and photojournalism, in biographies of and other books about Capa, but in novels, graphic novels, the autobiographies of such famous people as actress Ingrid Bergman and Hollywood director Sam Fuller, assorted films, and even in videos of Steven Spielberg talking about his inspirations for the opening scenes of his film Saving Private Ryan, not to mention countless retellings in the mass media.

Charles Christian Wertenbaker, “Invasion!” (1944), cover

An early version of this story started to circulate immediately after D-Day, made its first half-formed appearance in print in the fall of 1944, and received its full formal authorization with the publication of Capa’s heavily fictionalized memoir, Slightly Out of Focus, in the fall of 1947. Since then it’s been reiterated endlessly, either by John Morris or by others quoting or paraphrasing Capa’s or Morris’s version of the tale. It gets retold in the mass media with special frequency on every major celebration of D-Day — the 50th anniversary, the 60th, most recently the 70th. In short, it has gradually achieved the status of legend. That this legend went unexamined for seven decades serves as a measure of its appeal not just to photojournalists, to others involved professionally with photography, and to the medium’s growing audience, but to the general public.

For 70 years, despite the many glaring holes in it, no one questioned this story — least of all those in charge at the International Center of Photography, which houses the Capa Archive. These figures have included the late Cornell Capa, Robert’s younger brother and founder of ICP; the late Richard Whelan, Robert’s authorized biographer and the first curator of that archive; and Whelan’s successor in that curatorial role, Cynthia Young.

Ironically, two celebrations of the 70th anniversary of Capa’s D-Day images provoked our investigation. The first came as a flattering profile of John Morris, written by Marie Brenner for Vanity Fair magazine. Morris served as assistant picture editor in LIFE’s London bureau for that magazine’s D-Day coverage, and in this Brenner piece he recounts his version of the Capa-LIFE D-Day myth once more. Shortly thereafter, on May 29, 2014, TIME Inc. — the corporation that had commissioned and published Capa’s D-Day images back in 1944 — posted a video at its website celebrating those photographs, which some refer to as “the magnificent eleven.”

A division of Magnum Photos, the picture agency Capa founded with his colleagues in 1947 (the same year he published his memoir), produced that video for TIME. The International Center of Photography licensed the use of Capa’s images for that purpose. And none other than John Morris, by then 97 years old and living in Paris, provided the voice-over, his boilerplate narrative of those events. In short, this video involved the combined energies of the individual and institutional forces involved in the creation and propagation of this myth — what I came to define as the Capa Consortium.

Assorted elements of those two virtually identical versions of the standard story, Brenner’s and Time Inc.’s, struck J. Ross Baughman as illogical and implausible. The youngest photojournalist ever to win a Pulitzer Prize (in 1978, at the age of 24), Baughman is an experienced combat photographer who has worked in war zones in the Middle East, El Salvador, Rhodesia, and elsewhere. As the founder of the picture agency Visions, which specialized in such work, he’s also an experienced picture editor. Ross contacted me to ask if I would publish his analysis at my blog, Photocritic International, as a Guest Post. I agreed.

In the editorial process of fact-checking and sourcing Baughman’s skeptical response to the standard narrative provided by Morris in that video, my own bulls**t detector began to sound the alarm. I realized that Baughman’s critique raised more questions than it answered, requiring much more research and writing than I could reasonably request from him. I decided to pursue those issues further myself.

This immersed me in the Capa literature for the first time. Speaking as a scholar, that came as a rude awakening. The most immediate shock hit as I read through a half-dozen print and web versions of Morris’s account of those events — in Brenner’s 2014 puff piece, in Morris’s 1998 memoir, and in various interviews, profiles, and articles — and watched at least as many online videos and films featuring Morris rehashing this tale. I realized that the only portion of this story that Morris claimed to have witnessed firsthand, the loss of Capa’s films in LIFE’s London darkroom, could not possibly have happened the way he said it did.

In retrospect, I cannot understand how so many people in the field, working photographers among them, accepted uncritically the unlikely, unprecedented story, concocted by Morris, of Capa’s 35mm Kodak Super-XX film emulsion melting in a film-drying cabinet on the night of June 7, 1944.

Anyone familiar with analog photographic materials and normal darkroom practice worldwide must consider this fabulation incredible on its face. Coil heaters in wooden film-drying cabinets circa 1944 did not ever produce high levels of heat; black & white film emulsions of that time did not melt even after brief exposure to high heat; and the doors of film-drying cabinets are normally kept closed, not open, since the primary function of such cabinets is to prevent dust from adhering to the sticky emulsion of wet film.

No one with darkroom experience could have come up with this notion; only someone entirely ignorant of photographic materials and processes — like Morris — could have imagined it. Embarrassingly, none of that set my own alarm bells ringing until I started to fact-check the article by Baughman that initiated this project, close to fifty years after I first read that fable in Capa’s memoir.

This is one of several big lies permeating the literature on Robert Capa. Certainly Capa knew it was untrue when he published it in his memoir; he had gotten his start in photography as a darkroom assistant in Simon Guttmann’s Dephot photo agency in Berlin. And Cornell Capa also knew that; he had cut his eyeteeth in the medium first by developing the films of his brother, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and David Seymour in Paris, then by working in the darkroom of the Pix photo agency in New York, then by moving on to fill the same role at LIFE magazine before becoming a photographer in his own right. My belated recognition of that fact led me to ask the obvious next question: If that didn’t happen to Capa’s 35mm D-Day films, what did? And if all these people were willing to lie about this, what were they covering up?

So, building on Baughman’s initial provocation, I began drafting my own extensions of what he’d initiated — and our investigation was launched.

In December of 2017 I published the 74th chapter of our research project. You’ll find all of it online at my blog; the easiest way to get to the Capa D-Day material is by using the url capadday.com. During these years I have become intimately familiar with a large chunk of what others have written and said about Capa and his D-Day coverage.

In my opinion, the bulk of the published writing and presentations in other formats (films, videos, exhibitions) devoted to the life and work of photojournalist Robert Capa qualifies as hagiography, not scholarship. Capa’s own account of his World War II experiences, Slightly Out of Focus, consistently proves itself inaccurate and unreliable, masking its sly self-aggrandizement with wry humor and self-deprecation. Morris’s memoir repeats Capa’s combat stories unquestioningly, adding to those his own dubious saga of the “ruined” negatives.

Richard Whelan, “This Is War! Robert Capa at Work” (2007), cover

Richard Whelan’s books, widely considered the key reference works on Capa, simply quote or paraphrase Capa and Morris uncritically, perhaps because they were sponsored, subsidized, published, and endorsed most prominently and extensively by the estate of Robert Capa and the Fund for Concerned Photography (both controlled by Capa’s younger brother Cornell) and the International Center of Photography, founded by Cornell, who also served as ICP’s first director.

Produced in most other cases under Cornell’s watchful eye or the supervision of one or another participant in the Capa Consortium, the remainder of the serious, scholarly literature on Robert Capa has almost all been subject to Cornell’s approval and reliant on either the problematic principal reference works or on Robert Capa materials stored in Cornell’s private home in Manhattan, with access dependent on his consent. Consequently, it constitutes an inherently limited corpus of contaminated research, fatally corrupted by its unswerving allegiance to both its patron and its patron saint. Such bespoke scholarship becomes automatically suspect.

Cornell Capa, interview with Barbaralee Diamonstein, 1980, screenshot

The second failing of this heap of compromised materials resides in its reliance on untrustworthy and far from neutral sources: Robert Capa, with a demonstrated penchant for self-mythification; his younger brother Cornell, a classic “art widower” with every reason to enhance his brother’s reputation; and Robert’s close friend and Cornell’s, John Morris, whose own stature in the field premises itself on the Capa D-Day legend. Only Alex Kershaw’s unauthorized Capa biography, Blood and Champagne, published in 2002, maintains its independence from Cornell’s influence, but at the cost of losing access to the primary research materials and consequently reiterating the erroneous information in the accounts of Capa, Morris, and Whelan. Virtually everything else published about Capa, including those stories in the mass media that appear predictably every five years along with celebrations of D-Day, unquestioningly presents the prevailing myth.

This Capa literature suffers from a third fundamental flaw: Those generating it (with the exception of Capa himself and his brother Cornell), have no direct, hands-on knowledge of photographic production, no military background (significant in that Robert Capa’s most important work falls under the heading of combat photography), and no forensic skills pertinent to the analysis of photographic materials. Nor were they encouraged by their patron, Cornell Capa, to make up for those deficiencies by involving others with those competencies in their projects. Instead, their privileged relationship to the primary materials, along with the availability of a prominent and well-funded platform at ICP, enabled them to effectively invent whatever suited them, pleased their benefactor, and served their purposes.

Responsible Capa scholarship, therefore, must begin by distrusting the extant literature, turning instead to the photographs themselves and relevant documents that the Capa estate and ICP do not control and to which they therefore cannot prohibit access. Those materials lie at the core of our research project.

Here’s a short summary of what we’ve found:

Capa sailed across the English Channel on the U.S.S. Samuel Chase.

According to the official history of the U.S. Coast Guard, fifteen waves of LCVPs (commonly called Higgins boats) carrying troops left the U.S.S. Samuel Chase for Omaha Beach that morning. Capa almost certainly rode in with Col. Taylor and his staff, the command group of Company E of the 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Division, to which Capa had been assigned. They constituted part of the thirteenth wave.

That wave arrived at the Easy Red sector of Omaha Beach at 8:15, a half hour after the last of the 16th Infantry Regiment’s nine rifle companies. We can see from Capa’s images that numerous waves of troops preceded them.

Using distinctive landmarks visible in Capa’s photos, Charles Herrick has pinpointed exactly where Capa landed on Easy Red: the beach at Colleville-sur-Mer. Gap Assault Team 10 had charge of the obstacles in that sector. An existing exit off this sector made it possible to reach the top of the bluffs with relative ease. Col. Taylor would become famous for announcing to the hesitant troops he found there, “Two kinds of people are staying on this beach, the dead and those who are going to die — now let’s get the hell out of here,” and urging them up the Colleville-sur-Mer draw to the bluffs.

Robert Capa, CS frame 4, neg. 32, detail, annotated

Fortuitously, that stretch of Easy Red represented a seam in the German defenses, a weak point at the far end of the effective range of two widely separated German blockhouses. Both cannon fire and small-arms fire there proved relatively light — one reason for the success of Gap Assault Team 10 in clearing obstacles in that area. This explains why, contrary to LIFE’s captions and Capa’s later narrative, his images show no carnage, no floating bodies and body parts, no discarded equipment, and no bullet or shell splashes. This also explains why the Allies broke through early at that very point.

Capa did not run out of film, nor did his camera jam, nor did seawater damage either his cameras or his film. In his memoir, Capa first implies that he exposed at most two full rolls of 35mm film — one roll in each of his two Contax II rangefinder cameras, 72 frames in all — at Omaha Beach. By the end of that chapter, this has somehow grown to “one hundred and six pictures in all, [of which] only eight were salvaged.” John Morris claims he received 4 rolls of Omaha Beach negatives from Capa. We find no reason to believe that Capa made more than the ten 35mm images of which we have physical evidence.

Capa made the first five of those images while standing for almost two minutes on the ramp of the landing craft that brought him there. In them we see Capa’s traveling companions carrying not small-arms assault weapons but bulky oilskin-wrapped bundles, most likely radios and other supplies for the command post they meant to establish.

Capa made his sixth exposure from behind a mined iron “hedgehog,” one of many such obstacles protecting what Nazi Gen. Erwin Rommel called the “Atlantic Wall.” He made his last four exposures — including “The Face in the Surf” — from behind Armored Assault Vehicle 10, which was sitting in the surf shelling the gun emplacements on the bluffs.

Capa described Armored Assault Vehicle 10, which appears on the left-hand side of several of his images, as “one of our half-burnt amphibious tanks.” In fact, it was a modified American tank, a “wading Sherman,” not amphibious (merely waterproofed to the top of its treads) and not burnt out; later images made by others of that stretch of Easy Red show this tank undamaged, closer to the dry beach, and apparently in action. Taken in conjunction with the known presence at that point of Gap Assault Team 10, the large numeral 10 on this vehicle’s rear vent suggests that it was a so-called “tank dozer,” one of which landed with each demolition team that morning. The U.S. Army had modified these tanks by adding detachable bulldozer “blades,” so that they could clear the debris after the engineers blew up the obstacles.

Not incidentally, both the time and place of Capa’s arrival on Easy Red contradict the current identification of Huston “Hu” Riley as “The Face in the Surf” in Capa’s penultimate exposure on Easy Red, as well as the earlier identification of “The Face in the Surf” as Pfc. Edward J. Regan. Both these soldiers arrived at different times than Capa, and on different sections of the beach. Thus the identity of “The Face in the Surf” remains unknown.

After no more than 30 minutes on the beach, and perhaps as little as 15 minutes there, Capa ran to a landing craft, LCI(L)-94, where he took shelter before its departure around 0900.

Capa claimed that he reached the dry beach and then experienced a panic attack, causing him to escape from the combat zone. We must consider the possibility that he suffered from what they then called “shell shock” and we now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But we must also consider the possibility that, even before setting forth that morning, Capa made a calculated decision to leave the battlefield at the first opportunity, in order to get his films to London in time to make the deadline for LIFE’s next issue; if he missed that deadline, any images of the landing would become old news and his effort and risks in making them would have been for naught.

No fewer than four witnesses place Capa on this vessel, LCI(L)-94. The first three were crew members Charles Jarreau, Clifford W. Lewis, and Victor Haboush. According to Capa, once he reached LCI(L)-94 he put away his Contax II, working thenceforth only with his Rolleiflex. One of the 2–1/4″ images he made while aboard this vessel, published in the D-Day feature story in LIFE, shows Haboush assisting a medic treating a casualty.

Robert Capa, “Untitled (Medics at Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944).” Annotated screenshot from magnumphotos.com. Victor Haboush indicated by red arrow.

The fourth witness to Capa’s presence on LCI(L)-94 was U.S. Coast Guard Chief Photographer’s Mate David T. Ruley. Ruley, a Coast Guard cinematographer assigned to film the invasion from the vantage point of this vessel, coincidentally documented its arrival at the very same spot at which Capa landed, recording the same scene from a perspective slightly different from Capa’s at approximately the same time Capa made his ten exposures.

Robert Capa, “The Face in the Surf” (l); David Ruley, frame from D-Day film (r)

Ruley’s color footage appears frequently in D-Day documentaries. Charles Herrick and I verified that these film clips described conditions at that same sector of Easy Red while Capa was there. Ruley’s name on his slateboard at the start of several clips enabled us to learn a bit more about him and his assignment.

Robert Capa, center rear, aboard LCVP from USS Samuel Chase, with camera during transfer of casualty, D-Day, frame from film by David T. Ruley

Most importantly, this resulted in the discovery of brief glimpses of Capa himself, holding Ruley’s slateboard in one scene and photographing the offloading of a casualty from LCI(L)-94 to another vessel in the second clip. These are the only known film or still images of Capa on D-Day, the only film images of him in any combat situation, and among the few known color film clips of him.

Robert Capa holding cinematographer’s slate aboard LCI(L)-94, D-Day, frame from film by David T. Ruley

Cinematographer David T. Ruley, illustrations for first-person account of D-Day experiences, Movie Makers magazine, 6/1/45

By noon the battle there was largely over, and Capa had missed most of it.

He made the return trip to England aboard the U.S.S. Samuel Chase.

Arriving back in Weymouth on the morning of June 7, Capa had to wait for the offloading of wounded from the Chase before he got ashore sometime around 1 p.m. He sent all his film via courier to picture editor John Morris at LIFE’s London office, instead of carrying it himself to ensure its safe delivery and thus enable Morris to face with confidence the imminent, absolute deadline of 9 a.m. on June 8.

As a result, Capa’s films did not reach the London office till 9 p.m. that night, putting Morris and the darkroom staff in crisis mode.

Capa’s shipment included substantial pre-invasion reportage of the troops boarding and crossing the English Channel, his skimpy coverage of the battle on Omaha Beach, and several images of the beach seen from a distance, made while departing on LCI(L)-94, as well as photos of medics tending to the wounded on the return trip aboard the Chase.

In addition to several rolls of 120 film, and a few 4×5″ negatives made on shipboard with a borrowed Speed Graphic, Capa sent Morris at least five rolls of 35mm film, and possibly a sixth.

These include two rolls made while boarding and on deck in the daytime, two more of a below-decks briefing, a (missing) roll of images made on deck at twilight during the crossing, and the ten Omaha Beach exposures, plus four sheets of sketchy handwritten caption notes.

All of these films — including all of Capa’s Omaha Beach negatives — got processed normally, without incident. The surviving negatives, housed in the Capa Archive at ICP, show no sign of heat damage. Thus no darkroom disaster occurred, no D-Day images got lost … and none got “saved” or “salvaged.”

In his memoir, Capa wrote that by the time he got back to Omaha Beach on June 8 and joined his press corps colleagues, “I had been reported dead by a sergeant who had seen my body floating on the water with my cameras around my neck. I had been missing for forty-eight hours, my death had become official, and my obituaries had just been released by the censor.” No correspondent has ever corroborated that story. No such obituary ever saw print (as it surely would have), no copy thereof has ever surfaced, and no record of it exists in the censors’ logs. Purest fiction, meant for the silver screen.

So much for the myth.

We learned a few other things along the way:

LIFE magazine ran the best five of Capa’s ten 35mm Omaha Beach images in the D-Day issue, datelined June 19, 1944, which hit the newsstands on June 12. (The other five were all mediocre variants of the ones they published.)

“Beachheads of Normandy,” LIFE magazine feature on D-Day with Robert Capa photos, June 19, 1944, p. 25 (detail)

The accompanying story claimed that “As he waded out to get aboard [LCI(L)-94, Capa’s] cameras got thoroughly soaked. By some miracle, one of them was not too badly damaged and he was able to keep making pictures.” That wasn’t true, of course. Capa returned immediately to Normandy, landing back there on June 8 and continuing to use the same undamaged equipment with which he’d started out.

No sheet of caption notes for Capa’s ten Omaha Beach images in Capa’s own hand exists in the International Center of Photography’s Capa Archive. Presumably he provided none. Morris himself must have provided some — drafted hastily on the night of June 7 — for both the set that he sent to LIFE and the set that he provided to the press pool; that was required of him by his employer and by the pool. As for the captions that appeared with Capa’s pictures in the June 19 issue, Richard Whelan writes, “Dennis Flanagan, the assistant associate editor who wrote the captions and text that accompanied Capa’s images in LIFE, recalls that he depended on the New York Times for background information, and for specifics he interpreted what he saw in the photographs.”

Thus the wildly inaccurate captions that (to use Roland Barthes’s term) “anchor” Capa’s images in LIFE’s D-Day issue, and on which most subsequent republications of these images rely, either got revised from John Morris’s last-minute inventions in London or written entirely from scratch by someone in the New York office, even further removed from the action.

LIFE’s captions indicated that the soldiers seen gathered around the obstacles were hiding from enemy fire. That was also untrue. Instead, we discovered that their insignias identify them as members of Combined Demolitions Unit 10, part of the Engineer Special Task Force, busy at their assigned task of blowing up the obstacles planted in the surf by the Germans in order to clear lanes for the incoming landing craft, so that they could deposit more troops and materiel on the beachhead.

Robert Capa, D-Day negative 35, detail, annotated

The demolition team that cleared this section of Omaha Beach, Easy Red, had more success than all the other demolition teams combined. In many ways, they saved the day for the Allies — at a high cost: these engineers as a group suffered the highest casualty rate of any class of troops on Omaha Beach. Capa’s failure to provide caption notes for these exposures resulted in 70 years of misidentification of these heroic engineers as terrified assault troops pinned down and hiding behind those “hedgehogs.”

We learned that ICP had a habit of obstructing any research into the life and work of Robert Capa that did not conform to Cornell Capa’s and Richard Whelan’s censorious requirements. ICP refused to allow British military historian Alex Kershaw to access any of the materials in the Capa Archive, and refused to grant his publishers permission to reproduce any Capa images in his unauthorized biography, published in 2002. ICP also refused to allow French documentary filmmaker Patrick Jeudy to use any of the primary Capa materials they controlled in his remarkable 2004 film, Robert Capa, l’homme qui voulait croire à sa légende (“Robert Capa: The Man Who Believed His Own Legend”). Upon the film’s release, Cornell Capa persuaded John Morris to sue Jeudy in France, in an unsuccessful attempt to block its distribution.

Robert Capa, “ruined” frames from D-Day, June 6, 1944. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

We also discovered that TIME Inc. had authorized the creation of unlabelled digital fakes of Capa’s supposedly “ruined” and discarded Omaha Beach negatives, for insertion into that May 2014 video commissioned from Magnum in Motion, the multimedia division of Magnum Photos, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Our disclosure of this deception forced TIME to acknowledge the fakery and revise that video overnight.

Richard Whelan, “Robert Capa: In Love and War” (2003), screenshot

Finally, we discovered that Capa’s authorized biographer, the late Richard Whelan, lied outright about the emulsion sliding on Capa’s D-Day negatives (among other things). And Cynthia Young, his successor as curator of the Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography, not only repeated his lie but plagiarized it in a 2013 text of her own.

Cynthia Young, “The Story Behind Robert Capa’s Pictures of D-Day,” June 6, 2013, screenshot from ICP website 2014–06–12 at 11.38.23 AM

Many of Capa’s rolls of film from the 1940s — and not just those he made on D-Day — show the exposure overlapping the sprocket holes. This resulted from a mismatch between Kodak 35mm film cassettes and the design of the Contax II, the camera Capa used that day, and not from any damage to the films.

Top: Contax camera loaded with shorter Kodak cassette showing sprocket holes being exposed. Bottom: Capa negative shown with proper orientation as it would have appeared in the camera. Note exposed sprocket holes. Top photo © 2015 by Rob McElroy.

Since the Capa Archive at ICP houses all those negatives and their contact sheets, both Whelan and Young have known this all along. Given the official position that first Whelan and now Young have occupied at ICP, they are de facto the world’s foremost authorities on Robert Capa. As such they represent, with regrettable accuracy, the deplorable condition of Capa scholarship in our time.

Cynthia Young, “Morning Joe,” MSNBC, 6–13–14, screenshot

The myth of Capa’s D-Day and the fate of his Omaha Beach negatives falls apart as soon as one compares its narrative to the military documentation of that epic battle. It collapses entirely when one examines closely the physical evidence — those photographs and their negatives.

The promulgation of that myth by the Capa Consortium, all of whose members have a vested financial and public-relations interest in furthering the myth, has proved itself calculated, systematic, duplicitous, and self-serving. Its voluntary dissemination by others, including reputable scholars and journalists, has shown those authors as lazy, careless, and professionally irresponsible. The Capa D-Day myth serves as a classic example of the genesis and evolution of a falsified version of history that, with its emphasis on the exploits of individual actors, distracts us from paying attention to the machinations of the corporate structures through which information must pass and get filtered before reaching the public — powerful institutions with agendas of their own.

I would like to think we have made a sufficiently convincing case that no one can credibly tell the standard Capa D-Day story again, at least not without acknowledging our contrary narrative. After all, our investigation forced a reluctant John Morris, the most energetic and vocal proponent of the legend, to recant its central components on Christiane Amanpour’s CNN show in the fall of 2014.

Most recently, in a Lensblog piece published in the New York Times on December 6, 2016 — just a day before his 100th birthday, and months before his death in Paris in July 2017 — Morris once again admitted that he’d never actually seen any heat-damaged 35mm negatives; that Capa may have only made the ten surviving images; and that he may have stayed on Omaha Beach only long enough to make them.

As for the institutions involved in perpetuating the myth: On June 6, 2016, ICP published this post on the institution’s Facebook page: “During the D-Day landing at Omaha beach, Robert Capa shot four rolls of 35mm film — only 11 frames survived. By accident, a darkroom worker in London ruined the majority of the film.” Since then, grudgingly, as a result of my public prodding, ICP has begun at last to make available to researchers the papers of Cornell Capa, promising to also permit access sometime in the near future to the papers of Richard Whelan, along with the Jozefa Stuart interviews from the early 1960s on which Whelan based much of his work.

Yet, as recently as October 2018, Cynthia Young published this statement in a special issue of the French newspaper Le Monde: “Capa, surrounded by explosions of bombs and bursts of machine guns, took photos in the water for a short while. … He expected his films to have been damaged by the water — he was squatting in the sea, troubled and agitated, tinged with blood. A few weeks later, he learned that all but ten images had been destroyed in the darkroom or during the shooting.” (My translation — A.D.C.).

Cynthia Young, “Les deux icônes de Capa,” Le Monde Hors-Série, 50 images qui ont marquél’histoire, October 2018, pp. 78–79

So there’s more work to be done on this subject. For the time being, our investigation has drawn to a close. In this country, though the Society of Professional Journalists honored our team with the 2014 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Research About Journalism, our work has received little attention, aside from a feature article in the official journal of the National Press Photographers Association, an article so rife with conflict of interest that the watchdog website iMediaEthics published a lengthy dissection of it. We have had better luck abroad; the project went viral in France in the summer of 2015, resulting in extensive coverage there in major periodicals and TV stations, as well as responses in Spain, Italy, the U.K., Brazil, and elsewhere.

Vincent Lavoie, L’Affaire Capa. Le procès d’une icône, 2017

I take heart from the fact that the two most recent books on Capa respond in different ways to our investigation. One, a graphic novel by Florent Silloray, published originally in France and now available in English, is (so far as I know) the only book on Capa of any kind to omit entirely the story of the darkroom disaster in London. The other, a meditation by French-Canadian Vincent Lavoie on the challenges to Capa’s 1937 “Falling Soldier” image, concludes with what its author and publisher must have felt was an obligatory commentary on our parallel research.

It took 70 years and the collaborative energies of powerful institutions and individuals to embed this fable in our cultural consciousness. Clearly, we still have much work to do if we hope to dislodge this fiction from the mythology of photojournalism and photo history — not to mention the larger D-Day myth into which it has become so thoroughly woven. But at least that process has begun — just in time for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, coming up in June 2019.

With minor revisions, this is the complete text of a lecture delivered on Friday, March 2, 2018 at the Society for Photographic Education 55th Annual Conference at the Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia, PA.) Its first English-language publication was in Exposure, the journal of the society.

About the author: A. D. Coleman has published 8 books and more than 2500 essays on photography and related subjects. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Formerly a columnist for the Village Voice, the New York Times, and the New York Observer, Coleman has contributed to ARTnews, Art On Paper, Technology Review, Juliet Art Magazine (Italy), European Photography (Germany), La Fotografia (Spain), and Art Today (China). His work has been translated into 21 languages and published in 31 countries. In 2002 he received the Culture Prize of the German Photographic Society, the first critic of photography ever so honored. In 2010 he received the J Dudley Johnston Award from the Royal Photographic Society (U.K.) for “sustained excellence in writing about photography.” In 2014 he received the Society for Photographic Education’s Insight Award for lifetime contribution to the field, and in 2015 the Society of Professional Journalists SDX Award for Research About Journalism. Coleman’s widely read blog “Photocritic International” appears at photocritic.com.

source https://petapixel.com/2019/02/16/debunking-the-myths-of-robert-capa-on-d-day/

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pauldeckerus · 5 years