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elialys · 6 months

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20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by @ceruleanphoenix7. I'm tagging: @melusine0811 @lastbluetardis and @oliviassunrise. No obligation to complete this of course, only if you want to! I'm terrible at tagging, so anyone can do this really 😅

(These answers are a bit skewed because it doesn't take into account the ~90 fics I posted on ffnet since 2004, and there are a couple fics on AO3 I've 'hidden' in private collections)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What's your total A03 word count?

1,064,298 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Fringe (32)

Doctor Who (20)

Horizon Forbidden West (5)

The Newsreader (3)

The Last of Us (1)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

On the Wings of the Ten, Aloy/Kotallo, HFW (1,510 kudos)

Chasing the Aurora, Ten/Rose/Tentoo, DW (1,410 kudos)

Calluses, Tentoo/Rose, DW (1,341 kudos)

Across the Void, Ten/Rose, DW (933 kudos)

A Leap of Faith, Ten/Rose, DW (826 kudos)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Always, to the best of my ability. Sometimes I respond literally 6 months to a year later, but I try my best to always do it. I love exchanging with my readers ❤️

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

This one is tricky because I really try to end all of my stories on a hopeful note, if not a happy one. I'm going to go with In Reverse (Peter/Olivia, Fringe), though, because it's undoubtedly the saddest story I have ever written in 20 years, if only for the stillbirth in it. And although it doesn't end on a tragic note, it's extremely bittersweet.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Maybe Calluses? (Tentoo/Rose, DW) I feel this has the most blatant "they are so in love and hopeful for the future" ending in everything I've posted on AO3 😅

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I have a few times through the years, people tearing down my writing style, accusing me of being too melodramatic (I wonder why 😂). Thankfully it's been very rare in two decades of fic writing. I did get a homophobic comment once because I wrote a minor female character having a wife.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do. I like to say the 'E' in my E rated stories stands for "Emotional Smut" 🤣 I'm strongly on the ace spectrum, so my smut is extremely vanilla, heavily focused on feelings, with just enough description to know what's going on. I write love making and that's about it 😅

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I don't, although I remember being 15 and writing a Harry Potter and Buffy crossover in one of my notebooks xD

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, although I accidently discovered 'sequels' to some of my fics, with entire sections copied/pasted of the original stories in the new ones. Although I was credited for writing the 'prequel', it's very strange to see whole chunks of my writing mixed with someone else's without me knowing anything about it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

A few times, including in Chinese and Russian! The strangest thing to me is when someone translates one of my stories in French, considering it's my native tongue, and back in the days when my English still sucked a lot, I spent many hours translating my own fics from French to English.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Once. It was an interesting experience!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Peter and Olivia. Of all the ships I've written for, I've written for them the most, and the longest. Writing them again this summer after a 6 year break was the most wonderful feeling 😭 I just feel like I know those two by heart, and writing their characters is just...comforting.

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have so many WIPs right now 😭 I don't think I'll *ever* NOT finish them, considering I finished Shivered Bones this year after a 7 year hiatus, as I knew I would eventually, so I want to believe I will finish those WIPs I really love. On top of my list of WIPs I absolutely want to finish someday: Chasing the Aurora, These Lines Etched in Sand, On the Wings of the Ten

16. What are your writing strengths?

Feelings? I've been told my writing is 'immersive', and that I'm good at putting my readers into the characters' headspace and making them feel what they're feeling. I love writing introspection and exploring characters' motivations and progression, and I know I'm pretty good at it! I can also write an 'imagery-heavy' kind of prose that people seem to enjoy.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions of actual places 😂 Like, give me an emotion to describe or an abstract concept, and I will write 2,000 words without dialogue. But tell me "now you have to describe their PHYSICAL SURROUNDINGS" and I will cry and have to be dragged by force to my keyboard.

I also find dialogue-heavy scenes to be the trickiest to write. Not the dialogue itself, that usually flows out fine, but everything around it. If it's just dialogue lines, it reads so fast and...flat. What do I write around the speech lines to control the pacing of it? How do I make this 'dynamic' even though the characters are, let's say, trapped in an elevator, having a heart-to-heart, or sitting around a table (not to mention the many 'let's talk about our feelings while lying together in bed' scenes I've written 😅). How do I convey body language and tone of voice without repeating myself 500 times? Tricky but also rewarding when I tackle it haha

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

If the character doesn't speak English in a fic written in English, absolutely? It's like watching a show/movie with characters in a non-english speaking country, yet everyone speaks English to each other in a thick accent, like, please don't 🥲

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I wrote my first fanfics at age 15, and it was all about Buffy and Spike 😅

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Asking me this is like asking me if I have a favorite child 😭

I think one I'm proudest of is The Horizon Hides in Vain (Ten/Rose, DW). I genuinely was in such a zone when I wrote it, and I think it's a nice example of my writing style, in terms of prose, characters and plot.

#writing #on writing #writing questions #fic writing #long post

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edalynn · 9 months

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Idk if I've already said this before, but H/L is like- if you look at just the surface-level concept of it, it seems fine and like it could possibly be good rep.

Interracial bi x pan couple with a plus size girl, where she's powerful and her bf is magicless, and he's genuinely amazed by her power and doesn't feel emasculated by it? That sounds cute.

But the second you actually zoom in and look at their *canon* personalities and dynamic, it doesn't work.

There's no chemistry between them, and their dynamic hadn't gotten any development since the episode where they met (half a season ago) until FtF decided to be bad fanfiction made canon and pretended like their relationship is developed enough to justify giving nods to the ship (which led to a lot of fans considering it canon), despite it getting no focus at all until then.

Plus neither of their orientations are actually shown in the writing the way Luz and Eda's are, defeating that representation point. With Hunter there's at least that one blink-and-you'll-miss-it flag (which is not good rep, sorry, at least have him wear it for a good chunk of the episode like Luz did), but with Willow there's literally nothing indicating orientation.

And the ship took away screen time from more important things that could've been focused on, like showing more of Hunter's dynamic with Luz and Camila, or having Amity be the one to reassure Willow during her breakdown, since she started the "half a witch" nickname, and it would've been much more fitting and meaningful for *her* to be the one to end it. Or it could've been Gus! He's been Willow's friend for years, much longer than the others, and I just don't buy that Hunter developed a more deep and meaningful relationship with her over a couple months than Gus had over years. (Or it could've been both Amity *and* Gus)

Plus there's everything you've talked about with how the foundation of this relationship isn't healthy, particularly in the common interpretation of it as something that happened during seasons 2 & 3 and not during the timeskip.

[I mention the surface-level ideas (interracial bi x pan ship with a plus size girl, magicless x powerful, etc) in part because I realized I have a pair in my original stuff that fits the surface-level descriptors, but their personalities are different, and I'm aiming to have them actually have chemistry. It works better at least in part because it's *my* idea and not something other people shoved into my world that I had no intention of writing. The pair is even technically "straight passing", though the girl is a transfem enby (they/she). They're also both in their late 20s/early 30s, so they're not teens]

It really does sound great barebones until you realize Willow has barely spoken to Hunter more than a few times, Hunter has been out of character flustered around her for no reason in really weird and out of place scenes, and Willow hasn’t showed any interest in a relationship with anyone the entire season, always making a point to focus on her own self-growth rather than looking for outside affirmation. For hunt//low to be even worthy of being considered a well-written and developed ship, the characters’ relationship to each other would have had to been actually developed lmao. There’s no background to the entire plot of FtF between the two of them other than being sort of friends for the last few episodes. They barely know each other, and with how badly Hunter is still shown to have PTSD and trauma from his very recent past it makes it very OOC for any of FtF to happen the way it did.

And unfortunately, you’re right about the lack of representation from them. Okay, you can say as much as you want that Hunter is bi rep and Willow is pan rep, but unless it’s actually shown in the show it doesn’t mean fuck all. Okay, Hunter has a patch. That’s it. Willow doesn’t even show interest in a romantic relationship the entire length of the series, so I’d even be more inclined to call that an implication of her being aroace if I really wanted to be a stickler about it. Our two canon relationships, lumity and raeda, have both Luz showing interest in guy and girls as well as Eda showing interest in guys while having been in a relationship with a nonbinary person in the past (and currently, now). That’s what representation is- it being shown in the actual piece of media rather than tacked on as trivia after the fact. Plus, Dana literally said that everything she said after the show ended was her headcanon and should only be taken as headcanon and not canon as the media technically doesn’t even belong to her anymore 🙃 She said that unless it is explicitly stated in the show, it is not actually canon, and unless I’m losing my mind hunt//low was never canonized in the show before, during, or even after the series :-) If you want to believe their orientations are canon, then fine. But that imo shows poorly on TOH for not actually showing them as representation and barely sneaking in one patch for Hunter in a half a second scene.

And the fact that their bullshit scenes in FtF take up time where we could’ve gotten more plot related content will never stop pissing me off. I hadn’t thought about the concept of Amity helping Willow, but now that you’ve brought it up I actually think that would’ve made the conclusions to Willow’s arc far more satisfying and meaningful. Amity and Willow rebuilding their friendship has always had way more of an impact on the story than Hunter and Willow’s “friendship” “developing”. In fact, I’d consider it a MAJOR point in her arc, something that colors her character’s place in the story and what helps her to overcome part of her struggles even. There was no reason to waste that space on Hunter, and would’ve got rid of the dumb, uncomfortably written Boscha mess with Amity. And in doing that, they could’ve used that time to wrap up Hunter’s arc in any sense, rather than tabling his entire storyline to be Willow’s savior. They should’ve scrapped any Hunter and Willow storyline out of the third season all together, being as they clearly didn’t have the proper time to develop it in any way other than coming off as bad fanfiction written by a 12 year old.

The concept for the relationship really is a good and interesting one, but the story of TOH clearly wasn’t built for that to work and any nods to it came off as a toddler trying to shove a square block into a round hole. Your original work already sounds far more developed and well rounded just from a few sentences in comparison to an entire ask-long essay about hunt//low’s actual scenes/interactions in the show. And the worst part is, they’d have to tweak Willow’s entire personality to get it to work.

#taako talks #asks #anons #toh #the owl house #huntl0w negative

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bluebeesknees · 1 month

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Hi Bee! Going anon because I feel so awkward asking this and I genuinely like you and your work is beautiful ;;;;;;

Patreon subber here! I've noticed that you seem to be drawing less and less of BTS art and more of that anime show. Which is 100000% your prerogative and I fully support anyone following their own joy and especially artists creating art that interests them, not just to cater to their audience, so this is in no way me asking or requesting you to draw less anime and more BTS! However, I'm not in the greatest place financially right now and I need to be more strict with myself and where I am spending my money and to make sure where I'm spending my money also aligns with my own wants. I wish I was in a position to just remain subbed as a patron no matter what because I love your art and want to support you as an artist, and I've really been warring with myself over this for the last couple months because that truly where my values lie when I have the means. But between the topic and amount we're paying for, I'm feeling torn. I TOTALLY get the reasons for the decrease in content, your health issues and school and work are completely valid, but it doesn't change the fact that we're getting noticeably less now than we did a year ago, and you've been promising it's temporary for set periods (first school and exams last year, then work, then health), but it's held pretty steady for at least a year now and has never returned to the level many of us subbed to originally despite repeated assurances that eventually things will pick back up. Less content is honestly not a big deal in and of itself, but it doesn't sit right with me that you haven't been upfront that these changes will be permanent, always promising that the current volume is temporary. But also there's been no broaching the subject of the fandom your creating for the majority of the time now changing from what your subscribers subbed to or for. Again, I fully support you creating for whatever interests you, but when I subbed you were solely a BTS fanartist and described your patreon as such on twitter, offering early and uncensored access to NSFW art, and you've never said anything to your subscribers about your focus permanently shifting to predominantly be anime. So far in 2024, not including previews for or commissions, you've published 2 BTS art posts and 8 of the anime characters on patreon. In the position I'm in, it just doesn't make sense for me to be spending a monthly subscription fee on fan content that isn't something I follow or know anything about. So I guess what I'm asking is for confirmation that you will no longer be focusing on BTS art? Truly you are so talented, I genuinely do love your art in general, I just can't afford to spend monthly money on something that doesn't genuinely interest me, even if I wish I could stay subbed just to support an artist I admire.

Dude hey! It seems you put a lot of thought into this so I'll answer accordingly!

I know I haven't been as reliable as I wanted to be in the past few months and I apologise for that. I don't mean for this to sound like an excuse, but I did very much believe for things to be temporary. (I tremendously overexhausted myself with my degree and my health has been a bit shit since qwq) I overestimated myself and should have had more foresight and taken proper breaks with the payment cycles as well.

Now, as for the shift in fandoms, I have wanted to broaden my range of fandoms I produce art for for quite some time. I do still very much love BTS and the aus I made mean a lot to me still. But the fandom in general has sparked a lot less joy than it used to lately and I've gotten a bit bored drawing only them. BTS was already an uncommonly long obsession and while i wouldn't call it burn-out, I AM a bit singed. I haven't announced something like a permanent shift on my patreon or twitter because it isn't, I love to draw them still but my focus just isn't as singular as it was for the past few years.

I know that keeping multiple fandoms under a single hat on patreon isn't ideal, and I completely understand that patrons don't always vibe with that. So I do not take it personally AT ALL should they decide to leave. Honestly it makes me very grateful to see that this meant enough to you to contact me like this.

Jjk is currently the thing that interests me the most, but I did plan to return to the roots of doing bangtan ship polls again for next month!

You've definitely given me stuff to think about. I'll make an announcement in the next few days regarding future plans.

And finally, I'll plainly say that my focus on bts art won't return to the level of intensity it started out as for a good while. It will continue, but not as it was. As you said, it's good for an artist to draw not only for an audience and I won't ever force myself to do that either. But I should have been more transparent, maybe it really is time I overhaul my page to represent the current me.

Ok, enough serious waffling, Please Do Not Feel Bad for cancelling your subscription!! In fact I encourage it if it doesn't spark joy anymore!! Smutty patreon art is a luxury expense and shit is hard enough these days!! I pinky promise I will not be mad above some entirely impersonal mild annoyance that my monthly budget shall now encompass 3$ less :)

I hope I covered it all, if you want to ask me about anything else, feel free to dm me, I promise I won't bite. I should generally encourage more plain feedback on my page so if you have more notes, I'd love to hear them!

But for now that's all!

Love, Bee 🐝 💙

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eruscreaminginthedistance · 6 months

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Book recs based on stuff I read in 2023

Nonfiction

Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer (2003) - it's outdated by about 20 years which leads to one hell of a jumpscare at the end, but I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested at all in Mormonism, high control groups, FLDS, and the history of abuse against women and girls in the LDS; it covers everything you need to know about the ways the LDS church has cultivated a paedophile/domestic abuse culture and it's fucking haunting and it's the most upset a book has ever made me

Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufman (2017) - a really fun read; it's a collection of case studies of the real life Africans living or working in England during the Renaissance, with each chapter focusing on a different individual and what we know about them from parish records, legal documents etc. It's also a great primer on England's relationship with the slave trade and African nations from the 16th to 17th centuries. Also I listened to this on audiobook and the lady's voice is super soothing

Problematic gay rep

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (1956) - yeah okay turns out Baldwin is the GOAT of queer lit for a reason. I don't even like 20th century stuff but Baldwin can WRITE man I was sucked in! And David is the BLUEPRINT of problematic gay rep! I loved watching his awful decisions I hope he suffers eternally! It's a short and easy read and a classic for a reason do give it a chance

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite/William Martin (1996) - I'm not sure if I'm deadnaming Martin here because I bought the book earlier this year and it was still being attributed to Poppy Z Brite so I guess it's being treated like an author pseudonym now? I think? Anyway, don't read this book unless you're a disgusting freak like me who enjoys torture porn. This book comes with every content warning under the sun and I had an AMAZING couple of afternoons reading this book. American Psycho, Jeffrey Dahmer and NBC Hannibal had a baby and Martin delivered it; it's a raw, twisted and angry scream into the void about AIDS, homeless queer youth, homophobia and cultural stigma, wrapped up in a bow made of intestines. I went into this book hoping to see people get tortured and came out of it quite melancholic with a lot to think about, and I accidentally got attached to the victim oops!

The Charioteer by Mary Renault (1953) - I was gonna make a non-problematic section just for this book but then I remembered all the rampant femmephobia xD and Ralph and Laurie would 100% be bootlicking gays against pride. This book personally isn't for me - it's a lot of love triangle nonsense - but I think the tumblr demographic is particularly primed for gay World War II love triangle stories, and it's a softer, happier love story than my other recs. Would recommend if you can get past the main characters being pick mes.

Manga

No Longer Human by Junji Ito (2019) - this is a story about being a bad person and ruining everyone's lives especially your own lol; I loved the original prose version, but Ito's spin of the story makes everything so much worse and if I hadn't literally read a book about irl paedophilia the month before I think this book would have put me in the angriest and most violent place I've been all year. Love gorgeous art? Love mental illness? Love despicable spineless main characters? Get on this

Other fiction

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (1980) - it took me a month to read this entire book. It's so self-indulgent and long winded and contrived and the big twist is laughable and I wouldn't have it any other way! It's just some old guy playing in his sand box with his little monk action figures and it's charming af. Plus the concept of a monastic murder mystery involving several orders of monks will never not be fun, and I'm biased towards the book cos my guess at the very start as to whodunnit was right >:) would recommend if you like Sherlock Holmes and long long diatribes about medieval Catholic geopolitics

Garth Marenghi's Terrortome by Garth Marenghi (2022) - this one's just a bit of a laff. The horror comedy ramblings of a man going stir crazy during COVID lockdowns. You don't need to have seen Garth Marenghi's Darkplace to understand the book but it is recommended if you can access it. Content warning for explicit man x typewriter

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962) - it's a modern day (relatively) witch story! Jackson was writing about and for all the weird autistic little girls out there with this one. It's a gothic murder mystery about two co-dependent sisters who are outcasts in their village. It was a great introduction to Jackson's work

#i've still got two more books to read before 2023 ends but I don't think they're gonna make the list so it's fine lol #books #reading #my reading #literature #bookblr #reading wrap up #book recommendations #book reccs

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ryan-shepard-writes · 2 years

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A couple dozen Get To Know Ya How Ya Doin questions by @athenixrose !!! Tagging anyone who feels like doing them! If you want to answer them you should go to THIS POST HERE and either copy/paste or reblog directly from Athenixrose!

Since I'm shy and haven't really been active in the writeblr community, I'm going to make it my goal to answer ALL the questions!

How are you?

I'm... Here. Which I consider to be a good thing.

How's the writing going?

Not terribly, I think, but I have a bad kind of writer's block right now. I know what I want to happen, but I can't make myself WRITE it... I also kinda feel like I really want to delete and change a bunch of stuff. Idunno.

Do you read books?

A bit too often, yeah. I cycle through the same ones all over, y'know? I love reading, but I think my brain is using it as an excuse not to write.

Have you been focusing on plot or fluff/downtime in your WIPs where nothing happens really?

Attempting to do plot, which is probably my problem. I excel at dialogue and character interactions, but writing plot is... Rough for me.

What's the hardest part of writing for you?

Actually physically doing it. Especially when it comes to doing events and advancing plot.

Do you like making titles?

YES. I love coming up with titles and taglines.

Do you like making blurbs?

I'm not sure! I don't think I've ever precisely written a blurb before?

Do you make your own mock covers?

Yes and no. I designed my own header photo on my blog, if that counts?

Do you write fanfiction?

Yes. A lot. Probably too much. I'm a selfshipper.

Who was your first ever favourite character from any piece of media?

My first ever fave? Probably Mewtwo.

Who is your current favourite character from a piece of media?

All Might!

Favourite book?

Gods that's a hard question. Probably one of the books in the Protector of The Small Quartet by Tamora Pierce.

Favourite song?

Genuinely no clue. I have a lot!

Favourite film?

TREASURE PLANET!

Favourite TV series?

At the moment? My Hero Academia!

What has been the biggest influence that has shaped how you write or inspired you?

The dichotomous complexity of the human heart.

Have you ever written anything out of spite because you hated how another piece of media was written or produced/ acted out?

Ooooooooooh yes. Most definitely. I don't think it exists anymore, but I wrote a whole ass new ending for The Giver when I was in middle school.

Last fictional death you cried at?

Aunt may in Spider-Man 2018 :')

How many drafts do you complete before you consider a WIP finished?

Uh.... Hehehe.... Finish?

How long have you been writing?

I wrote my first "original story" when I was 9, but I daydreamed original stories before that.

What genres do you write for?

Science-Fantasy, romance, queer, cosmic horror... Usually all at once.

Do you like doing research and if so, are you researching for a WIP right now?

LOVE research. Catch me taking refresher courses on hawking radiation for 2 lines of dialogue.

How many abandoned WIPs do you have?

Only a few... I tend to keep writing things even years later.

How many completed WIPs?

Hehehehe... 1. An old Kingdom Hearts fanfic that I wrote in middle school.

How many WIPs in progress?

All of them.

How organised with everything, are you? Do you keep track of OCs with lists ect?

I'm the least organized person you have ever met. I have no character sheets. Everything is trapped in my brain. Please send help.

Has your own writing ever made you cry?

Oh yeah absolutely. Fate's Crystal Majesty has SEVERAL points that make me tear up.

#fate's crystal majesty #ask game #important #writeblr

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raindropssys · 9 months

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forenote: sorry, this is a long ask, and idk if this is the right place to put it, but i'm looking things up everywhere (google, quora, reddit, youtube, dsm books and diagnostic tests, and now looking for people's personal experiences on tumblr) and trying to find out if this is real for me or not. i'm also sorry if this is really disorganized because i ramble and am a little stressed and get in a way where i can follow my train of thought, but maybe someone else might not. and i ended up giving more background than i expected.

background

so i'm not sure if i'm a system or not but i know I have traits that are described in some of the diagnostic tests. but i don't trust my own brain because when i was a kid i used to be a heavy daydreamer so far that if i did it as an adult now, it'd qualify as maladaptive daydreaming.

i'm getting a therapist today, but i just want to talk about this with someone else, particularly someone who is certain about themselves as a system. i'm 20 afab genderfluid (i think?).

i feel like i have persona parts (?), i guess. for instance, i have a part which would qualify a fictive. i can typically feel his thoughts, sometimes in his voice, and he wants to do different things in life than i do. he doesn't really have career or scholarly goals, but he wants a family, like a wife and a kid at some point "if all [his] ducks were in a row". (i want a husband one day but i don't want kids ever.) but i feel like i can tell what he's thinking before he verbalizes it in thought.

and sometimes it feels like (because if i am a system, then i'm always conscious when the body is conscious, i'm always in control at some level, even if another influence or feeling of someone else is there) i can step in and stop them being in action or taking control of the body. in fact i don't think i've ever experienced a full loss of control or consciousness.

but this particular possible fictive, i used to do roleplay online for when i was in middle school. and i remember when i was exposed to the character, and i remember roleplaying. but i vividly remember some of the imagery of the roleplay in my head, and this particular roleplay lasted on and off for a few years and was much broader than what this possible fictive has picked and pulled and "told" me what was real and what wasn't.

like to him, certain parts of the roleplay are fact. like in his original story, he is an only child and dies in the end of the story. when i feel like him or am "talking" to him, he is emotionally attached to his sister from the roleplay. and i've said to myself/him in the past "you're not real, she's not real. the story, even the parts that are what you give credit of me and my friend's storytelling to, that isn't actually real". and then for a long time, i didn't think about it until i started trying to get into writing and daydreaming the way i used to in fandom for the source and it felt shallow and unreal. and i've always been good at imagining. i just didn't put anything into it until the couple of times that i've said to myself "maybe i have multiple personas/parts" then not trusted myself to talk to a therapist or anyone else about it

actual ask

but a day or so ago, i was looking to get into that old roleplay account, and i had tried multiple times to get into the email i had made for it but i couldn't properly remember the email address. he and i have been focusing on "talking" in my head for the past week or so, and in my head. he was really just resting close by and i was looking at the account and saying i wish i knew the email to get in. and he "suggested" by thought to write the email address a different way than i had been insistent on doing. and i was able to finally get into the account by way of the backup email and now i really really want to take that as proof but i also don't trust that something i saw on the page didn't jog my memory as a singlet and that i'm too in my own head to accept that i'm a singlet despite for years believing so and only having about 3 to 6 months out of my entire life where i believed that i could be multiple.

have you heard of this sort of thing happening in did or another dissociative disorder?

hello anon, hope you're doing well.

in our experience, and i'm sure many other systems' experience, self doubt is a large factor in system discovery. now, i am not saying you are definitely a system, because 1) i do not know you and 2) that cannot be decided by me. but whatever you're experiencing, you are indeed experiencing it. that cannot be taken away. you may be a system, you may not be. but, i feel it is important to keep this in mind. back when our host was beginning to accept that we are a system, they would very often doubt themselves and be convinced that they were somehow faking it unintentionally.

you mentioned that the supposed fictive feels very emotionally attached to the characters from the roleplay story. that is something that i, a fictive, can absolutely relate to. something that you may want to ask yourself is, if you feel attached to those characters in the same way(s) and/or the same degree? or, are the emotions that he experiences relating to that something that feels unlike yourself?

as for this email business, that does sound like something that a system could very well experience. i can't say this with complete certainty, however, as our system pretty much shares memory.

i would say that talking with systems and sharing experiences may help you in this. and hey, you've already done so by sending in this ask, so well done. i wish the best for you and hope that you are able to figure this all out!

-will

#raindrops.sys #raindrops.sys.asks #will.raindrops.sys #dissociative system #dissociative alters #did osdd #osddid #osdd system #did system #osdd community #did community

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acerace · 3 years

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...you have opened my eyes to a vast universe of VintageBeef lore that I was unaware of. I knew about the New Hermit Order, of course, and the UHC invention, and I've watched a few of his CTM things but -- I will take all the info and lore you feel like giving out because Beef is amazing and my knowledge is so small.

Vintagebeef my beloved <3

So the thing is, right, until about 2016 I only watched two (2) youtubers- Vintagebeef for Minecraft and aDrive for Pokemon (and funnily enough both of them are named Dan irl). So I've watched most of Beef's videos over the years and have a general knowledge of most of his stuff, except because it's been like a decade I don't remember where most of the lore comes from XD

The thing with him is that he doesn't do Lore tm the way other mcyters often do lore- he doesn't have an extensive RP series to draw from like Grian, doesn't have a solo world with steadily increasing amounts of lore like Etho or Zisteau, and while he's played on SMPs and been involved in storylines before it's not really the focus of his episodes unlike with Evo or Legacy or Empires

So where does that leave us?

IRL, Beef always has multiple series running at the same time. Often he's playing on an smp while doing a singleplayer, often modded, series as well as a CTM or modpack with a group of friends. For example, right now he's playing on Hermitcraft, doing weekly Pixelmon and Building a Zoo episodes, and a CTM map with Slip. And to me, this translates to one thing: Beef is an adventurer. He travels frequently- he explores a world and when he decides he's done, he leaves for the next one. That's the basis of my personal interpretation of his series and his character for my writing.

Ok so reading this back, this got extremely long and didn't explain much in the way of lore, somehow? If anyone has any additions to add please do so, I am very definitely leaving out a lot and would love to see what other lore people remember and are using for Beef! I didn’t include the Hermitcraft stuff since my memory of season 4 is blurry (his base was themed after the Martian, that much I know, and he and Iskall were buddies :D) and most of the s5 NHO lore is best watched from Bdub’s perspective from what I remember, and the only s6 stuff is a single line in Hermitgang and then the Area 77 arc with its possibility of an NHO reunion which we did not get rip. And s7 of course had the cloning machine and also the Podzol Party as the main lore. So all the original rambling is still below the cut though it is very long, and I'm gonna bullet point the main stuff here instead:

Actual canonical things:

Invented UHC and was the only survivor of the first ever uhc (Mindcrack UHC s1)

Married to an ender dragon (one of the UHCs I think), later father to a different dragon (Mindcrack season 3? I think?)

Might not have legs if you choose to take that joke as canon (Mindcrack s2)

Was a wizard (RAD)

is a zookeeper (Building a Zoo)

Had a wife and kids (Sims in Minecraft)

Part of the Trial of the B Team court case (Mindcrack)

NHO founder, founder of the Podzol Party (Hermitcraft)

Created a cloning machine that sort of works (Hermitcraft)

Played the Forest which is I believe the first time he and Keralis played together (look up the trigger warnings for this one, it's a horror game)

Was the creator/owner of Sourceblock SMP (featuring some familiar faces if you know Legacy, Empires, or MCC) and there is literal magic from a mysterious sourceblock of water that teleports people and summons mobs and probably more stuff that I haven't seen yet since I'm still watching it myself

Things you can infer:

Good with animals (Life in the Woods, Pixelmon, Ark)

Is a car nerd (irl and all of the car games he's played)

Is a highly experienced adventurer who has traveled through dozens of worlds both vanilla and modded, across multiple dimensions (Twilight Forest, the Aether, the Betweenlands, Limbo), completed dozens of monuments, fought in blood sports, survived apocalypse after apocalypse, tamed dinosaurs, and played a lot of prop hunt and golf with your friends

If you're looking for what to watch for lore purposes, I'd say the Mindcrack UHCs and Team Canada's RAD series are pretty good, definitely Sourceblock and HC s5, plus the Diversity CTM maps and Ruins of the Mindcrackers maybe? And Mindcrack Prank Wars for the chaos and the origin of Team Canada. And if you can handle horror than the Forest is fun and if you don't do horror you can watch the Pojkband play golf or prop hunt they're hilarious I love them sm I want a Pojkband reunion So Bad

Beef's first series was a singleplayer series in beta 1.4_01 though he had played the game extensively before that, and was a big fan of Guude, having watched his own Minecraft videos. The series was functionally a hardcore one where if he died Beef would delete the world and start again! I haven't actually Watched this series so idk if he died or how often lmao. When Guude made Mindcrack, which was btw one of the very first Minecraft SMPs, he also hosted a competition for people to join, and Beef submitted a video (which is still viewable on his channel I believe!) and won, and was added to Mindcrack in season 2 :D (fun fact, Guude said that even if Beef hadn’t won he would have added him anyway)

Two running jokes emerged from Mindcrack- pulling a Vintagebeef and Beef doesn't have legs. The first is a reference to Beef dying of fall damage (I believe the exact instance was him trying to jump into his swimming pool and failing spectacularly) and after the incident, every time someone died of fall damage they were pulling a Vintagebeef. The second joke comes from Guude, who joked that the reason Beef wasn't going to a convention was because he didn't have legs, and then he pranked Beef's base by building a giant pair of legs at the entrance to his castle so you had to walk between them to get into the base. This joke has long since died and both Beef and Guude feel pretty bad about it iirc because there were people who genuinely thought Beef was disabled and were emailing him supportive messages and stuff oops. So if you go looking on the Salad or find old Mindcrack fics, you might see references to Beef having prosthetic legs!

Mindcrack also brought about the creation of several Player groups- Team Nancy Drew, Team Canada, and GOB to name a few relevant to Beef. Team Nancy Drew consists of Beef, Pauseunpause, Guude, and Baj, who formed to investigate a prank on one of the members but I forget who. They're named Nancy Drew after the detective! Team Canada also formed in retaliation to pranks, with it consisting of Beef, Etho, and Pause, the three Canadian members on the server (not including Adlington who moved to Canada but never joined the group). There was also a Team America who pranked them with American flags everywhere. GOB is Guude, OMGChad, and Beef, who played stuff like the Ragecraft, Pantheon, and Monstrosity ctms together but that's way down the line lol

Team Nancy Drew is also notable for inventing UHC. It was Beef's brainchild but it was the four of them who first played it! The first UHC had the four of them working to kill the dragon with no natural regen, with everyone dying but Beef, who "won" the UHC. The second uhc was still dragon focused and iirc is where Beef married the dragon? Memories are hazy but they do kill the dragon in this one I think. UHC was then revamped as a pvp event and became a regular Mindcrack game every few months, featuring most of the Mindcrackers and several special guests, including Dinnerbone, who as we know Thanos-snapped Doc's arm out of existence as a result of Doc killing him in one of them

In one of the seasons of Mindcrack, Beef invited swedish Mindcracker and good friend Anderzel to go caving with him and invented ABBA Rules caving, where the winner takes it all. ABBA Rules is a game where each ore (and also dungeon loot like nametags) is assigned a point value and the person with the most points at the end wins and gets to keep all the stuff collected from the game.

In Mindcrack season 3?, Beef punched the ender dragon in an... awkward area, so when the dragon died and left the egg behind, Guude said Beef was the father of the egg XD I don't remember if I watched s3 so I have no idea if anything Happened with this concept but *history of the world voice* you could make lore out of this!

So Team Canada has played a Lot of CTM maps (which fun fact were pretty much invented by another Mindcrack member, Vechs, with his Super Hostile series! Super Hostile has a bunch of things called "Zistonian", which are references to another Mindcrack member Zisteau, who has a very wild singleplayer series with even wilder lore but I digress). In Ruins of the Mindcrackers, they had a running joke that Beef was Etho and Pause's mom, which is a joke we can leave in the past actually /lh. They also played all the Diversity maps, Sky Factory, Terra Restore, Uncharted Territory uhhh and a couple more ctms and adventure maps! Each map kinda has its own story so in Diversity 3 for example they were trapped in a simulation? I think? Team Canada also recently played the Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons modpack, aka RAD, in which Beef was a wizard with a magic staff that could do anything from summon lightning to control hostile mobs.

Sourceblock SMP is a vanilla survival 1.14 series that ran for one season and the series starts with each of the Players being drawn to a strange sparkling water source that, once they touch it, brings them to the Sourceblock world. It also summons a giant zombie at one point. There's probably more lore for this series but like I said I haven't watched it all the way through yet

He has a Patreon server called VintageCraft and has done a series or two on there as well, and played a few UHCs with them, so lore that how you will!

Beef also played a few popular mods, notably Pixelmon, Life in the Woods, and Feed the Beast, with LitW being singleplayer and the other multiplayer. He's also recently played the Zoo and Wild Animals mod a lot. He did a short series with the Minecraft Comes Alive mod where he married one of the villagers and had two children, so that's canon now :D he’s played a Lot of Pixelmon starting when the mod first came out iirc (he chose Turtwig in his first series and built a Grass gym, then made a Normal gym in another series in uhh 2016) and he still plays to this day. Quite a few Hermits played on his Pixelmon servers with him, like Wels, Etho, Iskall, Stress, Slip, Zueljin, and also Guude and Phedran (a Mindcrack adjacent player and creator of the LitW modpack) and a few Mindcrackers on the older servers

Mindcrack and friends played a lot of other games too- 7 Days to Die, Ark Survival Evolved, Unturned, to name a few, so you can pull a lot of lore out of these as well. Speaking of friends and non-Minecraft games, Beef teamed up with Pause, Keralis, and Slip (a former Hermit) to play the horror game the Forest, which saw them stuck on an island trying to survive against terrifying mutated human... things. They played it a few times as the game updated but as afaik it's the first time Beef played with Keralis and possibly Slip and since the game starts with the Player's airplane crashing, that could totally be how Beef first met them in-universe

I... think? that’s everything I mentioned in the tags? There is probably way more stuff I’ve forgotten that stems from inside jokes and things that happen within each series, but I hope that was a) helpful and b) at least somewhat comprehensible lmao

#hermitcraft #mindcrack #vintagebeef #mcyt #long post #asks #redwinterrises #that was so many words #kudos to anyone who reads the whole thing lmao

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traincat · 3 years

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I feel like I've read a ton, but I'm honestly still pretty new to comics rn. That being said... What is one more day? Ik we don't like it and it happened a while ago, but that's about it [,=

Time for Spider-Man History With Traincat: Highly Controversial Storylines! And that feeling is totally normal with comics with huge canons -- you can read a ton and still have some fairly big blindspots in your understanding of the total picture. That being said, this is kind of a big one, both in terms of Spider-Man history/canon and in terms of how Spider-Man fandom functions. I would say probably no other storyline has had quite as much impact on how the fandom views and interacts with the source material as One More Day/Brand New Day. It's been the Wild West out here ever since it happened. (Which was in 2007, so like, yes, fairly long ago, especially when you look at how Spider-Man canon has evolved since, but in the grand scheme of things, also kind of recent. One More Day is not old enough to rent a car.)

So when people talk about Spider-Man's One More Day, they're usually actually talking about two related arcs: One More Day and Brand New Day. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering both. For the sake of transparency, I am going to admit that I think One More Day, as a self-contained story, is good, actually. This is controversial! I admit that! But I stand by my stupid opinions on this blog, for some reason. I think One More Day when you examine it on its own, by which I mean you ignore the decade and a half worth of canon that came after it, as a Spider-Man story and as a PeterMJ-centric story holds up under scrutiny and that people who don't like it don't like complicated love stories and might actually throw their own mothers under buses. No offense to the OMD haters. Little bit of offense to the OMD haters. Brand New Day, which is the continuation of One More Day, on the other hand -- largely bad. Very largely bad.

But let's backtrack. One More Day is a four issue crossover storyline that takes place directly after Civil War, during which Iron Man and Captain America got divorced and divvied up the superhero community and Spider-Man made some startlingly bad decisions and made a fugitive out of himself and his family in a manner that got Aunt May shot, and Spider-Man: Back in Black (Amazing Spider-Man #539–543) which examines Peter's actions immediately after Aunt May is shot and ends with him humiliating the Kingpin in front of an entire prison. One More Day consists of Amazing Spider-Man #544 -> Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 -> Sensational Spider-Man v2 #41 -> Amazing Spider-Man #545. In One More Day, Aunt May is dying, all of Peter's efforts to save her have thus far failed, and, consumed by guilt, he is rapidly running out of time. Approached by Mephisto, a literal demon from hell, Peter is offered a deal: Aunt May will live -- and Peter's identity, which was previously revealed to the world at large during Civil War, will once again be hidden from the memories of all but a select few -- if Peter trades him his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane struggle with this, but eventually both agree to the deal. The clock strikes twelve, the deal is done, and Peter and Mary Jane's marriage fades into history.

(ASM #545) A reasonably simple premise for a story that caused so many problems -- most, I would argue, not actually the original story's fault. So obviously, this was an unpopular move -- Peter and Mary Jane had for a long time been a fan favorite Marvel couple, and in a fictional universe where most relationships are doomed as soon as they begin, the enduring Spider-Marriage was sacred ground. And then, with a snap of its fingers, it was gone: Peter wakes up in Aunt May's house, no longer married, with Mary Jane out of the picture. (She would not return to the book on any sort of consistent basis for over 50 issues.) In the wake of One More Day began Brand New Day, which is basically what it sounds like: a promised "brand new day" of "exciting" Spider-Man content and a publishing schedule where Amazing Spider-Man came out three times a month. (Which sounds good on paper but I think in practice caused more problems than it created good storylines.) Peter, newly single again, had new love interests! And also Harry Osborn was alive again for some reason! I generally like Harry's post-BND stories so that part's fine with me.

But overall? Brand New Day is a mess. It knows it wants to tread new and exciting ground with Peter -- tell new stories! ensnare new readers! make them fork out for a book three times a month. -- but it doesn't know what those stories should be. Readers who were invested in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship -- a major facet of Spider-Man comics for decades at that point -- felt rightfully betrayed that the marriage could be so easily traded in and that Mary Jane herself, perhaps the second most important figure in Spider-Man comics after Peter, could be tossed aside. From a personal point of view, I think Brand New Day fails in large part because it abandons what has always made Spider-Man such a compelling series, and that's the mix of Peter's personal life with his vigilante life. BND sees Peter with new friends, new jobs, new love interests, etc -- it is very much a brand new day! But it isn't a better day compared to the stories that came before it. I do like some post-BND stories, especially American Son (ASM #595-599) and Grim Hunt (ASM #634-637), but compared to pre-BND where I think the majority of canon is good, it's a very lacking body of work that is hurt by the way it divorced itself from the PeterMJ marriage as Spider-Man's central relationship.

"But Traincat, I thought you said you liked One More Day?" Yeaaaaah. I do. This is why I keep saying I like One More Day on its own merits, and not on the merits of the stories it opened the doors for. I like a good romantic tragedy in fiction, and the way Peter and Mary Jane's final scene in One More Day plays out is beautiful. I like the idea of Peter caught in this impossible situation, being asked to choose between two women he loves more than his own life. A really common criticism I see leveled against One More Day is that Peter should have chosen his relationship with Mary Jane over May's life, which is -- okay, I think it's weird that people keep insisting on this, not in the least because by asking Peter to sacrifice his aunt's life they're essentially demanding he commit a callous, out of character act in order to further his own interests. It's also weird because the thing is, Peter already chose Mary Jane over May -- that's what gets them into this situation. It's literally in the scene where May is shot:

(ASM #538) When the gun goes off, Peter's spider-sense kicks in, and he covers Mary Jane, leaving May in the path of the bullet. He does choose Mary Jane over May, regardless of whether he realized what he was doing. And that's why he can't make that choice a second time. His actions in One More Day do make sense for him as a character, whether or not any individual reader likes them, and Mary Jane's actions make sense, too -- after all, she's the one who ultimately tells Mephisto that they agree to the deal when Peter can't bring himself to voice it.

A lot of people also like to nitpick One More Day by going, well, why could (x) or (y) with life saving powers save Aunt May which is like -- yeah, I guess, but if we're going to ask that about this specific comic book near death setup, you kind of have to do it with every single one, and I'm not going to stake every single moment of comic book drama on whether or not that gold kid from the X-Men was busy at the time. Comics are soap operas in flimsy paper form: serialized longform storytelling that relies heavily on melodrama. Sometimes you have to go with things. Sometimes you sell your marriage to the devil. Stuff happens. That in and of itself doesn't make One More Day a bad story -- and while some people blame the Spider-Marriage's dissolution entirely on One More Day, I think that's a little shortsighted when you look at the history of Spider-Man since the turn of the century. It's clear -- and Marvel themselves have been perhaps a little too open about this -- that Marvel in the past few decades has had trouble with the direction they want to take Spider-Man. They WANTED Spider-Man to appeal to a distinctly youthful audience that they didn't think they were actually reaching -- understandable, considering that Marvel nearly went bankrupt around 2000 and was saved by Ultimate Spider-Man, an out of main continuity series which retold Spider-Man from the beginning and focused heavily on Peter as a teen -- but the problem was Spider-Man in the main continuity was at that point in canon a happily married man who was pushing the dreaded 30 whether or not they wanted to admit that. This is also why Marvel has continually pivoted away from Spider-Man having kids, because they feared that making him a dad would age him too much and make him unrelatable to their coveted audience of Teens. (This is also why almost every new Spider-Man property, especially the live action movies, perpetually stick him back into high school, despite that occupying a very small slice of 616 canon.) So around the year 2000, they started trying things in relation to the Spider-Marriage, which was viewed as a major problem -- after all, what's more adult than being married and liking your wife. First, they had Mary Jane presumed dead. Then, they had Mary Jane and Peter separate. Then, when Mary Jane and Peter had only recently gotten back together, One More Day struck. If One More Day specifically hadn't gone the way it had, it's pretty clear that the Spider-Marriage was going to go one way or another -- it's a little bit of a shame it happened when it did, because OMD is the end of J Michael Straczynski's run, and JMS wrote a really beautiful Peter and MJ relationship. But Marvel as a company and especially editor in chief at the time Joe Quesada viewed Peter and Mary Jane's relationship as a major problem in how they wanted to portray Spider-Man and thought that striking the relationship from the books would allow them more freedom in their portrayal of him as younger and more relatable to their Desired Audience of people who I guess really wanted to see Peter sleep with characters who weren't Mary Jane.

(ASM #546. Younger! Fresher! Less attached! Kissing random women in the club!)

The problem with One More Day has always been in the follow through -- from the content of Brand New Day to the pacing of events to the fact that Marvel withheld key information for such a long time that it allowed misinformation to thrive. After all, what does it MEAN to trade Peter and Mary Jane's marriage to the devil? It altered the events of canon in Peter and the majority of other characters' memories so that the marriage didn't exist, but it left people wondering -- did the relationship as they remembered it existed? How much of Spider-Man canon was altered? And the answers didn't come for over 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. One Moment In Time or OMIT (Amazing Spider-Man #638-641), which revealed that while Peter and Mary Jane never got married in the altered canon they did continue their long committed relationship up until just after Civil War, was published in 2010, so essentially readers were hung out to dry without answers for three years. That's a long time to string people along, but not as long as it took Marvel to confirm that the popular fan theory that Mary Jane retained her memories of the original timeline as part of her own deal with Mephisto was also true, which happened this year. I would say, at least from my perspective, a lot of the frustration doesn't come from the individual One More Day storyline so much as how Marvel has continually dragged out the aftermath, using the promise of a Spider-Marriage return to keep fans on the hook. Which is why One More Day continually comes up in discussion of current Spider-Man, because Spencer's run has relied very heavily on imagery from that period with a serious question of whether or not there actually was going to be payoff, something which is still up in the air.

This has been Spider-Man History With Traincat, brought to you by anonymice like you.

#traincat talks comics #long post #*replies

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a-shakespearean-in-paris · 3 years

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I'd love to see your take on Cullen's recovery arc as an alternative analysis! I feel like we're only ever presented with the two options of: "he needs to atone!" Or "he was a victim that needs protection!", neither of which I've ever fully agreed with. I think it's a result of the lack of attention given to his arc in DAI, which leaves a ton of room for interpretation, and results in people swaying towards either camp depending on how sympathetic they are towards him and his history.

I totally agree with this.

The problem with the way Cullen is presented in DAI is that he’s presented in an unambiguously positive light, and as @tokutenshi pointed out in this post (which I do agree with) if your Hawke was hostile to him you don’t get some of his dialogue about questioning Meredith. Additionally if you side with the mages rather than the templars Cullen has some realizations about the Order that you’re not going to hear. It’s too little too late for a lot of people, though I would also argue with what tokutenshi said, he was severely traumatized after the Blight (if you take a female mage Warden in the tower during the Witch Hunt DLC you will get lines that indicate he is suffering from PTSD, notice the lines about him being “twitchy” and “jumpy”) Personally I think we can find a middle ground between Cullen being a victim of manipulation and indoctrination, someone who suffered after experiencing trauma, and someone who works hard in the moment to do some good, whether we can or should call it “atonement” or not. That being said, he does acknowledge in Inquisition that the war against Corypheus is his chance to atone, and he works overtime to the point where it’s commented upon by several characters including the Inquisitor how hard he works.

By the time we meet Cullen in Inquisition a couple of years have passed since the chantry’s explosion. This is where I will be critical of the writing because I do think the game should have better established what exactly Cullen was doing in the time in between, though we get bits and clues from dialogue if you pay attention: He served as Kirkwall’s knight Commander after Meredith died, and he and presumably Aveline’s guard worked to basically repair the city, as Rylen says in Griffon Wing Keep that there was a lot of rubble, a lot of people without homes. Cassandra noticed Cullen’s work and recruited him to the Inquisition. (Also, keep in mind that the Inquisition was originally going to help quell the worst excess of the mage and templar fighting, restore order because the chantry lost control. Then the conclave happened, it went boom, and suddenly the Inquisition’s purpose became far greater than anyone would have expected. So Cullen as Cassandra’s choice of Commander makes total sense to me, considering he was a former templar and bringing him in basically acted as a symbol to any wayward templar, letting them know that there could be another way. But I digress on that part, haha.)

I *think* some people are dissatisfied with Cullen’s “redemption” arc in DAI because we don’t really see him fall on the sword or beat himself up for his past. There’s also no moment where he like, faces a mage he maybe knew in Kirkwall or has to deal with the mages not trusting him. Obviously of course there is nuance there as well as Toku and I mentioned--he wasn’t allowed to heal as much as he should have before being shipped to Meredith. However, here’s an interesting bit of dialogue you can get if you pick the right options after Perseverance if you tell him he doesn’t need lyrium:

Quiz: The man you were. You can’t pretend like he never existed.

Cullen: Not even if I wanted to. But I’m here now. I can make that mean something.

Cullen knows he screwed up. What’s more, he doesn’t want to forget he screwed up. But he lives in the moment to make things right. Blackwall’s arc actually shows him falling on the sword and wanting to atone, versus with Cullen it’s implied he has come to terms with his screw ups off screen. He doesn’t continuously beat himself up, he does what he can for the Inquisition to the point where if the Quiz tells him to go back on lyrium for the better of his soldiers, he does, knowing it just may kill him. There is also limited dialogue that challenges his views which turns some people off, but I know for my Inquisitor she’s very much about the now and what they both can do in the now. I won’t blame anyone who wants to be able to challenge him more, but frankly I find the fact he doesn’t continuously fall on the sword or beat himself up interesting.

All that being said, I do think of his arc as more of one of recovery versus redemption. And to be frank I’m kind of critical of the term “redemption” and what makes good redemption arcs or not. Someone having a “redemption arc” seems to imply that there’s only one road to the top of the mountain when maybe redemption is something you should always strive for? But as for the “recovery” arc: the chantry, IMO, purposely devoids both mages and templars of a personhood or life outside the order and Circle and treats them as objects. Many templar recruits are children and are basically indoctrinated to believe they serve the Maker and they are needed and that they do the Maker’s will. There’s an interesting bit of dialogue you can get if your character is a warrior and talks to Cullen about the templar spec, basically if the Quiz says “templars serve the Maker, I’d do the same.” Cullen basically replies, “uh, yeah, that’s not going to make you righteous, believe me,” implying this was the way he once indoctrinated to think, but he no longer believes it so. Templars are given lyrium for their abilities, but also to placate them, something Alistair says in DAO.

After Kirkwall Cullen sees where the Order is going, gets an offer from Cassandra and decides that if he removes the “part that kept [him] chained,” he would find his own purpose again. (He says this is your Quiz makes him take lyrium.) In Inquisition we learn he always wanted to protect people. (Our local mind reader Cole says “some templars want to only protect, like Cullen” if you ask him about templars.) And as a kid living in rural nowhere Ferelden, he saw the templars as protectors. Why I interpret his arc as more about recovery than redemption all has to do with Perseverance and the way you as the player can handle it: You can either let him know he can start over, he can endure and one day find a life of his own away from duty and battle, or you can make him take it and thus let him remain indoctrinated to what the chantry taught him, that there is nothing outside of duty and battle. It comes down between a choice of “you are leashed to what the chantry made you till you die” to “you are more and you can recover and make your own life,” which he does do by Tresspasser, romance or not. At the end of the game if you keep him off lyrium he basically thanks the Inquisitor for giving him a chance, letting him know he could be more. Additionally, a lyrium free Cullen in Tresspasser speaks of meeting his siblings again, developing a relationship. If you make him take it forever he refuses to see them.

I could also see the arc as one of faith, and finding it again. If you keep him off lyrium the prayer in the chantry he speaks is one of quiet reassurance and finding strength through his faith, but if you make him take it the prayer is “blessed are the peacekeepers” and it’s uttered desperately as if he is trying to believe it. He also mourns how far he fell. All this to say that I find it very interesting his writer focused his personal quest around the lyrium and what lyrium represents rather than say, him meeting a mage who lived in Kirkwall or something and him trying to atone to them.

When I wrote my post about why Cullen gets so much fandom related wank I got a lot of different responses that echoed the same thing about Cullen’s arc not getting a lot of attention. I think there is a lot of good writing there with his personal quest, but his writing doesn’t fill in every single gap---not to mention people are going to have vastly different experiences on how they played the games till Inquisition. And my examples of dialogue are things you may not get if you don’t pick the right options. And heck, some people only have played Inquisition.

So, I think me calling his arc in Inquisition a recovery arc has partially been not me trying to justify why I like him, but analyze a differing way a character who has screwed up in the past is written. Blackwall’s arc is a true redemption arc IMO. Cullen’s isn’t so clear cut as a redemption arc, but at the end of the day it is truly about him finding his own purpose again, which leads me to lean more toward calling it a “recovery arc.”

#cullen rutherford #replies #thanks!#toku I was going to expand your post but I got this ask and thought I'd talk about it here #I once wrote more about this in a longer post that expanded on it being a recovery arc I think #but this is a summary #resjade #long post #I had a screenshot of the quote but the post was already too long lol

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fycarmensandiego · 3 years

Text

A chat with author Melissa Wiley

In 1996, HarperCollins published six Carmen Sandiego chapter books, featuring VILE villains from the then-current "Deluxe"/"CD-ROM"/"Classic" generation of computer games and a new lineup of Acme agents, headed by a Black female Chief (Lynne Thigpen ha impact), and focusing on kid detectives Maya and Ben.

The series included two books each by two writing teams and one solo act, Melissa Peterson. I got in touch with Melissa, who now uses the pen name Melissa Wiley, and she graciously answered some questions about writing the Carmen books and beyond.

To get you caught up to my knowledge before the interview, here's Melissa's website, and here's her bio as printed in the two Carmen books (accompanied by the caricature above):

Melissa Peterson is the author of several books for young readers. Born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, she has lived in eight different states and visited Germany and France. She has never ridden a dolphin, but she did eat a great deal of sour cherry ice cream outside the cathedral in Cologne. [Note: These are both references to plot points in Hasta la Vista, Blarney.] Her research for Hasta la Vista, Blarney included many hours playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? An official ACME Master Detective, she lives in New York City with her husband and young daughter.

FYCS: Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview.

Melissa Wiley: What a fun blast from the past! The Carmen books were my first professional writing gig and I had so much fun working on them.

That's so exciting to hear! With that being the case, how did you get involved with the books?

I was an assistant editor at HarperCollins, working for the wonderful Stephanie Spinner. I started out as her editorial assistant at Random House right after grad school and moved to Harper with her a year later, shortly after [my husband] Scott and I got married. Stephanie knew that I wanted to be a writer, and she often sent in-house writing assignments my way (lots of cover copy). When I left Harper in 1995 to have a baby, Stephanie recommended me for several book assignments, including the two Carmen Sandiego novels. That project had been underway for several months—Harper was doing a tie-in with the game and TV show. There were six books in total; two were assigned to me and four went to other writing teams [Ellen Weiss and Mel Friedman, and Bonnie Bader and Tracey West]. I often joke that I got my first modem, my first baby, and my first book deal in the same month!

I loved working with my Carmen Sandiego editor, Kris Gilson. The two books were a blast to write and a great learning opportunity for me. Ellen Weiss remains a good friend of mine. She's a true gem of a person!

Have your experiences writing the Carmen books influenced your work since then?

With Carmen, I discovered how much I love writing humor. Before that (in grad school), my poems and stories were on the serious side. I had so much fun with the playful, sometimes goofy tone of the Carmen Sandiego books that I definitely shifted afterward to more of a focus on humor in my books. I still find writing from a place of playfulness to be my most satisfying kind of work.

Were you familiar with Carmen Sandiego before writing the books?

I loved the computer game! I'd seen several episodes of the show—it's all a bit blurry now and hard to say which I encountered first—and really enjoyed it, but I especially loved the game. Instant classic!

How much guidance did you receive from HarperCollins / Brøderbund? Were the plots your own, or were you given plot outlines?

We were given the basic descriptions for the two kid detectives, and I had a couple of meetings with the editors and the other writers to flesh out the characters a bit more—give them personalities. I don't think Mel was in the meetings, but Ellen was there, and Tracey and Bonnie.

Then I wrote outlines for my two books and the other writers outlined theirs. I was assigned one "Where in the World" mystery and one "Where in Time" mystery. I think I submitted several plot ideas for each—the big challenge was thinking up interesting objects for Carmen and her henchmen to steal. The Blarney Stone and cocoa beans were my favorite ideas and I was thrilled that they got picked!

How did you research the books?

Those were AOL days, and the web wasn't yet a place for intensive research, so I spent a lot of time in the library. For The Cocoa Commotion, I conducted phone interviews with staff members at the Hershey chocolate factory—lots of fun. But I never did get to visit the Blarney Stone!

What was your favorite part of working on the books?

Researching the history of chocolate! Naturally I had to do a lot of sampling in order to describe it properly. ;)

Your author bio in the books mentions that the scene in which Maya and Ben eat sour cherry ice cream in Cologne, Germany was inspired by an actual experience of yours. Did any other experiences of yours make it into the books? Have you had any other travel experiences that notable? (Note: I'm originally from Northern Michigan, so travel experiences involving tart cherries are a high bar to clear for me.)

Ohhh, that sour cherry ice cream! I hope I get to taste it again someday. Apart from eating a lot of chocolate, I can't remember any other personal experiences that informed the books. If I were to write one today, I'd make sure to set a scene in Barcelona. My husband and I spent a week there in 2008 and it was an incredible trip. The paella! The Gaudí buildings! Art on every corner! I'd love to go back someday.

The bio also features a caricature of you with your baby daughter...

That drawing was made by the brilliant comic book artist Rick Burchett, who was working with Scott on Batman comics at the time. Scott was an editor at DC Comics and Rick was one of his favorite artists to work with. When I needed a bio illustration for the Carmen Sandiego books, we commissioned Rick to draw it. I love that piece so much! The baby is my oldest, Kate, who was born right around the time I started working on the books. We still have the original art!

You've written over 20 children's books for a variety of ages, in a variety of genres. Do you have any favorites among them?

That's so hard to say—I'm fond of all of them and I dearly loved creating worlds and adventures for Charlotte and Martha in my Little House prequels—but The Prairie Thief and The Nerviest Girl in the World are extra-special to me. I grew up in Aurora, Colorado and had a summer job at a wildlife refuge on the prairie, a landscape that served as the setting for Prairie Thief. I loved getting to weave secrets into the prairie setting that means so much to me.

Your most recent book, The Nerviest Girl in the World, was published last August. Can you tell us a bit about why you wrote it?

I lived for 11 years in La Mesa, California, a small town just outside San Diego. While I was there, I learned that in the very early days of silent film, there had been a film studio in town. Eventually the studio moved to Santa Barbara, but it was exciting to discover that before Hollywood was the center of the American film industry, little old La Mesa was a moviemaking place. I began reading everything I could find about the studio, and when I learned that many of the cowboys in those early Westerns were real cowboys and ranchers, an idea for a book began to take shape—the story of an adventurous girl who stumbled into work as a daredevil film actress along with her cowboy brothers.

Of course, I'm legally compelled to ask the question that literally every interview currently includes: how has the pandemic changed your job?

LOL! Yes, it's the question right now, isn't it! Well, I've worked at home since the Carmen Sandiego days, and I homeschool my kids, so in the biggest ways our lives weren't hugely affected by the shutdown. But I used to do a lot of my writing in cafés, and I miss that like crazy! I had to think up all sorts of new strategies for staying focused at home this past year. I'm hoping to get back to the coffee shops this summer!

Something I found really interesting is that you have a Patreon, which you explain you started to help pay for medical bills. How has that experience affected your work as an author?

I've played with lots of kinds of content on Patreon and really enjoy having a space to share behind-the-scenes stories. It's a more intimate and personal space than social media, so I feel free to let my hair down and be really frank.

Thanks so much for these fantastic questions! I had so much fun reminiscing about the Carmen Sandiego adventure!

#carmen sandiego #melissa wiley #interviews #mine #csm

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linkspooky · 4 years

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Hey, I've seen that you also read haikyuu. Do you like the progression the manga took in the last couple of weeks? Also who are your favorite characters?

I have mixed feelings at best about the final arc. First I want to say I have no problem with the arc itself. The way the epilogue takes place after graduation which allows characters who are not normally in the same school to interact is top-notch. The character interactions for the most part have been the best part of reading this arc.

For instance there’s Oikawa and Hinata. Oikawa was always Kageyama’s foil so he never got much time to interact with Hinata, but not only was their meeting hilarious but we got to see how much the two of them have in common because they’re both people who want to be stars at the center of the team but are much more suited for support roles because they’re not inherently talented. They also both have spent a long time competing with and feeling inferior to Kageyama who does have natural talent.

Oikawa’s insight on how the real star was not the person who stood out the most but rather the person who quietly helped the team is major growth from the boy who wanted to snuff out Kageyama because he thought his natural talent was going to surpass him one day and Kageyama would take the spotlight away from him. Oikawa’s visit with Hinata also allows Hinata to become a much more introspective character who starts thinking about the other characters on the court rather than just himself.

One problem I’ve always had with Hinata as a character is that his need to stand out and be a star has always felt incongruent with the themes of the series as a whole which is that voleyball is ultimately a team sport. The beach volleyball arc by going back to basics has made Hinata’s character growth feel real and tangible to me, because we see him actively start to work past his own need to be special and start caring about the needs of others on his team.

His friendship with his partner isn’t soemthing that’s focused with for very long, but it’s really heartwarming to me to see Hinata learn to communicate with this person whose language he originally did not speak very well, become a part of his life to the point where he wants to win this tournament for him to give him the courage to propose to his girlfriend. It tells a lot of Haikyuu’s strength which has always been the human aspect of the sports manga. In an unfamiliar environment, Hinata struggles to connect with people who speak a different language and come from a different culture and yet, because of that he relearns the power of connection.

However, while I like the arc itself and believe it to be a well-written ending the problem is we kind of just skipped to the last chapter. My problem with the final arc can be summarized with these panels.

There was a lot of set up for the fact that Haikyuu was going to continue to follow Hinata and Kageyama for all three years as they continued to play high school volleyball. Especially since there were characters who still had set up for unfinished arcs that would have had more importance next year, like the person most likely to become captain after Daichi graduated, or Yamaguchi. The first years could have developed more over two more years of volleyball and that’s something I wanted to see, especially since there were still opponents set up for them to fight against like the Inarizaki brothers, or their longstanding rivalry with Date Tech. The manga tells us that by the third year Yamaguchi was confident enough that he was the captain that led the team the farthest they’ve ever gotten into the semi-finals but I really would have liked to see that!

Skipping over all of that seems unnecessary and I get the impression that rather than telling the full story as it was set up, (as there are hanging threads left unfinished like Kageyama needing to learn leadership, All of Yamaguchi’s setup and him getting to flourish more in his second and third years and getting more payoff for his persistent hard work, the rivalry between Tsukishima and Hinata) there was a lot more set up with the first years and a lot we could have learned from seeing the first years have the torched passed to them by the third years and carrying on the team. But we just didn’t get it. And it feels like the manga just cut all of that in order to rush to the ending.

So the ending arc itself is fine and is doing a neat job at tying up loose threads, but at the same time I also think it’s a waste of potential. It feels like Haikyuu as a manga is trying to end when only half of the story has been told. Also my faves are Bokuto and Akaashi, but this post is getting a little too long so I’ll give the reasons why in a separate post.

#hq meta #metasks #Anonymous

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coolman229 · 6 years

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Hello, I've seen others state that the Star Wars sequel trilogy is just a redo of the original trilogy where they tear down the original characters just to build up the new characters so they can achieve the exact same things (which seems fairly accurate). If you were the head writer of the sequel trilogy what would you do for the main plot?

I’ve actually wrote out how I would do The Force Awakens a while back in this post

http://coolman229.tumblr.com/post/137998912812/my-the-force-awakens-au

But basically I’d take a lot of the concepts from The Force Awakens and overhaul them. (though it’s been a while since I’ve written it so I don’t remember if I’ve changed anything since then). Under the cut is a lot of stuff about how I’d handle the trilogy.

The First Order still exists, but it’s a fairly small group that was pulled together from the remnants of the Empire post RotJ. The leader is an adaptation of Thrawn with a vendetta against Luke for being the reason the Emperor died and the Empire fell apart. While Thrawn is the Supreme Leader of the First Order he has to play political games with the New Republic Senate by pretending that the First Order isn’t a bad group and helped people out in a Post Empire galaxy. He’s super evil and has confrontations with Leia. The Senate is so wrapped up in bureaucracy and red tape and paranoid about another Clone War that no one can do anything decisive about the First Order, so the OT trio start doing things on their own by creating their own group outside of the New Republic to combat the First Order.

Luke is the Grand Master of his new Jedi Order, which is made with rules he felt made sense. There’s no limit on love and marriage (he married Mara Jade and had children who I’ll talk about in a bit), and he’s very much against forcing any student into a specific path, opting to tackle things personally and focuses on helping young Jedi learn how to resist the Dark Side without completely restricting them, drawing on his own experiences to teach them the best way to handle things. I’d bring in several expanded universe characters into Luke’s Jedi Order like Mara Jade (who if I had my way would be played by Sigourney Weaver), Ahsoka, Bariss, Kanan, and Kyle Katarn (who would eventually mentor Finn as someone who knows a thing or two about being a Stormtrooper). Obi Wan, Anakin, Yoda, and Qui Gonn assist Luke in helping avoid the mistakes of the past.

The Jedi Temple was attacked 12 years before The Force Awakens (which is 18 years after RotJ) by the First Order and the Knights of Ren led by Kylo Ren and to the public at large everyone except Luke was killed. But Luke got his students out and no one died and the other teachers went into hiding with at the ancient Jedi temple with Luke to keep the students safe. Rey, who is Luke’s daughter and second child, was taken because Thrawn wanted to manipulate her and turn her into a Knight of Ren. So he brainwashed her and was going to have Kylo train her in the Dark Side, except a First Order officer decided he didn’t sign up for brainwashing a child and fled with her. He was shot down on Jakku and died, leaving Rey there with no memory. Luke disappeared with Mara 5 years before the start of TFA, which you find out at the end of the movie is because he realized that the First Order were focused on him so in order to take the target away from Han, Leia, and the rest of his friends he went out on his own (though Mara refused to let him go alone) to combat the First Order and draw the attention of Thrawn to force him to search the galaxy instead of attacking. This way he’d buy Han and Leia more time to deal with the First Order.

Kylo Ren’s real name is Darnel Dameron, and he’s Poe’s brother. Poe has the storyline of trying to redeem his brother, who in this is far more sympathetic because of his relationship with Poe despite his internal conflicts about the Light and Dark sides of the Force. Finn is largely the same in concept but his brainwashing plays a huge role in his character development. You discover that he’s Force sensitive and the “Awakening” (which is the surge of Force sensitive people connecting into the Force) is what was responsible for helping him break from his brainwashing along with the shock of losing his friend in battle. He will struggle throughout the movies to truly break free from habits and things that were drilled into him since he was a child, to the point where he has to unlearn the idea that Luke Skywalker is evil and must die. He connects with Poe and Rey and they help him find his own humanity.

The Knights of Ren are basically Thrawn’s own Inquisitors. They started out with no Force users but over the years Thrawn added more and had them trained to be Jedi killers. Kylo was the first Force sensitive one and was put in charge of them. The only other important member I’ve come up with is Drulo Ren, who I imagined as being played by Nicholas Hoult. He’s a Force sensitive Knight of Ren who’s Kylo’s second in command and often handles diplomatic meetings in place of Thrawn (the opening for episode 8 would be him visiting Mandalore to get support for the First Order). Drulo acts calm and collected but he’s really a violent sociopath, and he’s pretty power hungry but he’s very loyal to Thrawn. He hates Kylo and has a significant issue with him being in charge of the Knights of Ren. They have a conflict during Ep 8 and 9 culminating in a fight between them.

In this Luke and Mara have three children.Ben, Rey, and Biggs Skywalker. @angelrin89 and I worked on the Skywalker and Solo kids. Ben is pretty hardcore jedi (but like Obi Wan hardcore where he talks smart but then leaps out a window) and spent a lot of time with Obi Wan’s Force Ghost and adores his father. He immediately joined Luke, Han, and Leia’s group to help fight the First Order. Rey was forced to survive on Jakku, and to make a living did a lot of different jobs. Aside from scavenging she also did repair work on ships (she did all the work on the Millennium Falcon), and even doing a taxi job to drive people to and from the main spaceport on the planet. Biggs ultimately wants to be a pilot, though he does Jedi training as well.

The first of the next generation that we’ll see in my version of TFA are Han and Leia’s kids. They have four kids, three biological and one adopted. Aya, Bail, and Anakin are their biological children, and they adopted a girl who was orphaned by the First Order and Han trained her to shoot. He loves that she’s not Force sensitive so he’s not the only one in the family who isn’t. Aya Solo is the eldest and she’ll be the main one in TFA. She shows up on Jakku with Chewie looking for the Millennium Falcon while Han is off looking for Luke. The Falcon was stolen and traded so while Han took another ship to find Luke (cause he cares more about finding Luke than the Falcon) Aya and Chewie went to look for that and have spent the last couple years looking for it. Aya has… quite a bit of her parents in her and uses blasters and her lightsaber equally. She’s got that trademark Han Solo confidence and is pretty quick to pull a blaster. Bail Solo is the next child and he’s much more of a diplomat than his sister, though he’ll still jump right into a fight without hesitation. He shows up at the end of TFA on Starkiller Base to fight Kylo Ren and save Rey and Finn. He’s definitely inherited his father’s piloting skills even if that means being as dramatic as possible (when you mix Han Solo with the Skywalker line you’re bound to end up with dramatics). His entrance is literally crashing a ship into Starkiller Base as he jumps out of it. Anakin Solo is the youngest and is arguably the most Jedi out of all the next gen kids. He is very reserved and thoughtful, mainly because he grew up terrified that he’d turn to the Dark Side because of his name, but after talking to Leia and Anakin’s Force Ghost he realized he didn’t have to worry but did a lot of training with Luke.

Poe, Finn, and Rey all stick together throughout TFA from the beginning on Jakku because Poe shows up at the trade outpost Rey works out of. He also takes the control of the Millennium Falcon after Rey nearly gets them killed. He’s the best darn pilot in the New Republic and he grew up on the Falcon. Since Poe’s parents were friends with Luke and Leia he grew up with the Skywalker and Solo children. He and Aya knew each other since they were kids.

Episode 8 would mostly focus on Rey training with Luke and the rest of Luke’s Jedi Order, and Finn starts realizing his Force sensitivity (and meeting Kyle Katarn). They’d have proper conflicts with the Knights of Ren, but I haven’t put much of the story together outside of general ideas. Importantly Rey meets her brother Ben Skywalker, who of course is introduced dressed as a Stormtrooper and comes to rescue her when she’s surrounded by First Order Stormtroopers. You’d also get things like Force Ghost Anakin/Obi Wan/Yoda/Qui Gonn appearing and talking, specifically Obi Wan and Anakin talking to Rey and Luke. We’ll see Ahsoka in the movie as another Grand Master in Luke’s Jedi Order. She’ll call Luke “Jedi Master Skyguy” and talks to Force Ghost Anakin and Obi Wan.

Episode 9 would be the finale where you get to see Luke show his stuff. It leads to an all out battle between Luke’s Jedi Order/Leia’s rebel group and the First Order ending with the death of Thrawn and the full destruction of the First Order. Rey, Finn, and Poe help fight alongside the rest of the Skywalker/Solo kids. I only have a few parts of that figured out but by the end the day is saved and peace returns to the galaxy.

#superryunosukeyuki #TFA AU #ask #ask me

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