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365dailyaffirmations · 2 years

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TGIWednesday: I was afraid that would happen

TGIWednesday News

My father used to say, “I’m afraid they’ve discovered our sleepy little town.” But I now say, “Traffic wouldn’t be so bad if they’d stop naming Clearwater Florida one of the top beaches in the world.” So what’s my point? Honor you, your body, and self care. Go on that family vacay if you can, yes even to my home town. Do things that promote YOU, your body, mind and spirit. Work out, get a massage, read a great book, learn how to fish

This month we are honoring and paying tribute to mother, Mother Earth, Gaia. And just like a mother can dote on her child, we need to use that same love and affection towards ourselves. Right now I see you receiving this, that you’re deserving of it and worthy of it and so it is. Beside is a picture of my sweet momma, The Great Granny Ruth, getting a "granny" mani-pedi :) She loved car rides too with the excitement of a 5 year old. What a life she had, what a life YOU have. Celebrate it here and now - look past all the glamour, noise and static and enjoy!

After the live airing of the guided energy process of Purple Rain for the first time in March, we were inundated with requests to make the recording available for purchase. And if you haven't already heard, the single digital MP3 file is AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW for just $19!

"Oh man Jimmy that purple rain process was so powerful. I just listened again and it brought tears to my eyes. Very deep. Still shifting !! Thank you ." - Donna H.

"The purple rain process was life changing and I would like to keep using it every day & night to keep making this amount of progress every day. Extremely effective at reaching & clearing deep levels of stuck energy quickly. I absolutely love it!!!" - Patricia

"Thank you I loved the purple healing rain on the Darius session, thank you." - Caroline

"How miraculous, we all felt that Purple Rain shift for sure! Even Darius commented and felt like it shifted other parts of the world and conflicts and he was spot on! Miracles never cease." - Amanda

"Just wanted to express my gratitude to you’all for making these. Listening to Jimmy go through his Purple Rain clearing last month on YWR, when the yard was covered with violet blooms was really great! - Kate C. / VA

Please find all the information below and play it more than once! I believe it can make a difference in any challenge you may be facing.

Through this special guided energy process, we will bring restorative, purple/lavender rain energy into wherever there is weakness and wherever you need to be restored. You will hear, see, feel, and experience the purple rain of divine healing energy enter into those darker recessed places of your self that have always longed for healing. We are going to coat you, cleanse you and bathe you in the purple rain through the power of all that is.

Get Purple Rain Process for $19

This process is meant to be experienced as a listen-only piece, NO PDF transcript is provided.

TGIWednesday Download

~ Prioritize Self Care ~

I believe, think, know and feel that life is a celebration and I am open to pampering myself with self care in all forms. I am ready, willing and able to take a brief break and honor that still small voice within me by being still, thankful and in a space of gratitude. I know, when, where, how and why to pause, take time out or time off to just chill and enjoy nature and my life. I am asking in all languages and throughout all time lines and so it is. May the rest of your life be the best of your life and remember to make progress every day!

Upcoming May Zoom Event

NEXT ZOOM EVENT WED. MAY 25th at 7:30pm Pre-register at Calendly for $22 (includes reminders and replay) https://calendly.com/jmh-calls/may-zoom-event-ywr

TOPIC: Mother Earth Goddess Energy Any issues you've had with Mom or being a Mom. Any area where you lacked guidance from Mom, or she was overbearing and anything in between. You'll be asked to submit your top 3 wishes to change and they will each be addressed and cleared LIVE on this 30-minute Zoom call. *NOTE* The replay of this call will now be sold for $27 the day after in our shop. So pre-register & submit your items whether or not you can attend live to get the lower price. **YWR/Darius Season 23 Spring Offer Pkg B or C Buyers: This is call #2 which is INCLUDED in your offer - The direct Zoom link is already available on your Package download page and you will also receive a call confirmation email THIS FRIDAY to activate notifications sent the day before and 1-hr before next Wednesday's. **Submit your top 3 wishes to change using short powerful sentences by NOON Eastern on the day of the event to [email protected] Positive Examples to Strengthen: *Allow me to be an excellent child of my mother, as well as an excellent parent to my children and grand children. *I see myself doing my part to become more intuitive and aware of the Goddess energy within all of us. *Through recycling and other conservations measures, I see myself as giving back to and protecting Gaia mother earth Negative Examples to Clear: *Please remove ill will between myself and my mother and any negative patterns that go against love and peace. *Allow me to stay out of what is often the evil conflict of the world and for the Goddess energy to envelop and ground me now. *Anywhere I have abused or used the earth resources directly or indirectly by polluting, instead allow me to leave a zero carbon footprint.

Pre-register Here - $22

Dark Energies Clearing MP3 - 20% OFF

We are now in the Mercury Retrograde phase through June 2nd, we’re giving 20% off our Releasing Dark Energies MBW Audio MP3 because we KNOW it will help/contribute to lessening the affects of the miscommunications that often accompany this astrological event. We’re also excited to let you know that we’re working on and expanded version of "Clearing the 5 Anchors" as an audio MP3 and video demonstrating how to get you OUT of the darker energies, and for those of you who have been attacked or feel as if you’re under a constant attack of the negative/alien/evil ick, we believe we have found some solutions for this! So stay tuned for cool, fun, future announcements that could only help YOU!

Add to cart - Discount is Automatic

Fish Food

The Daily Bread To Feed The Fish

Tell the Fish - 365 Daily Inspirations and Affirmations - by Jimmy Mack MAY 18TH "Today I will realize that the impossible is possible. I will hear the tiny whisper of spirit and follow with zeal the deep still voice within me. I will rise up and release my expectations so that spirit will surprise me in ways that before I had only dreamed of."

FREE Live Appearances

Watch and listen to hundreds of Radio Show replays for FREE here in the archives from the Jimmy Mack Healing Radio show: https://thejimmymackhealingshow.com/

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From the Fish Box

TESTIMONIAL FROM MY DAILY PRAYERS: "WOW! Magic Happened! Re: Jeremy's move... The brother, did not show up at all - he ended up at the last minute having to work this weekend. So the wife and the daughter arrived and all they wanted to do was just poke around and look at the place because the daughter will be retiring tomorrow! He literally said that they did NOT want to be in our way while Jeremy moved out… PLUS the demolition that was supposed to start tomorrow got put on hold! YEAH! Thank you so very much for all the prayers! Keep them coming… we have definitely turned a corner. Love & Blessings." - Peg R.

**Browse all previous MySwitchWorks Zoom replays here

Come See Me in Tampa

SWANN HOLISTIC HEALTH SOLUTIONS NEXT DATE - TBD

Jimmy Mack will be offering sessions at Dr. Charla Tempone’s office at Swann Holistic Health Solutions Get on the schedule today. Please call their office directly at ?? (813) 873-7773 in order to get on the schedule for 15-minutes $45 or 30-minutes $75. 403 S. Habana Ave. Tampa, FL 33609 Just south of Azeele next to Skin Savvy http://www.ctholisticsolutions.com

Receive 24/7 Prayers from Jimmy

Your name will be added to a special VIP Prayer list where Jimmy will use his intelligent computer software, src4you which runs 24/7, to delete the negative and increase the strength of the positive creating a higher probability of favorable outcomes for you.

In addition, throughout the full 30-days, Jimmy will be dialing into your energetic signature each day upon rising and make certain that you are a clear yes, unclear to no and running forward before you start your day. He is doing the heavy lifting for you around 3am NY time while most of you are asleep in order to smooth out your way and increase your most favorable life outcomes.

The 30-day service is now being offered exclusively and you also have the option of selecting an ongoing subscription ($95/month) which is managed through PayPal only.

Upon written email request, for each new order we offer a one-time email analysis via the intelligent healing software that Jimmy uses on your behalf. Most clients have had amazing results and outcomes!

You can add yourself and those living in your immediate household and yes you can include pets! Merely include everyone’s names and Jimmy will add them to his daily prayers.

You can run this monthly and stop at any time after the 30 days is up, you will have the opportunity to renew and update your list each month but are under no obligation. I believe you will experience magical transformations and make progress every day!

IMPORTANT REMINDER: After your purchase of any digital files in the shop or in a special offer, you MUST Download them to a desktop, tablet or phone AND save them to your own device. These files get moved, replaced and updated over time and will not be forever active on your original purchase link. So be certain to download all of Jimmy’s eBook or audio files instead of listening to them from the live links directly. For Apple device users... look into installing the free app that the Apple Store provides so that you can download and store your files directly without requesting the alternate links. It may be worth looking into on your end for future convenience. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/files/id1232058109

Below is list of the 30+ audios in the MyBeliefWorks series…. Find a topic that addresses your issue(s), click on the link to read more. We had a lot of help downloading & channeling these over the years & they keep getting better. Don’t forget… you can share these with your immediate friends and family.

Receiving Abundance Freedom from Abuse Overcoming Addiction Body Scan: Head to Toe Healing Experiencing Bountiful Harvest Igniting Creative Spark Discovering Your Destiny Daily GPS Reset Releasing Dark Energies/Fears Crossroads -Decision Making Diet & Exercise Support Education & Learning Support Empowering the Empath Healing Family Relationships Attracting a Financial Windfall Gold Coin: More Money in All Forms The Golden Key Process Joy of Money

Healing Body Disorders Mental Stress Relieving Holiday Stress Increasing Intuition Easing IRS Stress & Taxes Finding Love & Romance Positive Money Mindset Moving Forward from Past Chronic Pain Relief Pet Healing Support Pro$perity Unlocked Improving Sales & Success Improving Sex Improving Sleep Traveling with Ease Work & Career Success Weight Loss Support Restoring Youth & Vitality

Go deep sea "fishing" with Jimmy!

Level 1 is open to ANYONE at anytime! Click here to watch the Mastery video playlist

The Certificate of Mastery Program includes 2 best-selling ebooks and 2 clearing audios plus written & video instructions, AND one-on-one time with Jimmy ALL for about the cost of a single 1-hr session! This online course is for anyone who is familiar with OR new to "fishing" and is ready to dive into the deep end & get results that are beyond the ordinary! It includes The Tackle Box & The Dowser's Handbook ebooks PLUS 2 MP3s "Clearing Dark Energies" & "Increasing Your Intuition" to help clear, strengthen and prepare your energy field for optimal “fishing” results. This is a work-at-your-own-pace curriculum that will TEACH & CLEAR you at the same time! In under 2wks you will be finished with the program and ready to fish on your own with greater results! Level II offers Practitioner Certification for those who qualify.

Learn About Certification Here

TGIFunny

Forward

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meetmeatthewhaleskull · 2 years

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Hi there! I'm a potential transfer to COA, and I was curious about what the process of applying to graduate school is like at COA, especially since there's only one degree offered. I'm considering pursuing a graduate degree in environmental science or marine biology, and I know some programs have application requirements like a bachelor's degree in specific fields, specific undergrad prerequisites, etc. I know a lot of COA students do go to graduate school, so would anyone be able to talk about how students are able to meet those requirements, or if you feel like there are any challenges or advantages unique to COA?

Hi! Here's what two of our marine science faculty have to say about COA students going on to graduate school.

Professor Chris Petersen:

"We have never found the name on the degree to be a problem for students when applying to graduate schools. If there is a challenge for a student, it is that they have to be the ones to figure what courses are best for them given where their interests are (either by themselves or in consultation with faculty) . Of course, there are some fields that would be impossible to do here: if you wanted to be an engineer, then we would probably see how to best help you move. But the things that you hear about us, in those fields, we get people that are interested to graduate school. I've had students interested in lots of different graduate programs (including several in marine biology), and mostly they check with potential programs to make sure they are getting the kinds of classes that they need.

"A couple of relatively recent ones: Aliza Leit '21 was interested in marine biology and policy, was thinking she might go to law school and then late decided that she wanted to focus just on marine biology, and is currently a Master's student in Marine Science at Tel Aviv University studying fish species introductions in the Mediterranean. She did enough work to be able to go into law, policy, or science when she graduated. Kaitlyn Clark '19 is a Ph.D. student studying scallop ecology at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science - she started [there] as a Master's student but switched after one year to a Ph.D., and has received funding through Virginia Sea Grant. Kaitlyn was a strong science student from the beginning, and was more than prepared for her graduate program. "

Professor Sean Todd:

"I have had a lot of students come through with interests in grad school. Like Chris, I have never known it to be an issue for any of my advisees. In fact, the COA transcript looks so different that it stands out from other applications. I think we also train students particularly well for grad school. We nurture independent thinking, self direction and creativity - these are all essential skills for grad school. And at the Advanced level, many of our seminar classes are very similar to the kind one sees at grad school.

"The only thing I would say is that sometimes (in the older days) some of our course titles needed a little bit of interpretation. It was usually simply solved by a quick email. But I think, for the most part, we are past that."

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moronic-validity · 3 years

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First Date (Kinda)- Billy Lenz

Note: Okay so like I patterned Billy’s speech after my own when I’m manic. I know it isn’t perfect to the character, but I wasn’t sure how else to do it...

There are also a lot of time jumps...

Warnings: uhhh interesting parenting choices, interesting life choices, threats of murder....accidental nearly 2k fic.

The sorority moved out in a hurry after the murders and the school would not allow any students live there. The chances it would happen again were low, but not zero. Putting students back in that house would look bad.

The house went on the market fully furnished and your family got it for a steal, for cheaper than international tuition and four years of on campus housing. Their only rule for the house was that you paid the utilities and for any repairs, other than that, good luck in Canada.

Everything was fine for the first few months, classes went well enough. November came and went, and suddenly it was December. You knew the history of the house so you were a bit gun-shy to put up decorations.

Then the phone calls started.

Pretty piggy this, Billy that, something about your cunt mixed in. You rolled your eyes.

“Hey dude, I know the transcripts are like public info now or whatever, but please get some original content,” and with that, you hung up on him.

The next call was heavy breathing. Your eyes hit the back of your skull and you decided to pant into the phone as a reply before hanging up.

Call three was the one that got your attention. The caller was silent and you were near certain the line went dead.

“I’m going to kill you.”

You blinked a few times, processing the information. It wasn’t the fact he told you he was going to kill you with a level of certainty reserved for phrases like ‘2+2=4’. It was the fact that despite the phone damn near back on the receiver, you heard him loud and clear.

He was in the house.

You cursed yourself up and down for moving into the stupid house. You cursed yourself twice over for not checking all the locks.

You could’ve run, but you had drawn the conclusion that he was close enough to nix that. You also knew he was close enough to hear it if you tried calling the police, and you knew they wouldn’t make it in time anyway. Instead you calmly picked up the phone and clicked redial then call.

A phone rang upstairs.

Billy wasn’t expecting his phone to ring. He stared at the Nokia in his hand. He called people; people didn’t call him.

Then it stopped ringing.

“Billy?” You asked cautiously, remembering his name from the earlier, expletive filled rant. You took his silence as confirmation, “Billy, I know you’re upstairs.”

Billy shuffled in place. He wasn’t used to this, not at all.

“Hey,” you said, snapping him back to the one-sided confirmation, “it’s colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra, I have plenty of blankets down here. I’m going to put some of them on the stairs, then I’m going to make myself some adult hot chocolate. If you’re going to kill me, could you wait until I’m drunk?” You hung up the phone and, as you told Billy you would, placed a few thicker blankets on the stairs. You walked into the kitchen and filled a mug with water and popped it in the microwave.

You pulled out your phone and sent a few texts to your parents, wishing them a merry Christmas and letting them know that you regret not spending the money for a plane ticket home. You felt the tears well up. God, these were going to be your final words. Nothing overly profound, just a wish to be back in your childhood home.

The microwave beeped and you wiped the tears out of your eyes. You added the powdered hot chocolate mix and turned around to grab your bottle of vanilla vodka. You were met with a fairly lanky man standing a bit too close for comfort.

The only thing in the situation that brought you peace was that he couldn’t hurt you while his hands were occupied, focused on keeping your grey blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

You two stared at each other for a moment or two before he broke the silence.

“Want some,” he nodded at the hot chocolate in your hands.

You stared at him a second longer before nodding.

“Want vodka in yours?” You asked. He shook his head no, like a dog trying to dry itself.

You filled a second mug with water and heated it up the same way you did yours. The second you had it in the microwave, you turned back to face the stranger at your table.

“So..” you started, watching him tap his foot, twiddle his thumbs, and periodically twitch, “are you still planning on killing me?”

“No no no, Bibibilly,” he took a deep breath and started over, “No, Billy isn’t goigoing to kill you.” He went back to paying attention to his thumbs.

You nodded slowly, unsure if you believed him or not. The microwave beeped and you took his mug out, quickly mixing him a normal hot chocolate. You pulled some whipped cream from the fridge and sprayed a generous amount onto his drink then placed it on the counter in front of him. You thought about it, decided to forgo the alcohol, and grant yourself a generous amount of whipped cream as well.

You turned back to him after fixing your drink, only to find him gone with your mug.

You knew you probably wouldn’t be sleeping, but for some reason, you also couldn’t bring yourself to call the cops. Your therapist was going to be thera-pissed when/if you told her.

Billy was perched at the top of the stairs, sipping the drink you made him. He wasn’t sure when he decided he wouldn’t kill you, but he wasn’t going to. He adjusted the blanket, your blanket, around his shoulders. He flipped open his phone and called you.

“Yes Billy?” you answered the phone.

He was breathing heavily into the phone, then mumbled a single word. Stairs. Then he hung up the phone.

You walked to the bottom of the stairs and saw where he had set down the now empty mug. You smiled to yourself.

Billy lived in your house for weeks. You only knew he was there when he would call you with single word requests. They ranged from requests for blankets to trying to bargain with you for hot chocolate.

Late January, you decided to set up a bedroom for your ‘roommate’. There were plenty of rooms and you didn’t want him getting sick in the attic and then giving it to you when you two did see each other.

Billy’s phone rang once before he picked it up.

“Come on downstairs,” you told him, not waiting for a response before hanging up.

He padded down the stairs, wearing one of your sweatshirts that you thought went missing out of the wash. He rounded the corner, down one of the hallways filled with rooms. That’s where he saw you, shifting foot to foot, clearly excited about something.

He looked into the room and saw the bed was made, a mug on the dresser, and a pillow -one he recognized from your own bed- laying at the head of this other one.

“It’s for you,” you explained, doing another grand sweeping motion. “I don’t want you sleeping in the attic anymore, it’s too cold up there, you’ll catch your death and give it to me.”

Billy was frozen in place. He wasn’t sure how to process this one. He looked from the bed to you, then back to the bed, then locked his eyes on you again, trying to read your mind.

You tried to read the look on Billy’s face. He was squinting at you like he was trying to work all of this out. Then he latched onto you, hugging you tighter than was comfortable. You accepted his affection and wrapped your arms around him.

Once he let go, he started rambling through different expletives and went to explore his new room. You leaned against his door frame and watched.

The rest of January went, Billy proved to actually be a solid roommate, often doing the dishes or sweeping when you were in class.

You came home in a horrible mood February 13th, it wasn’t like you had a partner to celebrate Valentine’s Day with, but it didn’t stop you from being pissed that you would be spending it alone with Netflix.

Whatever, it’s some commercial bullshit holiday to convince people to spend money for no good fucking reason.

As pissed as you were, you were careful not to slam and doors, well aware that it had a tendency to throw Billy into a spiral.

Billy watched you come in and he could feel the frustration radiating off of you.

You flashed him an unconvincing smile, then walked into your room and shut the door.

Billy did not like that one bit. He went into the kitchen and mirrored your motions from the night you two met, making hot chocolate with plenty of whipped cream. He carried the two mugs to your room and knocked on the door with his foot.

You opened the door and the first thing he noticed was that your eyes were red. You had been crying. Billy was always more used to loud and violent anger, but yours was quiet and you did your best to keep it to yourself. You turned around and sat cross-legged at the head of your bed, clutching a pillow.

He set the drinks down on the dresser and sat across from you on your bed, mirroring your position.

“is [y/n] okay?” he asked, probably louder than he meant to.

You sat silently before bursting into tears and rambling all of your problems to him. He sat and listened, fidgeting every few seconds, but that was more than normal for him.

He did his best to pay attention and he understood that it was less about being lonely and more about feeling alone.

He got up off the bed and brought you the drink he made and put the mug into your hands. You stopped talking and took a long drink of the now lukewarm hot chocolate.

He watched you drink intently, tapping the sides of his own mug.

“Thank you” you set the drink down on the cluttered table next to your bed and you leaned against him, resting your head on his hunched shoulder.

#Billy lenz #billy lenz x reader #billy lenz x you #black christmas 1974 #Black christmas #billy lenz fic #slasher fan #slasher fandom #slasher fucker #slasher fic #slasher fanfic #slashers #horror movie #Horror fandom #horror fan #fanfic #fanfiction #theo's thoughts #Teddy Talks

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felassan · 4 years

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Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 1

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler played DAO, specifically the mage Origin. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, or personal accessibility reasons). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into DA2 and DAI. Some of it is info which is known having been out there already, some of it is new, and all of it imo was really interesting! It leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

Note on how future streams in this series are going to work: The streams are going to be every Friday night. Most likely, every week, they’re going to play DAO. Every second week it will be Liam and DG and they’ll be doing more of this developer commentary style/way of doing things, talking about how the game was made as they play through, covering quirks and quibbles etc. Every other week, it will be Liam and a guest playing a different campaign in DAO, and Liam will be talking with them about how DA changed their lives or led them into game development, to get other peoples’ thoughts on the series (as it’s now been like 10 years). Some of these guests we may know, some we won’t. When other DA devs are brought on, it’ll be in the DG sessions. They hope to have PW and Karin Weekes on at some point. Sometime they hope to have an episode where they spend the whole time going through the lore.

(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

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

DAO’s development actually finished up around April 2009. They then put it on ice for around six months before release. Human Noble is DG’s favorite Origin. It’s one of the ones he wrote. He also wrote the Dalish Origin as well (Tamlen is his doing ;__;). DAO’s temp name during development was Chronicles. DG has never played any of the DA games after they were released. He played them pre-release loads of times, when they were half-broken or incomplete etc. This stream is his first time seeing everything played after completion.

NWN: Hordes of the Underdark was the first game where DG was a/the lead writer, in charge of other writers, as opposed to a senior writer. It was pretty well-received. In the fall of 2003, BW were just finishing up HotU when James Ohlen came to DG to talk. BW had been having issues during the development of NWN with the IP holder for D&D Wizards of the Coast, so they were interested in starting their own IPs that they would have ownership over (and also for financial reasons). JO said to DG that one of these new IPs would be fantasy and one would be sci-fi. He knew that DG was more fantasy-oriented, and so asked DG if he wanted to take this on. DG was down, and the first thing to figure out was what that fantasy IP was going to be.

JO gave DG an atlas of European history, which he still has, and said that he wanted him to make a fantasy world that is reminiscent of medieval Europe and reminiscent of D&D - “make it like D&D but not, file off the serial numbers really well”. This worked for DG because he was pretty familiar with D&D and there were also lots of things that he didn’t like about it and wanted to change. So DG went off and for the next six months worked on creating a setting, beginning with documentation and the map. This was kinda strange because they had no idea at that time what their story would be. JO was very interested in having a “genetically evil” enemy in the setting (like an equivalent to orcs). DG wasn’t a big fan of this and his initial go at the setting omitted this (i.e. darkspawn were not a thing) and was a lot more realistic. JO insisted on adding them later on.

This period of development wasn’t actually a good process. There were other people who were working on the project who were designing the combat side. Looking back, DG feels that they should have put their heads together a lot sooner. The combat designers had various ideas for various prestige classes and subclasses, and DG would be like “these are nowhere in the setting [lore]”. He tried his best to add a few of them after the fact, which is why we see things like DA’s version of the bard archetype. The combat designers and artists originally had a vision in mind of a game that was much more along the lines of the type of fantasy you’d find in the Conan the Barbarian world - bare-chested barbarians, sorceresses that show a lot of skin, a grimdark world with barbarian hordes. They were just assuming that’s what it was going to be. At this point in time DG had never thought, “Oh, maybe I’m responsible for communicating my ideas to them” - he’d never done this role before and was just told to go create the world. He created world-building documentation and would send out emails saying “I’m making this documentation, please go ahead and take a look”, not learning until later on that nobody outside of the writing team really likes reading such documentation. He learned tricks later on like making the docs more accessible, less dense and wordy, and overall easier to peruse.

There was no real ‘vision holder’ for DA. Mass Effect did a much better job of that. Casey Hudson was the project director and the vision holder for ME, and he had the power to enforce a set vision of what was and was not ME. ME therefore ended up having a bit more of a coherent vision. DG was in essence the vision holder for DA, but he didn’t really have the authority to enforce it on the artists. The DA teams ended up spending a good 3.5 - 4 years of the ~6 years of DAO dev time going in circles, not exactly sure what they were going to make, the various people working on it having different ideas of what ‘kind’ of fantasy they were going to make. The writing team were leaning towards LoTR; the artists were leaning towards Conan; at one point one of the project directors was leaning towards a point-and-click Diablo-style action adventure; and nobody was overriding anybody else.

The fans who hang out on the forums and in similar places have a very different idea about what kind of game they like and want to play versus the telemetry BW get from the public in general. As an example, fans on the forums tend towards playing non-humans and feeling that playing as a human is boring. Forum-polls reflected that, but BW’s general public-telemetry shows that around 75-80% of the playerbase played a human in DAO. Elves were at 15% and dwarves 5%. In contrast, in the core/forum-based fanbase, the human figure dropped down to 30%.

DG originally wanted Zevran to be a gay romance (he has talked about this before). He asked JO if he could do that pretty early on, thinking of Jade Empire which had same-gender romance options which were really popular. BW were surprised about that, and DG had no idea that the JE team were going to do this. For DAO, he had an idea for an assassin character. He had been reading about how the CIA and KGB would often recruit gay men to be their assassins, as they didn’t tend to have family ties. DG thought this was really interesting. JO was cool with the idea on a conceptual level, but thought that the work that would end up going into it would be better served if those characters could be romanced by both male and female PCs. Zevran and Leliana weren’t intended to be bi, they were “bi out of convenience”, but at the time these sorts of things (representation and such) didn’t enter into the equation as much as it does today. DG wrote Zevran in his head as being romanceable by men.

DG would ask the hair artists, “Why all the mullets?”, because he never understood that, and he’d get “a sort of shrug response”, and an indication that “it’s easier to model, I guess?” Having hair which is loose, in the face, in locks, coming over the shoulders etc wasn’t really supported at this point by the tech or the engine. Hence, they ended up with like five different versions of mullets. On the subject of the engine, for the first half of development they were using an upgraded version of the Aurora engine from NWN, and it was not good. Several years in they decided to switch. Trent Oster was in charge at the time of making a new proprietary BW engine. At the time it wasn’t ready yet, but the DA team decided to grab it, use it and hammer it into the DA engine. That engine had “so many little weird quirks”, like lighting on skin not working properly and looking bad, and one of the issues was hair. It was supposed to be BW’s proprietary engine but it really wasn’t optimized for RPGs and didn’t include a dialogue system. They had to custom-build the conversation system. (At the time Trent didn’t think BW should be doing RPGs anymore, which is a whole other story of its own). DG recalls programmers complaining about things in the engine that weren’t ready for ‘prime-time’. Even compared to games released concurrently, DAO’s graphics were a bit dated.

For the worldbuilding, they had an internal wiki and they kept everything on there. They ended up with a lot of legacy documentation on there very quickly. Eventually they solved this by hiring an editor whose sole job it was to wrangle the documentation. DG started work on the setting in the same manner in which he’d embark on starting a homebrew - ‘so like, first, here’s a map, oh, I like this name, vague ideas, a paragraph on each major nation, a rough timeline of the history, expanding, and it just growing from there’. After about six months, they brought on other writers, and by then he had around 50 pages of documentation. This 50 pages was a minute amount compared to the amount they had generated at the time of release. Originally, they weren’t sure where in the world specifically the story would take place, so DG made sure to seed potential and brewing conflicts throughout Thedas. They settled quite quickly on the new Blight starting in Ferelden. Once they established that, the writers went to town on taking Ferelden specifically and blowing it up detail-wise. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of the dwarves and Orzammar. Mary Kirby was on Fereldan customs and traditions.

The first version of the setting was more grounded in realism, almost like a post-fantasy. The dragons and griffons were extinct and a lot of the things that were thought to be fantastical were thought to be over with. During development, they started clawing these things back. They brought back dragons because the game was named Dragon Age (lol). DG was approached like, “Hey, we named the game DA, can you bring back dragons and weave them into the story more powerfully?” Wynne’s writer Sheryl Chee had a bit of an obsession with griffons and was often like ‘omg, griffons :D’, and this is the origin of Wynne’s dialogue with the Warden about griffons.

KotOR was the first time BW had tried to do a game that was fully voiced-over. For KotOR, BW sent the work of casting, direction and so on down to another studio in California called Technicolor. BW had little say in the process then and when they got it back, “it was what it was”. By the time they got to DA and the first ME, BW had a good system down for recording and VO had become an important thing in games at the time. BW are really one of the premieres for this, a lot of actors really like acting on BW games as they get a lot of space to act where they wouldn’t normally be able to do so otherwise. DG has learned a lot from Caroline Livingstone on how to encourage the best performance out of an actor. For DAO, DG worked together with the various lead designers and Caroline to decide on the auditions, casting etc. This was one of DG’s favorite things to do.

Gideon Emery as Fenris, GDL as Solas and Eve Myles as Merrill were times where DG had written the character and then went to Caroline and said “I have an actor in mind for them, can you check it out?” These were specific times where he was able to secure the actor he wanted. This didn’t always work out, for example there are times when actors aren’t interested or have no time due to scheduling conflicts or were too expensive etc. Eve and GDL were DG’s roommate Cori’s idea. Cori was a big fan of Torchwood/the actors from Torchwood, and worked as an editor at BW for a long time. Gideon was DG’s idea after playing FF12. For DAO, DG didn’t have any specific ideas in terms of actors. Casting Morrigan was the longest, most drawn out process.

The Circle went through a whooole process during worldbuilding. Initially, mages in the game weren’t supposed to have any “fighting magic”. The restrictions were originally such that in the lore, they didn’t teach mages that. Mages weren’t taught any magic that could kill people, only ‘indirect’ forms of magic that could support others. However, [during what sounds like] playtesting it was asked “Why can’t I cast a fireball? I just want to cast a fireball”, so the writers had to go back and rework how magic in the lore worked completely.

Flemeth was originally going to be voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, and she was totally on-board, but unfortunately because of DAO’s development delays, she was unable to attend the new recording time as she had a conflict in her schedule (she was filming House of Sand and Fog). Shoreh was quite disappointed about this and her family had been so excited that she was going to be in a video game. When the movie was finished, Shoreh came back to BW and let them know that she was still available, and this is how she ended up in ME2. For a while they were trying to find an actress with an accent that authentically mirrored Shoreh’s. Out of the blue around this time, Claudia Black’s agent sent BW an audition tape of her. At the time Claudia hadn’t done any games but wanted to get into it. The tape was of Claudia doing a beat poet rendition of Baby Got Back. DG still has this tape. DG was a big fan of Farscape and on listening to the tape, it clicked right away in his head that Claudia would be perfect for Morrigan.

The Fade ended up being a big irritation for the writers. They wanted the PC to be able to assume different forms and such while in there. A lot of this stuff proved too difficult for the combat designers to work out, and so it ended up getting changed a lot. They had a hard time coming up with gameplay that could work in the Fade. The mage Origin is DG’s least favorite of the Origin stories, as he’s really dubious about the Fade section in it. It didn’t work out like how they had pictured it in their heads. By the time they got to DAI, that’s when the Fade really looks like how the writers first described/envisioned it. By this point the artists were more keen to give it a more specific feel. DAO was made at a time when ‘brown is realistic’ was a prevailing thing in games dev.

The experience of a mage in the world isn’t represented or conveyed very well to the player when the player is a mage. The experience of the player when they’re playing a mage or have a mage in their party doesn’t really match up with how the world lore tells them how dangerous mages can be - for example, how they can lose control and so on, we never really have an example of a PC mage struggling with being taken over by a demon. This was originally supposed to be a subplot in DA2 for mage Hawkes, in one of the last cuts. In Act 2, mage Hawke was originally slowly being tricked by a demon in their head that they thought was real, only to realize at the last minute. Mouse the Pride demon in the mage Origin is the only time in the entire series that they really ever properly demonstrated how demons can fuck with [PC] mages. Also, PC templars were originally supposed to have a permanent lyrium addiction that they needed to ‘feed’, but this was scrapped as the system designers weren’t keen on it and felt that it was essentially handicapping the player.

Mages were originally also not supposed to be able to deal with pure lyrium (it would ‘overload’ them). There is a plot where mage PCs run around touching lyrium nodes to refill their mana bars. On this DG was like “Wtf is this?” The designers said that it works, and DG said “but it flies in the face of the lore”. This instance is an example of how the DA team was working where the various departments (writers, artists, designers etc) all had their own ideas about how the game and its world would work and never overrode each other (see above). DG feels that DAO is a little contradictory in that way. It’s only after the game came out that a lot of the people on the team really “bought into” what they’d put forward. This got easier as they went on, with people involved buying then into the things that make Dragon Age, Dragon Age. At one point, not everyone on the team was even aware of those things.

DG relates that originally, they would ask the artists, “Ok, can we get a village?” and said village once created would be quite generic and non-specific to DA. The writers would try to relate how things are in the DA world and list things that would be found in a village like this specific to the DA world, and the artists either didn’t read it or had their own ideas (DG isn’t sure which), and nobody was around to tell them not to do that and that they should do it differently. Everyone having their own ideas like this is why we ended up getting something that is this sort of “cobbled together half-Conan half-LotR mish-mash”, and after a while this sort of became DA’s “thing”.

Initially, BW had concepts drawn up for a lot more different creatures. After they went in circles for those years and consequently ran out of time to do all the models, they had to cut these concepts down more and more. Demons were among the ones that were the first to go (this is why we have situations like a bereskarn as the Sloth Demon in the mage Origin). The original concepts for things like spirits of Valor and Sloth demons were really good. Early on, JO made a list of D&D creatures that he liked. He picked the ones that they were thinking of doing, sent them to DG and said to make a “DA version of this”. For example, D&D succubi essentially became Desire Demons. Desire Demons were originally patterned off Sandman, neither male nor female yet really alluring, acting more like a genie and trying to ferret out mortals’ inner desires (which are not necessarily sexual in nature), without being overtly sexual. The artists’ version came back and that was basically the model seen in-game. The writers were like “What is this, this is nothing like the description?” and the artists responded that on the list from JO, it was included, in that you had to click on “succubus” to get to the Desire Demon description, so they had just read “succubus” and done their version of a succubus. The artists did loads of great work, but this was one of the instances were DG was like “???” By then, it was too late to change it. The writers were able to encourage them to make Desire Demons a little more fearsome, so that made it in at least.

The mage Origin was one of the more contentious Origin stories. It had like 4 different versions written of it over time. It was often the case that BW would hire someone, and writing an Origin story was their first test. Three different writers came in and wrote a version of the mage Origin and those versions just didn’t work. Finally they passed it to Sheryl Chee and she wrote it. The Origins were the parts of the game in general that were written/rewritten the most often. There were several others that got written that they discarded.

Duncan was slated for death from Day 1. When DG writes a story, the thing he does first is pick out the big emotional beats that he wants, such as deaths. He decides these ahead of time and the stuff in-between comes later and is more often changed. Oghren was also originally supposed to die, but this ended up getting cut. DG related a story of how Oghren came to be: At the time, there was a phase JO went through when he thought everything had a formula that it could be done by. One of these ‘creative forumulas’ was that all such IPs had a two-word name that they’re known by, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Dragonlance (being Dragon-Lance). This is how ‘DA’ and ‘ME’ came to be. One of the formulas he wanted to implement was how to distill the ‘comedy character’, like Minsc or HK-47. These characters were very popular with the fans and JO was certain that there was a way to figure this out to create one for DA. At the time, DG argued with him a lot about this. JO insisted it could be done. DG was originally supposed to write this character but ended up not doing so. JO came up with a list of comedic archetypes and had DG write a blurb about what kind of character each could be. These were then sent out to the team who voted on which was their favorite. This process eventually resulted in an archetype basically called ‘The Buffoon’ (think Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, the kind of guy people laugh at because he’s such an oaf).

At this point ‘The Buffoon’ wasn’t named or made a dwarf yet. JO came to DG to write him, but DG said there was a problem which is that he hates this archetype. Homer and Peter are characters that he despises. DG is a professional writer, but this was comedy (outside of his areas of strength), and he felt the best he would be able to do is write a character who makes fun of this archetype and lampshade that. Comedy is something that has to come from within the writer. Oghren was given to someone else, and he ended up getting rewritten again anyway. By the time they were working on Awakening, DAO had not yet come out, and the assumption prior to the game going out was that Oghren was still going to be the most popular character from among the followers. The comedic character that ended up being the most popular along these lines was Alistair, which was interesting as he wasn’t intended as a comedic character, “so shows what we know”. DG was dubious that Oghren was going to be popular, because “he was kind of pathetic, honestly”, but that was the thinking at the time. Thinking he would be well-loved is why he was in Awakening.

On Alistair, any character DG writes is going to be sarcastic. At the time DG had made it a sort of personal challenge to recreate Joss Whedon’s dialogue patterns in his characters. Alistair was a sort of mish-mash of Xander from Buffy and maybe Mal from Firefly. DG wanted to see if he could do it, so Alistair was kind of quippy and self-deprecating. DG never really considered this to be Alistair’s main personality feature, but when other writers wrote him, they often had him doing this, as they liked the trait so much, and so this is how Alistair ended up as he did.

On dwarves, the dwarves being cut off from the Fade is very much baked into who the dwarves are as a race. There’s a specific reason why. This has been hinted at so far and it’s likely to come up in the future. DG had various ideas for some things that he wanted to include with the races or the way the world works etc. Some of them ended up never happening or some are mentioned only as part of the lore (templar lyrium addiction never coming up in gameplay is an example of this). Dwarven history and the nature of the dwarves is one of the things that survived pretty well though. DG calls Jennifer Hepler “mistress of the dwarves” and says that she did a really detailed, amazing breakdown of their history. After Jennifer left it was Mary Kirby, and DG feels that they did a good job of maintaining how dwarves were, in terms of both how they’re often presented in fantasy and yet also quite different in DA. Orzammar is one of DG’s favorite plots all together. You can really tell that Jennifer Hepler really enjoyed the dwarves and brought a lot of love to that plot.

DG draws a distinction between DA fans and the unpleasant people who harassed Jennifer Hepler.

They managed to keep the Tranquil in. There was a while there where they were going to be cut. At the same time, DG regrets that they couldn’t solve the making of the player more aware of how mages are dangerous, thing. Players could make a cogent argument like “they’re not that dangerous, look at me [mage PC]” and the writers were like “well... yeah, that is fair”. It was a case of showing one thing and the player experience of it being another. DG feels that this made the templars come off worse than they are. DG feels that they are being massively unfair and too extreme in their approach to the problem, but the problem itself is a real thing. He feels that there’s some merit/truth in the argument that mages are oppressed, but he looks at it more like an issue like gun control rather than as treatment of oppressed people, saying that we don’t have an example in real life of oppressed people who can explode into demons and cast fireballs and so on.

There are some funny pronunciations that worked their way into DA, and the reason for a lot of them is as follows: the writers had to create a pronunciation guide for VO, because otherwise you end up with a lot of inconsistencies. (Some did still slip through). The guide was online, and if you clicked on a word, an audio file for it would play. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of this and did a great job, but has a really strong NY accent, and in some cases the ‘NY-ness’ of her pronunciation endearingly worked itself into things (the way Arlathan is sometimes said is an example of where this happened sometimes).

Sometimes the writers trying to communicate the “hotness” of a character to the artists didn’t go smoothly. The writers would sometimes say things like, ok, this character is a romance, they need to be hot, and the designs would come back looking “like Burt Reynolds”, and the writers would be like “???” And then a character that wasn’t particularly intended to be hot, as in that wasn’t mentioned at all in the descriptions of them, would come back “accidentally hot”, and the writers would be like “Why couldn’t you have done this when we were asking for a character that was meant to be hot”, and the artists would be like “What?? He’s not hot”. And this became a thing (lmao - this discussion was prompted by DG being asked “Was Duncan meant to be that hot?”, for context). Some of the artists were so paranoid about their [in]ability to judge actually-hot characters that when it was time to pick an appearance, like for Alistair, they gathered up all the women at BioWare, and DG (“resident gay”) into a room to show them an array of faces and bodies like “Is this hot? Is this hot?” DG and co would sit there like, “How can you not tell? Is this a straight man thing?!” Anyways, this is why oftentimes we ended up with characters who are accidentally hot.

Over time, the writers realized that the way they communicated to artists needed to be managed better. The words they would use would have different connotations to them the writers, than what they did to the artists. For example, for Anders’ design in DA2, he was supposed to be “a little haggard”. When DG thinks of haggard, he thinks ‘a little tired, mussed hair, looking like you’ve been through some shit’. But the artists based on that produced concepts with super sunken cheeks, looking like he’d been terribly starved. The writers needed to develop a specific vocabulary for communicating with the artists, as artists think in terms of how something looks, but writers are thinking in terms of what the character “is”. Anders’ description talked about his history a lot, and the one visual-type word that jumped out was “haggard” due to its visual connotations. “A lot it came down to the writers being up their/our own asses.”

When they got to DAI, they had figured out that the way to get best results on this front was /not/ to have the writer go off and develop a long description and pre-conceived notion of what the character looked like in their head. In such scenarios artists don’t feel that they have much to contribute to the process or an ability to put their own stamp on who this character is and make them interesting to them (the best, most interesting characters are when people at all stages of the pipeline properly get to feed into it). They learned that the better solution was to bring the artists in earlier, and to give them little blurbs, and not name the character but give them an ‘archetype’-sort of ‘name’. For example, Dorian was “the rockstar mage”, “cool”, “Freddie Mercury”. The writers wouldn’t be sure that a particular concept would ‘hit’, so at this stage they would offer an array of options and sit the artist down and walk them through the concepts. The artists would then provide a bunch of sketches and it would go back and forth, with both taking part in the character creation process together. For the first two games, the writers were “really hogging” this process to themselves. They got better at not doing this and better at communicating with the artists by DAI.

There were a lot of arguments about how mages in DAO had a lot of specific lore words like “Harrowing”, “phylactery”, “Rite of Tranquility” etc. There was concern that this would be too confusing for players to understand and that it was too complicated. DG says that thankfully he put his foot down and pushed for this stuff to be kept. A lot of fans assume that as lead writer DG had all this influence, way more influence than he could possibly exert on a team. He wasn’t even a lead, he was a sub-lead, under a lead designer. He only had so much say. If the lead designer or lead artist wanted to do something differently, often there was not much he could do. Hence he had to pick his battles carefully, choose the important ones to fight. The mage vocabulary thing was one of these.

Templar Greagoir’s name is pronounced “Gregor” and it comes from a place in Alberta near where DG lived.

Codex entries are usually one of the last things that get done in a project like this, and so all of that kind of textual lore comes in super late and is super punchy as by then the writers have written so much and are exhausted. They had to find a way to make this process cute or interesting or fun for themselves, which is why a lot of entries are quite fun to read. Sometimes a writer would make a joke for banter [irl], and it would end up making it into an entry.

Only Morrigan and Duncan got unique body models in DAO. The companions all have custom-morphed heads but not custom-morphed bodies (Morrigan not included here). This is why every model has a necklace or a collar right at the point where they had to be attached to be a body. These sometimes used assets that couldn’t be used by the PC but were not unique to that character. Duncan probably got a unique model because he was in a lot of marketing/promotional material. Qunari were originally conceived as having horns.

Most people didn’t even finish DAO once (public telemetry again here), only approximately 20-25% actually did. The devs try not to read too much into this kind of thing, but the telemetry does tell them where a lot of people stop playing the game permanently (they call these “drop-off points”). One of these points in DAO is the Fade during Broken Circle. Sometimes when people interpret this data they involve self-serving biases, but it was generally accepted that the Fade there was too long, too complex, not interesting enough, etc. [source]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

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

#dragon age #bioware #morrigan #solas #video games #queen of my heart #mass effect #lgbtq #jade empire #fenris #the Fenaissance #alistair theirin #lul #fav warden

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berriusagi · 3 years

Text

Stomach Bug Ch10

Doctor’s Visit

Alright I am back with another chapter and with this I bring something special. I want all of you to help me decide what our lovely Mari will be having so place your votes in the poll.

LINK REMOVED

Thank you to everyone who voted I’ll be using the results gathered and I hope everyone’s happy with what the final tally was.

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“Damian’s not home right?” Tim asked, making his way into the Batcave where all the other bats sans Damian were sitting around the computer.

“No, tomorrow’s pixies first appointment with that new doctor so he decided to stay the night to give her moral support since she’s never been to a gyno before.” Jason said looking up from the files he was reading over, “honestly from what I’ve heard about what happens during those exams I don’t blame her for wanting a little support before going.”

“It’s all routine and can’t be any worse than the baby-making process.” Dick hummed typing away on the computer.

“I think that’s enough talk about that; why did you want to know Tim?” Bruce asked looking over at his second youngest.

“I found more info on Marinette thought I’d share with you all while Damian wasn’t here to stop me or compromise the data,” he explained walking over to the bat computer connecting his laptop to it.

The other men all sat silently around waiting for Tim to begin his presentation as he sorted through different encrypted files before bringing up a few pictures. “To begin her original name was Marinette Dupain-Cheng and her parents were bakers back in France, Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng,” Tim said pointing them out.

“Marinette told me they essentially kicked her out,” Bruce said crossing his arms, “They believed the words of some liar and threw her out. She lived with a friend her last year in Paris before moving here.”

“Wait, hold on,” Dick said turning to Bruce, “Her parents kicked her out when she was still a minor? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Yes, and they knew that, she mentioned that when she told her grandmother she came and took custody from her parents, who seemed more than happy to hand it over, and let her stay to finish out that school year with a friend then moved here to finish out her schooling.” Bruce nodded.

“Yeah that all tracks to what I found,” Tim nodded, showing them documents next, “I have here the transfer of custody, her transcript for moving here, as well as the adoption papers for Ivy and Harley. I also went ahead and started running some background checks on the people still in her phone.” he added typing away.

“Anyone, we should be worried about?” Jason asked leaning back in his seat content to just watching Tim work, “She told me a bit about one of her friends’ guy seemed a bit sketch when he was a Paris hero though now I think he’s meh but never got a name from her.”

“You said he was one of the heroes?” Tim asked looking over at Jason.

“Yeah, she said he gave up his miraculous after the fight because his dad was the villain and he didn’t think Ladybug would want anything to do with him if she found out who he was so he bit the bullet and gave it up. He left Paris shortly after to live with his aunt.” Jason said looking around at the others.

“If the villain were outed then it’d be easy to find out who his son was,” Tim said, turning back to the computer the clicking of keys filling the Batcave as he searched through multiple French websites. The other three just watched as screen after screen flew by before settling on a trashy tabloid-like website.

“I don’t think this is what could be considered a credible source Timmy,” Dick winced looking over all the clickbait titles and the like to dislike ratio on the articles.

“No, but it does have quite a bit on the Paris heroes,” Tim said scrolling through to articles that had more likes and seemed of better quality, “here we go, Hawkmoth Defeated: How a Recluse Held Paris Hostage.”

The four men all leaned forward reading through the article that detailed the final battle between Hawkmoth and the Paris Heroes with a written description of what happened as well as a video that seemed to have been taken from a mix of sources and spliced together. The article detailed what Hawkmoth had been doing for three years and in the end, revealed him and his accomplice to be Gabriel Agrest and his assistant Nathalie Sancoeur.

“So we know that Gabriel Agrest was the big bad so who was his kid?” Jason asked as Tim typed away.

“Adrien Agrest, teen model for the Agrest Fashion Label. Looks like after his dad got taken down he had to go through months of interrogations and court hearings just to prove his innocence. His mother was found dead in the Agrest Mansion and with no one else it looks like his aunt took him in once he was cleared.” Tim said reading through the files he dug up.

“That would mean he probably gave his miraculous to Pixie right after he was cleared. If he was going to do something sketch he’d just hold onto it.” Jason said.

“He probably was so messed up after the battle he didn’t want any connection to the miraculous I mean his father turned evil because of them.” Dick hummed crossing his arms.

The four fell silent as they took in the information they had received, “Well Tim you got anything on that liar?” Jason asked, tilting his head.

“This whole blog is about that liar.” Tim said motioning to the tabloid, “I’ll email you guys the link and read it at your own pace there is years of garbage on here.”

“Then with that, I think we should all be heading out. We'll go over more of what Tim found later for now we should get to work,” Bruce said, getting to his feet and moving to change into his costume.

The other three nodded as Tim packed up his laptop and stored it away before they all got dressed and took their way out of the cave to begin their nightly rounds.

~.~.~.~

“So what do you think they found?” Marinette asked cuddled up to Damian's side on her bed with the hyenas crowded around them on either side resting their heads over their laps, “Chloe didn’t exactly hold back on mentioning certain names.”

“I would be surprised if Drake didn’t have an entire dossier on all your friends.” Damian said rubbing Marinette’s back, “You know he probably took all your contact info right?”

“Yeah oh well,” she shrugged turning to bury her face into his neck, “They were bound to find out eventually, might as well let some of the greatest detectives around have some fun piecing my life together.”

Damian hummed closing his eyes as he relaxed back into the plush pillows covering Marinette’s bed, “Are you nervous about tomorrow?” he asked.

“A little,” she sighed tightening her grip on his shirt, “Mum told me what to expect and said she’d sit in the room with me if I wanted her to, you can’t exactly join me since we can’t have this whole thing getting out.”

“I’ll be waiting here for you when you get home don’t worry,” he said kissing her forehead, “now try to get some sleep you barely got any at the manor.”

Marinette nodded letting out a deep sigh as she shifted around to get comfortable between Damian and the hyenas. Eventually, she settled down and dozed off into a dreamless sleep with Damian rubbing her back and the familiar weight of Bud’s head on her hip.

Damian stayed up for a bit longer listening to the quiet sounds around and thinking over what to do for the next day. He eventually made his way into a dreamless sleep as well a bit after one AM when he finally managed to shut his mind off.

~.~.~.~

“Marigold are you ready?” Ivy called from the kitchen as she looked through her back to make sure she had everything.

“Almost,” Marinette said, coming out in a comfortable knit sweater and skinny jeans, “I was looking for my purse. I think Lou took it,” she said, looking around in the usual spots for her bag.

“I’ll keep your wallet and Tiki in my bag we have to get going,” Ivy said, grabbing Marinette’s wallet off the counter and stowing it in her bag as Tiki flew over and settled into the bag as well giving Ivy a nod to close the bag once she was comfortable.

Marinette nodded and went back to her room grabbing her phone quickly checking it before putting it away in her pocket and leaned down kissing Damian’s cheek as he groaned slowly blinking his eyes open. “I’m leaving I’ll text you when we’re on our way back.”

“Okay habibti call me if you need me.” he yawned reaching up and pulled her down for a kiss, “good luck with your appointment I’ll see you after.”

Marinette nodded kissing him again as Ivy shouted for Marinette that they were leaving. She gave Damian another quick peck on the lips before pulling back and ran out to meet Ivy at the door. “Had to get my phone.” she smiled stepping out of the apartment and waited as Ivy locked up and ushered down to the cab waiting outside.

“Now remember Marigold just relax and everything will go smoothly, it will be uncomfortable but it won’t hurt okay.” Ivy said, settling into the cab beside Marinette and rubbing her back, “I can sit inside the room with you if need me to.”

“I think I’ll be okay,” Marinette said, taking a few calming breaths as they made their way to the doctor’s office. Once they arrived Marinette was starting to look a little green as they went through the check-in process and filled out their info.

Waiting for her name to be called felt like an eternity and her stomach was twisting into knots as she watched other women come and go through the office. Marinette sat there twisting her fingers in her sweater and took slow deep breaths trying to calm herself when the door opened, “Marinette?” a nurse called.

Marinette shot up her face going from pale to a deep red as she made her way to the nurse. The nurse smiled and ushered her inside and went about getting her blood pressure, “Hmm little elevated but I think it could just be your nerves.” the nurse smiled, and her height and weight.

“Alright girly so here’s your room I’m going to need you to completely strip down underwear and all then put this paper gown on opening to the front and here’s a privacy blanket for your legs.” the nurse said motioning to the items on the bed, “the doctor will be in here shortly.”

Marinette nodded as the nurse closed the door leaving her alone, “It’s just a check-up.” Marinette mumbled undressing and taking her time to carefully fold her clothes and set them on the table in the corner of the room. She put on the provided gown and settled on the table keeping her phone clenched tightly in her hand as she waited for the doctor to arrive.

It felt like an eternity when there was a knock at the door and the doctor stepped in, a petite redhead with a smattering of freckles covering her pale face, “Hello Miss Marinette I’m Doctor Amelia.” she smiled coming over to shake Marinette’s hand, “I see you’re here for a wellness exam and you’re expecting.”

“Uh yes,” Marinette coughed her voice, cracking a bit from her nerves, “I uh just found out a few weeks ago.” she blushed, gripping the paper blanket covering her legs.

Doctor Amelia nodded looking over the file, “This is your first-ever wellness exam yes?” she asked, taking a seat.

Marinette nodded keeping her head bowed trying to not let her nerves take over her.

“Okay sweetie we’ll go at your pace so just relax okay.” Doctor Amelia smiled setting the file aside and grabbed her stethoscope.

~.~.~.~

The entire exam didn’t take more than five minutes before the doctor was cleaning up and stepping out to give Marinette some privacy to redress. Marinette wasted no time pulling her clothes back on and sending Damian a text saying, ‘Making this baby was less violating than that.’ before putting her phone in her pocket as there was another knock, “Miss Marinette if you're ready you can go to the front and schedule the next appointment.” Doctor Amelia said through the door.

Marinette walked over opening the door her face still a bit flushed, “Okay uh when should I come back next?” she asked.

“I think in a month should be enough time and we should be able to hear the heartbeat by then.” she smiled, “Your moms waiting for you upfront, and here’s the card to one of my nurses if you have any questions feel free to call her okay.”

“Thank you.” Marinette nodded, taking the card and quickly went to the front to meet back up with Ivy and schedule the next appointment and made their way out to walk back home.

“I think we should pick up some breakfast.” Ivy smiled putting a hand on Marinette’s shoulder as they walked. “There’s a nice little bakery around the corner should we pick up something from there?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.” Marinette nodded following Ivy down to the bakery and got in line looking over the different pastries they had for sale. Between the two of them, they picked out an array of sweet and savory options with Marinette making sure to pick out some vegetarian options for Damian. Soon they were walking out with two large bags and were walking down the street back to their home.

Upon entering both had to hold their bags of treats high out the reach of Bud and Lou trying hard to reach the goodies hidden away. Harley quickly came over pulling them back by their collars so the two could set the bags down in the kitchen.

Damian was settled at the table and got up coming over to help them unpack as Harley got some coffee and tea going as they all settled down to enjoy a bit of a late breakfast. Marinette ate her croissants and fruit danish taking small bites so as not to upset her stomach any further. The small group spoke of anything and everything as they enjoyed their meal. Harley taking the time to pick out the meat from her sandwich to give to the two hyenas and Damian holding a small conversation with Tiki as she munched on the cookies Marinette picked out.

“So when are you going back?” Harley asked looking over at Marinette as she bit into her bagel.

“In a month, the doctor said we should be able to hear the heartbeat by then,” Marinette said, finishing off her danish, “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“You’ll be fine Marigold we’re here for you every step.” Ivy smiled ruffling her hair, “Now I think you should go lay down, maybe settle your stomach and your nerves. You were looking a bit green and tense after your appointment.”

Marinette nodded, finishing her tea and croissant before heading back to her room to lay down. Damian finished off his breakfast quickly and excused himself before following Marinette leaving the two sirens and the small goddess at the table.

“At least he’s good for our little Mari.” Harley hummed sipping her coffee, “So long as he makes her happy he can stick around I guess but not too sure I forgive him for knocking our baby up.”

“Oh, now you don’t like him?” Ivy chuckled, raising her eyebrow at her.

“Oh, I adore the kid but you know one of us has to give him the shovel talk eventually.” Harley chuckled getting up to clean the dishes and put the leftovers away.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

@myazael @beautiful-disasters-sunshine @moonlightstar64 @moonlitceleste @stainedglassm @casual-darkness @mochegato @ultimatetornshipper @heemsanddamemes @nathleigh @qualitypeacepainter @raven-frost-21 @maskedpainter @demonicbusiness @dood-space @trippingovermyfeet @emimar7 @indecisive-mess-named-me @changelinggarden @zerotosiki @alysrose-starchild @s-and-n @wolf2118 @athena452 @jjmjjktth @eliza-bich @solangelo252 @icerosecrystal @heinrode @Junarvion

@babylovebug18 @animegirlweeb @corporeal-terrestrial

#daminette #damianette #damidad #mominette #maribat #maridami #ml x dc #teen pregnancy #stomach bug

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sharkselfies · 3 years

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The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast Transcript - Episode 2

Here is a transcript for episode 2 of The Minds Behind The Terror! In this episode, showrunners Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh are joined by author Dan Simmons and actor Adam Nagaitis, who plays Cornelius Hickey. They cover episodes 4-6 of the show, getting into Hickey’s psychology and Adam’s incredible acting, Dan’s feelings about never revealing the monster too soon, Adam getting locked in a conference room with the Tuunbaq prop for twenty minutes, and the spectacle that is Carnivale.

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast - Episode 2

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

Soo Hugh: Welcome to The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast. I’m Soo Hugh, executive producer and showrunner of this labor of love, here with my partner in crime Dave Kajganich, executive producer and showrunner.

Dave Kajganich: Hello.

SH: Today we welcome The Terror author Dan Simmons, and actor Adam Nagaitis who plays Cornelius Hickey in the TV series. Dan is calling in from Colorado, and Adam you’re here from London.

Adam Nagaitis: I am! Hi!

DK: Adam and Dan, I don’t know that you have been introduced to one another, so welcome both we’re happy to have you!

AN: Thank you! It’s lovely to be here.

Dan Simmons: Thank you. I have to start with just a fanboy meltdown here, I don’t do this, I don’t praise actors that much even when I’ve met them, but I need to use a word that as a novelist and as a mature, American human being I don’t use because the younger generations have appropriated it, it’s the only adjective that they use in their whole vocabulary, but Adam, your performance as Cornelius Hickey was brilliant. It was awesome.

AN: Thank you so much, Dan, and obviously the feeling is beyond mutual. There is no Cornelius Hickey without you, so, um, really overwhelming to hear someone like you say that, so thank you so much.

SH: This is so touching.

DS: And I’ll confess something else to Adam, the first time I watched it, I thought your character was a good guy because he jumped down in that grave to put the lid back on.

[laughter]

DS: It was on my second viewing I thought, “Wait, he stole the boy’s ring! Bastard!”

SH: So this is the second podcast of this series, if you haven’t heard the first one, episode 1, we recommend highly that you go back and listen to those, that first episode will cover episodes 1.01-1.03. Today we’ll talk about episodes 1.04-1.06, and if you have not seen those episodes please, please don’t break our hearts and listen to this podcast! Watch the show first! We’ll have many spoilers that we’ll be discussing.

SH: So now since you guys have finally met one another, Dan and Hickey--Dan and Adam.

[laughter]

SH: Should we talk about, Dan, just how you first originally structured Hickey in the novel, and we know that you loved Hickey, but your experience watching the show in terms of seeing the changes that we have made and what we’ve kept from the book, how that affected you.

DS: Mostly the changes that you guys and Adam did for the character of Hickey I think, uh, I don’t wanna praise too much, but they’re marvelous. They showed me a succession of, um, not villains but a complex, sometimes wicked character in a way that I don’t think I got to in the book. My character was like--a bit too much like Iago in Othello, you know, he tended to be motiveless malevolence, or malignancy, which is the way you describe Iago. And there are many Iagos in the world, but the way that Adam created Hickey out of the soft clay of my introduction was marvelous to me. I could just see all the wheels turning in Hickey’s head, all the ways he’s looking for an edge, so I took it to maybe point C or D, you guys took it through Y.

DK: The last thing that we’ve seen Hickey do is that he has gone through the lower decks of Terror and has shat on a bed...

[laughter]

DK: ...and has found a resignation letter from Crozier that no one is meant to see, because Crozier is now in command of the expedition. We have laid out a different kind of ascension, if you will, or architecture for Hickey’s arc in the show from the book, and I wonder, Adam, if you could speak a little bit to having read, I think, part of the novel and been told to stop reading by me and Soo because we didn’t want you to be confused. How did you receive these episodes, and how did you plan to sort of make the--cover the distance between those two points in Hickey’s arc, which it’s a lot of distance to cover.

AN: There are pieces of the novel that stayed with me and unfortunately I could not get out of my head as much as I would try, ‘cause they were very potent aspects of Hickey, were always useful, but it’s as you said, Dan, it was just that the switch, I’m just backtracking ‘cause there’ll be a reason, but the switch from, the clarification for me, or the justification of his motivations was all really I had to find. A new soul, a new motor. And that motor sort of begins--perhaps changes gear, in episode 4, when Hickey is--I don’t wanna say betrayed? But you know, for the first time he’s proactive about a decision he makes when he goes and grabs Lady Silence.

[show audio]

Crozier: There’ll be no violence towards this woman without charges brought and well proved. Who is responsible for this?

Hickey: I am, sir.

AN: He’s pushing the boundaries of what his courage is allowing him to do at that point, and he knows that this is dangerous. But it’s also completely necessary and he can’t help himself. And I think he’s fairly sure of a reward. But what ends up happening, he considers himself constantly self-aware, like an incredibly high introspective IQ, that if he’s achieved anything in his life, it’s that he is completely honest with himself at all times. He has these conversations in the mirror all day, every day, just to make sure that he’s sharp, that nobody will call him out on any sort of fracture that they can see within him. He sees his weaknesses, he accepts--that’s a soulful narcissist, I suppose, as a way of describing him, but one thing that has escaped him he realizes is that his desperate need to be accepted, to be loved, to be seen, and be patted, and to be, um, to have that authority figure, whatever you wanna call it, allowing you the rite of passage.

[show audio]

Hickey: Captain Crozier, there’s something I wanna say, but I hardly dare speak the words.

Fitzjames: Oh, speak the words, Mr. Hickey.

Hickey: Well, of all I know in this world--and of this world… I tell you. That… I do not believe it is an animal we battle.

AN: And he realizes when he gets lashed, this day of sort of revelation, where he understands every time he gets hit, you know, he--I took a lot of the lashing I took through the way that Hickey’s described in the book, that his life has been this low level horror story, and pain is something that is incredibly interesting to him. It’s not something to be avoided, it’s something to be embraced.

[show audio]

[sound of the lashing, Hickey gasping in pain]

SH: Adam, if we had to break down the whipping scene, ‘cause I mean your performance in that moment, I mean, it’s so extraordinary, the amount of what you were able to pull out physically as well as just emotionally in your face in that scene. Will you walk us through, what did you internally--‘cause in all you were saying about Hickey being with one foot planted in practice but also at the same time being the self-aware philosopher, but in that moment of the lashing, some different, higher kind of understanding must have been in place, ‘cause pain is at work there. Was your process different in that scene?

AN: You must forgive me as well for goin’ on, ‘cause when I talk about Hickey I get lost

[Crosstalk, Soo reassuringly saying “No!”]

AN: and I go forever, but I remember it sort of breaking it down, preparing it was breaking it down into how you are perceived when you enter that realm of torture or judgement or whatever it is, and he always is gonna make sure that he didn’t lose the experience in stupid, human things like shame, or, you know, consideration of embarrassment, he never walks in--it’s almost as if there’s never anybody else in the room, he doesn’t care to cloud it. And that was the very first point, was to get in and go, “What does it mean to be punished as a boy?” I was thinking, “You know, that’s it, what does that mean? I wonder what they’re gonna do to me?” When he realizes that and these people around him, that--I don’t know, it’s kind of--I suppose it was such a strange collaboration of sensations, because at the one point, you know, I’m in this, as an actor I’m naked in this scene with all these people, and being punished as a boy should have taken Hickey down, you know, the shame should have overwhelmed him, and it should have been this sort of embarrassing situation, and instead it became empowering. He wasn’t afraid of crying and screaming, and again, it’s not--if it’s practical, and it helps, it’s no big deal. It’s just pain. And everybody else would be in pain, and it doesn’t matter. Even if, you know, if people perceive him as weak, he’ll find a way to get ‘em. It doesn’t matter.

[show audio]

Crozier: Again.

[whip cracking, ship creaking, muffled groan from Hickey]

SH: And something we haven’t talked about much yet in these podcasts is this theme of hubris and the hierarchy and the patriarchy, and Dan you explore it fully in your book. In terms of figuring out, you know, where our characters come from, and their foundations and backbones, they come from a very distinct historical period that really thought that their empire was the crowning achievement of human civilization, right? And that the royal navy is this prime embodiment of that conquest. They were gonna go out into the world, find that sea route to China, and the world will be theirs. In both the book and our show, that kind of thinking is what drives them into the heart of peril, right? And what was always interesting about the Hickey character, in some ways, was he questioned--in some ways he’s very--too modern for his times, in some way, in that he questioned that hierarchy, that patriarchy.

And that’s something that I think Dave and I can both sympathize with as well. The character was so interesting to write for because Hickey was in some ways an easy embodiment of our voice today. And then when you--when we watch your performance, what was great about your performance was it was never slippery, ‘cause it’s really easy to play Hickey as slippery. I always felt that your performance was always located in something very very direct. People can play characters like Hickey where you don’t--they never wanna commit to anything because he’s supposed to be nebulous, or too ambiguous. That was never the situation. When you had that smile on your face, when Irving is saying, you know, “climbing exercises!” we know you’re not playing Irving, which is great, and I think that’s such a success of your portrayal of Hickey, is it never feels slippery.

DK: Well an awful lot of people came in to audition for this part, and what we found was a lot of people, most people--in fact, everyone but you, Adam--played Hickey as a kind of pre-built villain, and when we saw your first tape come in and you were open-handed, and you were smiling your way through the same monologue that everyone else had put fangs on, we knew that you were our Hickey, because that kind of charisma, and that kind of confidence, and that kind of hubris, in a way, is what were going to be the magic ingredients, I think, it’s what we sort of loved about the opportunity for the show to take the Hickey from Dan’s book and sort of turn it in a different unexpected way so that readers who hadn’t read the book wouldn’t know right off the bat whether they were meant to sympathize with Hickey or be wary of him or both, and I think that’s a great achievement of the performance is you sort of feel you’re on both rails the whole time, and I think that’s kind of an amazing achievement.

AN: That’s how you wrote it! I mean that was exactly--I think that you saw what you wrote, the real strength of that character was in his understanding of himself and his understanding of the hierarchy and how this world functions, you know? He’s studied it, gave him an intelligence, that’s the way I saw it when I read it.

DS: But it’s pretty amazing to think that by this point in the show, you have stolen a dead boy’s ring, you have shit on your ex-boyfriend’s bed, you have murdered our favorite doctor--

[laughter]

I mean there’s a lot, you’ve done a lot of things to turn the audience against you, but I don’t think that’s how an audience will feel!

AN: All completely justified.

[laughter]

SH: You’re acquitted.

[laughter]

SH: Can I steer the conversation just slightly in a different direction, ‘cause Dan, you made our lives very difficult in one way, so you have these two incredible set pieces in your book

[Crosstalk, Dave saying “yes.”]

SH: and they happen to fall chronologically so close to each other that production wise we had to film them one episode apart.

[Dave laughing, and he laughs a few more times in the background throughout the following]

SH: So in 1.05 we have the huge Blanky mast Tuunbaq fight sequence, and then in 1.06 we have Carnivale. They are along with something that comes at the end of our show, they are--those two scenes--those two sequences are, you know, some of our biggest biggest, just, action set pieces. They’re just extraordinary spectacles. But Dave and I, you know, we grew many grey hairs in this process because they’re so fantastic in the book, they’re fan favorites in the book, we knew that we had to--we knew we were gonna be pillaged based on whether or not we succeeded in those scenes. So seeing the mast sequence and seeing Carnivale, what did you think? DS: I know the difficulty in putting two set pieces like that close to each other, I mean, the chase with Blanky was pretty dynamic, and even more so from the book to your show, it was very dynamic.

[show audio]

[Tuunbaq fight scene! tense music, Blanky yelling, Tuunbaq roaring]

Hodgson: Fire!

[cannon fires, the shot hits the Tuunbaq and it growls, Blanky falls and screams, the mast creaks]

DS: And I love the character of Blanky, all the way through to, you know, his ending. He’s wonderful.

SH: Speaking of the mast sequence, what we were discussing prior, this is the first time we actually get to see the Tuunbaq. We’re curious how both of you--you know, ‘cause Dave and I, we’ve been very careful about how we utilize and deploy the Tuunbaq in our show, and making sure also that narratively in the story-wise it didn’t feel like, “Oh, we need to ramp up this episode, we’ll throw the Tuunbaq in,” that we were very more deliberate about when we put the Tuunbaq in our show, and making sure that it didn’t, like Dave was saying, didn’t fit the monster of the week. But I mean Adam, you have a very particular relationship with the Tuunbaq that starts to become revealed in episode 4, could you just walk through how you were thinking about it?

AN: The way that I started to think about the Tuunbaq was as a character, that was the best way for me to think about it, as another, you know, another member of the narrative in general, and it’s a person--it, of all the people, there are only, including the Tuunbaq, there are two that I respect: Crozier, who I see as something of maybe a soul mate, would be a way of describing it; and the Tuunbaq, who I see as a person who is, he or she is, true to themselves and unafraid, and undeterred, and pure in their resolve, you know, and their execution, and so it’s almost admiration and mutual respect, and that when that Tuunbaq looks at me, and I look back, that I see myself. And I see what I might become, you know, and I have--and Hickey sees himself as having elements that the Tuunbaq doesn’t have, you know, the idea of, Hickey so rarely sees people that he acknowledges, that, in his mind, deserve or warrant his acknowledgement, and when he first meets eyes with the Tuunbaq, that’s what he goes through.

[show audio]

[wind whirling, footsteps, Tuunbaq growling]

DK: Dan I was always curious to ask you about the Tuunbaq in terms of your creation of that creature. I mean in our research we found elements of different sort of spirits from Inuit mythology that seem like the Tuunbaq is kind of an amalgam of, can you walk us through sort of how you hit on that idea and what parts of it are from Inuit mythology that you can remember and what parts of it are your own invention, or just how that creature came to be, it’s such an interesting, fascinating creation?

DS: That’s a good question, I’ll answer it, but first I wanted to add an unharmonious, non-praising comment, which is when I was watching the series on my little computer screen and I got to the Tuunbaq chasing Blanky up the rigging and so forth, I paused the show, walked out in my front yard, aimed west, and shouted, “Don’t show the fuckin’ Tuunbaq!”

[laughter]

DS: “Not yet!” I’m sure you heard that.

SH: Did you think we showed it too much in that sequence?

DS: I did when I saw the sequence. When I’d seen the show front to back, one and a half times now, I think it’s fine. Dave, you remember, when we first talked about things, that was--I was stressing that left, right, and center, which is--I was basing it on a favorite movie of mine, which nobody else has as a favorite movie, but it’s the 1951 version of The Thing. Howard Hawks directed it even though he gave the credit to his DP, but he directed it, and it got so every time a door opened, every head, every person turned to look. And the monster turned out to be James Arness in a silly suit. But the tension was tremendous, and I think you guys build up very nicely, you know, everybody’s ready, looking over his shoulder, there’s that scene where somebody does, and the wiser man says “It’s only the ice, Georgie, it’s only the ice,” but of course it’s not.

[show audio]

[Neptune the dog barking]

Strong: He’s been goin’ on like that since the wind died.

Hartnell: Take your wigs off.

[rustling, wind whistling, Neptune continues barking]

Hartnell: Don’t you hear that?

DK: It was a fine line to walk, because on the one hand, you know, I don’t know if anyone would have made the show if it didn’t have, you know, quote unquote “a monster” in it. So we were trying to be very intelligent on how we deployed the Tuunbaq in the show, and wanted to make sure that when we did it didn’t feel like it was meant to spice something up, that it felt sort of earned, in some way, and you were confident that the less we showed of the Tuunbaq the better. But that isn’t--it’s not the easiest sell if you don’t happen to agree with this point of view, and you know, luckily we were sort of able to have our cake and eat it too, in a way, but still, even when episodes one, two, and three aired, we were reading reviews and people’s comments online saying, “Is there a creature in this show or isn’t there?”

DS: Or what, yeah.

DK: Some people really want that settled, and so we tried to do it both ways, we tried to show just enough to make sure that it felt like we weren’t being coy about it, but not so much that we exhausted what’s interesting about it.

SH: And also the fear--there is a danger, if you put it off, ‘cause, Dan, Dave and I agree with you that you wanna hold off the reveal of the monster as long as possible because it’s just gonna be more satisfying that way, but there’s a tipping point to that as well, of course, you know, right? ‘Cause if you delay it too long then the expectations are almost too great. And when you delay the monster for so long the level of perfection that the audience is gonna expect is never--we were never gonna please them. So at some point, by finding that right balance point of “we show them enough that they know we’re not playing coy with them.”

DK: We also had a storytelling reason, a really good one, to make sure we did show it up front in the first third of the season, which is, you know, by the time you reach episode six you realize there’s something wrong with the Tuunbaq, that it is getting sick, or it is going off somehow, I mean, when Lady Silence finally decides that she’s going to offer her tongue to it in hopes that it will accept her as a Shaman and that she can contain this sort of mythological disaster that’s happening, and it rejects her, and it shows up to that scene looking a little woozy, and you know, there’s obviously a cause to be concerned about it.

[show audio]

[eerie music, Tuunbaq growling and snuffling]

DK: That wouldn’t have landed if we hadn’t seen, in some form, the Tuunbaq in all of its majestic glory. You know, we think of the Tuunbaq as quite presidential, in terms of its comportment, you know, that it is a pure expression of this mythology, it is the keeper of equilibrium, it is neither a hero nor a villain. But by the time we get to episode six, we should be feeling a little bit panicked about what this creature is becoming. It seems to be falling apart in front of us in the same way that the men are.

SH: Our Tuunbaq exists. We don’t play that game of “it’s a figment of our characters’ imagination.” That is one route we could have gone, we did not wanna do that.

DK: Adam, I don’t know if you remember, when we finally got the scale model head of the Tuunbaq to Hungary, and we had it in a conference room, I think, and I grabbed you from set and I didn’t tell you where you were going, and I took you to a door and I pushed you through it and closed it behind you, and in that room was the Tuunbaq, and you were the first person in the cast to see it. Do you remember what that experience was like?

[laughter]

AN: That was terrifying!

[laughter]

AN: I do remember, I remember that day very very well. It was just a head on a stick, wasn’t it?

DK: A big head, but yeah.

SH: Enormous.

DK: It was just the head--

AN: A great big head on a stick! And I knew the importance of it, so I sort of closed my eyes and opened them. I remember thinking, it was the eyes, the human eyes, that convinced me that it was a unique, thinking machine. It was a unique creature that had--that was worthy of respect, that was kind of the thing that I remember thinking about it. And of course it was terrifying. But yeah, I remember the teeth, the human teeth. It was so brilliant, it was so brilliantly conceived. I remember it was head height, and I just stood in front of it for a while.

DK: I remember it was twenty minutes before I opened the door!

AN: You opened it for a long time! I was like, uh, is it gonna move? It was great. It was really scary.

DK: So Dan, walk us through where it came from. I mean, this is a creation from, almost from scratch, I think, from you.

DS: Well first I built the Tuunbaq out of what I think is a good monster and would be a good monster in the Arctic. And after constructing it, I went just tearing through Inuit mythology and stories and oral tales for quite a while before I found the right creature. He was called Tuunbaq in the mythology, but it could’ve been Sedna, Sedna was a great sea monster. They have so many wonderful beings. But you guys summed it up in dialogue…

[show audio]

[man speaking Inuktitut, another man translating]

Translator: From the Shamans… the thing that eats on two legs and four… a thing made of muscles… and spells.

James Clark Ross: I don’t understand. Is he describing a man?

Translator: Sorry, Sir James. I don’t know what the hell he’s describing.

DS: That was the best summary of the Tuunbaq that I’ve heard. I’m gonna steal it from you if I ever do readings on this book again.

DK: Oh good.

[show audio]

[men cheering]

Fitzjames: There it is. We’ve not heard that sound in far too long.

DS: I especially enjoyed Carnivale. I like it that you didn’t follow my lead and turn the Carnivale on the ice into the scene from The Masque of the Red Death. I had a sailor who’d actually read that story in Boston in my novel, so he’s the one who set up the Carnivale with all the rooms from the Edgar Allan Poe story, and yours, the idea of celebrating, going home essentially, when the sun rose, that made a lot more sense to me.

DK: Well do you know the reason we went in that direction, I think in the writer’s room when we were discovering all the different sort of signs and symptoms of things like scurvy, nostalgia was considered a primary symptom of scurvy, and one way you could diagnose it. And we thought, well, if these men were going to throw a party and all bets were off in terms of what the theme of that party would be, we wanted to embrace the likelihood that a lot of those men who were in early stages of scurvy at that point might have leaned too heavily on nostalgia. And that gave us a kind of a surprising new sort of code to sort of explore in Carnivale.

[show audio]

Fitzjames: Come on, boys!

[cheering]

Fitzjames: Now, let’s get our hair good and powdered before that damn sun finds us again.

[more cheering]

DK: The idea that Dr. Stanley, who has a child back in England, and, you know, has a clear sense of what the kind of illness that’s on the table being discussed could do to the men, and he hears the news of the beginning of episode six that they’re probably running out of food and, you know, the episode, that episode six is called “A Mercy” for a reason, that really Stanley thinks he’s doing a great favor to all of the men by killing them. And it just was--I’m curious, when you watched that reveal in particular, that the Carnivale disaster was not going to come from the Tuunbaq but was going to come from somebody who was a kind of Cassandra in a way, like understood what was coming, in a way that lot of the men didn’t understand, whether that rang true emotionally to you in terms of how you would position these characters at that point in the novel.

DS: In the novel, you don’t have to compress time like that. The things can almost coexist and still work. So I had a little more freedom to do the Carnivale. But when you showed the malignant motives of the various people behind it, the doctor and so forth, the burgeoning insanity made sense.

[show audio]

[distorted music, liquid pouring, yelling]

Crozier: Hold him, hold him!!

[flames crackling, more yelling]

DK: Hickey’s arc between episode four and episode six, you sense someone who’s coming into a power, but doesn’t exactly know yet how he wants to use it, and is scanning other people and other relationships to try to find out where will the advantage come from. And I think what’s great about the final shot we have of Hickey in six, that is Hickey just before someone tells him, probably, that they’re going to be walking out.

AN: By the time we reach episode six, he’s well on the way to formulating in the material world, in our physical world, to formulating his sort of group. What’s going on inside him, what’s going on in his--maybe even subconsciously, or even very very very quietly consciously, is a furthering of his understanding that this universe is for him. These happenings are for him. They have his name all over them, his real--and since the beginning of his life he’s been checking the dials, trying to tune into the right radio station where there’s a clear voice of the numinous, or the supernatural, or the universe, or God, or whatever you wanna call it. He’s hoping for the clear voice that says his name.

DS: I have a question for Dave and Soo, which you looked at the muster of the crew as I did, you know, I had to decide who was what in a fictional term, you have about 127 interesting stories if you want to pursue them, but were you aware early on that there was gonna be one messiah developing in the story?

SH: I don’t know if we looked at it in terms of a messiah figure.

DS: Ah, but Hickey does.

DK: In these episodes, I think he doesn’t quite yet know what he’s going to become, except he knows he doesn’t have to be subservient anymore to other people’s versions of what he could become. I think he’s not quite sure where he is. He knows he’s just moved from one ladder to another ladder, he’s no longer on sort of the hierarchical ladder of the ships, he’s on a bigger ladder and he’s climbing, and he doesn’t quite yet know what heights that will reach, but it’s fascinating to see Hickey unleashed in these episodes, but not yet know what he’s going to put his power toward.

[audio from the show]

[the music from the end of episode six during the brief moment of sunrise plays]

SH: 1.04-1.06 takes place from the last sunrise of the year, and then the end of 1.06 is the sunrise of the year, so in terms of just that lovely visual metaphor, it’s also our dark nights, where we have polar nights. Did you guys, watching the episodes, did you guys feel that darkness? You know, Dave and I were so curious whether or not people understood what it feels like to live in perpetual darkness for months, and whether or not our audience was gonna get that. How did that come through for you? DS: The darkness, it was a hard thing, I think, to do in a series like this, it’s pressures, like the men in the ship not only have the pressure of the ice groaning and moaning and growling and pushing at the ship, they have the pressure of the months of darkness. And I think you did it well, I don’t know if it was a reviewer or a friend who said the show is all about--in the ship it’s all about claustrophobia, outside the ship it’s all agoraphobia, fear of open spaces.

SH: Oh that’s wonderful!

DK: Absolutely. We talked a lot about that in the writers’ room, about how there was--we didn’t know which was worse, you know, and characters would have different opinions about that. Is it better to be sort of sealed up in almost a coffin-like environment, or is it better to be exposed with no way to protect yourself? I don’t know what I would choose.

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

SH: So that is episodes 1.04-1.06, Dave and I are here with Dan and Adam, and it’s been such a pleasure you guys, thank you for joining us, and next time we’ll be covering episodes 1.07 and 1.08. Dan and Adam, both of you will be back as well.

DK: Wonderful.

DS: Great.

SH: Thank you!

[preview snippet from the next episode plays]

AN: In complete honesty, it never occurred to me that any of those things were cruel or despicable!

[laughter]

#the terror #the terror amc #the minds behind the terror #dave kajganich #soo hugh #dan simmons #adam nagaitis #personal #as with last time google doc link will be in the reblogs #and please lmk if you see any typos or other mistakes!

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pumpkinpaix · 4 years

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HI! I'm new to the MDZS fandom and I fell in love with Suibian, but you don't see it that much. I seen somewhere that it would burn out a weaker core and I cried cause I wanted to see that, and as far as I know it doesn't happen anywhere. I'm wondering if you could tell me anything and everything you know about Suibian. I'm starving for anything about it

hi anon! ahahah, it’s always a dangerous thing to ask me about “anything and everything” on a topic because I usually have too many thoughts, most of which are unorganized. but! if you’re interested in that, then here we go!

First, re: your comment about Suibian burning out a weaker core: I am not aware of this theory (or is it something from an interview?? if someone knows, please say so!), but if it brings you joy, then it’s certainly an interesting one to consider! Unfortunately, I don’t have much more to say on it because I’m unfamiliar with it, but I do have quite a lot to say on some other Suibian concepts!

ask and ye shall receive (a very jumbled heap of thoughts as i spiral further and further out of control):

[all rough translations are mine, and thus all mistakes are mine. I am using the version of the novel that is available on luoxia because I can’t be bothered to go flipping through my print edition ahaha.]

the questions about Suibian that interest me the most are why it sealed, when it sealed, when Wei Wuxian began to wield it again, and what that might all mean. I’m going to be talking about novel, CQL, and audio drama canon all together, because I think looking at each canon alone and in combination can raise a lot of very different points!! (I have not watched the donghua or read the manhua yet, so forgive me, I have nothing to say about them. /o\)

So! the one piece of information that we’re given consistently throughout all three of the canons is that Suibian was sealed after Wei Wuxian’s death and that no one but Wei Wuxian himself (and Jiang Cheng, by proxy) could draw it from its sheathe. Thus, Wei Wuxian’s identity is revealed and the golden core swap comes to light. Wei Wuxian is surprised by this, and asks Lan Wangji, “Did it really seal itself?” (novel, chapter 63; CQL, ep 42; audio drama, S2E15).

The novel and audio drama both include a line from Wei Wuxian that emphasizes Wei Wuxian’s surprise, implying that sword-sealing is very uncommon:

万中无一的大好事竟然让我给撞上了

Something incredible that happens less than once per ten thousand times, and I actually encountered it.

the irony, of course, is that this incredible thing is what ended up blowing his cover. rip Wei Wuxian.

but what I think gets really interesting is comparing different points at which Suibian sealed itself and what that might imply in conjunction with other information. Jin Guangyao says “shortly after” his death, but CQL includes a scene in episode 19 that implies that Suibian actually sealed itself much earlier.

[ID: Gif from episode 19 of the untamed drama. Lan Wangji attempts to draw Suibian after he and Jiang Cheng storm the Nightless City and retrieve their swords. He cannot pull it from the sheathe. /end ID]

(in case anyone is curious, it’s about 30 minutes in. I spent the effort to make the gif, so I might as well give you the timestamp lol)

this scene takes place during the period of time when Wei Wuxian is in the Mass Graves (aka the Burial Mounds) after Wen Chao cast him down and left him for dead, right near the beginning of Sunshot. I’m fairly certain it’s not mentioned in either the novel or the audio drama, so this is a CQL-only detail. (please correct me if I’m wrong; I get my canons muddled all the time //hides face)

CQL basically does nothing narratively with this scene other than giving us some sad shots of Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng (honestly, valid ;A;) but!! if we decide to accept this scene as our jumping off point, we can get to some interpretations about Wei Wuxian using information from the other canons!

take this exchange from chapter 57 of the novel (immediately prior to the massacre at lotus cove):

江澄道：“还不是又为咱们的剑的事去温家了。一想到我的三毒现在说不定被哪只温狗握在手里，真是……”

他面露嫌恶之色，魏无羡道：“可惜咱们的剑还不够灵，要是能自动封剑，那就谁也别想用了。”

江澄道：“你再修炼个八十年，说不定可以。”

Jiang Cheng said, “He’s gone to the Wen sect regarding our swords again, hasn’t he. Whenever I think that my Sandu might even now be in some Wen-dog’s hands, ugh…”

His face filled with loathing, Wei Wuxian said, “What a pity our swords don’t have enough spirit. If they could seal themselves, then no one could even think about using them.”

Jiang Cheng said, “If you kept cultivating for another eighty years, maybe.”

from the novel, it seems clear that sword-sealing is something that only happens when a person’s cultivation level is exceptionally high. if this is true, and we go with the CQL timeline of Suibian sealing itself long before Wei Wuxian’s death, it means that Wei Wuxian’s cultivation level wasn’t just high, it was leagues above pretty much anyone else when he was still a teenager. (In fact, Suibian had most likely already sealed by the time this conversation takes place.)

If we don’t go with CQL’s timeline, however, I think we could make a very different argument. It’s a bit of a reach, but I think it’s a lot of fun, if you’re willing to come with me on this journey!

Jin Guangyao says Suibian sealed itself “shortly after” Wei Wuxian’s death, but we don’t really have external confirmation of that. For all we know, someone only bothered to test it sometime after his death, and Suibian had been sealed for some indefinite amount of time. All we can say for sure is that by some point shortly after Wei Wuxian’s death, Suibian was already sealed and resisted being drawn by anyone who tried it.

We’re told over and over that one can only wield a spiritual sword effectively if you have a golden core/the spiritual energy to match it. Wei Wuxian stops carrying/using Suibian because he knows that in his hands, it will act as nothing more than an ordinary sword. His method of cultivation is no longer suitable for the sword. Suibian is tied to both Wei Wuxian’s soul and his golden core.

If sword-sealing only happens when the cultivator’s level is unbelievably high, then I think we can make the argument here that by the time of his death, Wei Wuxian’s core was likewise unbelievably strong – but Wei Wuxian is no longer the one developing his core. Jiang Cheng is.

I know it’s a ridiculous reach. To be clear, I don’t think the text actually intends this or supports this in any meaningful way, but I do think that it gives us some very tasty potential!! If Suibian sealed itself sometime after the core transfer (which, honestly, we wouldn’t know – after all, who’s been trying to draw Wei Wuxian’s sword?), but just if, I think we can plausibly make the argument that Jiang Cheng’s cultivation is truly extraordinary.

:DDDDDDDD

It’s fun right?? It’s a fun concept!!! Even if it’s nonsense, even if it’s not that deep, even if this was an unintentional coincidence, I think it would be interesting to look at this as being some kind of measure of Jiang Cheng’s accomplishments. On the flip side, I also think it’s very important thematically that Jiang Cheng’s value as a person has nothing to do with his cultivation, that he is, in fact, always second-best, but that doesn’t make him any less worthwhile or deserving of love. Maybe I’m just projecting lmao. Of course, being extraordinary doesn’t preclude him from still lagging behind Wei Wuxian–Wei Wuxian might have just been more extraordinary ahahah. We can have both!!

Now for a totally different thing! Interestingly, this conversation about cultivation levels and sword-sealing (the one with Jiang Cheng) also happens in the audio drama, S2E12 (about 15 minutes in, since I just checked), but Wei Wuxian adds an additional comment:

(don’t have the transcription of the original chinese, I’m just going to translate it as I hear it)

“But maybe you don’t need to cultivate to a certain level to have your sword seal itself. What if there were some other way?”

these two versions of the conversation actually imply pretty different things, I think! this addition opens the possibility to the audience that sword-sealing is possible even without an extraordinary level of cultivation, and I think lends credence to the idea that Suibian is just an unusually loyal sword, regardless of Wei Wuxian’s cultivation level. Whether that’s something inherent to Suibian’s “personality”, or whether this says something about how Wei Wuxian inspires loyalty wherever he goes, or whether it just speaks to the strength of their bond remains to be seen.

(obviously, this could imply any number of other things as well, but I find this to be the interpretation that makes me happiest.)

If we go with “Suibian seals itself after Wei Wuxian’s death” in this canon, I think this emphasizes the loyalty aspect with a touch of grief.

If we combine this with CQL and have “Suibian has been loyal since he was a teenager”, that also emphasizes the loyalty aspect – just in a different way.

Of course, doing meta combining unique details from different canons is largely pointless in terms of crafting any real “analysis”, so I’m mostly saying all of this because I enjoy the process of building the supercanon in my head that brings me the most joy! To summarize the varied interpretations I’ve brought up in this post:

CQL-only: Suibian sealed itself when Wei Wuxian was a teenager, at latest, by the time he was thrown into the Mass Graves.

Novel-only: Sword-sealing is very rare and achievable only through extraordinarily high cultivation. Shortly after Wei Wuxian’s death, Suibian is discovered to have sealed itself, so Wei Wuxian’s core, by the time of his death, was extraordinarily powerful.

Audio drama-only: Sword-sealing is considered very rare and achievable only through extraordinarily high cultivation, but might also be accomplished by other methods. Shortly after Wei Wuxian’s death, Suibian is discovered to have sealed itself. If Wei Wuxian’s core is not wildly and improbably powerful, this implies that Suibian has become an exceptionally loyal sword by the time of his death.

CQL/novel: Wei Wuxian was already incredibly powerful by the time he was a teenager.

CQL/audio drama: Suibian has been exceptionally loyal to Wei Wuxian since at least his teenage years.

Novel and audio drama-only have a much wider range of when Suibian could have sealed itself, as mentioned, so there are further variances within those interpretations.

there’s a lot of potential here!! with my personal feelings regarding the story, I like novel-only with Suibian sealing post-core transfer, audio drama-only with Suibian sealing post-Wei Wuxian’s death, or CQL/audio drama with Suibian sealing as a teenager pretty much all equally. I think the CQL/novel interpretation gets too close to casting Wei Wuxian as a hyper-special and innately noble individual in a way that undercuts the strength of his character arc, but that’s my opinion. (As an aside, this is actually one of my major complaints about CQL in general, independent from what I’m talking about here. But that is a topic for another day ahahaha. To be clear, I still love CQL very much, despite my many frustrations!)

As for what I think is the most “likely” to be the “right” interpretation (whatever that’s worth), I would probably say the one that emphasizes Suibian’s loyalty with Suibian sealing post-death, because I think it’s the most thematically cohesive and has the textual support to back it. (I think it’s a valid interpretation even using novel-only text; it’s just slightly less explicit without the additional comment from Wei Wuxian.)

A final detail:

We don’t get anything from either CQL or the novel that explicitly addresses when/if Wei Wuxian is able to wield Suibian again, but the audio drama’s rendition of the “Yunmeng” extra very subtly indicates that by the time that extra takes place, Wei Wuxian has cultivated a golden core and is carrying his sword once more. You only get it at a couple of moments, but Suibian sometimes clinks when Wei Wuxian moves or when he bumps into something. The two instances I can remember specifically are when Lan Wangji tosses the ring onto him (the ring hits Suibian), and when he’s rowing the little boat onto the lotus pond and the motion makes a sound. It’s!!! Extremely good!!! It makes my heart very full!!!!!

ANYWAYS, if all of my scattered rambling didn’t fill the Suibian-shaped hole in your heart, I would also like to recommend @zeldacw‘s wonderful WangQingSuiChen series of comics, featuring anthropomorphized versions of Wangji guqin, Chenqing, Suibian, and Bichen. I believe the most recent comic is here, and there are links to the rest of the comics in the post. If you just want her general tag for the AU (which is more than just the comics), it’s here!

If you have interest in listening to the audio drama yourself, you can purchase it through the MissEvan app (Mao’er FM). There are buying instructions linked in this post! If you need English subtitles, @suibiansubs is the group that does them. :)

I really can’t recommend the audio drama enough, tbh, it’s really really dear to my heart, and the team clearly worked so hard and cared so deeply for the story they were trying to tell. Consider this my regularly scheduled plug for the audio drama ahaha.

As always, my meta is my meta and if you don’t vibe with it, that’s chill! I change my opinions constantly (I think I changed them like three times in the course of writing this ahahaha), and I know some of my older meta has been making the rounds and every time I see it I think about all the ways my views have shifted since I wrote it rip. For this post moreso than usual, I want to emphasize that pretty much all of the meta included in this is meant to explore intriguing what-if possibilities, not for serious literary analysis purposes. I am aware that a lot of this is reaching/overinterpreting into implications that probably aren’t there. I just think they’re fun to consider!

so this was a mess, but I hope you or someone out there enjoyed it anon!!

(ko-fi, if you’re so moved)

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wayward-mikaelson · 3 years

Text

Winter's Doll--Chapter Twelve

Word Count: 3483

About: Nadia returns to the compound and her and Bucky have a moment.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x F! OC

Characters: Nadia, Bucky, Steve, Tony, Clint, and Laura

Warnings/Trigger Warnings: Drinking, Sexual Content (Fingering, Oral-M Receiving, and Unprotected Sex-This a work of fiction so wrap it before you tap it).

A/N: Sorry this fic is taking forever to finish. I have one more chapter and I can focus on all my other single fics.

*This work contains stuff written for the 18 and up crowd. Please read at your discretion. Minors DNI. This work is cross posted to other sites under the same name. If you want to follow my other accounts, the linktree link is in my bio. I am NOT TAKING requests at this time. Feedback is welcomed!

Forever Tags: @hobby27 @donnaintx @myinconnelly1 @elansaidaris @magssteenkamp @440mxs-wife

Marvel Tags: @soccer-100000

Bucky/Sebastian Tags:

Winter's Doll Tags: @supernatural-love14 @loudlylovingalpaca @kingkhibas

Masterlist

Marvel Masterlist

Winter's Doll Masterlist

Chapter Eleven

Favorite Fics Masterlist

Nadia laid on the Barton's couch and stared at the ceiling. She had just woken up to the sound of the Barton children running around upstairs. She could hear them shushing each other every now and then when one would make a loud noise. Nadia thought it was cute and knew that Clint and Laura were raising those kids right.

Nadia had to have two surgeries after being shot. One to remove the bullet, which was a success, but Nadia developed an infection. So the doctors had to open her back up and clean it out. The healing process was painful and Nadia yelled at every nurse that came in to see her and ask how she was doing. Pretty much scaring them away. Now, Nadia didn’t mean to act the way she did towards the nurses, they were only doing their jobs, but she was in so much pain. The drugs they gave her did nothing.

Bucky had been her visitor every day. He was there to make sure she was fed properly and that she went on walks to lessen the pain in her abdomen. Bucky apologised for being a dick and getting her into this mess. But Nadia told him that it’s not his fault. The two of them patched things up and got close again. They talked and laughed until the visiting hours were over.

A week after being discharged from the hospital, Steve had pulled her into the conference room and told her that it would be best to go to Clint’s for the time being. Nadia didn’t even protest, she knew she needed the time away to rest more and see her parents.

So that night she was flown out. With only a quick goodbye to Bucky.

While Nadia was away, Bucky couldn't stop thinking about her. Bucky always thought about Nadia, but while she was away, Bucky’s mind was just filled twenty-four seven with her. He’d drift off during meetings or screw something up while doing inventory somewhere. Even before he fell asleep at night, he’d call Nadia and talk to her for a few hours. Just hearing the sound of her voice, it made Bucky feel better.

Nadia enjoyed the phone calls from Bucky. It distracted her mind from the going ons around Clint’s ranch. Especially her mother. Don’t get it wrong, Nadia loved her mother, but her mother was always up in her business. Always asking about whatever came to mind. One day, Laura found Nadia looking in the liquor cabinet.

“Sorry, I can’t stand my mother right now,” Nadia began to say.

“The hard stuff is in the back,” Laura pulled out two glasses and helped Nadia pull the bottle out. “It's just a few more days until you go back.”

Nadia took the shot Laura handed her. “How hasn’t she driven you crazy yet?”

“Who says that she hasn’t?” Laura smiled and took her shot. “Plus the kids are in love with her. But when she isn’t with the kids she’s criticizing my cooking. I’ve had to kick her out of the kitchen several times.” The two of them laughed and took a few more shots before going back out.

Nadia slowly rolled off the couch and winced at the slight pain in both her stomach and shoulder. A soft groan slips out of her lips and soon there are firm hands helping Nadia up.

“I told you that couch was killer,” Clint made sure she was steady. “Even when you have a wound like that. Should have taken one of the kids' beds.”

Nadia stared at the blonde archer. “That wouldn’t be fair,” Nadia patted Clint's shoulder. “Your kids need their beds.”

Clint tried to hold back a laugh and failed. The look in his face pretty much judged Nadia in that moment, “You, Nadie, were injured, Lyla would have understood if you took her bed for the week. So, for this last night, you will be taking Lyla’s bed.” Naida opened her mouth to protest. “Nope, don’t even. Otherwise, I’ll have to call Cap and see if another week here with your parents would be good.”

Nadia glared at the man before her. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You wouldn’t even dare,” Nadia raised her eyebrows. Clint knew that her parents were driving her crazy.

“I’ll start the coffee,” Clint patted her shoulder and walked into the kitchen.

“I think I hate you now,” Nadia called after him.

“You’ll thank me,” Clint called back.

***

Nadia had only been back at the compound for two hours before getting approached by Fury. He obviously didn’t look happy but then again, Fury never looked happy. Especially when it came to Nadia.

“Can you explain this?” Fury tossed a file to Nadia and it landed on her lap. Nadia opened the file and saw that it was transcripts from the mission she got shot on. “Can you explain why two of my best Avengers were bickering about a one night stand?”

“What is it to you?” Nadia closed the file and handed it back to Fury. “I had a one night stand with Thor and Bucky was obviously jealous. We fought and lost focus of the mission and I ended up getting shot.”

“That’s the point,” Fury dropped the file back on Nadia. “Avengers shouldn’t be sleeping together because of this.”

Nadia stood up and had the file in her hands again. “Does Thor know about this too?” Nadia took two steps towards Fury. “I guess not because no one has heard from him in about a month. So,” Nadia took another step towards Fury and held the file up to his face. “Until he’s been briefed on it and that it’s on paper and ready to sign, I will continue to sleep with teammates.” Nadia flicked her wrist and all the papers from the file scattered everywhere.

Nadia made her way towards the training facility to just sit and relax. When she got in there, Bucky was there sitting down, unwrapping his only flesh hand. “Right where I left you a week ago,” Nadia smiled when Bucky looked up and smiled at her. “Did you not move the entire time?”

“Where else would you find me?” he gave that smile Nadia loved and now it made her blush a bit. “What brings you down here? You look a bit cheerful.”

Nadia made her way towards where Bucky sat and sat next to him. “Well for one, I’m down here because of Fury,” Nadia noticed Bucky’s face when she said Fury. Guess Fury got to him too but she decided she didn’t want to pry into that. “And yes, Bruce finally got my painkillers in so I took what I could for the pain and I'm feeling greater than I have in a week.”

Bucky smiled and placed a hand on your leg. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling great and that you’re back.” Bucky let his hand linger and then pulled back. “I do want to say something to you.”

Nadia twisted her body to face Bucky and this time, it was her who placed a hand on his leg. She felt every muscle in his left tense up at her touch but she didn’t move her hand. “If you’re going to say sorry for the umptenth time, James Barnes, I will slap you with one of those training mats.”

Bucky laughed a little and covered Nadia’s hand with his metal one. Nadia had felt the metal many times before but for some reason, this time the feeling sent small little shocks of pleasure through her arm. Nadia had to tell herself that she needed to keep her calm. This was just Bucky after all.

“That and, um,” Bucky slowly let his voice trail off but his metal hand also slowly tightened around hers. “You know, you’re the only woman I call Doll.” Nadia’s breath caught in her throat. She wanted to say something but nothing that came to mind would have sounded right coming out of her mouth. “When I saw you that first day, I wanted to say hi but didn’t. Then the days leading up to Starks party, I still wanted to say hi. Steve called me crazy for not doing so, cause you’re so beautiful.”

The words that were coming out of Bucky’s mouth, they were reaching Nadia’s heart. She was frozen in place, in a good way. Letting her heart melt as she let her best friend tell her how he felt. Bucky must have practiced this moment a million times this last week. Nadia felt like she was dreaming and literally took her free hand and dug her thumb nail into her index finger.

Nope, not a dream, she thought

“Over time,” Bucky was still talking. “I started to feel things for you and I memorized whatever I could about you. Like for instance, how you drink your coffee. You only add about an inch of heavy cream to your coffee. Also, you really like musicals. Sometimes, when you’re in your room, I can hear the faint sound of you singing along. And, Nadie, you have the most beautiful voice I ever--”

Nadia pushed her hand free from Bucky’s and grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him towards her. Bucky wasn’t taken by surprise one bit, but he didn’t think that this would be Nadia’s response. He placed both hands on the side of Nadia’s face and pressed his lips firmly to hers.

Their lips molded together like they were meant to be. Like it was a missing puzzle piece in both of their lives. Nadia’s hands loosened on Bucky’s collar and slid up and around his neck. Bucky dropped his hands to her hips and pulled Nadia up onto his lap and wrapped his arm around her. Naida gave a mixture of a sigh and moan. The sound was enough to send Bucky into a feral state.

“You have no idea how long I wanted to kiss you,” Bucky whispered as he pulled away. The shine his eyes and smile on his face, it mirrored Nadia’s. “I just pictured myself asking you first.”

Nadia rested her head on Bucky’s and ran her hands through his hair. It was soft and it smelled of cedarwood. She could feel the pounding of her heart and if she could feel it, then Bucky could most definitely hear it. Nadia took a deep breath to help steady it and pulled at her bottom lip with her teeth. Bucky’s breathing just as deep as Nadia’s. The way that her fingers just rested in his hair was soothing and relaxing. He could sit like this forever and never tire of it.

“Sorry I took that moment from you,” Nadia broke the silence and pulled away. Bucky’s hands remained on her hips and Nadia sighed as he started to run his thumbs in circles. Nadia looked to the side.

“Well,” Bucky licked his lips and used a hand to turn Nadia’s face back towards him. “It’s not the end of the world.” Bucky ran his thumb over Nadia’s lips and she instantly felt the faint throb between her legs. She wanted nothing more but to have this man tear her clothes off. “Besides, I wasn’t finished.” Bucky pulled Nadia’s face towards his, catching her lips in between his teeth. Nadia sucked in a soft but soft breath.

“Show me what you got, Sergeant Barnes,” Nadia pulled away and lightly gripped his hair. A low groan came from Bucky's lips. The wetness between her legs was getting thicker and hotter. Nadia needed Bucky to do something or she would do something about it. She needed to scream this man's name, even if the whole compound could hear her. She didn’t care. She’s wanted this man for months.

Bucky quickly stood up and had Nadia in his arms. Her legs instinctively wrapped around his waist where she could feel his rock hard erection pressing through his workout pants and straight into her clothed, wet core. Bucky walked them to the only bathroom in the area, kicking the door shut and blindly locking it.

Bucky set Nadia down on the counter. “I may not be a god,” Bucky pressed his lips to Nadia’s ear. “But I will make you feel so good, you’ll be left wanting more.” Shivers ran down Nadia’s back and she smirked.

“Like I said, Sergeant,” Nadia pulled away and gripped Bucky’s workout shirt tightly in her hands. “Show me what you got.” Each word slowly rolled off her tongue. Nadia let go of Bucky’s shirt and grabbed the hem of hers. Crossing her arms, Nadia ripped the cotton over her head, leaving her blue bra untouched and Bucky staring at her breasts.

After a few minutes, Bucky stepped back and ripped his shirt off. Nadia’s eyes wandered down his muscular and chiseled chest but they didn’t get too far. Nadia slid off the bathroom counter and stopped closer to Bucky. She reached out and touched the scars on his skin that met the metal of his arm. She knew his story, she knew what happened to him but seeing the scars made her heart sink. She leaned forward and kissed the scarred skin.

Nadia then began to pepper sweet, small kisses down around his chest. Bucky’s eyes just watched her. He was in awe that this beautiful woman, one he’s wanted for months, was kissing his bare skin. He wanted to engrain this whole thing in his brain. When she began to kiss down to his stomach, Bucky couldn’t help but let out a small little groan, letting his head drop back.

Bucky felt Nadia’s fingers slip between the elastic of his pants and tug down a bit. Bucky looked down to see her beautiful bright eyes looking back up at him. They were glassed over with lust with a hint of permission to go on. “Go on doll,” Bucky’s voice was husky now. “I’m all yours.”

Within seconds, Nadia had Bucky’s pants and underwear pushed down. Her hand was slowly stroking Bucky’s already hard cock. With each gentle stroke, a small moan and groan would slip through his lips.

Then, without a word or a warning, Nadia took him into her mouth. He was thick and long, the tip of his cock poked the back of Nadia’s throat. Nadia groaned at the feeling of finally feeling him in her mouth. She had dreamt and imagined what it would feel like to bob her head over his cock. She bobbed her head up and down as a slow and agonizing pace and moaned every few minutes.

“Fuck,” Bucky groaned as he felt the vibrations of Nadia’s voice. Bucky’s hand gripped around Nadia’s hair and slowly began to thrust down the back of Nadia’s throat. Nadia groaned and felt the wetness between her legs seep out and onto her underwear. She needed him now.

Nadia pulled back with a pop and stood up. Nadia undid her jeans and shimmied out of them and kicked them to the side. She walked backwards until she hit the cool counter and jumped up there and motioned Bucky to come forward with one finger.

Bucky closed the distance between them in just a few steps. He took his flesh hand and placed it behind her head and pulled her face to his. His kiss was firm and wet. He nipped the bottom of her lip, causing the wetness and ache in her core to become unbearable.

Bucky’s metal hand rubbed up Nadia’s thigh where he squeezed it tightly. Then he took his thumb and rubbed her clit through her underwear making Nadia whine into his mouth. Bucky smiled and pushed the fabric away and inserted not one, but two metal fingers into her.

“Ah, fuck,” Nadia hissed against Bucky’s lips.

“Shh,” Bucky hissed as he slowly pumped and scissored his way around inside you.

It didn’t take long for Nadia to feel her stomach tighten. She began to moan but Bucky kissed her harder to muffle her moans and pushed his fingers deep inside her. Nadia couldn’t contain herself, Bucky was twisting and curling his fingers in all the right spots. Her moans, as much as they were muffled by Bucky's lips, they were getting louder by the second. Nadia's hands flew to Bucky's hair and she gripped it tight as she felt herself tighten around Bucky's fingers.

"Damn, Doll," Bucky growled and used his thumb to rub small circles around her clit. Nadia threw her head until it hit the mirror behind her. “Let’s get you to do that again.” He dove in for her neck and sucked a hard spot on the base of her neck. And just like that, Nadia was squeezing herself around Bucky’s fingers.

“Oh, god,” Nadia breathed out as she felt herself getting closer and closer. Before Nadia could warn Bucky that she was getting close, her body was hit hard with her orgasm. It shook her entire body. Her back arched up and she screamed out as she gripped Bucky’s hair tighter. Bucky continued to finger fuck her through her high until she came down.

Bucky withdrew his fingers and brought them up to his mouth and licked them. Not breaking eye contact with her. Through her post orgasmic haze, Nadia reached for Bucky’s metal wrist and pulled his fingers from his mouth and took them in hers. The taste of her release mixed with metallic had Nadia rolling her eyes to the back of her head.

“I don’t think I've seen anything as hot as this,” Bucky’s low raspy voice sent a shiver down Naida’s back. And with that, Bucky ripped the underwear off Nadia’s lower body and discarded the rest of his pants and underwear. “Tell me you still want this,” Bucky took Nadia’s face and she opened her eyes as he lined his cock up with her entrance.

“I do,” Nadia trailed her hands up Bucky’s chest. “I want you to fuck me and if anyone hears, they will know that it’s James Barnes’s cock making me feel this good.”

Bucky’s lips twitched into a crooked smile as he pushed himself slowly into Nadia. Now, Bucky didn't stretch her as far as Thor had, but Nadia felt every vein rubbing against her and her walls fluttered around him. The two of them groaned at the feeling.

It was beautiful and it felt perfect.

As soon as Nadia was adjusted, Bucky began to slowly thrust in and out as he pulled her lips to his. This kiss wasn’t heated as before, it was deep, passionate and full of emotions. Nadia wrapped her arms around Bucky and drank in this moment. Bucky kissed down to Nadia’s shoulder and started to pick up the pace of his thrusting.

“You...feel...so...perfect,” Bucky grunted softly in between each thrust.

Nadia moaned in response as she felt the tip of Bucky’s cock push at her cervix. Within minutes, Nadia was feeling the familiar tighten in her stomach and she gently dug her nails into Bucky’s back. The action alone pulled a growl from Bucky and he began to thrust harder and deep into Nadia.

“Oh, God.”

Bucky and Nadia froze in place. The coil in Nadia’s stomach loosened and disappeared. She didn’t want to lift her eyes up at the person who entered the bathroom. She knew Bucky locked the door, she watched him lock it herself.

“What? Did someone throw their shit around?”

This voice made Nadia and Bucky look. There stood Steve looking awkwardly down at the ground. Tony peeped his head and his eyes widened at the picture before him. Bucky shifted his body to make sure Nadia was covered more and not too exposed to the men standing in the doorway.

“Huh,” Tony nodded his head and nogged Steve. “Now we know why the door was locked. By the way,” Tony gestured towards the naked forms. “So glad that this happened. Now that sexual tension during every meeting and mission is gone. Just don’t let us find you fucking during missions.” With that Tony left.

Steve, with his head still down said, “Fury is looking for you Nadia. Something about meeting with the President.” Then he was leaving, closing the door behind him.

“Well, that happened,” Nadia leaned back and looked at Bucky. “I guess I shouldn’t keep Fury waiting.”

“Oh no,” Bucky nodded and slowly pulled his cock out of Nadia. Nadia closed her eyes at the emptiness. When she opened them, Nadia saw Bucky picking her clothes up and handing them to her. “Sorry about the underwear.”

Nadia slid off the counter and smiled. “Don’t worry,” she took the clothes from his hands. “I have plenty more you can ruin.”

“I look forward to that,” Bucky pulled Nadia into his arms and kissed her. “Hopefully you’ll let me ruin another pair tonight.”

#Winter's Doll #Bucky Barnes x OC #Bucky Barnes and OC #Bucky Barnes Smut #Bucky Barnes Fanfic #Bucky Barnes Imgaine #Bucky Barnes Story #Marvel #Bucky Barnes #Marvel Fanfic #Marvel Imagine #Marvel Story #MCU #MCU Fanfic #MCU Imagine #MCU Story #The Winter Soldier

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dis--parity · 3 years

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Interview 03-IO/GW-██

TRANSCRIPT -- Interrogation session 03-IO/GW-██

Date: ████ of █████, 20██

Interrogator on site: Captain ████ Raynes

Transcription Correspondent: Agent ███████ Brewer

Begin recording at 1000 HRS.

S001, ‘Garis’, awaits in the interrogation chamber, appearing fatigued, but stable.

Interrogator agent Raynes is cleared to attempt interrogation.

Interrogator Raynes enters the interrogation chamber. Door is locked.

Begin Questioning.

Garis: Guess we know the drill by now. So… what you got for us this time?

Raynes: Well, surprisingly… our team recovered quite a lot of paperwork. Your cult leader didn’t really seem to have the due diligence to burn it.

Garis: So… lots of stuff we didn’t know about, then? Like what?

Raynes: Cryptocurrency transactions, recruitment figures, personal expenses… the brand name doubled as a money-laundering front for some people your… leader, was associated with, it looks like. Other than that… he was a gambler. Day-trader, broker, conman… you name it.

Garis: Oh, there’s a fair few fucking names we’d use for that degenerate piece of filth. … hey, there’s one of them just now.

Raynes: I’m with you there. I already told about what we found in that pudding - looks like he used the same stuff on himself. Him and Rosenfeld. You think… maybe he wanted to believe his own lies?

Garis: More likely he was just a junkie. Both of them. Using people like us to bring in the dirty money, doing whatever they please and letting the others do the same, ‘cause as long as they make a profit-

Raynes: Hey, hey, hey. I get it. Chill. They were greedy bastards, secret’s out, but they’re dead now. Speak ill of ‘em all you want, but… I’m afraid there’s more. That pudding they gave you? For both you in the cult and the general populace, they put blood in it.

Garis: I-... blood? Like-... my blood?

Garis appears to become nauseous at the concept. They take out a lozenge that agent Raynes had previously provided them with and suck on it.

Raynes: Yeah. Possibly… those blood donations went into it. Mr. Whittock-... Judas, wanted to study the effects of the blood of the young on the aging process using a large sample. When he got something solid, he was gonna sell it to all kinds of people. Politicians, criminals, all kinds of people who were past their prime. Another profit incentive.

Garis: And a way to keep the old and corrupt in power. Fuck… that- you destroyed all that, right?

Raynes: I can’t confirm or deny that.

Note: It’s destroyed. I saw to it myself.

Garis: So… you’ve got all this from those documents. Why are we still here? Just for the hell of it?

Raynes: There’s still a few questions I need to ask you. One of them is about the, ah... possible terrorist motives of the cult. Given everything I’ve just told you, everything Judas looked like he was building up to… why the sudden change of heart? Why order a shipment of weapons so conspicuously?

Garis: We-... we can’t say for sure. Not from our perspective, but… there were-... we got messages from the God in the Numbers around the same time we all received what I later found out were weapons. It… it wasn’t Judas that was talking.

Raynes: So… the other one. Elijah?

Garis: We were... doped up, all of us. Same thing they always did to us, but we knew. I knew. Gale knew. And his voice-... the voice- Elijah, he was the one the God in the Numbers spoke from. We all got our guns, told they would… told it was the rapture. We didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I heard what people thought. That we’d go out and show these ‘relics’ to the world, redeem them in the eyes of God. But… we alone felt the cold steel of a nine millimeter in our hands.

Raynes: But… why do this? Haemolife was more or less off the radar until that weapons shipment came in.

Garis: … I think that was the point where they finally factored Gale in. Someone who could get past that barrier, someone who had the willpower to defy the God in the Numbers. Someone who didn’t have the same fear Iris did. They knew… they knew she’d blab eventually. Desperate times, maybe.

Raynes: And the way Rosenfeld took desperate measures was to initiate a terrorist attack before you could expose the truth?

Garis: No - not to take everyone else out. To destroy everyone in the know - myself included. Maybe something changed along the way, maybe they realised your CIA was onto them. Either way… it was the end for all of us.

Raynes: Even the ones cross country… shit. They were prepared for this. Shit… I mean… you told me about your parents. I guess you didn’t leave anyone behind, at least

S001 grimaces at these words. Their mood appears to be taking a turn for the worse.

Garis: … we did. Fuck. I did. We… couldn’t even say goodbye. We knew what was happening, and-... we pushed him away. We didn’t want to drag him into this, too.

Raynes: Who?

Garis sighs.

Garis: … his name was Alex. He was there for us. If it wasn’t for him, we might not be Garis now. He showed us the best of times, and stuck with us in the worst of times. He knew… he knew about what we truly went through, we told him. And he helped us anyway. Loved us anyway. He-....

Garis pauses for a brief moment. Their face looks almost guilty.

Garis: They, told me about how their dad used to isolate them socially, stick them to one place, and how they grew jealous of all the other kids who had parents who loved them, parents who took them places instead of keeping them cooped up in their rooms, parents that… didn’t have any agreement between each other to do what they wanted to their children. Together, we figured out ways to fight back against our respective abusers. I was able to defy the God in the Numbers because of them. Because of their... humanity, that nobody else showed us. Fuck… all that time, we thought we were saving them. But, now we’re together, we realise… they were saving us. If they became a target…

Raynes: … tell me something. If there’s something you could say to them right now, if they’re alive, if they could listen... what would it be?

Garis hesitates. Agent Brewer detects this conversation is becoming too personal in nature, but the interrogator is owed some leeway.

Garis: … I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t explain to you what was happening, Alex. But… you saved my life. I wish I knew where you were, and I promise one day we’ll find a way to talk to each other again, someway, somehow, and I’ll tell you, once and for all… thank you.

Note: Raynes has taken all the leeway he’s getting.

Agent Brewer enters the interrogation chamber.

Brewer: Raynes, what are you doing?! This isn’t helping us, we’ve gotten everything we need! Now let’s move on to the next stage already, and-

Raynes: William! Get back to your post, I told you I’d handle this.

Brewer: Oh, because you’ve handled everything so fucking well so far, haven’t you?

Garis: Hey, shut the fuck up, goatee!

Raynes: Yeah, shut the fuck up! Finish up that transcript and we’ll take it outside the interrogation chamber. We’ll move onto the wrap up once you’ve got that shit out your system.

Garis: The… ‘wrap up’? What is this? What have you got planned now, CIA?

Raynes: … I guess we’ll see for ourselves. Please, go back to your cell. Things are gonna work themselves out - starting right now.

#[REDACTED] The Haemolife Files #cult tw #abuse tw #{ wow colette. two haemolife files in two days? what's up with you? }#{ well hey! }#{ we're finally reaching the conclusion! }#{ the next few ones will be smaller }#{ a LOT smaller than this i'm sorry this one was chunky }#{ but it's important! }#{ but! i'm hoping this'll be like. the fourth to last? yeah }

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windblooms · 3 years

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answering all the asks i got regarding college offer advice below!

Anonymous said:

So about your college thing - I think that some people lose offers due to failing to disclose a health condition (this is more important for health based courses). Alternatively, this is more of a shot in the dark, underperforming in exams enough so that the place didn't expect it (honestly that would probably take more effort than passing as expected, ya know). I don't think the college can take away an offer unless you either refuse it or some sort of other issue, e.g. a criminal record not being disclosed, occurs

thank you for sending in some advice! orz yeah ;; from the reddit posts i read and dms i received, unless you do something very extreme or your grants tank considerably, then students are fine. so to whichever being is up there i hope the admissions office doesn’t take a look at my grades too much. i plan to major in cs, and my calculus grade dropped from a B to a C this semester, so i’m just like . hoping they ignore that bahahah. thank you again awa

Anonymous said:

About the college stuff- it happens!

One reason could be because of grades. Counselors often warm seniors from just... stopping their efforts once they get accepted. A lot of kids in my school got acceptance letters, stopped going to classes/doing their work, and had their offers received.

Another reason could be because of behavior or posts you make. Which is why there's "no phones, no pictures" rules in some college spaces. What you post can most likely be seen by administration and they can rescind the acceptance if you're pulling stunts or being hateful.

Another reason could be because they don't think you're the right candidate for their school anymore. Goes a bit with the first two, but say you stop attending clubs or sports, which can be essential into getting into colleges (specific ones) and they were reliant on you staying in that for you to come.

If you have any questions feel free to ask! I might pop in your messages if you need specific things answered. Hope this helps.

orz YEAH i heard that colleges actually look at social media pages of students? that’s so wack like . . . i can see why but that just feels like you’re being watched highkey. thank you for the advice and insight though . . . hopefully this info also helps other students who are in a similar bind as i am!!

Anonymous said:

Abt the college thing- assuming you live in the US bc this is my knowledge about the college process - typically that would happen if you do something really bad (I.e., hate crime-y/bullying/HS reports you cheating etc) or if you completely tank your grades (and I mean REALLLLY tank) after they accepted you (slight slips won’t matter- it’s your last year of HS and it happens to a lot of people). Other than that, if they rescind an admission offer out of the blue, I would call the admissions staff and ask why. I would also make sure you have everything they requested of you, sent to them (transcript/letters of rec/essays/whatever they require). Hope this makes sense!

yes, i do live in america (yay?); i sent in all my info regarding admissions, and my parents are just anxious over my grades. last semester i had like a’s-b’s with like . one c iirc, but now i have majority b’s and two c’s with around two a’s. one of those c’s is in calculus, so my parents are concerned because i plan to major in cs, an engineering branch, which pretty much entails mathematic proficiency sigh. everything you said makes sense though! thank you for being so thorough.

Anonymous said:

regarding ur last post abt college application and stuff,

in my past experience usually colleges/universities would set some kind of deadline for you to process ur application further after they have accepted ur application. if u fail to proceed with the application (usually it has something to do with payment if anything else) then they would nullify your application.

i dont think it has anything to do with ur score seeing as you did get accepted in the first place (?)

im sorry if i couldn't help much.

you did help! yep, i did send in all of my stuff, my concern is mostly with grades though ahh. im sure other anons who are looking through this thread will also find advice that they can use if they’re applying to colleges as well!

Anonymous said:

hi hi!! regarding the school thing, i’m not sure if it applies to all unis around the world but from where i’m from, when you apply to university through your grades (not from entrance exam) and the uni accepts you, that’s when they start to verify you grades to see if it’s legit or not like if they find one number off then they might pull the offer even though you’ve already received an invent :(( that’s one of the main reasons i’ve been told why your invitation could get canceled though i’m not sure about other factors!

regardless, i hope you’re doing fine and best of luck in everything you’re going through!!

what you said is true! it’s encouraged that seniors still try with their classes, even after they’ve been given offers by colleges. that’s what counselors tell us at least, but from actually college students, i’ve heard rescinded offers are actually pretty rare, even if your grades do slip . . . so i’m genuinely hoping that it seldom happens because . gosh . urk ahsdflasj

thank you for the well wishes!! same to you anon, and everyone who sent in advice.

#anon.ask #al.ans #al's sh/tposts

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hannah-in-drewland · 4 years

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Unused Message in a Haunted Mansion Dialog

This post is my archive of all the deleted/unused conversations in the MHM game files. I will continue to update it as I go through the painstaking process of going through all the files!

As many of you know from a thread on the STFD case closed boards, one-third of the audio files on that game go unused but remain in the game files. Much of the dialog indicates that STFD was meant to be much longer with more scenes and plot points that would make Nancy more suspicious of everyone’s motives. These include things such as Nancy looking through the “famous” locked drawer, Nancy confronting Rick about the B.T. Kaiser letters, and Nancy actually asking characters for help with things that she would just figure out during the course of the game.

MHM’s unused audio files don’t have anywhere near as much audio, but the audio from the character dialog is interesting nonetheless. A lot of the suspects talk about one another more in these clips, and Nancy converses with the characters about things that are not addressed as much in the final version of the game (like asking about the treasure). Below are the file names and transcripts of the conversation bits. My commentary is italicized.

Rose to Nancy:

ROS0C - Hello Nancy, sorry about that seance last night. Why couldn’t Abby conjure up some helpful spirit...like an electrician!

ROS08 - I don’t know. Abby is very theatrical. But sometimes I’m not sure when she’s acting and when she’s not. She insists that this place is haunted. I’m even starting to hear things. But maybe I’m spending too much time in this house.

Abby to Nancy:

ABB0G - You look kind of tired. Maybe it’s time to get some sleep!

This conversation bit might have been meant to get Nancy to go to her room to trigger the scary sound effect, which implies Abby was trying to scare her. It could have also been used to trigger Nancy receiving the “Leave the mansion now!” note, although I always thought Louis was the one who wrote that.

ABB74 - Ask Charlie. I’m sure he’s lost it again.

Nancy was able to ask around about where to find the chisel/paint scraper. But because this item is so easy to find, it didn’t make sense to have conversations about it. Also, Abby would have been meditating at this point. This conversation emphasizes how much Abby distrusts Charlie as a handyman.

Charlie to Nancy:

CHA03 - No I am..I-I mean...I know Rose is all concerned but you gotta expect a few things to get out of control with these big projects. Accidents happen, you know?

Would have been used when Nancy asks Charlie about the accidents. This makes him sound more suspicious.

CHA65a - Yeah, I left one up in the entry somewhere. It should be there. Just look around, you’ll find it.

CHA65b - No, I sure don’t. I know I had one before, but I forgot where I put it. Sorry!

Nancy could ask where the chisel/paint scraper is. The contrasting answers might have been used to distinguish the junior and senior difficulty levels. Again, because the item is so easy to find, it probably didn’t make sense to have dialog about it.

CHA72 - You’re the second person who’s asked me that! Louis also wanted to know!

This implies that Louis was either asking Charlie about the Great Christmas Gold Robbery or what Gum Bo Fu meant. It definitely would have made Louis more suspicious if this was kept in.

Louis to Nancy:

The following audio files imply that Nancy was a bit more trusting of Louis in that she asked him about the hidden room in mansions and the clues about there being hidden treasure in the mansion.

LOU54: No I haven’t. I hardly ever leave the library.

LOU85: No I haven’t. But I have found other hidden rooms in victorians.

LOU63: Hidden treasure? Now that sounds straight out of some mystery novel! Nooooo….

LOU64: These rooms were hidden for purely cosmetic reasons. Unsightly areas such as attics were often concealed so as not to ruin the overall decor of the house.

LouisEnd: What are you trying to do?!?! Why, you good for nothing susudnsfhsfhud!!!

No commentary necessary!

#Nancy Drew #Message in a Haunted Mansion #Her interactive #stay tuned for danger #Nancy Drew Game #mhm

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rocknrollarticles · 3 years

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The Artwoods Story

The Artwoods’ 100 Oxford Street is a UK compilation album released in 1983 that features a four-page booklet (pictured above) that tells the band’s story, written by guitarist Derek Griffiths.

Since there's a limit on the number of photos that can be added to one post, I'll be reblogging this a couple times until I have all the info up. To see this post with all the info added in reblogs, click here.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy Derek’s words as much as I do!

Transcript under the cut (main text + Record Mirror article from page three's rightmost side)

“ It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Artwoods came into being because everything just seemed to evolve naturally. The one date however that does stick in my mind is the 1st October 1964 which is the date I turned professional, thus depriving the accountancy profession of a valuable addition to its ranks! But seriously, one must go back to previous events in order to trace the history of the group.

I first met Jon Lord at a party in West Hampstead when he was a drama student at The Central School of Speech & Drama. He was introduced to me by Don Wilson whose claim to fame was his membership of the famous skiffle group Dickie Bishop & His Sidekicks. They had had a hit years previously with "No Other Baby But You", and Don now ran a band on a semi-pro basis called Red Bludd's Bluesicians in which I played guitar. Well, I say we were called this, but only when we were fortunate enough to cop an R&B gig. We used to play The Flamingo Allnighter and lots of U.S. air bases. The rest of the time we played weddings and tennis club dances as The Don Wilson Quartet! Jon Lord was brought in on piano and was a very valuable addition especially as he could get his hands around a little jazz and all the old standards. Jon used to ring me at work and interrupt my vouching of sales ledger invoices in order to discuss the coming weekends gigs. We would bubble with excitement at the approach of an R&B gig as we really hated all the weddings and barmitzvahs.

Around this time Don made a very important policy decision and we suddenly became the proud owners of a Lowrey Holiday organ for Jon to play. Shortly after this Don contrived to drive the band-wagon into the back of a lorry on the North Circular, doing himself considerable mischief in the process. This brought about the unfortunate end of Don's career with us, but not before he had masterminded an important merger of two local bands.

For some time we had been aware, and not a little envious, of The Art Wood Combo led by none other than Art Wood himself. His band underwent a split at that time and Red Bludd's Bluesicians, alias The Don Wilson Quartet, were neatly grafted on. We really felt we were moving into the big league by doing this as Art not only had more work than us but, wait for it, used to sing with Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated with Charlie Watts on drums and Cyril Davies on harmonica! The next problem was a replacement for Don, and this was solved by stealing the bass player from another local group The Roadrunners, a good looking cove who went by the name of Malcolm Pool. The offer and acceptance of the gig were transacted in a pub car park somewhere in West Drayton staring into the murky waters of the Grand Union Canal clutching pints of local bitter (Fullers?). (Authors note: drugs had not been invented at this stage, as far as most groups were concerned, apart from the odd pill to keep one awake on an all nighter!)

The next personnel change took place some time in 1964 and this involved the retirement of drummer Reg Dunnage, who did not want to turn pro. Auditions were held in London and lots of drummers attended. However it was more or less a foregone conclusion that Keef Hartley would get the job. You see we'd already decided that what The Artwoods needed above all else was a Liverpool drummer! Unfortunately none came to the audition, but Keef hailed from Preston which was near enough for us. Keef had previously played with Rory Storm & The Hurricanes, replacing Ringo Starr in the process (heady stuff this), and Freddy Starr & The Midnighters. Both were such influential bands of their time that these credentials combined with Keef's quasi Liverpool accent (at least to our ears) provided him with a faultless pedigree.

So that was it, the line-up that would take us through to 1967 when Colin Martin eventually replaced Keef Hartley on drums.

For a while we worked as The Art Wood Combo but then decided it was hipper to drop the Combo and become The Artwoods.

The period when The Artwoods were operating was one of musical change when groups went from recording and performing other writers' material to writing their own. In fact the last year of the group's existence was 1967 which heralded the arrival of "Hendrix", "Flower-Power". "Festivals" and experimental use of mind expanding drugs! 1966/67 were particularly exciting years to be based in London and every night would be spent in one of the many clubs which had recently sprung up. The Ad Lib, The Scotch of St. James, The Cromwellian, Blaises and of course The Speakeasy to mention a few. Many of these we played in and the trick was to be well known enough not to have to pay the entrance fee on nights off. Any night you could be sure to meet your mates "down The Speak" and it became the unofficial market place for rock musicians.

It was also the days before huge amounts of equipment took over. Equipment meant road-crew and trucks and in turn financial hardship. This simple equation has been the downfall of many bands over the years. We used to travel in a 15 cwt van together with all the gear-no roadies, just us. It's amusing to recall but after recording the TV show "Ready, Steady, Go" (in Kingsway in those days?) one would be besieged by autograph hunters on the way to the van with the gear. Even really 'big groups of the day like The Zombies would hump their own equipment and apologetically place an amp on the ground in order to sign an autograph! Because it was financially viable to travel to small clubs in this way, we would often average 6 or 7 nights a week, every week, on the road. A bad month would probably mean less than twenty gigs. This meant we were living, sleeping and eating in close, and I mean close, proximity. You really found out who your friends were.

The subject of equipment is an interesting one as it really distinguishes the bands then from those of today. The average pub band of today would carry more equipment than we did. As I've already mentioned we were quick to realise that we could elevate ourselves musically by investing in a proper electric organ as opposed to a Vox Continental or Farfisa that many groups used. Consequently the group purchased a Lowrey Holiday and we thought this alone would provide us with the Booker T and Jimmy Smith sound.

What we failed to realize was that we also needed a Leslie cabinet with a special built-in rotor to get that "wobbly" sound. Our friend and mentor Graham Bond, the legendary organist/saxophonist, was quick to point out the error of our ways one night when we were gigging at Klooks Kleek in West Hampstead. We groaned inwardly when we discovered the extra cost and humping involved, but it had to be bought. We were fortunate very early on to score a deal with Selmers, who provided us with free amps and P.A., but we had to make the trek to Theobalds Road once a week to get it all serviced as they were not as reliable in those days. I used a Selmer Zodiac 50 watt amp and Malcolm had Goliath bass cabinets with a stereo amp.

The P.A. comprised two 4 x 12 cabinets and a 100 watt amp! When we toured Poland we played in vast auditoria and linked our system with the Vox system being used on tour by Billy J Kramer & The Dakotas. This meant we were pumping out no more than 300 watts which is laughable by today's standards. Although it would never have compared in quality, I can remember standing at the back of extremely large halls and being able to hear clearly all the words Billy J sang. One day in 1963 Alexis Korner sent me off foraging in and around Charing Cross Road for a new guitar, with instructions to mention his name whereupon I would receive a discount of 10%. Previously I played a Burns Trisonic (collectors will appreciate this model did not have "Wild Dog" treble) but fancied owning a Gibson ES335 as favoured by many blues players. Sure enough one was hanging invitingly in the window of Lew Davis's shop.

I ended up paying £135 and still use it regularly today although its value has multiplied five fold. Malcolm came with me that day and bought an Epiphone bass, the same colour and shape as my guitar. For years we looked like matching book-ends on either end of the group! Keef started off using a Rodgers drum kit, but somewhere along the line changed to, I think, Ludwig. There was no out-front mixing as is common today, just the P.A. amp on stage with the vocalist. Primitive I know, but everything revolved around bands being able to travel economically with their gear and perform at small clubs anywhere in Britain. The college circuit was much sought after and provided the icing on the cake while package tours were not necessarily well paid. We did our first with P. J. Proby and got £25 per night (for the lot of us) and we had to pay for our own accommodation!

I have already mentioned "Ready, Steady, Go" a show on which we appeared on more than one occasion. The original format called for groups to mime to their records but after a time it was decided that it would become "live" and that the show would be re-titled "Ready Steady Goes Live". We were proud to be picked for the first "live" show and learnt the news via a telephone call to our agent in London from a phone box high in the Pennines. We managed a drunken war-dance of celebration round the phone box believing that this meant we'd really cracked it. As I remember the first show we did featured Tom Jones (complete with lucky rabbits foot) miming to "It's Not Unusual", The Kinks, Donovan and Adam Faith's Roulettes playing live (without Adam). We were promoting our first single "Sweet Mary" and I would put the date at around late 1964.

Our first recording deal was with a subsidiary of Southern Music Publishing called Iver Productions and I reckon that would have been mid 1964. Southern had a four track studio in the basement of their offices in Denmark Street ("The Street") and getting the gear downstairs, especially the organ, was "murder". Our first producer was Terry Kennedy and we recorded several tracks with him. Without going too deeply into all the details of recording techniques of the period, one tended to compensate for the lack of tracking facilities available, by attempting to duplicate the live excitement. In many ways it was a frustrating experience particularly for ambitious guitar-players. I was a Steve Cropper freak and I knew as a musician that a lot of his sound on record resulted from him working his amplifier hard in the studio— thus the speaker would emit the sound he was used to on stage. In Britain however, engineers would say "You don't need to play loud man, we can turn you up on the desk". The result was a weedy, thin guitar sound. From way back I'd been experimenting with "feed back" on stage and I really had to dig my heels in about the guitar sound in the studio. Once when I turned my amp up to give it a bit of "wellie" on a solo the engineer bounded out of the control room screaming that the level would bust his microphones!

Sometime during the career of The Artwoods it was decided that we should graduate to a better studio. This was arranged by Mike Vernon who also became our producer. Our records had all been released through the Decca Record Co. and Mike was a staff producer with them. Mike w also an authority on "The Blues" and the relationship led to our only single chart record "I Take What I Want" a cover of a Sam & Dave U.S. R&B hit. Mike was also producing John Mayall at the time and it seemed only natural that Mike and The Artwoods should team up. From this point on we recorded at the Decca studio in Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead, but I can't honestly say it did any more for us than our previous efforts in the Southern Music basement, although we could now indulge ourselves in the comparative luxury of the eight track studio. Later on, towards the end of the groups life we were signed by Jack Baverstock at Philips Records who was looking for a group to cash in on the thirties-style gangster craze which had been triggered off by the film "Bonnie & Clyde". As a result we changed our name to "St. Valentines Day Massacre" and released a single of the old Bing Crosby hit "Brother Can You Spare A Dime?" It was an ill- fated venture, which I would prefer not to dwell on, virtually signalling the end of the band apart from a few heavy-hearted gigs with a changed line-up.

Before that though, there were many great times to remember, and a fair number of gigs that were memorable in one way or another.

One of our favourite gigs was Eel Pie Island which we regularly played once a month; in fact we held the attendance record there for a while until the ageing blues artist Jesse Fuller took it from us. Eel Pie Island is literally an island in the middle of the River Thames at Twickenham and there's never been a gig like it since. It was an Edwardian ballroom originally I believe, that achieved notoriety in the 50's with the Trad Jazz boom. At that time, an overloaded chain ferry was used to convey the crowd across the river, but during the 60's a small bridge was in existence although it was only wide enough to take the promoter Art Chisnall's mini van. He had to make three separate trips across with the gear strapped to the roof and hanging out the back doors.

The audiences were exceptional for those times and I don't know where they all came from... very much like art students and very much more like the 70's than 60's. Long hair predominated and this was before 'hippies' had officially been invented! If you can imagine a ramshackle wooden ballroom, bursting at the seams, condensation pouring from the walls, the audience on each others shoulders leaping up and down, the sprung dance floor bending alarmingly in the middle, in the summer couples strolling outside and lounging on the river bank ... all this and not a disc jockey in sight! One other bonus was that it was a “free” house and therefore sold many different types of beer— we always favoured Newcastle Brown. Back on the 'mainland' afterwards it was always riotous packing the gear into the truck. I don't know how he managed it but one night Malcolm drove our truck over the support band's guitar which happened to be lying about, thus breaking the neck. I'll never forget the shocked look on that poor guitarist's face as Malcolm smoothly slipped the van into gear, apologised and drove off in that order!

No trip up north was complete without stopping at the famed Blue Boar on the M1 for a "grease-up" on the way home. I do not refer to truck lubrication but to a particular rock'n'roll delicacy known as “full-house”. This comprised double egg, sausage, chips, beans, tomatoes, fried slice, tea, and (if you were man enough) toast. It was considered a Herculean task to break successfully the 10 bob' (50p) barrier-all served on wobbly cardboard plates that doubled as items to sign autographs on for the self service waitresses.

Waitress: What band are you?

Me: You won't have heard of us.

Waitress: Oh go on, tell us.

Me: OK. The Artwoods.

Waitress: Never 'eard of you!

It was everybody’s dream to walk into the Blue Boar just as their hit of the moment was playing on the Juke Box.

One time we were chosen to represent the twentieth century at the centenary celebrations of the State of Monte Carlo— a most lavish affair which the aristocracy and dignatories of Europe attended. Princess Grace and Prince Ranier were the hosts and people like Gina Lollobrigida and the like were there. The ball was held in the famous Casino at Monte Carlo and we stayed in an opulent hotel called The Hermitage, I think. All I can remember is that we all had single rooms (a rare luxury) which were massive, and you could have pitched a tent under one of the bath towels, they were so big. After this we jetted off up to Paris where we played next door to the Moulin Rouge at a club called The Locomotive.

Whilst we were there we were taken out by our friend Mae Mercer, the American lady blues singer who we backed in England. She lived in Paris and took us out to Memphis Slim's club where we all set about drinking like it was going out of style. At the end there was an embarrassing scene concerning the bill with the result that Mae ended up in tears. Whilst we were bumbling about in an alcoholic stupor, an upright looking gentleman put his arm round Mae to comfort her and a wallet appeared magically from his inside pocket. Without further ado the bill was despatched and we later learned that our anonymous benefactor was none other than Peter O'Toole who was busy in the street outside filming 'Night Of The Generals' and was an old buddy of Mae's.

One Boxing Day we loaded up with turkey sandwiches and Xmas pudding and headed off for a gig down in Devon or Cornwall somewhere. We arrived to find the club closed and boarded up, and as usual we were broke. Naturally we were livid, checked into an hotel and located the promoter who lived with his mum. Next morning we drove round to where he lived and burst our way past his confused mum. We found him in his bedroom nervously cowering against some fruit machines which he collected. He had no money so we forced him to empty his damned machines with the result that we drove back to London with 50 quids' worth of 'tanners' (approx 22p for the younger reader!)

Whilst on the subject of disasters I suppose I am duty bound to mention Denmark. The first time we went there we caught the ferry to the continent, drove up through Germany, then caught another ferry to Denmark. There was no promoter to meet us when we arrived so all we could do was drive to Copenhagen and check in at the Grand Hotel. It cost us an arm and a leg but at least we got a good nights sleep after being awake for nearly two days travelling. The next day we made a few phone calls and finally tracked down the promoter. He said: "Didn't you get my telegram cancelling the tour?" We politely said no we hadn't and what did he intend doing with us? He checked us into another hotel (cheaper of course) and set about booking us at places that were similar to English coffee bars and youth clubs. We made enough to survive on and paved the way to more successful tours of that country. In fact by now we had Colin Martin on drums and were pursuing a much more adventurous musical policy and writing our own material. It was just right for Denmark who had taken Hendrix to their hearts to name but one, and we subsequently became quite big there in 1967.

The Artwoods achieved modest success-a minor hit single in "I Take What I Want", but we worked constantly, travelled abroad, had fantastic fun and made a living doing so. We had seven single releases, one album, and one EP, and we broadcast both on radio and TV many times. We did stage tours such as the P. J. Proby tour and covered most aspects of "show-biz" apart from actually making a movie. It was the era when bands still had to prove themselves as a live act before being offered a recording contract. now frequently happens of course that an act can become huge record sellers without so much as venturing to do a live gig.

So what happened to everyone? Well Art returned to his former occupation as a commercial artist and finds some time to fit in free-lance work between accompanying brother Ron Wood on raving excursions between Rolling Stones gigs. Malcolm moved into the same field as Art and they now work in the same building. Both of them gig occasionally on a semi-pro basis although Malcolm spent some time playing with Jon Hiseman's Colosseum and Don Partridge in the early 70's. Jon Lord became famous with Deep Purple and Whitesnake as did Keef Hartley with John Mayall and various bands of his own. Colin Martin is now a BBC Radio producer of repute. I played in various bands such as Lucas and The Mike Cotton Sound, Colin Blunstone's band, Dog Soldier (with Keef again), before I somehow drifted into studio and theatre work. Recently I formed an R'n'B band called the G.B. Blues Company, and it's great to be back on the road again. ”

Derek Griffiths.

Clipping from Record Mirror on June 5, 1965, by Norman Jopling.

“We aim to excite!” … say the Art Woods

Just for the record, the Art Woods aren't a part of Epping Forest. In fact they're a group of five interesting young men, named after the group's leader Art Wood. They also happen to be one of the most realistic groups on the scene.

For a start, they are the awkward position of having a large following, a club residency but no hit record. Secondly. they don't mind pandering to commercial tastes, even though they have been hailed as one of the most authentic R & B groups in the land.

NO PULL

“But authentic R&B just isn't pulling the crowds any more,” says Art. “The audiences want to be excited, not to be lectured on what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. Although there was a time when you could spend half an hour on one number with long solos by everybody, it didn't last long. And although there are some clubs like that still, most of them want something fresh and new.

“And we try to cater for them. We like authentic R&B, but we also like playing everything and anything else. So far, our two discs haven't meant a light. Of course we'd love a hit. But we're lucky enough to make a good living without one.”

DISCS

The Art Woods latest disc is "Oh My Love" and the one before that “Sweet Mary”. Of them Little Walter has said that he couldn't believe any white group could sing and play the blues like they do.

Line-up of the group is Art Wood, leader. vocalist and harmonica. Derek Griffiths, lead guitar, Jon Lord, organ and piano. Malcolm Pool— base guitar, and Keef Hartley on drums. The boys use a specially adapted Lowrie organ, and get a sound that's really different.

But even if the boys sometimes become depressed about no hits records, they should remember groups like Cliff Bennett, the Barron-Knights, the Rockin' Berries and the Yardbirds, and how long THEY waited before they had a hit!

N.J.

#the artwoods #the art woods #art wood #derek griffiths #malcolm pool #jon lord #keef hartley #colin martin #100 oxford street #the 100 club #articles #liner notes #newspaper clippings #record mirror #my posts

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superlinguo · 4 years

Text

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Transcriptionist

When we started Lingthusiasm, I knew that transcripts had to be an essential part of the show. They’re so useful for people who can’t listen, people who would refer to read, and for when I want a quick reminder of what we covered in an interview (they’re also very handy for training a bot to take over the show). A few of us wrangled transcripts for a while, but it’s been an absolute delight having Sarah Dopierala on the team, turning our spoken words into written words.

Sarah and I were at SOAS at the same time, and Sarah was in the same MA program as last month’s interviewee, Exhibition Content Manager Emily Gref. In fact, it was Emily who put us back in touch when we were on the look out for a new transcriptionist. I guess then there’s an extra lesson from this month’s interview; the longer you’re around as a linguist, and the more connections you make, the more interesting pathways your career can take you on (The Helsinki Bus Station Theory for linguists)

You can find out more about Sarah’s research and her transcription work on her website, or follow her on Twitter (@SDopierala).

What did you study at university?

I went to the University of Pittsburgh for undergrad and studied linguistics as my major, with a minor in Japanese. It was a very well-rounded education. I studied many of the “core” topics such as phonetics (where I learned the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA), phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. I also got to study applied linguistics (which as I remember was an interesting class that overviewed many areas of linguistic application including forensic linguistics and even language documentation, among many others) and had a semester on historical linguistics. One of the most unique classes I took though -- which I don’t remember the name of now -- had to do with conlanging and natural language processing. Super cool. Besides linguistics I, of course, had my Japanese language courses and, since it was a liberal arts education, classes on a variety of other subjects including acting classes, art classes, and a physics class. It was good times.

For my master’s degree, I went to SOAS, University of London for an MA in Language Documentation and Description. This was a more specialized degree and a shorter program (1 calendar year) so my subjects were all linguistics related. For instance, I had classes on syntax (specifically looking at Lexical Functional Grammar), field methods, descriptive linguistics, and applied documentation (I think it was called) where we spent a lot of time discussing practical matters of doing research with people -- ethics, research methods, etc. I did get to do a lot of neat curriculum-adjacent things as well. I was a member of the Sylheti Language Project. We hosted a Sylheti language conference as well as published a Sylheti storybook. I got to attend other conferences as well to practice explaining my eventual dissertation topic -- converbs in Sylheti.

As of now, I’ve been accepted to the University of Frankfurt to do a PhD in comparative linguistics, still focusing on converbs only this time in Northwest Caucasian languages. Funding has been something of an adventure, but I remain hopeful! Besides, linguistics is never too far away. What is your job?

My current job is as a transcriptionist. I freelance making transcripts from audio recordings as my day-to-day, money-making job. Sometimes, I freelance through contracting companies. However, I prefer to work for myself and transcribe podcasts -- especially about linguistics! You may have seen my work via the Vocal Fries Podcast, Conlangery, and Lingthusiasm.

To build my transcription skills I took an online transcription course through Transcribe Anywhere. It took a certain investment of time and money, but you come out of there knowing your stuff and with a network of other transcriptionists to help you. I’m still learning a lot about running my own business (since I suppose that’s what freelancing ultimately is), but I feel confident, and it helps that I’m not completely alone.

As a freelancer, my daily schedule is hardly ever the same and I do tend to break it up even more with travel. That’s what I like about it though. I can do the job no matter where I go. As long as I get the job done well and in a timely manner, I can set my own schedule. It definitely takes a certain level of self-discipline to keep a freelancing schedule, that’s for sure.

How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

There are a couple of ways linguistics training helps me with transcription work -- or perhaps even transcription helps me with my linguistics work. My first introduction to transcription was during my master’s degree. As a documentary linguist in training, I made audio recordings with a Sylheti speaker and, in order to further analyze and archive my findings, I had to transcribe them. The difference of course was the goal. For transcribing podcasts and other material in English, the goal is generally to create a well-formatted document following written English conventions. However, transcribing an audio file for linguistic analysis, in general, focuses more on accurately representing the sounds of the language in IPA without reference to prescriptive ideas of what sort of written representation is “well-formatted.” For now, I’m focusing on readable English language documents but, in the future, I will return to transcription for linguistic analysis. I think my approach to that type of transcription will be enriched by this work.

The two types of transcription complement each other. When transcribing linguistics podcasts, I often use IPA to distinguish between different English pronunciations or even to represent non-English words. Just like I use knowledge of linguistic concepts to analyze linguistic data, I call upon quite a bit of that knowledge when I transcribe podcasts as well to not only identify certain terms but to follow the conversation. Understanding the content of the conversation reduces the amount of times I mishear, stop, rewind, listen again, and certainly reduces the time I spend researching unfamiliar topics. When I don’t understand the content of an audio file, I have a hard time predicting what people will say or what they might say. Being able to predict, to a certain extent, what someone might say plays a huge part in transcription and in general language processing as well. Transcribing these podcasts has also been a great way for me to keep up thinking about linguistics, keep up with what’s happening in the field, and keep feeling like I’m part of the community even if I’m not currently “doing linguistics” as my everyday job. 😊

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

I think I’ve been quite lucky in the advice I’ve received over the years, here are two things that have really stuck with me:

“If you can, study in a different department than your undergrad or masters.”

I have found that working in several different departments has not only helped me grow as a researcher, but it has made me more appreciative of the things I learned in previous departments. There are ideas I may not have been introduced to if I had stayed in one place and many people I would not have met as well. My pool of friends and colleagues has definitely been enriched by getting out of my comfort zone.

“What job do you want to get?”

My undergraduate supervisor asked me this question when I told her about my topic for a PhD thesis. She was of course very supportive of my academic pursuits, but I think this is the first time someone asked me this question in a way that was practical rather than condescending (since not everyone instantly appreciates the worth of linguistic knowledge). I’m so grateful that she did because, up until that point, I pretty much took for granted that I would get a tenure-track job at a great university and do descriptive and documentary research for the rest of forever. Don’t get me wrong, that would be amazing. However, this question made me think. It opened me up to the precarity of academia, the non-guarantee of a well-paying university job, the non-guarantee of any university job for that matter. While I will still reach for that dream researcher position, I am now much more open to other opportunities and other ways of doing what I love.

Any other thoughts or comments?

I’m not (yet) able to completely support myself financially just from transcribing. Like many other freelancing careers, it’s taken quite a bit of time to get myself out there. I do receive help and support from other places. Because of this, I have had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time learning the trade, reaching out to potential clients, figuring out best practices, etc., while also pursuing my academic dreams, which take their share of time and effort. Perhaps not everybody has this luxury, and I want to acknowledge that as a factor for anyone inspired to consider transcription as a potential career path. However, with some patience, I know that it is very possible to make a comfortable living as a freelance transcriptionist. In fact, I hope that someday transcription can be a main source of income for me as well. In fact, it’s one of my potential “non-tenure” jobs -- especially if it means I can still be close to linguistics! 😉

Recently:

Interview with an Exhibition Content Manager

Interview with a Community Outreach Coordinator

Interview with a Marketing Content Specialist

Interview with a Software Engineer

Interview with a Product Manager

Check out the Linguist Jobs Master List and the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews

#linguistics #linguistics jobs #linguist jobs #career #job #careers #work #podcast

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satoshi-mochida · 4 years

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Tobyfox has provided a status update on the second chapter and beyond of Undertale sequel Deltarune in celebration of Undertale‘s fifth anniversary today.

First, here are the latest screenshots from Deltarune‘s second chapter:

Get the full update below.

Introduction

Hi everyone.

If you’re reading this, you must have been sticking around for about five years.*

I want to express my gratitude for everyone that has supported and encouraged me over this time.

Thank you.

I’ve said it many many times before, but I didn’t expect the simple game I made to receive so much attention. Because of that, many interesting things have happened, and now I can even spend my time making another game.

It seems both of us received a lot of happiness from this occurrence.

If it’s okay, I would like to keep striving to do things that make both of us happy.

Let me know what you think about that.

*Since the Undertale demo released in 2013, the game has really existed for 7 years. It’s already been more than 25% of my life…

Deltarune

I will make another.

I am making a game called “Deltarune.” It is the second game in the Undertale series.

The game will be released in many “Chapters,” the first of which I released two years ago on Halloween. Since that time, I’ve been working hard to figure out the rest of the game.

However, it’s a game that’s much harder to make than Undertale.

Graphics are more complicated and several times more involved.

Systems are more complicated.

Exposes the weak points of my creative and artistic ability.

Plot is much harder to tie together (more characters, more important locations).

Significantly more content than Undertale in one playthrough (especially cutscenes).

I have only made one game ever.

Unlike Undertale, this is the type of game that would normally have many designers working on each aspect of the game.

A story writer, a composer, an audio director, a map designer, a battle designer, a minigame designer, and an overall director. Instead, all of those roles end up handled by me.

The good news is that a few months ago, I completed a significant milestone regarding the game’s design. I completed readable outlines for every chapter in the game, including first-pass dialogue for almost all the cutscenes, examples of the music, etc.

Although certain details are still hazy, the flow of the game and all major events and battles that take place are now clear.

In summary, I largely spent the past two years writing, composing, designing, and drawing. However, that’s not the whole story.

We had actually attempted to develop the game since the time too. Development started around March 2019 and a 99% work was spent on investigating engines alternate to GameMaker, which I used for Chapter 1.

Without getting into the details, I decided a few months ago to go back to GameMaker after all. It still felt like the best fit for the project. So using Chapter 1 as a base, we’ve started creating Chapter 2 since May 2020.

A lot of progress has been made since that time. I believe we can complete this chapter, content-wise, before the end of the year (not accounting for translation, bugtesting, and porting).

I feel very confident. And the strange thing is, even though we ended up using the original engine, I don’t regret the lost time, either. Not only was I still busy designing the game, but during that long period, I was able to think of many ideas that make the game’s story and characters better.

I’m glad that I’m making the Deltarune that I have now and that we are making healthy progress.

Deltarune Status Estimate

■ Chapter 2 (04.15.20 – 08.13.20)

Phase 1: Design

Main Design: 100% (dialogue, etc.)

Initial Setup: 100% (stuff involved setting up people to make the game, adding debug tools, documentation, etc.)

Phase 2: Implementation (05.01.20 ~ 08.13.20)

Art: 90%

Cutscenes: 80% (90% are started, needs 2nd pass)

Bullet Patterns: 70% (enemies are mostly completed, bosses are about 40% done, needs 2nd pass)

Non-Bullet Battle Elements: 30% (Some ACTs are done and enemies are fightable, but interactive ACTs need to be completed and polished and the bosses aren’t programmed outside of bullet patterns)

Audio: 80%

Maps: ??% most are started or placeholder, most need 2nd pass. NPC interactions are completed in all spots where written.

Other: 65%

Phase 3: Finishing

Balancing: 0%

Bugfixing: 0%

Translation: 0%

Porting: 0%

(Honestly, a lot of stuff FEELS like 80% to me, but the truth is that what’s there is quite rough now. Polish ends up taking a lot of time, so the real actual time value may be around 50% done…? We’ll see what happens. It’ll be a lesson for everybody.)

■ Chapters 3 and Beyond

Phase 1: Design

Story and General Game Progression (first-pass): 100%

Cutscene Dialogue (first-pass, lacking cutscene instructions): 95%

Map Design (textual): 70% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Map Design (drawn): 0% (this takes a lot of wrist energy so I don’t do it until we start programming)

Enemy Design (conceptual): 90% (all bosses are known)

Enemy Design (bullets / visual): 80% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Music (concept): 95%

Music (completed): 50%

Visual Design:BG Concept (first-pass): 75%, Important Character, Bosses (first-pass): 100%

Phase 2

Sprite Art: 20%?