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hawkland · 3 years

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My (mostly) Destiel Recs, Round-up #6

Well, between working like crazy on my DCBB fic and GISH and injuring my neck last month I haven’t kept up with my rec posts, so this one is going to be LONG and have a LOT and I’m going to try to break it up into sections, from oldies but goodies (some things I found on very old rec lists) to smutty delights to just tasty little bits of fluff, hopefully there’s something or everyone here. Most of these are not super-long, largely in the 10-25k range, though there are a few beyond that. With all the stuff I’ve had going on I haven’t wanted to lose sleep diving into 100k epics (especially when I’m writing my own right now, lol.)

“Oldies” but Goodies: Here are two great fics written some time way back when but that still definitely slap.

Theodicy by manic_intent (11k) - Probably the most brilliant Godstiel fic I’ve read to date. One of Cas’s first acts as the new god is to make a new archangel. Dean isn’t exactly on board with having his soul re-sculpted into wings he hates on sight (especially as they seem magnetically drawn to Cas), but he isn’t exactly given a choice. He, Sam and Bobby struggle with how to handle their former friend suddenly becoming a vindictive deity - trying to make plans to kill him if they must, which is pretty hard when it seems like Cas is always one step ahead of him. Can Dean hold on to enough of his humanity to provide a conscience to Cas and try to steer him toward good acts instead of destruction? This is one that I can’t say has a perfectly happy ending, but it’s a hopeful and imperfect one that’s just right for how the story plays out.

My Eyes Are An Ocean by entanglednow (10k) - Season 5 AU where Dean averts the apocalypse through a spell that “powers up” all the angels and he sees Cas’s true form - before being rendered blind. Dean tries to adjust to his blindness, Cas tries to deal with his guilt, and it’s just a lovely little read with an ending that’s... *chef’s kiss*

Lots more recs below the cut:

More great reads from some of my favorite authors I’ve recced before:

The Cabin on the Lake by DeanRH (21k) - This may be my new favorite DeanRH fic...at least for the moment. The year is 2152, Sam and Dean are long gone to Heaven, while Cas - stuck somewhere between mortal and angel - remains on Earth keeping vigil, keeping up the hunt, assuming he’ll never see either Winchester ever again. But when he starts hearing things, and imagining Dean visiting him as an angel himself, he starts losing grip on what is and isn’t real, and whether he can trust anything he sees or believes to be the truth. This is one hell of a psychological rollercoaster that kept me guessing right along with Cas until the very end. It also has some super-creepy horror elements, a novel “monster of the week”, and the hot-as-sin smut scenes I always expect from this author.

X Marks the Scot by DeanRH (15.9k) A fun little romp through history in one of this author’s great not-quite-au fics. Crowley sends Dean and Sam back in history to the Scottish Highlands to stop a monster, and while there they meet a blue-eyed clan chief who makes Dean weak in the knees. There’s something familiar about him, too. a very clever au that ties back to canon for an unexpected fix-it. Also, Cas in a kilt. Enough said.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon by DeanRH (12k) - Sweet and slightly angsty AU. What if Dean was a gardener in ancient Babylon when a strange dignitary came to warn that the tower under construction was to be destroyed by angels? Lush, romantic and sexy with some wonderful tie-ins to canon characterizations (of Dean, Sam, John and of course Cas).

sufficient for thee by angelfishofthelord (21k) - This is a beautiful Cas angst-fest and character study that reimagines how angel grace works, particularly in regards to healing others. It covers the whole of Cas’s arc from Season 4 through a post-series fix-it, is absolutely stunning and features some great world-building in regards to the angels. (One important TW: those with cutting/self-harm issues may wish to skip or at least proceed with caution). I love that I can always count on angelfishofthelord when I need a good dose of Cas!whump and pain.

And laugh at gilded butterflies by ireallydidthistomyself (13k) - another great Dadstiel fic from this author featuring one of my favorite angsty subjects! I don’t know how I missed reading this one before. An AU where Cas is raising (baby)Jack on his own until the angels find the two of them and prepare to seal Jack away in the Ma’lak box. Cas begs them to let him go with Jack, so at least Jack won’t be alone for eternity. Meanwhile Dean is frantically trying to find what happened to Cas, and he gets some unexpected help from Crowley. It’s sad and sweet and all the characterizations are great. A+ Crowley use here, too.

what stays (and what fades away) by dothraki_shieldmaiden (64k) - a fabulous read with some great art, too, that started me reading a bunch of fic from this author. Cas goes missing, and when he’s found he seems deep under a spell. When they finally manage to awaken him, he doesn’t remember anything of this life with Dean, Sam and Cas in the bunker. The last thing he knew he was a nurse living with his wonderful husband, Dean, and their two adopted children, Jack and Claire. What I loved about this one was the clever twist as to who was behind Cas’s curse and also how well-developed his AU world/existence was. I’m not generally keen on mundane aus or the one-dimensional way a lot of djinn dream fics tend to go for them, but this one managed to capture a believable version of Dean and Cas living a “normal” life without monsters without making it sugary/too-sweet.

before knowing remembers by dothraki_shieldmaiden (14k) Post 15x04, a wonderful fic that plays with some meta topics in a clever way. Dean and Sam are happy - they have free will and they’ve won against Chuck, even if they suffered some big losses along the way (including Jack). But Dean can’t help but think he’s forgetting something...or rather, someone. Yet every time he thinks he remembers, the name and face of that someone slips from his mind.

weights on my ankles by dothraki_shieldmaiden (9k) Post-15x03 where Cas ends up going back to the Gas ‘n Sip and working with Nora after leaving the bunker. A bitter sweet divorce-arc AU and what I love the most is how it ends - not perfect, not tragic, just very real and believable.

15x18 and Post-canon fix-it fics:

Orbital Velocity Around a Celestial Body by LeverDrift (26k) - An angsty but lovely fix-it fic, one where it gets worse for a while before it gets better. Dean pulls Cas from the Empty, where he’d been living in a fantasy world with a dream!Dean who was giving him everything real!Dean is certain he can’t. Dean has to struggle with wondering if Cas would have been better off with dream!Dean instead of him. This is one that will break your heart before putting it back together again as Dean struggles with his self-worth issues.

so good at crashing in by Wintertree (36k) - Another post-finale fix-it where Cas is back, the world is saved, and things are still...not as easy as it should be for either Dean nor Cas. Monsters are gone, there’s no more hunting to be done, and Cas wants to move out of the bunker somewhere closer to Claire, to move on with a proper human life. Dean thinks he can move there with Cas and stay as “best friends”, even to the extent that Cas encourages him to go out and have sex with others/women. (And wants to hear about it after the fact!) But can Dean figure out what he really wants, and what Cas wants as well? A refreshingly unique take on what a post-series life could have looked like for them.

Delicious smut:

Empty by squirrelofcelestialintent (43k) - Every day this fandom makes me rethink my previous squicks and DNWs in fanfic. Here I find myself enjoying quite a bit more dom/sub elements than I normally ever would! I think because I was absolutely drawn in by the breathtaking first chapter, capturing beautifully the emotions of Cas returning from the Empty in Season 13 if he and Dean had confessed their feelings right then and there. But Dean’s self-worth is all fucked up, he feels there’s no way he can be good enough for Cas, especially when his sexual desires run a little bit...let’s just say outside the vanilla and he’s struggling with shame over doing sex work when he was younger. This was HOT and POOR SAM really gets stuck in the middle of, well, hearing more about his brother’s sex life than he ever needed to.

He's My Mate by Hatsonhamburgers (22k) - This fic manages the delightful combination of humor and extreme hotness perfectly. Dean and Cas catch each other in some questionable masturbation situations. This leads Cas to decide he needs to buy Dean some proper sex toys. He’s just helping his best friend out, right? Sure. As I said, hysterical AND hot as hell.

Generals by nanoochka (9k) - Cas/Dean, Cas/Balthazar/Dean, implied past-Cas/Balthazar. An old LJ fic I found on an ancient rec list that is just scorching hot and a brilliant character study of Cas and Dean. Balthazar decides to invite himself in when he catches Dean and Cas engaging in some frisky business, and it turns into a bit of a power-play between the two soldiers of Heaven. Cas gets DP’ed and it’s all...well. It’s fucking good, read it.

The One With The Preening by HolyFuckingHell (5.5k) Can I do a rec post without including some wing!kink/wing!grooming in it? No, I can’t. (I also really enjoyed some of the other fics in this author’s series including The One With Dean's Horny Movies).

A Single Point of Light by Destina (2.4k) - This is a gorgeous Cas/Dean/Benny Purgatory short! A delicious balance of the two each caring for and caring about Dean in their own, protective ways, definitely a delight for any fans of this threesome.

Short and sweet, fluff to angst:

Snugglebird by almaasi (5.3k) - So, so soft and sweet and snuggly, just like the title. Dean’s things are disappearing from the bunker...and so, suddenly, has Cas. What’s going on? I do love my nesting!Cas fics, so...yeah. If you need a smile this is a good one to read :)

And Cleanse Me From My Sin by thisisapaige (1.6k) - another one for my beloveds who also enjoy wing grooming and sweet Dean-taking-care-of-Cas fluff.

Needle and Thread by Misachan (4k) - Season 5 wing!fic hurt/comfort. Cas’s wings are badly injured, Dean doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, but he’s stitched up Sam and himself enough times. He can do this. If you love caretaker!Dean and vulnerable!Cas don’t overlook this little gem.

Deceptive Preludes by sp8ce (2.7k) - One of those stories that delves into some of the difficulties Cas might have after coming back from the Empty a second time, especially in regards to accepting what’s real or not, understanding Dean, and how both of their communication issues can add to their struggles. Painful but hopeful for the future, felt very believable as I read it.

#my fic recs #destiel recs #my destiel recs #ok that's it for right now #should be plenty to keep y'all busy for a bit

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hatboyproject · 3 years

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This is very long, but it might be of interest to someone, somewhere. I was asked recently about the direction I'm taking this romance in and whether or not I'll be addressing certain disability specific subjects within it. The answer, of course, is yes - I have always planned to do this in one form or another. Whilst no single piece of media can address everything I'd like to say on the subject, and I am working within the bounds of a larger story with its own pacing and focus to consider, there's still room to touch on some of these things.

I'm aware that my interpretations won't always be the same as others'. They are my interpretations, coloured by my experiences and feelings, and ultimately, this is my mod - I'm writing it for everybody who 'wears the ballcap,' so to speak! But, it's my interpretation of this character that I'm trying to share with everyone. Different people "took the helm" (laugh, I'm hilarious!) on writing Jeff across the trilogy, and as time has gone on I've been trying to convince myself that it's okay to have my turn at doing that, too - albeit in a non-professional capacity. So... Let's get into my interpretation of Jeff, where his stuff comes from on my view, and how things went to get him to where we are at the beginning of ME3, where the romance can occur.

A lot of how I interpret him comes from experiences in my own life with my own issues, and with those of my loved ones, some of whom are physically disabled in similar (but not identical) ways to Jeff. Some of this carries an element of catharsis for me.

Mechanically and narratively speaking, what draws me to writing this romance is the contrast between how these two characters are strong. It's this core idea that strength doesn't have only one manifestation in a person. That loving somebody doesn't have to be done only one way, that it can be beautiful and passionate and fulfilling - even if, when it gets physical, the headboard can't exactly be made to shatter with the force of it all. For me, it's also an exercise in insecurity and dealing with feelings of frustrated inadequacy - something that has plagued me my whole life.

Yes, yes, he's fictional - but the only way for me to really get into a character is to think about them as if they're a real being. When I look at Jeff as a person, I see many things... Some very positive, some pretty negative... I try to see him as a complete person with strengths and flaws.

On the surface he is often defensive, dismissive, sarcastic, and emotionally avoidant. But why is that? He is highly skilled, dedicated and capable, and knows it, but at the same time is a person who is constantly overlooked, underestimated, and asked to work thrice as hard to get the same considerations. Even then, his validity is questioned often by almost everyone around him. Over time, combined with the realities of living with his physical condition, this has given him some deep-seated insecurities. He feels the need to brag about his skills because they are, ultimately, the one thing about himself that he is absolutely certain has real worth. He overcompensates for this by abusing rules and technicalities wherever he can, because I think he knows that if he played life by the rules, he'd never have gotten anywhere. It's a stacked deck, so why not hide some aces up his sleeve? When you don't fit in the box provided, you question the value of every box you see.

When a person lives with this long enough, it can get hard to swim against the tide of society's expectations and still remain chipper about it, let alone not internalise some of it. It can cause a person to create a shell constructed out of distrust and untruth.

Living with a disability can really suck sometimes, and the suck is compounded when having to deal with your own frustrations plus those of others. In my personal experience, that happens a lot.

There is a certain sense of alienation that it can create, and it can become a kind of Sword of Damocles. It can be easier to anticipate rejection and others' assumptions, inabilities to understand or relate than to keep reaching out, only to have the same tired conversations about being different. I see a lot of this in him. I understand the chip he has on his shoulder.

I also see an extremely sensitive, empathetic, devoted and boundlessly loving person under all that. In fact, it's because of these things that I think he actively tries to distance himself. At the core of his being, I see Jeff as somebody who loves quickly and completely. I think he sees that as a vulnerability, incompatible with what he's learned he has to do to survive... and also with the machismo thing that comes with being a pilot. I think on some level he's terrified of that about himself, but he also can't help it. Jeff is ride or die. So, he tells himself he doesn't care and never lets anyone in. Any time anyone showed interest, he'd shut them down, alienate them, distance himself, and get in the seat of something that flies.

I think up until now, (ME3) he's seen intimacy both as a thing he longs for, but is also afraid of because of his fundamental knowledge that he is different. He thinks he can't "measure up" to what he sees all around him. He sees romance as something that will lead to his inevitable rejection and being crushed, emotionally - and if he's not careful, physically, too. I think he's embarrassed about that as well. He's very interested where it comes to all that, but the things he likes to watch, he knows he can't do like that. His only experience is second-hand as a voyeur, so some of his perceptions about that are unhealthy for him. I think any kind of attempt by the medical professionals in his life to broach the topic and offer support on, he's angrily changed the subject, or stopped listening to, because of the entire mess above. I think Jeff is kind of a lonely person, and some of it is self-imposed, though the reasons for him thinking it's the right thing to do aren't all within his control.

All this is difficult for him to reconcile with, because he has been desperately in love with his commanding officer since almost the moment s/he met him, but entirely unprepared to face it.

I think at first it was easy for him to dismiss it as a stupid crush. Everyone gets them when cramped up in close quarters in stressful situations and the Commander's magnetism was hard to ignore. But then it became clear that Shepard really hadn't read his file and really hadn't made any assumptions at all about him. S/he just wanted to know him, and as time progressed and that actually bore out, it got hard not to really feel something powerful, even though s/he was the Commander and it wasn't strictly appropriate to think that way. But, then there was that thing about not fitting in the box provided...

I think he agonised over coming to Shepard with it, but ultimately decided it would be selfish with everything they were going through. I think there was a part of him that decided s/he'd never be interested anyway, not when there were other, healthier people to choose from... People who didn't have these hangups or need special accommodations made for them. I think he decided to keep it to himself, for what he felt was both their sakes.

If/When the Commander quietly hooked up with someone else, I think he had a lot of feelings all at once. On the one hand, the person he cared for most was finding some peace in all the craziness. On the other, he wished that particular brand of peace was shared with him. Most of the time there were more important things to worry about, but during downtime, I think it was on his mind a lot.

I think he feels very sheepish about it, but occasionally his jealousy got the better of him and he interrupted Shepard at moments that got too hard to watch on the security cams. He watched the cams around the ship lot, and listened in on all the others a fair bit. I think because he saw himself as being at a remove from most people in a lot of ways, it was easy to justify that to himself. I think he saw it kind of like listening to a podcast or a soap opera or... Nature documentary, almost, or something. He got to know all of them in this way... Parasocially at first, but gradually, socially too. He felt better about trying, because he had this secret edge. Not the greatest stuff he's ever done, but... Complete person. Strengths and flaws.

And then, the unthinkable happened. He couldn't accept that the ship was dying. He was sure he could save it... But when Shepard's hand touched his shoulder, when s/he'd come back for him, he knew it was over. And then, it really was over. Shepard paid the price for his arrogance. The person he wanted to protect the most spun off out into space. The communicator between his mask and that helmet was still in range for long enough that he could hear the choking. For a long time afterward, even hearing people cough made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The Alliance grounded him. I don't think he even had the capacity to be mad about it. I think that was a hard time for Jeff. I think between being burdened with the knowledge of the Reapers, the loss of Shepard, and the weight of his guilt, he was pretty close to the very, very edge when Cerberus knocked on his door and made him a bunch of promises. Pretty sure those promises had nothing to do with leather seats and everything to do with Project Lazarus. I'm very sure that the promise of Shepard coming back is the reason he even let Cerberus pay for the surgeries he agreed to undergo, because I don't think he valued himself much at all at that point. I'm pretty sure it was being ready to help Shepard that he was thinking about when he was learning to walk on his painful legs without crutches for the very first time. When Cerberus offered him a big shiny reset button I think he took it without hesitation because there wasn't anything else to hope for. I think seeing Shepard in the docking bay galvanised him and without ever telling them so, he pledged his life to them even harder than before. I think he told himself that he would support Shepard in every way he could. He would go wherever, do whatever, and when dealing with him, try to give them what he knew they needed; a goddamn break.

So, fast forward again, and now we are here. With all of this in mind... Shepard might have had a dalliance with someone else, or might've been too damaged by their previous love interest on Horizon, or whatever. Either way, I think Jeff saw it as not his business to even dream about that. I think the guilt tore him up every time he looked at Shepard. I think he felt like on some level, he deserved the pain of unrequited feelings which only ever got more intense. If he didn't think himself worthy of it back then, doubly so now. I think during the six months of house arrest, he tried to visit, but the Alliance denied his every attempt. Then the attack on Earth happened.

And so now we have Jeff, who, just like other humans is confused and groping about for a sense of what's up and what's down. Fortunately for him, Shepard is part of that sense of stability. He's just better at hiding it, because avoiding it and telling himself to focus elsewhere is second nature to him by this point. But things are a little different, now. Shepard seems looking around for a connection too. Future days seem short in number and the rulebook less and less important by the minute. Denying it to himself becomes impossible, and even EDI prods him about it. Shepard won't stop being so goddamn nice to him and even responds with things that if he didn't know better, he could interpret as... But then all the old insecurities come rushing back and he's walking on his own damn eggshells again. Fuck it. It's time to admit it. To come clean. S/he has to know.

So he asks. And s/he accepts. He's equal parts thrilled, stunned and terrified. He's even on some level, suspicious. Is s/he setting him up for a fall? Are they angry about his responsibility? What do they want out of this, actually? He hasn't explained what it'd be like. That what they're doubtlessly expecting of him is unrealistic. That he's completely inexperienced. I think at this point, he's a bit pissed off with himself and feeling a lot of dread because he's pretty sure how this is going to go. He realises he's got so caught up in it that he's done things in the wrong order. Damage control. He has to talk with Shepard and explain what s/he should expect from him, because it will be different. Manage expectations because he's had to manage his own. He goes in steeled.

But s/he knows it will be different, it turns out. As ever, Shepard has made no assumptions whatsoever. S/he only wants to get to know him. Wants him for everything he is, and accepts what he is not. It was never an issue for them beyond understanding how to work with it, because he is worthy just as he is, and has worked hard enough. He has to teach them about his limitations, about underestimating and overestimating... But where there's a will, there's a way. Time for a few shared moments of peace before the end of days, and through all the craziness, something feels right at last. He feels safe enough to let Shepard in properly. Thus begins his reassessment of himself and reckoning with letting go of the insecurities he has that aren't actually his own, but come from outside.

Also he totally gets to sext the Commander now when s/he's on missions. Nice.

So. There's a lot more I could say and expound upon but it's been hours and I have stuff to do. That's my direction. It's not going to suit everyone, and I doubt I can get everything across... But I'll try. I'm just one person, with just one perspective, with just one version of this story. But I hope people like what I come up with surrounding this framework, because I have lived a lot of it myself. Just a few less Reapers in my version. Not everyone's experiences and responses will be the same.

#shoker #shoker mod #hatboyproject #jeff joker moreau #character study #my approach

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boys-night · 3 years

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Mickey and Ian - communication, sex, and relationship styles, post 11x07

Here’s my take on how Ian and Mickey relate to sexuality and relationship styles, thinking mainly about 11x07, but also looking more broadly at the series and including HoS. If you’re not interested in incorporating 11x07 in your version of canon, ignore this! I enjoyed 11x07 but I understand people have different ways of seeing Ian and Mickey’s relationship. I’m also doing the classic meta thing of taking seriously exaggerated/comic/contradictory elements in the show because that’s how I roll.

Super long post under cut.

I’ve been reading Sexuality: A Graphic Guide by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele which is where a lot of the following ideas and terminology come from. I’ve also been looking at Meg-John Barker’s free relationship zine on their website rewritingtherules.com. I highly recommend their work, including the podcast they have with Justin Hancock, The Meg-John and Justin podcast (although MJ has left now and it’s called Culture, Sex, Relationships, but you can check out the backlog!)

They think about sex and relationship styles using various models including monogamy/polyamory, allosexuality/asexuality, romance/aromance etc. They look at these different facets of sexuality/relationship styles as complicated continua rather than binaries which shift over time. They also write about sexuality on an action/identity spectrum, communication strategies around relationships styles, and the windows into relationships. Here, I’m looking at all of these things thinking about Ian and Mickey’s relationship and as individuals within the relationship.

The monogamy/polyamory continuum

I’ve seen a bit of debate about how to label Mickey and Ian’s relationship on the monogamy/polyamory spectrum and I think it’s a pretty complex question especially considering those labels mean different things to different people and that relationships shift a lot over time. While labels like these can be useful, they can also be rigid and restrictive in their own ways.

Some terms that come close-ish to what they say they’ve decided in 11x07 are monoamorous and polysexual, considering they aren’t at all interested in romantic connections outside of each other but are up for sex (in a broad sense) with other people. But these terms don’t account for the agreement that they’re only exploring sex with other people when they’re together.

As people have pointed out, some of the boundary setting around exactly how they’re involving other people in the relationship is left off-screen, and also they’re not necessarily going to form identities around how they act in one episode. I’ve also seen people suggest reading their relationship style as monagamish and/or that what they do with other people is part of kink/play. I think these make sense in different ways and that in 11x07 Ian and Mickey definitely focus more on what they do (action) rather than who they are (identity) in regards to monogamy/polyamory.

In 11x01, Ian’s focus is more on identity. He sets up a binary choice between being monagamous or not in their relationship. 11x07 indicates they’ve moved through off-screen discussion into a much more personalised arrangement with more focus on actions allowing for flexibility over time. In 11x07, we see them agree on rules: sex in a broad sense is allowed outside of the primary partnership, love isn’t. They keep negotiations ongoing (e.g. in the bedroom, in the furniture store), and there is an indication that these rules could change over time.

I’d love to read/explore more about the ways in which this approach has changed over the course of the whole show. At the start of their relationship, definitely prior to s4, they have much more implicit rules about who they can have sex with, and those implicit rules become problematic in s5, when they realise they’re not completely on the same page regarding them. They bring up clashing ideas around the rules when Mickey’s leaving prison in s10 too. In s11, their relationship becomes more intentional, with these rules stated aloud rather than assumed.

The action/identity continuum in regards to gay sexuality

On a slight tangent, I think there’s a comparison to be made here to how they relate to sexuality (specifically gender of attraction) and the idea of gay identity, which seems to develop in the other direction. For Mickey especially, for a long time having sex with men was something he did rather than something he was, and that’s gradually somewhat shifted over the course of the show. There’s so much more that can be explored here, for instance, about how the action-based approach is much more acceptable within the hyper-masculine environment he was raised. Terry also approaches it this way when talking about prison sex, for example. According to this very oppressive social script, having sex with men in certain circumstances can be OK but claiming that as part of who you are is absolutely not.

But I also want to stress, I don’t think either approach to gay sexuality, looking at it through actions or through identity, is inherently better or worse. These different lenses on sexuality also intersect with class and levels of education. As explored in Sexuality: A Graphic Guide, the identity approach is also relatively a very modern way of seeing sexuality (late 20th century). Gender of attraction is also only one facet of sexuality (which includes amount of sex you want, type of sex, sexual roles etc.) but its now often regarded as the only or most important facet of sexuality. The identity-based approach is much more acceptable within the more aspirational/middle class settings they interact with in s10 and s11. In these seasons, Mickey and to a lesser extent Ian aren’t completely willing to accept it wholesale. I like how, for example, even well after “coming out”, Mickey often still approaches sexuality through actions rather than identity, e.g. his response to the woman at the flower shop asking if he’s a homosexual: “He is, I just like having another man’s dick up my ass.”

However, I also think it’s cool/interesting how Ian and Mickey both move towards and embrace various parts of mainstream gay identity in s11 too, and a large part of that involves combatting the sexism, femmephobia, and hypermasculinity with which they were raised, e.g. of course, singing and dancing to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande in the bathroom.

You could also look at the different ideas about the origins of their gay sexuality in HoS through this lens. Mickey goes for a psychological/behavioural approach (based in like early 20th century sexological theories); Ian goes for a born-this-way, biological/genetic approach (popularised in the 1980s as part of gay pride movements).

Mickey’s approach is very old school (definitely a way of thinking that reflects his upbringing), which assumes straight is the norm from which gay deviates, to do with Freudian theory/the idea of homosexuality as pathology. He doesn’t, for example, seek to use the same model (Fiona’s bad relationship history) to explain why Lip is straight. Ian’s approach (”not because I was born this way?”) reflects his investment in the intractability of sexuality related to his strict opposition to conversion therapy models and the idea of being gay as a choice. It also reflects the way he reacts negatively/disbelievingly to Debbie’s more flexible sexuality (in s8?). While obviously it’s fucked up/impossible to force people to change their sexuality and it’s perfectly reasonable for him to define the origins of his own sexuality however he wants, this approach risks excluding more fluid experiences of sexuality.

Again, Mickey’s approach is more behavioural/action oriented and Ian’s is more identity oriented. They both seem pretty willing to shift their ideas around this though (especially Mickey, who potentially is just regurgitating old stuff he’s heard without thinking). The concluding thought is that Ian is gay because he likes Mickey’s d, lol.

Individual differences on sex and relationship continua

I really like the detail that Ian doesn't want to have sex and be friends with anyone else aside from Mickey. In 11x07, he doesn't want to make friends with the guys in the locker room although he's down for repeat sexual experiences which suggests he thinks he forms romantic attachment through a combination of both sex and friendship. It seems like it's important to him in his negotiation with Mickey that they don't form romantic attachments outside of their own relationship.

This relates back to the 87% thing in HoS where Ian says he tends to get at least slightly attached to everyone he has sex with and Mickey has 87% of his heart. Mickey doesn’t like the 87% thing at all but I reckon it outlines a really interesting difference between the two characters in regards to relationship styles. It indicates that Ian is comfortable with a slightly less mononormative way of doing nurturance/care than Mickey, while Mickey seems to initiate more of the polysexuality than Ian in 11x07. (Although of course, we don’t see how Ian would react if Mickey were to tell him he’s got 87% of his heart! -- but this is a very difficult to imagine scenario).

Sex is a big part of their relationship for both of them. Both Ian and Mickey seem pretty allosexual (e.g. they feel sexual attraction for other people generally), but Mickey is possibly even more so than Ian. Mickey also maybe falls on the aromantic/grayromantic spectrum (once again, the labels can be really useful but I don’t want to be too prescriptive/rigid). Ian seems to be more alloromantic, with a capacity to experience romantic attraction to a whole bunch of people. For him, sex and romance seem to be more interconnected in all cases although he can definitely separate the two (especially when thinking about transactional sex etc).

But I think it's more complex than that. For instance, Mickey reserves certain sexual acts for just between him and Ian and its clear that they have both intimacy and exploration in their sex life. From the outset, Ian and Mickey’s relationship involves exploration and excitement with sex, and provides a freedom to explore their sexualities in regards to sexual roles and kink. It’s clear that Mickey values the safe space Ian specifically gives him in this regard from very early on in their relationship. There’s a parallel here with the bathroom Gaga/Grande scene where Ian’s instinct isn’t to tease or make fun of Mickey but support him embracing more stereotypical gay behaviours and/or more fluid gender roles to the ones he’s grown up with outside of sex too.

Also it might be useful to complicate the idea of romance itself which is a really difficult idea to pin down and which seems to mean different things for both of them. I love the stress on friendship in 11x07. Friendship and also family connection play such key parts in their relationship with one another and the way in which they are attached, arguably even more so than traditional models romance. Both HoS and the Hopper painting discussion are interesting to think about in regards to the ways Ian and Mickey think about the concept of romance differently and the ways it intersects with or differs from their ideas around friendship/family. I like how Mickey’s willing to see getting a coffee together as romantic in a positive way for instance after Ian explains that it’s about togetherness in hard times. While maybe Mickey sees Ian’s suggestion of having a bath together as awkward/weird because he views it more as trying to live up to a social script of what is “romantic”.

Communication strategies around relationship styles

In s11, Ian and Mickey’s relationship is very entwined, and, in comparison to Tami and Lip, for instance, they disclose a lot to each other. Ian asks that they tell each other everything, and although Mickey is more resistant to that initially, he becomes much more forthcoming with his feelings in s11 (around Terry, around moving to the West Side, around becoming a parent).

While I appreciate Ian’s role in initiating more communication between the two of them, I felt sorry for Mickey in their initial discussion in 11x01 in re “monogamous or not”. The turning over the paper method is a pretty binary way to open up a discussion about a very charged and complicated thing.

They do seem to complement each other in this regard though with Ian generally more keen to initiate conversation but also getting more trapped into binaries, narratives of normativity and should-stories. While Mickey totally still projects an image that is informed by local expectations around masculinity and white supremacy, he’s also a rule-breaker in many ways and doesn’t have the same desire to conform to what society perceives to be “normal” (thanks HoS), especially behind closed doors and within his relationship with Ian (“liking what I like don’t make me a bitch”). @fiona-fififi had a really good point in the tags a while back about how Mickey’s investment in their wedding and its success might have spurred Ian on further to embrace more normative ways of doing relationships. This is super interesting, and also makes me think just about how being married itself prompts Ian to think about taking a more active role in pushing the relationship further up the relationship escalator and in pushing for more communication around these steps in general.

There’s also something to be said about pressurising each other in 11x07, especially when they jokingly(?) threaten each other with sex with other men if both of them aren’t around. I doubt they were making these suggestions seriously but it definitely doesn’t strike me as the most consensual method of communication. But there’s parallels here with generally using sex as a bargaining chip earlier on in the season. Ian seems to do that after having exhausted his attempts at trying to have conversations around money/monogamy etc, as a tried and tested way of getting Mickey to engage with him. And it definitely reflects using sex with each other and sex/relationships with other people (e.g. s3 Angie/Ned, s10 Byron/Cole) as modes of communication in earlier seasons. It kind of makes sense that they still have these habits in s11 even if they are no longer the primary mode of communication.

Ian and Mickey relied so much on implicit communication in the early seasons and they have highly developed nonverbal ways of communicating. I don’t want to say that either verbal or nonverbal ways of communicating are inherently better than the other. They seem to understand each other on a deep level, which is really cool, but people have pointed out can make them think they don’t need to verbally communicate when they do, because they assume that they’ll understand one another and be on the same page. It’s super interesting to see them maintain that deep connection and continue to use nonverbal cues while also adopting more explicit and intentional communication styles in s10 and s11.

The windows of their relationship

The fandom is always bringing up how Ian and Mickey leave the doors open when they bang, lol, and also making fun of how much Ian overshares. I think this is v fair but it also strikes me as pretty healthy that he wants people to see into his and Mickey’s relationship, especially in his discussions with Lip. But Ian’s got plenty of people around him who can see and help when things get tough.

In s11, it’s great to see Mickey get closer to the Gallagher family and see various members defending him or taking his side in arguments, but he definitely does have less of an on-screen support system than Ian. (I wish that they had developed his and Sandy’s relationship in s11). I think the aftermath of the City Hall incident in s10 really reveals this particular imbalance in their relationship. On one level, Mickey moves in with Byron as a reaction to being hurt and even maybe a strategy of revenge/manipulation, on another, he doesn’t really have anywhere to go aside from the Gallagher house when/if he needs to get away from Ian. Also, the way he retreats back to the Gallagher house when he can’t deal with the Westside is an interesting development of this in s11.

Ian’s need to share stuff about their relationship is kind of exciting considering his history of being unforthcoming about his relationships (and his history of being in a lot of secret relationships), as well as how difficult he found it to talk about Mickey while Mickey was away. But there is a different problem with ongoing talk around privacy and boundaries here too (Mickey doesn’t want Ian to chat about how he’s not into rimming!). Although to be fair, Mickey also chats about a lot of explicit sex stuff with strangers.

Although they do ultimately decide against pursuing the pretty inorganic way of making friends in 11x07, Ian’s desire to make gay friends who he can talk to about relationship stuff makes sense in terms of the way he has been pushing for a more intentional relationship with more communication and more explicit discussion and compromise this season (and last season too). It also intersects with an idea of him/both of them going further to embrace gay sexuality as an identity.

It’s interesting that Mickey’s the one to initiate this decision through ribbing Ian about his relationship with Lip. Why’s Mickey doing that? Is it just to be a little shit or is he also trying (subconsciously?) to activate Ian in some direction? (And also, maybe there’s a parallel there to getting their apartment in the west side, where Mickey’s the one inadvertently introducing Ian to the idea by pushing for them to go play in the pool).

-----------

There’s a lot here which is just scratching the surface of thinking about Ian and Mickey’s relationship in the context of these different sexuality and relationship continua. For e.g. it would be really interesting to think more about this stuff in terms of shifting sex roles and kink exploration. Of course it’s all up for interpretation and I am sure I am highlighting areas that I’m personally interested in and inadvertently projecting myself/my own preferences and styles into this discussion. Very down for disagreements and discussions if other people are interested and manage to read all of this, lol.

#Ian x Mickey #Gallavich #shameless meta #shameless 11x07 #sexuality #relationships #Meg-John Barker #shameless s11 #Ian Gallagher #Mickey Milkovich #why did i write all of this?#Shameless HoS

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hopeymchope · 3 years

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Persona Lite with Fire Emblem sprinkles on top

I’ve been addicted to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore on my Switch for the past few weeks, and I’m getting close to wrapping it up. I figured it’s high time I talked about it a bit.

The game that would become Tokyo Mirage Sessions (TMS) was first announced as “Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem,” which is absolutely not a good way to describe what this became.

This title led so many people astray.

What comes to mind when you think of (mainline) Shin Megami Tensei games? An apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic setting. First-person-perspective battles. Negotiating with demons. Battles against deities. TMS contains a little bit of the third thing on that list, and none of the others.

What comes to mind when you think of Fire Emblem? Medieval-era settings. Permadeath (either optional or mandatory). RTS-style combat. The famed “weapon triangle.” Support conversations. TMS contains the fourth thing on that list, and none of the others.

But let’s be honest here: For most people (especially Westerners), the first thing you think of when you think about Shin Megami Tensei isn’t even the games with “Shin Megami Tensei” in the title. It’s the Persona series! They’ve grown far more popular than their parent franchise at this point.

So I suppose it was natural that TMS is, at its core, a “Persona Lite” game. The darker edges of Persona titles are removed in favor of something more T-friendly, but the basics are all there: A group of teenagers in modern-day Japan discover a strange alternate dimension that they can access which also gives them the ability to summon supernatural powers/entities. When people start to go missing in this other dimension, it falls to this group of teens to unite and save the day, ultimately leading to them discovering the reason why this alternate world has been bleeding into modern Japan in the first place and, in the end, saving humanity from annihilation. That’s totally how Persona works, and it’s also totally how Tokyo Mirage Sessions works!

However, instead of summoning Shin Megami Tensei demons as “Personas,” the heroes of TMS summon Fire Emblem characters that are “Mirages.” Each character is permanently linked to a single Mirage, so there are no “Wild Card” characters here. However, you can level the characters’ mirages up to make them take on new forms and new abilities. FE fans will notice that all of the characters here are from the Falchion/Tiki/Shadow Dragon stories - the two Marth adventures (Shadow Dragon/Mystery of the Emblem) and the semi-recent 3DS hit Awakening.

For some weird reason, all of the Fire Emblem “mirages” wear helmets, masks, or other face coverings 100% of the time. The only exception is Tiki.

The lack of the darker themes in many Persona games and the fact that there’s no “Wild Card” to manage is what makes this, in my opinion, more like PERSONA LITE. And then you get your Fire Emblem backup characters to serve as extra flavoring. The characters we meet from Fire Emblem are rarely the focus — you spend most of your time with the teen heroes — but they still manage to show off their unique personalities and carry in a load of FE fanservice. (The good kind of fanservice where it’s full of references and nods to the continuity of the series, I mean. Not the other kind where it’s softcore porn.)

Fire Emblem fanservice was one of the biggest delights for me here. If you’re looking for any SMT/Persona characters to pop up and link the continuity together, you can stop looking because they aren’t here. But if you want to see specific characters from the three source FE games pop up here, a metric ton manage to do so. For example: Tharja (from Awakening) creates two golems for training purposes, which she names Bord and Cord after the pair of heroes from Marth’s era. And then the actual spirits of Bord and Cord possess those golems. So naturally, they start bickering and fighting. It’s delightful.

So yeah, there’s plenty of nods for FE fans to appreciate even if your favorite characters are taking a back seat to a bunch of teenagers. Fire Emblem fans will recognize the heroic mirages, the enemy boss mirages, the weapon triangle weakness/strength system and lots of musical cues. On the flip side, Persona fans will recognize the story structure, the magic spells the characters wield (things like “Mazio” and “Diarama” and “Rakukaja”), the common enemies you encounter and cameos from a few of the more famous demons found on signage around Tokyo. Sadly, there are no familiar sounds or music pieces borrowed from SMT/Persona that I noticed.

In addition to the main story, there are also “Side Stories” for your party and side quests from various NPCs. The whole game lasts around 50 hours even if you aren’t trying to 100% it.

And while the music here is mostly pretty good — especially the Fire Emblem themes — I really wish we’d gotten some Persona-style tunes in here. Persona soundtracks are absolutely killer and everybody knows it. I wanted to hear some Shihoko Hirata, some Lotus Juice, some Yumi Kawamura, some Lyn Inaizumi. Alas, that never happens. Sad face.

In fact, as far as vocal tracks go, you’ll only be hearing the performances of the main characters. See, the story this time revolves around a group of teens who are hired by a talent agency to become young starlets of the stage and screen. You meet plenty of pop idols, a cooking show host, aspiring actors, and those who do combinations of the above. There’s a lot of focus on the Japanese entertainment industry, and it’s mostly a very positive portrayal about how hard teen stars work to reach their dreams and how fulfilling it can be when they express themselves through their artistic pursuits. Speaking as someone who legitimately does not care one iota about the idol industry in Japan or Asia as a whole, I’m very happy that these characters managed to remain likable and their pursuits stayed enjoyable throughout. No one here is an ultra-deep character, but no one here is a total cipher, either. I’m additionally thankful that the vocal songs are another highlight of the soundtrack alongside the FE tunes.

The last thing I’ll bring up is the “Sessions” mentioned in the title. It’s a battle mechanic wherein striking an enemy with a weapon or element they’re weak to will enable other characters to start jumping in with follow-up attacks. At first, it’s just one or two follow-ups, but by the game’s end, you might be sitting there for 15 or more consecutive strikes on an enemy after you initiate a “Session” of follow-ups. The greatest quality-of-life improvement built into this Switch port is that you can turn on “Quick Session” to make these attack animations much shorter and more rapid than they ever were in the Wii U original. I never had to play that one, but I can’t imagine I’d have much patience for constantly triggering 15 attack animations with every round. SO glad I don’t have to sit through that.

This is just a two-strike Sessions, so it won’t last long enough for you to take a beverage break.

So yeah, there’s a lot for RPG fans, Persona fans, and most of all, Fire Emblem fans to dig in “Tokyo Mirage Sessions.” And since we already covered that Danganronpa fans are apparently predisposed to enjoying Persona and Fire Emblem, that probably means that YOU, dear reader, are likely to dig this game as well.

#tokyo mirage sessions #tokyo mirage sessions fe #tokyo mirage sessions fe encore #persona #fire emblem #video games #video game reviews

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dakt37 · 3 years

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Avengers Assemble - Feral Outlaw Stony

So I've been expanding on this concept I doodled before Christmas, where Steve goes with Tony into the no-tech dimension at the end of season 3. Probably a lot of stuff isn't canon-compliant (beyond the obvious change that is), but "It's an AU so I do what I want" rules apply. Anyway.

The tl;dr is: The two of them spend a little time puttering around the weird no-tech dimension, and then get absorbed into Battleworld. They become explorers, helping people out and falling in love along the way.

(Once again, I feel like someone must have had this idea already, but I’ve never looked.)

Cut for excessive rambling.

~~~

Not all the areas we see in the show are present in Battleworld when Steve and Tony first arrive, so the boys spend most of their time traveling around, mapping the place out as it expands. A lot of my ideas rely on them still having little-to-no access to modern conveniences. Obviously someplace modern has to show up for them to get their hands on a pickup truck and a motorcycle, but I’m picturing a post-apocalyptic junkyard that’s been picked clean of anything obviously useful. They get the vehicles working by sheer force of “I’m Tony-fucking-Stark.” But like that fully functional NYC area is way too convenient, so it’s not around yet. (tbh I’m not even sure if it’s an alternate NYC or theirs, in which case it wouldn’t show up until the other Avengers do anyway)

They get the low-down on the "Battleworld" concept by eavesdropping on one of Beyonder's* welcome speeches. They realize that they are uniquely off the grid, because Beyonder didn't know they were in the no-tech dimension when he added it to Battleworld. They decide it's advantageous to maintain this secret status, but they're still Avengers™️ so they can't NOT help out wherever they can. But they don’t stick around any one place for long. Basically, they become vagrant vigilantes in addition to surveyors. They get a lot of their “stuff” (clothes, tools, toiletries, etc) as payment for odd jobs, or gifts from grateful locals they rescue. They get some food from populated areas as well, but also rely on foraging and hunting while on the lam. They have definitely eaten dinosaur at some point.

(*He doesn't get the nickname "Beyonder" until the other Avengers show up. In this AU Steve and Tony refer to him as "The Entity" or "Suspenders." You can probably guess who tends to use which.)

On top of the survival story, it's also a getting-together story. Steve and Tony flirt and pine and bicker and flirt some more, until a squabble turns into a confession and they finally start kissing. There’s plenty of time for “it’s cold in this wasteland and we only have one blanket, oh no,” but they’re firmly established as romantically involved by the time the other Avengers show up and they have the final showdown with Beyonder.

Anyway a lot of the AU notes I've been making are about the functional side of their Big Camping Adventure. So here's a bunch of lists about vehicles, gadgets, and navigation.

Vehicle stuff:

If Tony is riding passenger on the motorcycle, he can clip his repulsor boots into special footrests that reroute the energy and give the bike a speed boost.

The bike has a tow cable. Steve can harpoon things using a spring-action firing mechanism, including cliff faces to help him scale steep terrain. The cable can also be uncoiled manually, like when Tony takes flight while holding the end so he and Steve can clothesline hostiles.

Steve can stick his shield several places on the bike depending on what’s convenient. On the front as a windscreen/battering ram, on one side for easy grabbing, and even on Tony’s backpack so Tony can snuggle in properly while riding passenger and keep both their backs protected.

They probably don’t even need a ramp to get the bike into the bed of the pickup. Steve just picks it up and puts it there.

The evolution of Marsha (the truck) into a full Hulkbuster-style mech takes a long time. For the majority of their time in Battleworld, it’s just a truck with an ever-increasing number of weird add-ons.

Marsha can function as a tiny camper home. The cargo bed liner is a false bottom, which can be pulled up and rearranged to form a cover/roof. Underneath the liner, the actual truck bed is about a foot deeper, with most of that storage space taken up by a mattress and bedding.

Tony can pull a cable out of Marsha’s steering column and plug it directly into his arc reactor. This unlocks extra features and weapons. He generally has things balanced so that Marsha drawing power doesn't affect him any more than his armor drawing power would. But on rare and desperate occasions, he can overclock and hurt himself. Steve of course hates when he does this.

Turnabout is fair play though: at least once, something else damaged the arc reactor, so Tony plugged into Marsha to draw power from the battery for his electromagnet while he repaired the arc.

Gasoline can be difficult to procure, so both vehicles are hybrids. Tony just keeps adding new power conversion elements as they go along, based on what they can find.

F in chat for Tony’s armor:

Tony dismantles the armor he’d been wearing when they first went into the no-tech dimension.

Obviously he keeps skeletal versions of the repulsor boots and gloves in-tact enough to function.

He also keeps most of the helmet, for when he’s riding with Steve on the motorcycle. Mostly because Steve insisted. It's gutted of tech though, so if the faceplate stays as part of the design, the eyes are just holes (like in the classic comics).

The rest of the pieces are kept in a large packing trunk.

Tony repurposes some parts into useful gadgets for himself and Cap, plus the odd toy for other Avengers (like Widow’s new stinger gauntlets) because he’s optimistic like that.

Electronics use precious metals like gold and copper, so Tony scrapes some out to pay for things in certain areas of Battleworld, like the cowboy town or the pirate area. He might also barter with other general bits like wires and screws, but he avoids parting with any actual full tech.

Plug-n-play Gadgets

Since the power draw for Tony's electromagnet is actually fairly minimal, Tony makes use of the arc reactor as a charging station, mostly when he sleeps. It's not like there's a corner store they can drop by to get a pack of batteries. Things he charges include (but are not limited to):

Flashlight for Steve. The bulbs for it came from the eyes in the Iron Man helmet. Note: Tony doesn't need a flashlight himself because he can turn up his arc brightness apparently, lmao.

Camp stove. Steve questioned Tony building one for a hot second because hello we can build campfires to cook over? But then it’s raining and they're in a cave and Tony is like, "if you fill this space with smoke I will divorce you before we're even married." And Steve is like "camp stove wow yes okay." Also they had camp stoves in WW2 so honestly it was simply a Himbo Moment to disregard the virtues of one in the first place.

Walkie talkies. I know they had Avengers comms but I like the aesthetic of walkie talkies more. Maybe the comms relied on satellites that they obviously don't have anymore or something.

Navigation:

Speaking of a lack of satellites, the GPS in Tony’s armor is rendered useless. Steve is real smug about it and pulls out his old-fashioned compass. But Battleworld also doesn’t have proper poles, so it just spins wildly for a few seconds and then points at Tony’s electromagnet. Not to be deterred, Steve declares, “Well, you’re never lost if you can find Polaris.” They look up and realize that the night sky, despite having stars and a moon, is not at all arranged the way it is on Earth.

Tony takes this as a Challenge. He builds a sextant, then spends the next several nights in a row muttering math under his breath as he painstakingly creates a hand-drawn star chart. This, combined with landmarks, becomes the primary way they orient themselves as they roam around Battleworld.

Many nights, Steve and Tony lie in the bed of the pickup together and make up constellations named after other Avengers and friends. Steve makes a copy of Tony’s star chart and sketches artistic renditions of the constellations on top. To close this post with an interesting visual, here’s an example of what Tony’s star map might look like vs what Steve’s would more resemble:

#avengers assemble #avengers assemble AU #battleworld AU #Feral Outlaw Stony AU #stevetony #dakity yaks #Dakt rambles about Avengers stuff #long post

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chrisjake-cp · 3 years

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History 3 Trapped Filming Diary (full English translation) - Days 41-50

Masterpost here.

I don’t own the book so I can’t post my scans of the pictures that came with it. So I included some other pictures of the scenes that were being filmed. These pics belong to LINE TV or Choco Media, or I’ve taken screenshots from the episodes or the behind-the-scenes.

Read days 41-50 under the cut.

Day 41

On this day of shooting it happened to be Christmas, and the crew, waiting for the evening shooting process, enjoyed a Christmas gift exchange. Shaofei gave out a book; according to him it was a very inspirational book. A crew member who does hair and make-overs nearby opened it and laughed jokingly: “What kind of ‘inspiration’ do you mean?”, causing Shaofei’s thoughts to immediately go into another direction to the point of him not even being able to say it out loud (I can tell you: he was very bashful!). The whole crew also acknowledged that the most creative gift was a big bunch of green onions⁕ from Sanxing. When this present was opened the whole crew burst out in crazy laughter, but it need also be said that this was a most memorable gift.

⁕ Sanxing is famous for its spring onions! They even have a little museum dedicated to green onions there.

Also, what kind of book did Jake gift someone? 👀

Day 42

The day after Christmas, Boss Tang arrived at work, and the first thing he did was accept his gift from the Christmas gift exchange from the day before. So what did Boss Tang receive?

*ding ding* The answer is 20 Christmas trees and a bottle of “Indian Spiritual Oil”⁕ At the appearance of this gift, everyone nearby immediately laughed loudly, and I also silently expressed my heartfelt wishes for Tang Yi’s and Meng Shaofei’s happiness.

For today’s scenes, basically the whole ‘world’ had to be there: Unit 3, Tang Yi, A De, Hong Ye, Daoyi and Jingtang were all present, so the set was really lively. What was shot that day were the scenes after Hongye and Shaofei were injured in the parking lot. In order to increase the conflictual character of these scenes, the director assigned each actor their own, individual combination. What was interesting is that during rehearsals, the cameramen all quickly approached the actors like a large quantity of reporters. A De said smiling that the group of people was so large that it looked like an oncoming tank and he could only silently take the ‘card position’⁕ each time.

⁕ This oil is basically like viagra...but topical instead of taking a pill....It’s a natural plant oil but it contains some anaesthetics which will irritate the skin a bit (making your you-know-what more erect as it grows hot) and the anaesthetics will also cause you to last longer. Ahem. Let’s all imagine Chris receiving this gift. 😂

⁕ The card position comes from a basketball or football game. It means that during the game, when the ball is in the air, the player accurately judges the effective landing point of the ball, takes the lead in the opponent's position, and blocks the opponent out of the best position to gain control. Here it means that Stanley just chose the best position to gain control/the upper hand in the scene.

Day 43

Today we continued to shoot the hospital scenes. Shaofei said smiling that today was another aptly-named day of “earning money while lying down,” as he was lying down from the first scene in the morning to the last scene in the evening. After several consecutive days of intensive shooting, the hospital scenes were back in Taoyuan. Shaofei said he had been getting out of bed at 4am in the morning for several days in a row, and that day was no exception. So during the moments when he wasn’t in the shots, he could openly but stealthily catch up on some sleep in the bed, which made everyone present pretty envious.

Zhaozi just gets better the more he acts. Just look at his slightly wrinkled brows.

Day 44

In the last episode, Zhaozi took Tang Yi to see Shaofei [in the hospital] for the last time. Tang Yi, who had carelessly pulled the trigger and accidentally shot Shaofei was already handcuffed. He told Shaofei he would hand He Hang as well as Zhou Guanzhi over to the police. Zhou Guanzhi was the enemy who killed his father. In these past four years, Tang Yi’s biggest goal was to single-handedly murder his father’s killer. For Tang Yi to now agree to let Zhou Guanzhi live and to hand him over to the police, meant Tang Yi had made the ultimate concession.

Because he had persisted in his revenge, he had caused his lover to be hospitalized with a gunshot. Since meeting Tang Yi, Shaofei had been assaulted in big and small ways, and suffered injuries because of him. Tang Yi discovered that his stubbornly insisting on having his own way was a big factor in Shaofei getting hurt. If this continued, Shaofei would one day be ‘killed’ by Tang Yi. Kept apart by handcuffs, kissing your lover like that; what kind of plot could be more cruel than that?

Tang Yi, even while being handcuffed, was very witty/playful. He didn’t forget to stick his tongue out to the camera.

Day 45

Long time no see! I believe that people who have watched <Right Or Wrong< should not be too unfamiliar with Dr. Jintang’s “uncle-in-law” Jiang Zhaopeng. He is Qiu Zhiyu whom we haven’t seen for a while. Before filming, these two cultivated their understanding of their lines by videochatting [i.e. they practiced their lines] (and also cultivated the signals between both of their phones). One of the most frightening things in filming is the screen of a cellphone. Apart from this scene, the drama shows many different mobile phone screens; every time a call had to be made, or when a LINE conversation happened, etc. Only, whether or not the signal would be good, is an element that no one can control. If the signal is not good, phone calls won’t go through, or the moment when the phone rings doesn’t match the plot. Sometimes it can take a good number of takes, not to mention that this scene needed a video call. If the signal would not be good, the video and the sound might have been chopped. But we had a close call and the signal in the hospital was very stable, allowing us to be able to smoothly complete the take.

Zijian, who portrays Jiang Jintang, has a lively and witty personality. He would often say crazy things that amused the crew. In the evening, we filmed that Shaofei followed Tang Yi to the hospital to see Jintang [the massage scene]. Jintang wanted to angrily quarrel with Meng Shaofei, because he didn’t expect them to arrive together. His red face, his hard breathing and his stammering made all the staff on the scene instantly almost collapse from laughter. Even Shaofei, who was doing the scene with him, and Tang Yi, who was lying down behind them, couldn’t keep in their laughter.

At another rehearsal, Jintang was planning to jump on Tang Yi’s back, but because he hadn’t well coordinated his position, Boss Tang’s knees hit Jintang straight in his ‘important parts’. The staff who were on the scene jokingly told him to jump on the spot, and he actually did it. This was also a ‘pain in the balls.’⁕

⁕ Same expression was used in day 37. It’s more literal here. You can see this happening in the behind-the-scenes.

Day 46

Today we filmed father and son Chen Wenhao and Tang Yi meeting in front of Lizhen’s grave. The weather at the cemetery site was very unstable. Sometimes an uninterrupted drizzle floated by, and at other times wind and rain became quite strong. Occasionally, the sun would stealthily sneak out from the clouds to join in on the fun, adding many changes to the shooting. But the two actors were not in the slightest affected by these elements. As if their surroundings were all congealed together, the two looked at each other and cried really heart-wrenchingly. Afterwards, Chengyang [Chris] also frankly admitted that for this scene his mood was very complex, and it was very hard on him. Tang Yi stood in front of his biological mother’s tomb, and his biological father, whom he once thought to be her killer, walked up to him. At that moment, that kind of “crying” already wasn't just tears simply shed from sadness anymore.

When he heard the gunshot as he exited the graveyard without even looking back, Chris said that his heart was really hurting so much that he almost couldn’t go on.

A big thank you to teacher Jiakui, who plays Wenhao, to give [Chris] ample ability, and to push him beyond the limits of what he could do. What is even more special, is that today was, coincidentally, also Chris’ birthday. To shoot such a meaningful scene on his birthday and falling apart crying like that, really must have left a deep impression on him.

Day 47

The day when the entire Unit 3 team got together, happened to be the very last day of 2018. Today’s MVP was Junwei [played by Ethan Liu]. Everyone most likely knows about the meeting between Unit 3 and the international criminal police division where Junwei was tasked with reporting duties.

That day Junwei was constantly drilling and rehearsing, because all his lines needed to be correctly and fluently spoken for that role to be acted out well. One of the biggest causes for stress is that when you start failing takes, the whole crew and all the actors are just waiting. One can imagine that that is a very big pressure.

Originally everyone joked and said that before noon they would surely be able to go home to celebrate the New Year, but in the end, it took until in the afternoon for the first scene to finish smoothly and everyone on Unit 3 could begin to plan how they would spend New Year’s Eve. But our poor Captain and Shaofei had to stay behind to continue the next scene. Shaofei felt wronged and said to Zhaozi: “Where is the morality in him [the captain] being so happy?”

Day 48

Outside it was drizzling, but inside, the room was brimming with nervous energy as Tang Yi took Jack to negotiate with Old Ke, while Shaofei from his side and Unit 3 rushed inside as an important step and wiped out the place.⁕

While waiting for their scenes, each of the Unit 3 were doing their own activities. First Shaofei looked for a quiet place in the room and silently sat reading the script for the future scenes. With his usual style, he would use differently coloured pens to write down dialogue that belongs to Jake and Shaofei.⁕ Zhaozi, in turn, would be lying on the very big bed inside the room, and would both be talking to Junwei, having a pillow fight with Jack and taking selfies with his cellphone.

And how did Tang Yi spend the time waiting for his next scene? The answer is that he had rolled himself up in a quilt and fell into a deep sleep. No matter if Shaofei would loudly yell, “Where is Tang Yi?” outside the room, Tang Yi slept through it all.

⁕ The very first scenes of the whole show, when Shaofei and his team barges through the door! Some of the very first words we ever hear coming out of Shaofei’s mouth are “Where is Tang Yi?” MY HEART. This show is so well-made.

⁕ There’s an example of what Jake’s script looked like in the “HIStory 3: Trapped The Making of...” book. ankdlgdndkgn it’s the hospital balcony scene. The thing that he writes in black, between the two red exclamation marks... “This is the show’s first kiss!!! (Vixen Andy doesn’t count).” WHY IS HE SO CUTE?

Day 49

For shooting the scenes at the exterior of the police station, we borrowed the Xizhi branch police building. That Xizhi branch building which only opened in 2017, is very new and very beautiful. The interior was also very spacious, so we had plenty of room to use.

On that day there happened to be a major traffic incident in that jurisdiction area, and both clerical and field police officers were busy bustling about. Even news reporting vehicles were driving in and out. We were able to witness the police officers' work that we usually don’t have opportunity to see. Thanks to all the protectors of the people for their hard work.

Today’s Xizhi police station was bustling and lively. Thanks as well to the fans of Director Qingrong who, during the afternoon tea time, came to visit the set and brought snacks like donuts and coffee. In the afternoon the weather turned cold and it started to drizzle. But the fans braved the wind and the rain and came anyway, and even gave handwritten cards to the actors and the director, which was really sweet.

Day 50

Day 2 at the police station. Today’s weather was nothing like yesterday’s “sunny and cloudy with an occasional shower”. Today the sun was shining very brightly, and the temperatures soared straight to 30 degrees. It was the perfect weather to play a song called “I love summer.”

We shot the scene where three members of Unit 3 talked with Jack at the door. They had to walk outside from inside the police station and each time they had to redo the take, everyone went back into the building with a look of total unwillingness. They opened their eyes widely and took a very deep breath, and with a blank look in their eyes they wiped their sweat and used a small fan to keep cool. Phew, foreheads were filled with beads of sweat, and everyone’s clothes were also soaked with sweat.

In the afternoon we filmed the scene from the last episode when Boss Tang goes to the police station to wait for Shaofei to get off work, when Jack also happened to ride his motorbike to pick up Zhaozi from work. At that time, the weather was still very sunny. Boss Tang, who wanted to sit on his car’s hood to wait for Shaofei, suddenly yelled out. Apparently the vicious sun had rendered the hood burning hot, which made boss Tang jump up in sudden fright.

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gemjupiter · 3 years

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Gemini: A Love Letter

This was inspired by this dreamwidth post about Hoshi of Seventeen, in which they briefly mentioned that it’s frustrating to see him be reduced to a chaotic gemini stereotype because of his birth chart and as a fellow gemini stellium haver myself let’s talk about gemini (i hope op will forgive me for blatantly ripping quotes from their manifesto but they illustrate my point perfectly)

Gemini is seen in general by people who are not balls deep in astrology as chaotic, two faced, annoying, and like the epitome of the “mean girl” i remember being 13 sending my friends astrology instagram posts and jumping on the gemini hate bandwagon for all these reasons which aren’t actually super true of gemini placements. So what do i think is true about gemini placements? This can be boiled down into two categories: information and connection.

Information

This may seem slightly out of left field but i wanna talk about the “two faced” stereotype in this section because i think it’s a fantastic example of gemini’s tendency to pick up on a lot of information being misconstrued.

My little sister is a gemini sun and it has always been fascinating to me to watch her reinvent herself at the drop of a hat. In the span of a week I watched her decide she wanted to be an egirl, learn everything she could about the ‘subculture’, start dressing and acting the way she’d seen, decide she wanted to be a vsco girl instead and repeat the process. It is truly something to behold the speed at which gemini can learn a bunch about a topic, drop it and move onto the next one, and the way gemini suns especially combine this with how they present themselves to the world.

Gemini’s are just constantly acting on and implementing new information into their lives. I think about how in Hit The Road Jun from Seventeen talked about the parts of the other members that he admires and tries to imitate and it’s just such a classic gemini move.

So why aren’t gemini’s typically pegged as an intelligent sign by the general public the way that say virgo is? Because above all else what gemini really values is connection and communication

Connection

This is really the crux of my hot take, love is stored in the gemini. All gemini wants is to know and be known, the mortifying ordeal of being known and I think we as a society should start letting them reap the rewards of being loved!

Of course in practise most people love gemini’s, the number of undebatable icons in the famous gemini’s club (marilyn monroe, morgan freeman, bob dylan, naomi campbell, hyuna, ailee, dawn, yves, prince) wendy williams was talking about gemini’s when she said “she’s got a point, she’s an icon, she’s a legend, and she is the moment”. But what I really wanna talk about is all the love gemini’s have to give.

“You know how huge this world is? Amongst everyone, the land, the vast endless space of the universe...the fact that we were able to cross paths, this connection...is it destiny? I think that the time we have right now (together) is precious." (Hoshi, Fansign, February 2019)

Every gemini I’ve ever known has stressed the importance of friendship to me and how disheartening it is for them when they don’t feel like their friends understand them or really see them for who they are. Having a gemini stellium myself I often try to get closer to people by finding out what they’re into and then also getting into that thing and it’s on some level frustrating to not have that desire to know what things make you happy reciprocated. It’s a kind of imagined courtesy all majorly gemini afflicted people have, and as the sign of communication we should probably be better about letting people know what we expect in relationships.

[To the other members] "We should be considerate of each other when we speak, and when someone speaks to you, you should understand that they're trying to be considerate of you too" (Hoshi, One Fine Day Season 1)

“When the topic of the choreography for 'Thanks' came up, Hoshi talked about and showed everyone how while making it, he incorporated sign language into the choreography, wanting to show the meaning of thanks through both the song and the movements” (source)

“I think I might as well have confidence and live positively. I am the type to try and put effort to think in a more positive way. [But when it comes to other people] ... I don't go around saying ‘whatever it is, have strength’ annoyingly. When things get hard and tough, we share it and get tired together and then, also together, we would gather our energy back” (Hoshi, Elle Magazine, March 2020)

“I gained interest in choreographies with story-telling in them while thinking about what choreography can set us apart from other idols together with the choreographer-hyung, and paid attention to that part. Since I wanted to make a performance where we can play around freely, I naturally got ideas from musical elements.” (Hoshi, Dazed Magazine, 2017)

“I sometimes stay quiet because with Korean, I don’t know how to express my thoughts in a more clever way” (Jun, Hit the Road)

I find that gemini placements tend to both be kind of careless with their words and extremely thoughtful about them. A lack of brain to mouth filter but with primarily good intentions I guess. As the sign of communication it makes sense that gemini’s really value communication and how they express themselves but if I may get on my gemini mercury soap box for a moment the way I speak to people and the words I use is very very important to me especially as I’ve come into adulthood I take great care in communicating in a way that is kind and friend shaped which is why I say that receiving a stream of consciousness from someone with a gemini placement is an act of love comparable to making a homemade valentines card. To be able to trust someone with your thoughts as they come to you and know that you will be understood and heard is the level of connection and intimacy that gemini craves

Thank you for coming to my long ass ted talk on why I love gemini’s and think they’re good actually, I wish I could say i extend this same level of enthusiasm and word vomit to academics but alas…

#spencer.txt #hey its the gemini meta i was talking about #gemini #is it meta is it a love letter? thats a secret i'll never tell #if this pops off perhaps i will do ones for the other signs #eyes emoji

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rotzaprachim · 4 years

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If you feel so inclined I would LOVE to hear more about your thoughts on heist movies (my favourite genre too!). Do you have a favourite?

why thank you! long story short the heist is the BEST genre and has the potential for a lot of fun and also if the story decides to go there, social commentary, but the heist is also a trick to pull off and takes a certain degree of skill!

on a craft level, a heist is interesting because it’s pure, contained narrative. i’m sure there are literary fiction type heists out there, but on the whole the heist is the genre that strips all pretensions bare and reveals the bare bones of the story. plotting is KEY. the heist pushes all the elements of techniquie- plot, timing, rising tension, information and its release- straight to the center, often in extremely practical ways I.E we’re all in this One Building together and need to get this One THings. we’ve all seen bad heist movies before, and we’ve enjoyed them, but we’ve also Known they were bad or at least unfeasible, because it was pushed right into the open. (doesn’t stop them from Fun)

leigh bardugo aka MASTER of this genre said in an interview once i think that a heist is all about the timed release of information, which. yes. heists are ALL ABOUT tension and reveals, and a good heist writer is good at tightly controlling the rise and fall of tension based on their manipulation of the situation

i LOVE genre fiction and am a massive Genre Fiction Defender, because i think sometimes authors can do their best work within the conventions and general plot outlines that a genre can provide. and a heist is both a fairly set and adaptable genre that can be outwardly applied to others, as well. a heist too can sit anywhere on the goofy to grimdark, and is also often blended the crime movie or organised crime movie (often the Set Up/antagonist). finally i think there’s a bit of a distinction within a heist movie- between a Heist (aka an organised plan to steal something in secret, generally) and a Con (a plan specifically revolving around Playing people). arguably the best of the genre Combine the two to maximise different kinds of storytelling and tension. the problems facing the heist tend to be physical, scientific or practical - an uncrackable safe, guard dogs, lazer-eyed alligators, etc, whereas the problems of the COn are human- finding the mark, the mark’s soft spots, and of course, the internality of the grifter(s) trying to work the mark. the COn aspect can be a really fascinating insight into human psychology.

there’s also just an endless amount you can do with having people pretending to be other people to Get Something DOne and how that can be used to explore themes like class and privilidge....

which segues into my next point that a heist DOESN’T have to be subversive or NECESSARILY interested in wealth redistrubution and rob-the-rich-give-to-the-poor (although some of the best written ones are the ones where this is the case IMHO). BUT. the writer has to be aware those tensions exist, even subliminally! they have to underpin the structure of the novel. arguably, along with the organised crime genre, a heist is interesting for the extreme economic cross section of society it often contains - characters who have been struggling or down on their luck their whole lives in some ways engaging with or pretending to be the nobility or wealthy. a good visual heist often exploits this visually.

the final point is that a multi-person heist often needs a good sense of interpersonal dynamics between the heist crew who you know, like all human being under pressure ESPECIALLY human beings who might not know each other and have prison/lives on the line, may not get along all that well

so. it’s a pile up here. good plotting. good timing. PRESSURe. class. human psychology. very few heists have ALL these elements, but i’d argue that to tick, a good heist needs at least some of them.

a lot of my favorites aren’t movies at all!

- six of crows duology leigh bardugo - this series really got popular on tumblr, and it’s very simple as to why- it’s fucking great. seriously. like the hunger games, it’s one of those ya series i reread this summer and was reminded how well it stands up. (i wouldn’t read the grisha trilogy it intersects with until after, it is not NEARLY as good.) SOC works due to how well bardugo understands her characters, both in terms of internality and the wider political/social/cultural trends of the early industrial fake!amsterdam world they life in and importantly how the external and internal interact, and manages five and then six distinctive POV’s of a heist team MASTERFULLY. (no one in it is like vaguely a teenager is my only serious criticism). takes a while to get going but a knockout of a series.

(they’re making a tv series of it which mixes it in with a bunch of other content LOOSING the tight “nothing including but the plot-necessary and yet richly detailed” writing that made it in the first place. but. whatever

- leverage

the heartwarming series about a team of crooks becoming a Family and dealing with individual trauma while starting to To Good and rob the rich to give to the poor in the aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis! genuinely one of the best shows i’ve ever seen, the plot of the week was always really entertaining and fun but the show did an admirable job of running a good course and finishing in a good place with serious character development in a satisfying way! i especially love the female characters in this one (hats off to inej and nina of six of crows too tho!!! love them) including a very well-written woman in her 40′s and an autistic woman coming into herself while being a baddass thief. and alec hardison is just. the best EVER

- “time heist” - season 8 of doctor who

this is just one episode and it’s very classic goofy WHO BUT! i think it manages in 45 minutes to be both a goofy fun alien time and a genuine homage to the genre that has some good reveals

- timeless is NOT a heist show blatantly but in the way they used time travel there was often examples of Good Heist Writing

- arguably, though not as a WHOLE, parts Rogue One

the locke lamora series, by scott lynch-

these are LONG but they are FUN

ocean’s 8 is also FUN

#heists #the heist genre #if i THINk of any i will ADD

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watching-pictures-move · 1 year

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Movie Review | Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (DeCoteau, 1988)

This review contains spoilers.

Not a lot to this, but if you accept that there’s a cap on how good this will be, it’s pretty enjoyable on its own modest terms. I’m no David DeCoteau expert, but this has similarities with Nightmare Sisters in that it stars Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens, has a plot that relates to fratboy types and sororities and related horndog behaviour, and is mostly set in one location. When I say there isn’t a lot to this, it’s that there isn’t a great deal of incident in its eighty minute runtime, no particularly outlandish possibilities entertained as a result of its premise (a sorority prank results in the protagonists getting trapped in a a bowling alley unleashing an evil imp, who possesses some of them and sics them on the other), so really how much you enjoy this depends on how much hanging out with these actors. And I like Quigley, Bauer and Stevens quite a bit, so I had a good enough time. A bunch of stray observations:

I complained in my review of the 2021 Mortal Kombat that the digital cinematography in that movie looked dark, murky and flat. The cinematography in this movie is certainly dark, but what a world of difference it makes when these things are shot on film and some thought goes into the lighting. Because the characters are running around a bowling alley at night, it’s understandably pretty dark, but the lighting in this movie all looks like a portal was blown open from another dimension, and the impossibly bright beams that emanate from it are enough to blind you.

The imp (who is voiced with a… racially questionable cadence) grants each of the characters a wish. Naturally one of them wishes to make it with Bauer, and pretty much all the nudity in the movie comes from this scene. (DeCoteau lovingly photographs the guy shirtless in addition to Bauer in the buff.) Most of the other wishes have a monkey’s paw element (gold that turns out not to be gold, a prom dress in tatters), and the twist here is that Bauer is a bit too excited? The way the movie edits this scene it seems like it might have gone on for a long time, but the guy nervously protests that she’s going too fast for him. There’s probably something interesting here about fratboy types getting cold feet when their fantasies might actually true combined with the bluntness with which the female nudity is presented.

Early in the movie there’s a sorority hazing sequence where Bauer and Stevens are paddled on their behinds in loving closeup. I’ve never been in a sorority, because I’m a dude, but have also never been in a fraternity, but I’ve always gotten an uncomfortably sexual vibe from depictions of hazing rituals. And this movie seemingly shares my viewpoint, as the head of the sorority gets transformed into a dominatrix after she’s possessed by the imp. Again, there’s probably some overarching commentary around sexual mores that can be read into the movie that’s maybe a bit more complex than the moralizing one associates with slasher movies of the era.

The male lead of the movie is introduced watching horror movies, and announces that he’d rather do that than go spy on the sorority house, and I’ve never related more strongly to a movie character in my life. Interestingly, while his friends are more concerned with peeping on girls and getting laid, he’s the only one who actually tries to form an actual relationship of equals with a woman in the movie. Of course, that woman is a burglar from the wrong side of the tracks played by Linnea Quigley, who, as she often does, totally steals the movie. But the fact that both of these characters have motivations and ways of thinking removed from the fratboy / sorority mindset ensures that they survive the ordeal.

In the parlance of a wise man, I’ve done the research, I’ve looked at the facts, I’ve analyzed the hard data and my conclusion is that there are few things more adorable than the specific way Quigley darts her eyes and curls the ends of her lips when she breaks into a covert smile.

#film #movie review #sorority babes in the slimeball bowl-o-rama #david decoteau

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ihititwithmyaxe · 4 years

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How to teach someone Magic: the Gathering

I got asked to explain how to teach someone Magic: the Gathering. I have taught many players, and here’s what I found works best when you’re starting from literally nothing. I hope you find this guide useful.

Magic is a hyper-dense game. There are 10x as many rules to teach as a starting player needs to know. If you’re introducing someone with zero experience with Magic, start with the bare minimum. The hardest thing about learning Magic is the sheer volume of rules. It is much harder than you’d think to present the game as too simple, but it is incredibly easy to overwhelm someone new with a barrage of rules and mechanics and vocabulary and interactions and and and and and. Magic is really complex, so the key is starting slow and simple.

Lesson 1: The most basic fundamentals Make two 30-card monocolor decks with only basic lands, creatures, and sorceries. No other card types to start with! You want the decks to be pretty low power level, evenly matched, with a good mana curve, have some simple ways to draw more cards, and include a few exciting but simple cards (Pelaka Wurm, Goliath Sphinx, Sunblast Angel, Rune-Scarred Demon, Thunder Dragon). Use those decks to teach the major essentials:

-parts of a card -turn structure -the mana system -the different zones (except exile and the stack. save those for later!) -how to cast spells and execute other common game actions -very basic rules (one land per turn, how to attack and block, etc) -essential vocabulary (destroy, untap, discard, draw, sacrifice, damage, target, etc)

Keep creatures simple: mostly vanilla and french vanilla, and a very few with enter the battlefield triggers. Avoid repeatable triggers. Use only one or two different keyword abilities per deck and stick to the really easily understood ones that don't break other rules: trample, lifelink, deathtouch, flying, defender, and reach are great introductory keywords. Avoid cards and mechanics that are exceptions to normal rules--as simple as they seem to experienced players, using vigilance, haste, first strike, hexproof, prowess, protection, menace, indestructible, and other creature mechanics make it harder to learn the essential game rules and get the hang of everything 'normal' these mechanics disrupt (tapping, timing, combat damage, targeting, lethal damage, power/toughness, etc). Don't even mention the stack. Don't use any creatures with activated abilities. Only teach the three card types in the starting deck. Use clear, straightforward, flavorfully resonant sorceries: Concentrate, Enlarge, Sever Soul, Righteous Charge, Flame Wave.

It is actually pretty useful to stack the top 10 or 11 cards of their deck the first game so they get a reasonable good flow of lands and spells they can cast on the first few turns (don't let mana screw or flood be their *very* first experience with the game, lol). Practice a few games with those decks, let the newbie stop whenever they want, try to let them win at least one game. Offer to switch decks so they can get a feel for the other deck they’ve seen you play and because seeing how an experienced player uses the same cards they were just using can be helpful, too. Unless the new player is super eager to keep playing, take a break here and call it a day before moving on to the next lesson.

Lesson 2: Enchantments and new Keywords When the new player is ready to play again, play a game to refresh the skills, vocabulary, and information from the first lesson. After a refresher game or two with the basic decks, if it seems like they mostly get the rudimentary game mechanics (not strategy--that’ll come later), explain enchantments by showing some auras and non-aura enchantments, add about 3 of each and 3 lands to both decks, add one sorcery or creature that can destroy enchantments to both decks, then shuffle up and play some more games. After creature, land, and sorcery, the easiest card type to explain using flavor is enchantment, and they are a very helpful bridge to understanding artifacts and equipment. Play a couple games with the decks until the new player gets some hands-on experience using enchantments and figures out how both types work. Then swap out a few vanilla creatures for ones with new keyword abilities that come up a lot: haste, vigilance, first strike, hexproof, menace/intimidate/fear (depending on what era of cards you have). Play a few more games with these decks, then probably take a break before advancing to the third lesson.

Lesson 3: Instants and the Stack Next time you play, if things so far are going well, play another game or two to refresh their memory of what they learned so far, then introduce instants. Instants are a fundamental step up in how games flow and open up a lot of strategy doors. Start with very simple but useful, interactive instants: giant growth, disperse, murder, lightning strike, disenchant. This is when you finally introduce the stack, and it will probably take some getting used to because it’s just a weird game mechanic, but necessary to how the game truly works. Some things have easy flavor to help you explain: “things with deathtouch are extra deadly,” or “things with wings can fly over things without wings.” The stack has no flavor to help you explain, it’s purely a bunch of game rules. This is also a good point to swap out the simplest vanilla creatures for a few slightly more complicated ones that can help players get excited and interested, cards that are easy to fall in love with and show off the most iconic things a color does: Overrun, Vampire Nighthawk, Mind Control, Ghostly Prison, Flametongue Kavu. Play a few games with just simple instants, sorceries, enchantments, creatures, and basic lands. The mechanics and strategies and gameplay here represents a huge amount of what Magic is about, and after a few games with these decks, your protege should have a pretty good foundation.

Recapping what you taught them Take a few minutes to talk through what they’ve been learning and put it into context. Ask them if they are seeing how the three major tangible resources (mana, cards, and life) interact. By now they probably are starting to ask strategy questions, which is great! Explain in simple terms the single most fundamental pillar of Magic strategy: card advantage. Illustrate with different kinds of card advantage: Divination & Mind Rot, Flametongue Kavu, Second Thoughts, Cloudkin Seer, etc. Give some general pointers they can apply in most games, like the more mana you use during each of your turns the better, and think through what creatures live or die in combat if you attack or block a certain way before you decide to do so.

If your pupil is really showing interest in the strategy, now is a fine time to explain the essence of the five colors and basic strategy of the five major deck archetypes. I’ve outlined a really simplified version of each below. But if they aren’t especially showing interest in this, it’s fine to save these explanations for later:

White wins because it’s tougher than you. Blue wins because it’s smarter than you. Red wins because it’s faster than you. Green wins because it’s bigger than you. Black wins because it wants it more than you.

Aggro (aggressive) decks deploy as many cheap, fast threats as early as possible to kill the opponent before they can get set up. They excel in the early turns of the game. Control decks prevent and disrupt the opponent’s game plan, build up card advantage, and win with just one or a few powerful, expensive threats. They excel in games that go long. Midrange decks deploy a mix of mid-sized threats and efficient answers, out-classing aggro decks and pressuring control decks. They’re at their best in the midgame. Ramp decks seek to increase their mana supply faster than the opponent in order to dominate them with more powerful spells than their opponent can afford. They effectively reach the later turns of the game sooner than the opponent. Combo decks combine cards that interact to generate an effect more powerful than the sum of their separate pieces, often winning immediately. They want to find assemble their combo pieces as fast as possible before dying to more conventional strategies.

Where to go from here If they are on board, learning well, and enjoying the game so far then it’s probably you have successfully recruited another Magic fan! If your card collection allows, there are some very common but tricky game elements it’s best if you’ve avoided until now: activated abilities and artifacts, +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters, and multicolor cards. If lessons 1, 2, and 3 went well, it doesn’t matter much which order you introduce these four new game elements. But consider if anything is giving them trouble. If your padawan is struggling with the instants and stack, more practice with that is helpful before introducing activated abilities. Similarly, someone having a hard time with combat math might benefit from more practice with that before learning counters that modify power/toughness. For someone not totally comfortable with how the mana system works, hold off before you introduce multicolor cards and 2-color decks.

The game mechanics I’d suggest learning after these are a teeny bit more complicated, but very common and just about essential for getting into the game at this point: the exile zone, tokens, and cards that care about creature type. It’s also a good time to start slowly introducing mechanics that make the actual gameplay better and more enjoyable: scry, cycling, modal cards, cantrips, tutoring, and color fixing. Getting mana screwed/flooded, not having useful cards, and not having the right colors of mana can make a game very frustrating. These mechanics make those common unfun situations in Magic much more avoidable by helping your rookie player draw the right cards in the right order in more games, which will in turn make learning the game a much happier experience.

Things new players don’t need to worry about Some parts of the game are just too complicated to bring up with someone just learning Magic. You will make learning the game easier for a rookie if you just don’t even bring these up until they really have the hang of the game. -Planeswalkers: They are so much more complicated than any other card type, but they are very cool. -Legendary: this adds so little from a game-play standpoint and is (just in mechanics) basically all downside and extra rules for negligible payoff. -Layers: while necessary for the game to work, put off explaining the layer system as long as you can. It boggles and frustrates, and is a pain to remember, even for people playing for a year or longer. -Formats: it’s easy for new players to worry about card legality and formats, but just focusing on what cards and gameplay are exciting and fun will reel someone in better without touching on this for a while. Compounding a new player’s efforts to learn basic rules with format-specific rules like Planechase, Archenemy, Commander, etc won’t help either. -Multiplayer: As tempting as it is to throw people into multiplayer games to play up the social aspect, many new players can find this overwhelming. A common new player response is to just give up trying to understand what’s happening in a game if there are too many cards to read and track, or play is moving too quickly. Patience on this. -Infrequent, retired, or complex mechanics: stay focused on practicing the basics and the evergreen mechanics (the ones in every or almost every set). Learning the core of the game is easier when you aren’t overloaded with new vocabulary. You can teach someone better without adding in proliferate, exalted, flashback, bushido, hybrid, escalate, or suspend. Protection has come back to the game and is starting to show up more, and regenerate is on tons of old cards that show up in reprint sets and Commander, but both of those mechanics are much denser than mechanics like double strike or scry. -Deckbuilding: this can be a daunting challenge that turns many new players away and often rubs in their face the parts of the game they are the least proficient in. You should do most or all of the deckbuilding or use precons for someone just learning the ropes unless they express a lot of interest in doing this themself.

I hope this guide helps you, but it is only a guide. Remember to teach following the interest and excitement of a new player. Magic is an awesome game, but lots of people find different things to love about it. Finding what your newbie loves is what will hook them into the game, so look out for that as they learn. And when you find things that especially delight them, show them more so they know whatever it is they love is something Magic is full of!

#magic the gathering #mtg #gaming #articles #how to

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radramblog · 3 years

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More Inevitable Hot Takes- MTG Announcement Day edition

I only have myself to blame for this one. I forgot this was upcoming, and I went and blathered about dumb preview cards from most of a month ago anyway. Well, now I’ve got to spend two posts in one week talking about Magic cards. Woe is me?

Once a year, WoTC has a big day where they announce, like, everything for the next year’s releases. And with the picking up speed of set releases, there’s a lot there, and thereby I have a lot to talk about.

To be clear, I’ve deliberately avoided Magic Twitter and Magic Reddit for these announcements. Tis a silly pair of places.

Standard Sets 2022

In order:

Kamigawa Neon Dynasty is very concerning, as one of the people who’s a genuine big fan of the original Kamigawa block. The thing is, I like Kamigawa, with it’s spirits and artwork and samurai and the like. I like cyberpunk, with the aesthetic and the themes and the music. I’m not sure I’m going to like the two combined. We better see some fucking weird-ass spirits, and I’ll only be slightly annoyed if they’re cyber-ghosts or whatnot as long as they maintain that bomb-ass art design.

We have a new plane and a set to go with it, which is cool and nice. Urban Fantasy is a thing Ravnica already did, to be honest, but if I had to guess, Streets of New Capenna is going to be a much more low-fantasy, noir-y take on the genre. I think I saw something about Azra returning, which is cool. That one on the key art looks…very Ob Nixilis-y, though.

And then we’re going back to Dominaria and actually doing The Brother’s War, again? I think Urza block was about that arc, though the Dominaria United set might be like, before all that nonsense. They might have given details, I wouldn’t have seen them, I’m going based on someone’s TL;DR. I’m excited to finally have a Mishra card that isn’t the Time Spiral one, though I’m concerned about how they’re going to make an Urza and a Mishra that are both powerful enough for the iconic characters but not so powerful as to be dominant in the Standard they’ll be legal in.

So, so much Universes Beyond

I think the four Warhammer 40k precon decks is kind of exactly what I was hoping we were going to get for that particular crossover. Just enough to get fans happy and make some fun new cards, not enough that there’s a ridiculous influx of Tyranids into Magic’s annals. I’d be interested to see what regular Magic cards translate well into these decks, seeing as they’ll have to be 40k-ified.

I feel similarly about the Baldur’s gate Commander draft set. I remember fans of that particular D&D spinoff were frustrated with the lack of representation in AFR (I think Minsk was like the only thing they got), so now they have a whole set to work with. Ultimately, D&D is now already, and interminably a part of Magic’s multiverse, and more from those particular realms isn’t going to make anything super fucky. Also, Commander Legends was cool as hell, and this is going to be another one of those, so that’s a plus.

And…a Lord of the Rings set? Like, a full set? I’m assuming whatever got them 40K also got them rights to tabletop LOTR, seeing as Games Workshop has run the LOTR tabletop game for a while. Like with D&D, the medium-high fantasy of LOTR crosses over pretty well into Magic, so I’m not worried about that kind of cockup making things Feel Weird. I’m a little confused about the legality of the set, though, seeing as it’s in Arena, but not Standard legal, but it is Modern legal? What and why and what about Pioneer or Historic?

Secret Lairs

Few hits, few misses, though I remember seeing spoilers from a few that aren’t on this list. Presumably, the Art Series: Johannes Voss, Thomas M. Baxa, and Purrfection and Math is for Blockers were announced separately? Anyway.

Hits: The Kamigawa Ink cards look drop-dead gorgeous, holy shit. Add in the fact that I already play two of those cards and that the others are all cards I like? Might have to get that one. Math is for Blockers is a fun lineup though I don’t…really get the theme? Both Artist Series look incredible, though I’m not huge on the card lineups.

Misses: PURRFECTION would be great if it wasn’t apparently a convention exclusive and also if the art of cats were on cat cards. It’s cute as fuck, but eh. The old-format walkers are frustrating, but I’m not as against them as a lot of people are- like they’re ugly, but not worth throwing a fucking fit over. I weep for any new player staring one of these down, especially if they barely understand planeswalkers in the first place and/or haven’t seen one of these particular ones before. Also, the art is kinda just ugly.

And then there’s the Universes Beyond ones. Fortnite and Street Fighter, both with new cards that will eventually have regular versions (which leads me to wonder if TWD will do the same). There’s a clear attempt here to hit the zoomers and the boomers in the community, though the former probably won’t have the money to afford the Secret Lair if they’re burning all their cash on V-Bucks. It’s…not a great look? Like I’m not opposed to cartoony art styles (the Goblins Kaboom SL looked great!) but Fortnite’s in particular looks like dogshit in my eyes and I’m not looking forward to seeing it in a Magic frame. Street Fighter I’m more excited for, because I like Street Fighter, and because they confirmed Chun-Li is going to have multikicker which is kind of perfect. Obviously we’re going to have to see the cards, but in one case I’m dreading that, and in the other I’m welcoming it.

Other Cards

We have more Challenger Decks, for Pioneer this time. The decklists are already out, and they look pretty solid! The Challenger Decks have been pretty cool previously, a really solid set of lists that only needed a bit of tweaking to be FNM-viable, but they were held back by the fact that they were often released not long before rotation. With Pioneer being a non-rotating format, this is going to be great for getting people into the format.

Another Double Masters set is…egh. It’s another thing that’s not for me, I can’t afford to whale on that shit. With shipping and conversion those packs end up ludicrously expensive in Perth, and I’m pretty sure I only got to play with one the first time. Also, this one is going to have all the collectable nonsense of 2020/21 Magic, which is going to be A Lot.

And another Jumpstart. Eh. Don’t cock the shipping on this one up and it’ll probably be okay.

Commander Collection Black is here, and the list is already out. The Green one ended up way overpriced, but at least in this case the cards are all super playable. Actually, they were for Green too, I think, but hey there’s a Deluge reprint and a flip Lilli, so. I kinda miss the Signature Spellbook series already, though.

Finally, Unfinity. Another Un-Set. Unstable was a fucking incredible set, both on a comedic level and as one of the sickest draft formats in a long time, so I’m excited to see that one followed up. On the other hand, Unsanctioned kind of landed with a dull thud. Apparently though, they got some of the folks from LRR (among others) to help write names and flavour text for this set, and I love those guys to death, so I can at least guarantee the comedy element will be present for this one.

Other stuff?

Well we have a date for the Netflix series. I have a hard time believing it’s actually happening. When I first started playing was around when rumours and announcements were still happening regarding a full-on movie, and that basically didn’t go anywhere. So it’s a little surprising to have a solid, actual time frame for Magic Story Content in Video Form. I haven’t kept with the story for a fair bit at this point (since Dominaria, tbh), so I’ve got no idea if it’s been any good, and as to whether this will be any good. Considering apparently Gideon’s in the lead, my hopes aren’t huge.

The only other thing is Pins. I like Pins. I have a bunch of them on my bag. I would like to get more Magic pins. So this is good.

And that, I think, is the sum total of it. These announcements always end up with a combination of excitement, trepidation, and dread, but I think this is leading more on the positive end of that spectrum. There’s still way too many fucking sets, but I think that is largely at Hasbro’s feet. The money machine must keep churning, after all. Maybe someday Magic and WoTC as a whole will be able to unshackle themselves from that particular constraint, but I am not holding my breath.

#ramble #mtg #hot takes

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hellyeahheroes · 4 years

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Building America Chavez in D&D 5e

Sorry I’ve been mostly quiet, but certain recent events made me wish to take a break from posting. I do feel bad I didn’t do more for a Pride Month, however so I thought of doing something that will let me combine both trying to lift my spirits up (especially since I haven’t done one of those in a while) and doing little fun thing for LGBTQ followers - letting them play a game that is known as a good escapist fantasy as one of our favorite characters. We’re building America Chavez today.

First of all, let’s define Goals for this build. First of all, we need to kick and punch hard and be able to take a hit as well and be super fast. Second, we need to kick so hard to open portals to other dimensions. Finally, we need to be able to fly and shine bright light.

Regarding Ability Scores America is one of those characters who should have 20 in everything, but we cannot really do that so I’m gonna prioritize what we need for the build. As always I’m taking basic template from Tulok the Barbarian so we’ll be unig Standard Point Array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8). If you want to roll or use point-buy, go ahead and use these as guidelines, just remember you’ll need 13 inWisdom and Dexterity for multiclassing.

Strength: 14, You can throw tanks at the moon

Dexterity: 13, we need it for multiclassing purpose. Also, I doubt any medium or heavy armor goes with short shorts, America’s outfits are light armor at best.

Constitution: 15, you can take hits from the likes of She-Hulk, Vision and Thanos

Intelligence: 10, you don’t need it but America did go to college to expand her knowledge of cosmic stuff.

Wisdom: 12, living on your own since being a child means picking up some survival skills.

Charisma: 8, low but we will bumb it with rracial ability scores.

Speaking of Race, America is from another planet, descendant of a race created by two celestial beings, who can fly and shine her star marks. and if that doesn’t speak Protector Aasimar, I do not know what does. You gain +2 to Charisma and +1 to Wisdom, resistance to necrotic and radiant damage and know Common and Celestial languages. Your Darkvision lets you see 60 feet in dim light as in normal light and in darkness as in dim light, but without abilitty to discern colors. Once per long rest you can heal a person (or yourself) for number of hit points equal your level. Finally, you get a Light Cantrip, which lets you make one object no larger in any dimension than 10 feet and make it shine bright light in a 20 feet radius and dim light in next 20 feet. Use it for your own stars.

Background: You are from another planet in another dimension so Far Traveller is closest to that. You gain proficiency in any language of your choice, pick something campaign relevant. You get proficiency in Insight and Perception and a single musical instrument or gaming set of your choice. You have an All Eyes On You feature, which makes you a center of attention and opens you doors of curious nobles and scholars.

Class Features:

Level 1: We will kick things off as a Ranger. You gain proficiency in Dexterity and Strength saving throws, light and medium armor, simple and martial weapons, shields and two skills, choose Athletics and Investigation.

We will be using Ranger options from Class Variants Unearthed Arcana, which is free. Deft Explorer lets you pick one of 3 options - Tireless lets you a number of times equal your Wisdom modifier per long rest gain 1d10+ Your Wisdom modifier temporary hit points as an action. If you are suffering from Exhaustion and take a short rest, you lose a level of it.

Favored Fore lets you cast Hunter’s Mark on a target without expending a spell slot a number of times equal your Wisdom modifier and don’t need concentration to maintain it. Hunter’s Mark let’s you pick one target and for its duration (up to an hour) you deal 1d6 extra damage whenever you hit it with an attack and gain advanate on Survival and Perception checks to find it. And if the target drops to zero hit points before spell ends you can move it to another as a bonus action. So if you are chasing after Loki again, this will come in handy.

Level 2: 2nd Level Ranger gets to pick a Fighting Style. Unarmed Fighting lets your unarmed attacks deal 1d6+your Strength modifier damage, 1d8 if you hit with two hands at once (or do a dropkick, I guess) and when you start a grapple and whenever you hit a grappled creature you can deal it extra 1d4 bludgeoning of damage. As with Tulok, we pick this one a lot because a lot of superheroes just use fists. If you feel YOUR America should be swinging a waraxe, go for it and pick something else.

On this level Rangers get spellcasting. you know a number of spells and cannot know spells of higher level than you have spell slots for, whenever you cast a spell you spend spell slot of appriopriate level or higher. If a spell requires a saving throw it is against difficulty of 8 + Your Proficiency Modifier + Your Wisdom modifier and the latter two you also sum up to add to a Spell Attack roll if a spell requires one. You start with two spells.

Cure Wounds lets you touch a creature or yourself and heal for 1d8+ Your Wisdom modifier of hit points.

Zephyr Strike lasts for a 1 minute on concentration and for this time you don’t provoke opportunitty attacks and when you deal your first attack you get to make it with an advantage and your speed increases by 30 feet for this turn.

Level 3: Once you reach this level Protector Aasimar gains Radiant Soul, letting you once per long rest radiate with positive energy, even spouting mings made of light from your back. If your DM allows you can probably gain the benefits without that visual add-on. This form lasts for one minute and gives you flying speed equal your regular speed and once on each of your turns you can deal extra radiant damage equal your level to a creature you hit with an attack or a spell.

3rd Level Ranger gets to choose a Ranger Conclave. Horizon Walker specializes in dimensional travel and interdimensional threats. You can as an action sense location of a nearest interdimensional portal once per short or long rest. You also become a Planar Warrior, which means you can use your bonus action to select one creature you can see within 30 feet of you. During this turn when you attack that creature you not only deal extra 1d8 damage but also all damage from that attack gets converted to force damage. Force is the least protected against type of damage in the game, there is literally a single creature immune to it and zero creatures with resistance to it in entire Monster Manual.

At this level Ranger also gains Primeval Awareness, letting you spend a spell slot to be able to sense all aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead within one mile from you for duration of 1 minute per spell slot’s level, but does not tell you their exact location or number. It is horribly situational, costs your valuable resource and is basically a shittier version of Divine Sense, an abilitty Paladin gets on first level. It’s actually a core Ranger abilitty and it does have a replacement in Unearthed Arcana.... buuut that replacement gives you a bunch of extra spells that aren’t really America’s style. At least I am far more likely to beleive she is able to pick subtle hints of presence of various creatures due to her years of experience fighting everything the Multiverse threw at her, than I am that she can detect and talk to animals and plants or be able to see through an animal’s eyes. If you want to sacrifice some thematic coherence for more powerful build, be my guest.

Hunter’s Mark is now added to your spells’ known as a bonus from Favored Foe and Horizon Walker gives you another additional spell - Protection From Evil and Good, letting you make aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead have disadvantage on attacks against yourself or another creature. The target of the spell cannot be charmed, frightened or posessed by these creatures and if that already happend before you cast the spell, it rolls saving throws to shake it off with an advantage. A lot of lovecraftian horrors try to eat your teammate and future god for his future god powers, this will help against that.

Our regular spell for this level will be Absorb Elements. You can cast it as a reaction whenever you take acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage and it grants you resistance to that and next time you hit a target on your next turn, it takes extra 1d6 of that type of damage. This second feature is less impressive at higher levels where a lot of creatures dealing that type of damage are resitant or outright immune to it. Every dragon is immune to the damage dealt by its breath for example. EXCEPT that as a Palanar Warrior you convert that to force damage. Their offense just makes you hit harder.

4th Level: Sticking with Ranger for an Abilitty Score Improvement or a Feat. Resilent lets you add 1 to your Constitution and makes you proficient with Constitution saving throw. a large number of your spells is depending on Concentration so this is a good way to keep going even after you take a hit.

5th Level: Ranger gains an extra attack, letting you attack twice in a single attack action. Remember, those attacks are all affected by your Planar Warrior power.

You also gain access to 2nd level spells

Lesser Restoration, letting you cure one disease or a blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned condition from one creature. America heals fast.

Horizon Walker gives us Misty Step, which lets you teleport 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.

6th Level: You can pick second Deft Explorer feature. I will go with Roving to increase your speed by 5 feet and give you climbing and swimming speed equal to your walking speed. America is fast and with that you can move to your foes no matter where they are.

7th Level: Horizon Walker gives you Etheral Step. You can now once per short or long rest cast, as a bonus action, Etherealnesss on yourself without expending a spell slot but it only lasts one turn. It lets you step into Ethereal Plane where you can move without being affected by enemies or walls or magic effects on material plane. You can use this to move aout of the harm’s way or (more likely) behind enemy lines to punch that one guy who keeps hiding behind the tank.

You also get one more spell but I’m not feeling these 2nd level spells so we will pick Longstrider, which increases your movement speed by 10 feet for 1 hour, no concentration required. This means you can now walk, climb, swim or fly up to 45 feet per turn. And you cannot tell me America isn’t super fast, considering in her debut book she did this

8th Level: We will now jump to Cleric. America has multitude of things she could worship, be it Demiurge or Spirits Beracca and Sanar who created your home planet or even your moms and their messianic-like sacrifice. Or not, Clerics don’t need to worship a diety, they can draw the power from just believing this strongly in something the universe registers it as faith. Lou Wilson on The Unsleeping City plays a Cleric who is a doctor that draws power from caring about his patients so much, you don’t need to limit yourself just because you may dislike certain parts of character history.

Whatever your reasons, you get to pick a Divine Domain. Since America can travel between dimensions, she basically is a Planeswalker. Meaning she can jump to Magic: the Gathering setting Amonketh from one of Planeshift supplements and grab the Strength Domain. You gain proficiency in one extra skill, pick Survival, and heavy armor.

You also get Cleric spellcasting, which works as Ranger’s except you know all your Cleric spells and you prepare which spells you have ready each day. You also get cantrips, which you can cast as many times as you want. Your number of spell slots is determined by multiclassing table - check out a level equal your Cleric level + half your Ranger level rounded down to consult how many spell slots you have for use.

You get 3 Cantrips, two spells and two extra spells and an extra cantrip from Strength domain so we have some work to do.

Guidance and Resistance each lets you add a d4 to a single ability check or a saving throw respectively. This shit is life saving. No, I did not spend my last game lamenting guidance is not on Bard Spell list after my bard failed an important skill check by 1, why are you asking?

Thunderclap lets you clap your hands so hard every creature 5 feet from you needs to make a Constitution saving throw or be dealt 1d6 thunder damage. It is a staple for powerhouses, Hulk basically patented it.

Bless lets you pick up to 3 creatures, including yourself. For the duration they add 1d4 to attack rolls and saving throws

Detect Magic lets you sense or see influence of magic within 30 feet from you unless it’s hiding behind a thick enough barrier. Again, America been around, she can recognize a lot of tricks.

Divine Favor lets you add 1d4 of Radiant damage to your attacks. America’s punches are that strong.

Shield of Faith meanwhile grants you +2 bonus to your AC. Again, short shorts can barelly pass for light armor, less alone medium or heavy so you need all help you can get.

9th Level: 2nd Level Cleric gets to use their Channel Divinity.once per short or long rest

The standard use is Turn Undead, which forces all undead who see you to make a Wisdom saving throw or be turned for 1 minute or until they take damage, making them unable to do anything but spend their turn dashing away from you. You may say it is not in character but America travelled across the Multiverse a lot. Do you know what you can find in Marvel Multiverse a lot? Zombies. Especially Marvel Zombies. And even then, regular zombies in D&D are also know as “PAIN IN THE BUTT TO FIGHT WITH” so whichever kind of undead is bothering you, this will help.

Strength Domain grants you another use of this, Feat of Strength. You can choose to spend your use of Channel Divinity to add +10 to an attack roll, abilitty check or saving throw using Strength.

Finally, Unearthed Arcana lets you spend your use of this feature to regain a 1st level spell slot. It’s situational, but could be useful in a pinch.

Our spell for the level will be Sanctuary - cast it on one creature of your choice to make enemies have to roll a Wisdom saving throw whenever they want to target it with an attack or a harmful spell or have to choose another target. You can play this one as goading enemies to fight her to distract them from civilians or your mroe squishy teammates like Billy or Loki. Warning, don’t waste it on either Kate or Quentin Quire, they are likely to just go and shoot someone and the spell ends if target attacks someone, casts a harmful spell or causes damage from an already active spell. So no, Quentin, you cannot cast Spirit Guardians and then have America Sanctuary you, stop asking and read an errata already!

10th Level: 3rd Level Cleric gets 2 2nd Level spell slots

Aid lasts for an hour and lets you increase hit point maximum and current hit points of up to 3 party members by fve, always useful as a form of a battle plan to keep everyone safe.

Warding Bond lets you for an hour create a bond between you and another creature for 1 hour with no concentration. As long as the target is within 60 feet of you it gets +1 to AC and resistance to all damage but whenever it takes damage, you take as much damage and if you get further than 60 feet away from one another or you drop to 0 hit points, the spell ends. So cast this on Kate, Monica or Billy who are squishy but know to stay in the back. Don’t cast it on Ramone, Eddie, Adam, Teddy, Carol, T’Challa, Noh-Varr, Gwen, David, Eli or Galactus who are likely to be with you in the front line. And don’t cast it on Quentin, he is squishy and should stay in the back but he cannot be trusted, this kid has no self-perservation instinc whatsoever. Same goes for Loki, who is supposed to be smarter but still keeps poking everything around for one scheme or another.

Strength Domain gives us Enchance Abilitty, which grants you an advantage on abilitty chekcs of chosen Ability score and some minor bonuses if you pick Strength, Dexterity or Constitution. As I’ve said, America is good at everything as if she was an anime character, this will help you emulate that.

Protection from Poison for an hour, no concentration, gives the target advantage on saving throws against being poisoned and resistance to poison damage and when cast removes one poison already affecting the target.

11th Level: 4th Level Cleric gets an Abilitty Score Improvement, invest in your Strength. Spoiler, this will be where all your remaining Abilitty Score improvements will go.

You get one more cantrip and one more spell

Virtue grants the target 1d4+your spellcasting abilitty modifier of temporary hit points for one round

Branding Smite, which was added in Unearthed Arcana, lets you deal extra 2d6 Radiant damage and if the target was invisible it now becomes visible and cannot becopme invisible for the duration of the spell as it shines bright light in 5-feet radius. America punching someone out of their invisiblity so hard they now glitter? Sounds about right.

12th Level: 5th Level Cleric can destroy all undead of challenge rating 1/2 or less who failed saving throw against turn undead.

You get even more spells, gaining access to third level ones.

Remove Curse lets you remove effects of a curse from a person or break attunment to cursed item. Use it on yourself to simply shrug off the enemy curses

Tongues lets you understand any language and be understood by all other creatures for an hour. You ever noticed how all realities America goes to seem to speak English? This may be why.

Protection From Energy lets you get resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder. for the duration, on concentration of course.

Haste also lasts on concentration. it doubles your speed, grants +2 to AC, an advantage on Dexterity saving throws and an extra attaction you can use to take Dash, Disengage, Hide or use object action or make a single extra attack. Once it ends you cannot take actions for a turn,

13th Level: 6th Level Cleric can use Channel Divinity twice per short or long rest, gains a new use from Strength domain, letting you as a reaction grant +10 to another creature’s attack roll, ability check or saving throw using Strength. Sometimes you jsut want to cheer up on your girlfriend to punch someone harder, you know?

You also get to pick one more spell - magic Circle lets you ward an area of 10 feet radius and 20 feet height from celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, or undead, whichever you choose. You can either protect creatures inside from that type of enemies or trap them inside the circle. Either way the selected creature type cannot willingly cross the border of the circle, had disadvantage against targets on the other side cannot charm, frighter or possess and if it tries to circumvent this by using teleportation of any sort it needs to first succeed a Charisma saving throw.

14th Level: 7th Level Cleric gets 4th level spells

Freedom of Movement lets you for one hour, no concentration required, make yourself unaffected by difficult terrain and magic cannot in any way reduce your speed, restrain or paralyze you, you can spend 5 feet from your movement to escape nonmagical restraints and being underwater doesn’t impose any penalty on your movement.

Dominate Beast isn’t really in character so I will focus on second bonus spell Strength Domain gives you - Stoneskin grants you resistance to nonmagical Bludgeoning, Piercing and Slashing damage

Stoneskin is not an excuse to wear this awful outfit from Vengenace, tho.

15th Level: 8th Level Cleric gains Divine Strike, letting you once on each of your turns add extra 1d8 of that damage type. You also get to pick another Abilitty Score improvement and your Destroy Undead abilitty upgrades to undeads of CR 1 or less.

Your spell for this level will be Banishment, forcing a Charisma Saving throw on the target and sending it to another dimension if it fails. If the target is native to this plane, it is send to a harmless dimension and comes back once spell ends. But if it is not, it is send to its home plane and if you maintain concentration for one minute, it does not return. As with Magic Circle this is less something we hase SEEN America do but sounds like something she should be able to do. Open a portal under something and let it fall.

16th Level: 9th Level Cleric gets one spell of 4th level and one of 5th level.

Greater Restoration lets you remove from atarget a single level of exhaustion, one curse, one reduction of an abilitty score or hit point maximum, one effect that charmed or petrified the target. Use this on yourself to shrug off everything. Except perficication, kinda hard to use this while petrified.

Strength Domain gives you two extra spells, but Insect Plague isn’t very in character. Destructive Wave, however, lets you strike the ground, making every creature of your choice within 30-feet range take 5d6 thunder and 5d6 radiant or necrotic damage and be knocked prone, half damage on a succesful Constitution saving throw. You stomp the ground that hard.

Death Ward lasts for 8 hours with no concentration, first time a target would be dropped to zero hit points, they’re dropped to 1 hit points instead. If an effect would kill target instantly without dealing damage (say POWER WORD: KILL) it is negated. Either way the spell ends after a single activation. Sounds useful considering one of people on America’s shit list is COSMIC TITAN CHAMPION OF DEATH

17th Level: 10th Level Cleric gains Divine Intervention, which lets you call upon the power of whoever you picked as your patron diety. You describe what you want to happen and roll a percentage dice - if your result is lower than your Cleric level, diety intervenes in a way choosen by the DM. If you succed on this, you cannot use this feature for a week, if you fail you cannto do it until after a long rest.

You get one new Cantrip and one new 5th Level Spell

Word of Radiance forces all creatures of your choice to suceed a Constitution saving throw or take 4d6 radiant damage. You shine so bright you literally hurt your enemies.

Legend Lore lets you gain knowledge about a legendary object, person or location, up to mysterious secrets. Again, America has been travelling through the Multiverse, she likely has seen everything and recalls things that seem to be happenning again.Information may be a bit cyrptic, tho.

18th Level: 11th Level Cleric’s Destroy Undead improves to undeads of CR 2 or lower. You also get an access to 6th Level Spell - otherwordly Form was added to Cleric Spell List in Unearthed Arcana. It lets you for the duration (up to 1 minute on concentration) grant yourself flying speed of 40 feet, use of your Wisdom in place of Strength for attack rolls, an additional attack that doesn’t stack with your extra attack and immunity to either fire and poison damage and poisoned condition or radiant and necrotic damage and charmed comdition. This will help if you out of your Radiant Soul and need to fly again, but it is sadly not as good on this particular build because we already have an extra attack and rely more on Strength than Wisdom. But Clerics don’t get Fly.

19th Level: Speaking of Strength, 12th Level fo Cleric and our Final Abilitty Score Improvement lets us finally cap it.

20th Level: Our captsone is 13th Level of Cleric for a 7th Level spell - Plane Shift lets you become your party’s ticked to the Multiverse, letting you transport yourself and up to 8 willing creatures to another plane of existence or to banish an unwilling creature to a random location on a plane you choose if you hit it with a meele spell attack you make as a part of this spell and it fails Charisma Saving throw.

Overview: So this is my take on America Chavez - Protector Aasimar Horizon Walker Ranger 7/Strength Domain Cleric 13. Now let us see how valiable this build is:

Pros: First of all, you are really tough, with around 165 hit points, a number of spells you can set up to buff yourself and/or others you will be very hard to hurt. Second, you have a large number of ways to hurt your enemies and even combine them to deal some impressive damage. Finally, you have a ton of mobility options, letting you chase all most important targets all across the battlefield.

Cons: A lot of your spells require concentration and we didn’t cap this one, so it is mediocre. A lot of your offensive options compete for bonus action and your buffs require some prep time and forward thinking to set up or wasting your time during the combat. A number of offensive spells relies on your Wisdom modifier, which is weak.

However, you are pretty good at what you do best - punching and taking on yourself major threats. You are a reliable tank who can outlast her enemies in combat. Punch people and protect your friends, jsut remember you cannot do it all alone and your teammates are much more squishy - protect them and they’ll have your back

Alternatives:

There is a number of ways in which you could upgrade this build but sacrifice some of loyalty to America’s potrayal.

* Ranger 6/Cleric 14 lets you increase your Divine Strike Damage to 2d8, meaning you can deal 4d8 damage when combined with Planar Warrior.

* Ranger 12/Cleric 8 lets you increase your Planat Warrior Damage and gains extra attack from Horizon Walker’s 11th level feature, making you much more offensive but also with more hp.

* Change stats to STR 12 DEX 13 CON 14 INT 10 WIS 15 CHA 8. Pick Druidic Warrior as your fighting style, grab a club or a staff and pick shillelagh as your cantrip, letting you use your Wisdom for attacks made with said club or staff, then go Ranger 8/Cleric 12 or vice-versa, using your Abilitty Score Improvements to round up first Wisdom and then Constitution. This take on America will have much better offense AND defense but it strays so much from her as a character (no plane shift, no punching with your hands, less actual Strength and more trickery) it didn’t feel right. Sometimes you need to sacrifice power to stay loyal to the character. Then again, this build would sure be true to a certain aspect of America we know and love.

- Admin

#America #Ms. America #America Chavez #Ms. America Chavez #Marvel #Dungeons & Dragons

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archivingspn · 3 years

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Variety “‘Supernatural’ at 200: The Road So Far, An Oral History”

(...) Eric Kripke (Creator): For me, the core notion behind “Supernatural” was to make a series about urban legends. I think they’re this incredibly rich mythology about the United States, and no one had really tapped into that, so when I started as a writer, one of the first ideas I ever pitched was an urban legend show.

A couple years later I tried to pitch, basically, a “Scooby Doo” rip off of a bunch of kids travelling in a van dealing with these urban legends. It was an idea that I never let go of and kept throwing there every couple years. Finally I had a deal with Warner Bros. and that incarnation was a reporter. Frankly, it was a rip off of “Nightstalker,” but I really fleshed it out and it had mythology.

I took it to Susan Rovner and Len Goldstein at the studio and they said, “We love the idea of doing a horror show,” which no one was really doing on TV at that time, “but we’re not into the reporter, that feels really tired. So no thanks and let’s get another angle.”

So in this moment, when they were basically passing on my idea, as you often do in these kinds of rooms, you start tap dancing. And I said, “forget the reporter, we should do this show as ‘Route 66,’ two cool guys in a classic car cruising the country, chasing down these urban legends,” and literally right on the spot I said “and they’re brothers,” because it popped in my head. “And they’re dealing with their family stuff and they’re fighting evil.” You just start making it up as you go. They were like, “Brothers, wow, that’s a relationship we haven’t seen on TV before.” And from there, “Supernatural” was born… out of a piece of improvisation.

Peter Roth (President, Warner Bros. Television): Eric [had] been with us since about 2002. Sometime in 2004, he came to us with this idea… this extraordinary road show about these two brothers, in which they would be living all of the great urban and rural myths that [we’re all] exposed to as kids. It was a very commercial idea, emotionally driven, which was what I was most concerned about: who are the characters? Why do I relate to them? Why are they worth my while to watch? And once we cast Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, along with Eric’s great idea, along with the script, along with David Nutter, our director on the pilot, the combination of those factors is what made me so excited and I frankly knew, from the moment I saw this pilot, that it was a winner. There wasn’t a person who I work with who didn’t feel the same way. It was a real strong story of young adult siblings that resonated perfectly with The WB audience.

Kripke: When we were casting, you see a lot of people. We hadn’t found our Sam and Dean. David Nutter suggested Jensen because we knew him from “Smallville.” We met with him to play Sam, and we fell in love with [him]. And then Jared came in, and he was a really great Sam too. Looking back, we were such idiots to not see it… We had two great Sams and no Dean and you think it would be obvious to put one into the other role, but it was not obvious. So we [went] to Peter Roth and we said, “We’re not sure what to do,” and Peter was like, “why don’t you make Jensen Dean?” We all looked at each other like, “we’re idiots, of course.” It’s so difficult to find one actor who is charismatic enough to be a breakout character and to support a show. So to find two of them, where there’s only two leads… I didn’t realize what a miracle it was at the time. It’s a miracle. (...) Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester): It was just immediate chemistry. There was an ease to it. There was a familiarity to it. Once we got into it with each other, it just fell in place and it came… not easy, but definitely a little easier than my experiences in the past. I think the importance of that bond and that relationship was verbalized by Kripke when he sat us down and said, “this begins and ends with you,” and not only how we relate to each other on screen, but also off screen. There was an importance stamped into [that bond] very early on. (...) Padalecki: (...) It was definitely a huge learning process, not only for myself, learning the character of Sam Winchester, but I think we didn’t have a grasp on what we were doing. The original tag line was monster of the week, like “X-files” meets “The Twilight Zone.” And we had these very famous urban legends about Bloody Mary or the Hookman, but ultimately you’re going to run out of those.

Singer: Eric talked about the five-season plan… I don’t know if he secretly had that in mind and was just not sharing it, but initially Eric wanted campfire stories. And the mythology really started to evolve in the first year. We didn’t exactly know where we wanted to go, and I don’t even think Eric knew exactly where he wanted to go

Kripke: If I’ve said in the past that I had this five year plan from the beginning, I was lying. I always knew what that particular season was going to be; “by midseason I want to be here, by the end of the season I want to be there.” And then I always had a rough sketch what the season after that would be. I will say I knew that the show was going to come down to evil Sam versus good Dean and the fate of the world was going to hang in the balance — that was baked into the pilot. I wanted to build it to something that felt conclusive because I didn’t want these mysteries and mythologies to stretch on forever.

Sera Gamble (writer, executive producer): We were realizing the thing that we most enjoyed when we were watching cuts of the show was the chemistry between the brothers, and that the mythology we were constructing for the season was really a family story about two young men and their father, and this family legacy that they’re trying to deal with. That was the heart of the show, and if we paid attention to how each monster story resonated with the relationship between the brothers, then the show was always really interesting.

Padalecki: It was right around the episode “Faith” where the writers realized this show isn’t just about what kind of monsters we can kill but what the brothers can go through together. And I think luckily we stuck with that theme on through the end [of season one], where we reintroduced our father into the storyline. And we get some sense of what the father is willing to do for the sons and what the sons are willing to do for each other. And so it became this story about sacrifice and loyalty and family and friendship [within] this medium of the supernatural and ghosts and ghouls.

Gamble: It’s not like we sat down to write “Faith” and we said, “we’re going to write the game changer.” We just wanted to find a really human, emotional way into a story about faith healing. We had these different elements of the reapers that we wanted to bring into the show and the phenomena of faith healers in the history of America, and it ended up being a story that was really personal and kind of philosophical… From that point forward, everyone was hungry to do more stories that had an aspect of the personal and the metaphysical. (...) Singer: Eric’s phrase was “smoke them if you got them,” where we would just try to tell the best stories we could and be as provocative as we could. We felt that this had a long-term mythology, so ending with kind of a very dramatic cliffhanger just seemed the right thing for us and that all seemed to work out for us. (...) Padalecki: Season two is the season where we realize dying doesn’t mean you’re dead, beginning with Dean who died — so to speak — in the first episode, and culminating with Sam who died in the last episode. Unlike season one where we were figuring out what this show was about, who these characters were, season two we hit the ground running.

Ackles: The interesting thing that Kripke did with the first several seasons is he flipped character motivations from season to season. With the first season you had Dean as the motivating factor: he was really pushed by his father, dragging Sam along against his will. Then as Dad dies, the whole thing is flipped upside down. Now Dean is like, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” Dad was his motivating factor in life and [after] he lost him, it was a devastating blow and Dean just wanted to hang it up. And Sam was the one who was like, “no, we’re going to go find answers to this. I have to figure out how I play into this,” and Dean went along with him because he couldn’t let his little brother go it alone. (...) Gamble: It was really fun to kill Sam. You don’t very often get to kill the lead character. One of the really fun things about “Supernatural” is that you get to kill whoever you want, and it’s part of the evil genius of Eric Kripke. From pretty early on, he understood the power of doing the unexpected thing to the character the audience thinks is safe. He fought hard, and he was always someone who, in the room, would push us to not get precious with a character, to not try to save someone because we think they’re amazing. If we love them, we’ll bring them back in some other form. Because we had a plan to bring Sam back, we got to write the super-emotional scene with his brother that we knew that Jensen would knock out of the park, and both of them knocked it out of the park. (...) Singer: I think Bela didn’t quite turn out as good of a story driver as we might have wanted, although we loved Lauren — we thought she was terrific in the part. But we started pinning ourselves a little bit in the corner [with her as] Dean’s nemesis, like, “how often can she best Dean without assassinating our lead character?” If she would’ve been on three times a year, I think that character could’ve really served a purpose going forward. Ruby served a better purpose and that pushed the mythology into a different area. But we were a little flummoxed because you say, “what do we do? We can’t have two women just sitting in the back of the car with these guys.”

Gamble: I think Ruby in the long term was a more successful character than Bela, but we all really enjoyed creating Bela in the room, especially Ben Edlund, who wrote some really cool stuff for her. Not every peg will fit in every hole in the show. You don’t get Castiel one hundred percent of the time. If you follow any show for long enough, you’ll notice some places where they corrected the course, and we learned a lot from writing those two characters. I really like a lot of the stuff that we did with Ruby. It’s really cool to have a character that’s played by more than one actor, and it’s such an interesting characterization of a demon. (...) Kripke: I think the truncated season actually ended up helping the mythology. We were a little aimless as we had just lost the Yellow-Eyed Demon, the great big bad, and we hadn’t introduced a new big bad yet. Because we had less episodes, we had to focus quickly on what was really important: Dean’s deal with the demons and the fact that he had a ticking clock and that he was going to get dragged down to hell. (...) Kripke: If you had asked me in season one, were there going to be angels in Supernatural, I would have said “absolutely not, you’re fired.” Up to that point I always felt like I didn’t want any supernatural good guys in the show. If there was any force of good, it was going to be Sam and Dean, and they were going to be overwhelmed and outgunned. And as we were kicking towards the end of season three and we were doing lots of demon stories, I was worried that we were overplaying the demon stuff. But the idea that angels could be dicks and that they didn’t have to be this warm fuzzy helpful force, they could actually be a really interesting antagonist, once I kind of realized that, I said, “I’ve never seen that depiction of angels on television before.” It wasn’t just these two boys versus all these demons; it became Sam and Dean trapped in the middle of this massive war where you had two sides battling, and humanity, represented by the boys, were caught in the middle, so how do they play both sides against the other? It balanced the mythology in a way that I think made it much more satisfying. (...) Kripke: I’m the first to acknowledge that the idea really came from graphic novels. It came from “Preacher”; it came from “Hellblazer,” which has now become “Constantine,” which is why Castiel wears a trench coat. There’s a reason why Castiel looks exactly like Constantine — it’s because I ripped off Constantine. But I had no idea it was going to be a show at the time! It was funny, as I went into the writers’ room at the start of season four, having thought about it I said, “okay guys, this season we’re doing angels.” And they were like, “What? You asshole!” Because there were so many angel stories that were pitched earlier and I would literally shame them out of the room whenever anyone pitched an angel story, and now I’m presenting it as an entire mythology. But it worked out.

Padalecki: I think season four was really the turning point for the show, and really set the new parameters for what the show is still about to this day, most notably with the introduction of Castiel.

Ackles: This was when “Lost” was on the air, “Heroes” was on the air, these giant mega hits. I remember Eric taking issue with “Lost” because they kept asking questions and never really giving answers. He was against that method of storytelling and said, “no, I’m going to ask the question and I’m going to answer it. And maybe the audience doesn’t like the answer, but I’m most certainly not going to string them along just until I come up with some sort of a solution.” That’s one of the reasons why, from season to season, the bar just kept getting raised and the supernatural world kept getting bigger, almost to the point where it was incomprehensible to the Winchesters. I think we really saw that when the introduction of angels came into play, and then it became something far greater than things that go bump in the night… It was a leap of faith. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do something like that, but I think it panned out. And now we have one of the most loved characters of the series still with us today.

Collins: I was supposed to be on for three episodes, and they said, “Oh, you might do five episodes,” so they added a couple more, and then they added three more after that… Then they signed me up as a series regular and they kept me on for two years, and then they said they were going to kill me and that we would never see me again in season 7. And then they changed their minds again… I was joining the show the beginning of Season 4. I kind of assumed that that was the tail end of the show. I think everybody really thought that the show was going to be over at the end of Season 5 at that point, which was Kripke’s original vision, so it’s very strange to still be here. We are obviously counting ourselves lucky that the show has run so long. (...) Kripke: The movie “Stranger than Fiction” had just come out. And so it started with a really innocent single episode pitch: what happens if Sam and Dean realize that they’re characters in a book; that they find a book that is detailing their entire lives? And then it would give us an opportunity to really poke fun at what we’re doing in “Supernatural,” and that was really fun for me. [Then] somebody said, “well what if he’s a prophet of the lord?” We jumped all over that idea and it really tied into this mythology. It was our first serious meta episode.

And once we introduced him, I thought it was so funny and smart, and you just want to start doing more of it. That’s how I think a lot of the insanity in “Supernatural” emerged. Because we couldn’t repeat ourselves with Chuck: if you’re going to see him again, it better be at a fan convention. Every single time, Bob would say to me, “this is the one where we’ve gone too far.” And then after one of them I responded, “don’t you see? We can never go too far, there is no too far.” (...) Kripke: The thing I remember most about that season was how exhausted I was going through it… I knew I wanted some sort of apocalyptic ending where evil Sam had to fight a good Dean. One of the things that was really hard about that season is, it’s one thing in season four when you’re promising the apocalypse: Is it going to happen, can the boys stop it? It’s a whole different matter when you’re saying in season five, “okay, the apocalypse is happening,” because you still are on a budget. There’s an incredible amount of off-camera, “oh no, there’s been an earthquake!” stuff on the news. It’s really difficult to mount something of that scope. (...) Ackles: To look at the five seasons, to step back and look at that all as one story… it was a massively grand finale and it was like Game Seven of the World Series, and I just don’t know how you can go on from that. I think Eric thought the same thing. He was like, “I’m throwing out my last pitch and I’m taking off into the sunset,” and that’s what he did, but it had become such a hit that the studio and the network were like, “no, guys, you have to keep going.” (...) Gamble: We thought season five would be the last season. But pretty early into [it], Eric came to me and said “signs are pointing toward a season six,” and he was ready to move on and asked me to step in. And he came to me really early because there was a tremendous amount of learning and training and coming behind the curtain to see what he and Bob were doing that had to happen.

There was part of me that was just, lovingly, super pissed at Eric. I was like, “do we have to do this after the apocalypse? We literally burned the story all the way to the apocalypse. We have to start over and find a whole new classification of villains, so what the hell are we going to do?” But we had several months to ponder that. We had a great writers’ room, and everybody put their heads together, and Eric, to his great credit, stayed with the show, and was very active in constructing season six, and was incredibly helpful to me, personally. He was instrumental in figuring out what we were going to do next. It was like a reboot.

Kripke: I read every script. And then once Sera was comfortable in the gig and the studio and network were comfortable, I backed off. And from then I would define my role as a parent who sends their kid off to college. I’m extremely proud. I’m there if they need me… And it was never me running the show alone. It was always me and Bob Singer, and Bob has always been there. So there’s been true continuity. People say “Supernatural” has had different showrunners and it hasn’t. It’s actually always had the same showrunner, he has just had different partners over the last decade. (...) Gamble: The good thing about “Supernatural” is some things always remain the same. It’s always a story of two brothers, always a story about that family. It is always a story about the people who fight the things that go bump in the night, and there is always a structure that has an overarching mythology that gets solved piece by piece over the course of a season. That engine is pretty solid. I think one of the first conversations was just, “so we did heaven and we did hell, and oh, there’s a purgatory.” It started from that simple examination: “What is the mythology that we’ve been mining, and what else is in there that we haven’t talked about yet?”

You’re on a show for years and years, and you watch the actors grow up. Sam did not look like little Sammy was just out of college anymore. He was a grown-ass man; Jensen was a grown-ass man. They were adults, and they were men who had been through a lot, so the stories have to evolve, become more mature. They have to be about the problems that people would have in their adult lives, and that’s really how we were approaching these things. We were looking for problems that were not repeats of the problems they were having when they were 17 or 22. (...) Kripke: Once we were able to pull off “The French Mistake,” and Sam and Dean were actually able to go and become Jared and Jensen making an episode of “Supernatural,” I think Bob saw that there’s no such thing as too far. If you can pull that off and not destroy your show, you can truly do anything.

The season also saw Castiel drifting further away from the Winchesters, as he was unwittingly manipulated by Crowley in his quest to try and prevent a war among the leaderless angels. By the end of the year, after absorbing thousands of monster souls from purgatory, Castiel became corrupted by his newfound power.

Collins: I loved it. If for no other reason than Cas became God at the end of season six, which has always been a fantasy of mine, personally. There’s a very elite cadre of actors that ever get to [do that]. I think it was a great way to make the character a big bad. I was sorry to see myself killed off shortly thereafter in the beginning of season seven, but glad to see myself resurrected a couple episodes later. (...) Singer: We came up with this Leviathan idea: How do a group of monsters who want to take over society go about doing that? And the logical answer for us was, they insert themselves into the fabric of society in powerful ways — that’s what happens with the pharmaceutical companies, it’s what happens with government. It just seemed like an easy place to go and really be able to say something on a week-to-week basis. [We were] changing up what we were to try to make it interesting, and we feel if it’s interesting to us, we hope that it’s interesting for other people… Doing a season that was kind of political with these different monsters that we hadn’t seen before, I thought was pretty bold, and by and large a good season.

Gamble: The price of success is that you have to really be hard on yourself to keep the stakes high in a show like that. How do you keep the stakes high after you’ve faced the demon that kills your mother, angels, the apocalypse? The way that we found our way into that is by keeping it really personal. If it’s about Bobby, it will mean something to the audience, because Bobby means so much to the boys. (...) Ackles:(...) That was a huge blow to both the Winchesters because this was a surrogate father figure who had become their anchor, had become their home, and now they once again lost that pivotal character in their story. And so, once again the rug gets whipped out from underneath them and all they’re left with is each other and they’ve got to keep on going. I think that was a really important season because of not just losing Bobby, but look what it did to the story and the direction that it then sent the boys off in.

Padalecki: I thought season 7 was going to be the last season of “Supernatural,” while we were filming it. We’d gone so big with the Leviathans and it was yet another departure from our normal canon. There were times I thought we strayed a little bit; our big bad of the season was Dick Roman [James Patrick Stewart] and there were times I thought there were one too many dick jokes, every now and then I felt like we were straying off-course, but the fans stuck with us and I think that season we introduced Kevin Tran [Osric Chau] who stayed with us for a while, so we said goodbye to a few characters, we met a few new characters. (...) Jeremy Carver (writer, executive producer): When I came in, it was a pretty open canvas. A lot of things had wrapped up. The biggest issue was that Dean had been popped down to Purgatory, and what do you do with that? But because there wasn’t an ongoing mythology we had to worry about, we could really let our minds roam and I came up with that main idea of [Dean] becoming best friends with a vampire and then saying, “What if Sam, for once in his life did something that ran contrary to what the world at large — and when I say the world at large, I mean the fans at large as well — thought he should do?” For me, that was a really thrilling tack to take, just because it felt like fresh snow. From a story standpoint, it felt like Sera left lots of opportunity.

And then [there] was this idea of, these guys have been together for so long, at a certain point… they need to – I hate to say “mature” because that sounds like they weren’t mature in the past, but… mature in the sense of really exploring what it is to be their own person. And that’s what was really behind Sam not looking for Dean at the beginning of season eight. It wasn’t so much me taking over as it was like, “let’s put these characters in situations that make sense but feel risky for them as characters.” One thing I really wanted to do was to put a different kind of spotlight on these guys. (...) Ackles: One of my most favorite storylines was Dean in Purgatory. If there was one storyline that I wish would’ve dragged out much longer, it would’ve been that one. I would’ve liked to have seen more of what Dean was up against in Purgatory and how he lived and how he existed in that realm and among those things down there and how he was able to survive. And he befriended Benny [Ty Olsson], who I thought was a great character… I was sad to see [him] go when he did.

We’ve lost so many good characters on the show, but that’s one of the reasons why the show is compelling to people, because we do take risks…if there’s a fan favorite character that now could easily be an integral part of the story, we bring them in and then we kill them and it’s shocking. If we can continue not just to entertain people, but to shock them and to make them feel the spectrum of emotion, from joy to loss, then I think we’re doing our job as storytellers. And I think season eight was a good representation of that.

Padalecki: Ultimately, “Supernatural” is really a show about two brothers and their relationship and their struggles and their loyalties and their sacrifices, and so I knew in my heart of hearts that even though season eight started out with Sam having gone off to try and live another normal life with the character of Amelia (Liane Balaban), I figured it was a way to remind both the audience and the cast and crew what the show was about. I thought season seven might’ve gone a little off the reservation, but in a strange way, by steering even further off the reservation and having the brothers not even be involved with each other [at the start of season eight], it really reaffirmed for everybody what the bread and butter of the show is, which, in my opinion is the relationship between the two brothers, so it was a nice rekindling and repartnership of Sam and Dean. (...) Padalecki: My favorite part of season eight was the introduction of the Men of Letters. I was so excited to play this smart character, and I really got a chance to delve into that in season eight. I remember with the introduction of the Men of Letters – like I said, in season seven I thought we were maybe coming to an end, and then I read the episode with the Men of Letters and Henry Winchester played by the wonderful Gil McKinney, and I thought, “holy crap, we can go for another eight years.” And it was nice to have a home again. We had burned Bobby Singer’s home down a season prior, and that was our only standing set on “Supernatural,” and so to have the Men of Letters bunker to refuel and research and gather our bearings as characters and actors was a really welcome addition to the show, and I feel like the Men of Letters storyline has really worked wonders for and breathed new life into the show these past couple seasons. (...) Carver: The notion of Sam being possessed by an angel was originally Bob Singer’s idea. He threw it out there between seasons and said, “what if to save Sam’s life you had to put an angel in him?” It came from the same cloth of, “what if Dean had to rely on a vampire to escape from Purgatory and they became bonded over that?” You have to make do with the friends that are in front of you. Then we started to just flush out the character of Gadreel, who was originally Ezekiel, and that was one of my favorite characters we’ve done over the last couple of years, just because he felt very fleshed out and very empathetic. And Tahmoh was just wonderful because he has this bearing that is manly and unfamiliar all at once. He really dug into that role. If I remember correctly, Jared actually performed as Tahmoh before Tahmoh had even said a word of dialogue. So there was a leap of faith there on the part of Jared, who did a really spectacular job of portraying two characters, and he really embraced it. I was very happy with the way the whole Ezekiel/Gadreel story worked out, and how it all reflected back on the boys and their relationships. (...) Castiel finally became human in season nine — a trajectory that seemed to be a long time coming, after the angel’s powers began to dwindle in season eight.

Collins: That was something that I, as an actor, was looking forward to from the beginning — I kept on hoping that they were going to let Castiel become human for a while, and they finally did, and it was great. I think he had three or four episodes as a human; I wish we’d had a little longer in that realm, because I feel like there was a lot of good material to mine there, but the experience that he had being human made him much more empathetic towards humans, and I think that experience definitely left a lasting impression on him. He, I think, understands some of the subtleties of human interaction a little bit better. He is a little bit more savvy and definitely a lot more empathetic. But being more empathetic also makes him question himself more, have more doubts. He definitely is less cocksure as he moves through life, and he sees the gray areas and both sides of the story a little bit more than he used to.

Dean, meanwhile, became the unwitting recipient of the Mark of Cain, a brand that enables the wearer to wield the First Blade, a powerful weapon – but also saps away their humanity. Dean struggled to control his darker impulses as a result of the Mark, and after dying at the end of the season, found himself resurrected by the power of the Mark and reanimated as a demon, neatly paralleling Sam’s own descent into darkness in earlier seasons.

Carver: In this case, it was [writer and co-executive producer] Robbie Thompson coming up with the idea of Cain [Timothy Omundson]. And I remember him pitching this idea of the Mark of Cain. At the time he pitched it, I remember thinking, “I don’t know exactly where this is going to fit into the overall mythology, but it’s a wonderful thing to plant,” which we do all the time. One of the dirty little secrets of the show is that after we come up with something and it works out really well, we say, “hey, it’s almost like we planned it that way.” Sometimes things are just happy accidents. You try and draw out that roadmap, and then the writers are coming up with all these incredible, creative things. Cain just felt like such a no brainer, to the point where you’re wondering, “why haven’t we had this character in our world before?” We had referenced him before but hadn’t seen him.

But when [Robbie] talked about the Mark of Cain and putting it on Dean, it was something to plant like, “we’re definitely doing this and we’re going to figure out how to make this work as the season goes on,” which is exactly what happened. I’d like to say from the very beginning that we knew [Dean] was going to be a demon, but we didn’t. We had all these ideas of where Dean would go, but sometimes it’s peanut butter and chocolate and it takes a few episodes actually to realize the tools you have right in front of you.

Ackles: If you look back at the majority of series, it really hinges on Sam’s character. That’s the way it was originally intended, that’s the way it serves the story best, but every now and again the spotlight got flipped and turned on Dean, and I think we’re seeing this again with Mark of Cain. That was part of the setup for just very dark and troubled Dean.

Season nine was one of the more difficult seasons that I personally had to deal with, and it was because of not just the weight of the storyline, but because it was so Dean-centric. I was on set pretty much the whole time while everybody else was enjoying their vacation. It was just a lot of weight and a lot of darkness in my world last year, but we got through it and I think it made for some good story and I think it made for a good setup of where we’re going this year… I really enjoyed the twist at the end of last season when we think we lost Dean yet again and lo and behold, an unlikely character comes in and brings him back to life. So I have to give it to Carver on that one, when I read it I was shaking my head with very happy approval, because I knew that was now another massive situation that Sam and Dean are going to have to deal with. And how they [were] going to get out of it, I was anxious to see.

After Dean returned from death as a demon at the end of season nine, Crowley took his newly minted BFF to “howl at the moon,” but their bromance was shortlived – Sam saved his brother and restored Dean’s humanity in the third episode of season ten. So where do the brothers go from here?

Padalecki: Sam, with the help of Castiel, has saved Dean from being a demon and has made good on his promise at the end of season nine where he said he wasn’t gonna let him go, he wasn’t gonna let him die. But Dean is still cursed or possibly forever changed by this Mark of Cain. Sam and Dean don’t really know the repercussions of that just yet; they can’t find Cain; Castiel can’t find any answers; and Crowley’s not helping. We know that the Mark is changing him somehow, Dean doesn’t want it and Sam doesn’t want him to have it, so now they have to go as far as only the Winchesters will go to figure out how to get this Mark of Cain off of Dean before he turns into something that could cause more damage than Sam or Dean have ever seen.

Carver: Dean’s not a demon, but he still has this problem; he’s still got the Mark of Cain. And in the broadest strokes possible, it’s a very, very personal year where our overarching mythology for the season is building in a very methodical, very personal manner. I think a lot of relationships…I’ll even go as far to say a lot of bromances that have sprung up on the show, are going to be tested in ways that I think are going to be very uncomfortable. Each of our characters is going to have to stare into the abyss at some point and say, “who am I?” It’s going to be pretty personal, pretty intense, and pretty surprising as we move down the road.

Thankfully, the 200th episode (airing Nov. 11), is a light-hearted departure: it’s a musical, featuring a score composed by Christopher Lennertz and Jay Gruska, with lyrics by Robbie Thompson, who wrote the episode.

Carver: It’s our love letter to the fans. Many aspects of the fandom are going to see themselves represented in many different ways and in the most loving way possible. It’s an episode that takes a long, loving look at the show, warts and all. And we’re the first to admit our mistakes or our inconsistencies, and I think long-time fans will have a lot of fun seeing where we acknowledge this one big, happy, messy family that we’re all part of.

[source]

#2014-Nov #2014:November11Variety #*SMT #*destiel #*romance #*codependency #c/m saved the show #*CCTOF #Jeremy Carver #Eric Kripke #Sera Gamble #Robert Singer #Peter Roth #Jensen Ackles #Jared Padalecki #Misha Collins #author: Laura Prudom #Variety

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daretosnoop · 4 years

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The Final Scene Review:

Atmosphere/Layout:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Nancy Drew games do a stellar job at placing the player within the game. FIN is often given the due credit of being one of the best atmospheric games. The artists effectively portrayed a theater that is long past its prime. Everything is tattered and dusty. Things are old and rusty. How long has that popcorn been sitting there? Or that bubble gum? Who knows? It’s gorgeous! It’s incredible how they manage to make the theater so nostalgic to the player despite it being fictional. It really reminds you of old buildings that are destroyed to make way for corporate offices or businesses. It’s one of the few Nancy Drew games that sets the tone right from the start – dangerous and fast-paced. Maya’s kidnapping sets in the urgency, but right from the start players are required to navigate through an abandoned and creepy backroom only to pop out of a closet. It’s these two scenes that really hammer into the reader that this game is playing no nonsense. It’s like that moment in all horror movies/games where the characters realize this is for real. It really makes sense for the stage rooms to have a bunch of junk lying around here and there because it’s been abandoned. Allowing Nancy to look at them just continues to hammer that in. I mean, did anyone else feel slightly grossed out at the sink with a plunger in it? You really resonate with Nick Falcone’s commitment of protecting America from becoming Generica. Despite its dilapidated state, I’m pretty sure we all can agree that the theater commanded a presence. This game reminded me of the old Scooby Doo episode where they go to the puppet theater and are haunted by that creepy puppet master. And just like the Scooby doo gang, you always felt like someone was watching you—especially in areas like the underground basement and the main theater room.

Music:

Another stellar masterpiece. I don’t think there is a single track I hated. Each title retained the jazzy elements of the theater’s ritzy days, yet there is always something creepy intermixed within it. It really set in the feeling that someone was following you around. Tracks like “Lobby” and “Maya” really brought this feeling home, especially at end game when the danger music is playing and it intermixes with Maya’s theme. OMG, when that music started playing, I really got chills and started to become frantic. I forgot that the axe and hammer don’t work on the ice cube cupboard, which made me waste time. I actually finished this game with seconds to spare because I didn’t know that time didn’t stop when you read the letters.

In terms of little noises, I loved the sound of the doors as you opened it and the rustle of the curtains as you moved them aside. The noise the key make makes and the papers on Nick Falcone’s desk!

Characters:

Nancy: I think everyone agrees that FIN Nancy is a Nancy we rarely ever see. She is taking no crap from anyone. Not only does it reinstate the sense of urgency, but it also shows a Nancy who refuses to be pushed around by others. I mean, not one character dumps their chores onto Nancy! Well Nick Falcone sort of does, but Nancy has the option of calling him out on this!

Simone Muller: Ah, who can forget the best introduction lines ever, “I’m going to have to call you back, someone just stepped out of my closet”. That one line gives you everything you need to know about Simone. She’s busy, has no time for strange occurrences, and doesn’t let anything get in the way of her plans. I love her rudeness, especially when you combine it with Brady and the book he’s reading on “being your own self”. The fact that she refuses to talk to Nancy until the end of day one enforces that “I’ve got no time for you” managerial, Hollywood attitude. One thing this game does well is in making each character suspicious. There is no object or goal the characters are trying to attain, but rather, the game focuses on the lengths they would go to in order to satisfy their desires. Simone wants to make Brady famous because that would make her rich. Thus, from her dealings with Brady’s fans and the floral card, it makes sense that she might kidnap Maya. BTW, I just want to say how amazing this game is by making all the suspicious evidence be everyday items. For Simone, it’s messages and a floral business card. In other words, the suspicion is put on the character’s motives and their personality, as in, how they would achieve said goals.

Brady Armstrong: Total Hottie, am I right? Oh wait, wrong game. Out of the 4 suspects, Brady is the weakest because he really has no reason to kidnap Maya. Even if it was a publicity stunt it wouldn’t be him doing the kidnapping, Simone would make sure of that! But the plot twist they gave to his character was really cool and unexpected. It did bring some new questions, but within the context of the game, it was really great because it took the character with the lowest suspicion rate and made him super suspicious! I know some people might feel like it’s random and came out of nowhere, but I disagree. Brady is shown to have qualms with the amount of control Simone has over his life, not to mention his own fears of a waning career (which btw, nicely ties in with a theater past its prime theme). After Joseph, he shows the most amount of concern for Maya but it feels superficial, like it’s for a press. Later you see him reading the assert yourself book which builds his confidence not only to get out of Simone’s grasps but to go down a different path. Finally, he keeps everything in an office briefcase. It’s a subtle growth, but it’s there.

Nick Falcone: Probably the person the game wanted you to think is the most suspicious because Maya’s kidnapping falls right into his plans, and his past borderline illegal activates to preserve the theater. Honestly, even knowing the true criminal, I think the game did a good job at making Nick suspicious. He gives off the aura of one of those people who make you feel included and then next thing you know you helped someone out in a crime. One of those I’ll be nice and make you trust me, but I have ulterior motives and don’t trust you types. And yet, the game did something so clever with his character that connects him to the real criminal. You see, Nick is relatively nice to Nancy and actually works alongside her a bit, kind of like someone else we know. It’s a clever trick to make Joseph’s eventually reveal seem less jarring because the game has already shown a nice character who is extremely shady.

Joseph Huges: One of those tragic yet scary villains. You really sympathize with his desire to save the theater and his desperation. I felt really bad when the note about his brother’s death was discovered. He’s nice, but the game uses his niceness against you. He’s always there when you need help (he’s watching you). He tries to help you find Maya (he’s making sure you don’t find her before the demolition is due). He’s definitely one of the more dangerous villains because of his desire to be your friend. And yet, I kind of felt like they weren’t intentionally trying to hide this side of Joseph. One of the most obvious things about Maya’s kidnapping is that it would require someone to have intense knowledge of the theater’s layouts, and out of all the characters, Joseph has the most. So from the start, the finger was already on Joseph, but either his “kindness” makes you forget it or makes you deny it because it’s hard to believe. I still wonder if his denial confrontation is intentional or not, or a mix of both. It’s hard to say, he’s definitely a villain that’s exhausted. But it certainly made him one of the best, if not the best, villains in the series.

Puzzles: This game had a nice balance between the puzzles and game. The puzzles weren’t super complicated but they nicely integrated with the theater. I mean, it really wouldn’t make sense for a theater to have complicated puzzles here and there. I think the most complicated puzzle would be the one to get access to the magician’s room. The only puzzle that was a disappointment was using the keys in the attic to get past the door. There were so many keys and they were of similar colour which just made everything chaotic. The end game puzzle was hilarious because it wasn’t a puzzle at all. It was just a magic trick, yet it worked because of the setting! Simone’s phone was a little daunting because I didn’t know what the objective was. I knew you had to put the number from the lipstick card, but where and how wasn’t clear. I kind of guessed a few times then got it.

This game really hammered in the magical phrase “Appearances can be deceiving”.

One funny thing was with the electric door. I forgot to look into the chest to get the rubber gloves, so when I came to the electric door I started to improvise. Instead of going back to get the gloves, my brain went “Well, wood isn’t a good conductor of electricity so if we use the magic wand which is most likely made of wood as a stick and press the numbers with it, we should be good”….. I had to hear Nancy’s scream 3 times before I remembered the gloves.

There were a lot of phone calls, but I like talking to people and gathering bits of clues here and there and having to put everything together. Also, I loved Houdini’s cousin’s morbid humour, LOVED IT!

Graphics:

They show their age here and there, but like the theater, sometimes old is gold. This game doesn’t have little animations that are unique to the character. You could argue for Simone and Joseph as they both had something that was related to their work, but neither revealed much about their character. Graphics is something you can only talk about with the later games, but this game still provided unique angles like Joseph’s head peering into the trap door/magician’s room area.

Plot: It was fantastic. Everything is high stakes and instead of receiving help, Nancy receives reluctance and incompetence. No wonder she tags alongside the villain, he’s the only one who tries to help.

The only thing that I don’t completely get is why Brady felt threatened by Maya. So what if she exposes the fact that he’s the owner of the theater? How does that affect his popularity? If anything, planet Tinseltown would make a bigger dent in it.

Overall, loved this game. 10/10

#nancy drew #her interactive #clue crew #FIN review #The Final Scene #game review

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