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terranoctis · 1 day

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I played Hades II a fair bit yesterday during my breaks and free time for Supergiant Games' technical test of the game. Part of me wants to keep playing today, but I got stuff to do and I do want to keep up the excitement for the early access. I wrote a rough, kind of unedited essay about it before I went to sleep last night though below, mostly for me to have record of my memories in written form. Some spoiler-y screenshots and random thoughts/analyses below if you want to read more. I mean it--there are spoilers and the most random long tangents because I like to analyze. (I do recommend playing first if you have a chance to)

First thing I'll say is that the game is pretty phenomenal and so damn fun. The experience reminds me of when I played Hades for the first time in their initial Early Access of the game years ago. Longtime Supergiant Games fan here (since Transistor release)! I remember running into a bug then and reporting it when I froze in-game, but I have not run into any noticeable bugs at all yet for Hades II. I've done some reports for minor bugs, but extremely minor ones that I actually feel bad for even reporting and adding to their list of messages to go through. Supergiant has their QA down, truly. I have so much respect for them and how they've developed the game. Darren Korb did an amazing job on the music again. It has that iconic Hades sound with the strings (that is not a guitar, I forget what it's called) while also being its own distinct soundtrack.

The 4th wall banter moments between Melinoë and Homer (who is revealed as narrator!) have been one of my favorite things about the story/narration execution. Her being cognizant of Homer does make it so there are rather funny moments, but also brings up the question of how that might shape the narrative later on. I'm so curious!

When I first started the game, I had a funny moment where I died almost instantly in the second room because I was testing out Melinoe's skillset and ran out of MP (?) and then got slapped because I wasn't actually doing damage when trying to use her bigger skills, heh. It did take me some time to get used to it, but Mel's skills and cast abilities are so much fun to use when utilized well. Her cast and its ability to hold your enemies for a time is one of the best upgrades to combat, in my opinion. For all I love the first Hades, I remember having to dash like crazy to escape exploding carts coming after me if I didn't have a good boon to mitigate or avoid that. With the cast for Melinoë, it'll change that to placing strategically some casts that can hold quick enemies or enemies that are very dangerous if they get close to you (wailers in this game are one such enemy). In terms of boons, Demeter's, Hestia's, and Apollo's have been some of my favorites. Aphrodite also has a phenomenal one for casts that will gather your enemies into your cast, making it an ideal combination with some devastating other boons that can easily damage groups of enemies all at once. Hephaestus also has a pretty fun one where I think he can explode in a certain proximity with your special or attack, I forget. I do wonder if they'll have to rebalance some of these boons because there are certain ones I can annihilate enemies with--but then again, maybe that is needed for later sections of the game.

The numerous references to the moon in the game are a nice nod to Melinoë's lore in Greek mythology and poetry too. Though she's more associated with being a goddess of ghosts (I find it a nice touch you can salute shades you meet in the Crossroads because of this) and nightmares (I don't think it's a coincidence Hypnos is the only other survivor of Hades' inner sanctum), Melinoë has at some point been referenced as a moon goddess as well of the underworld. Selene is the moon goddess and Artemis has also become known as a goddess of the moon in mythology in addition to being the goddess of the hunt. So that connection between the three and the friendship they share in the game is pretty cool in that regard (Selene calls you the "Silver Sisters.")

Having Artemis become your friend in Hades II, something akin to a friendly rivalry like Thanatos was to Zagreus, is such a fun story--and then you have Selene added into that mix as well. From the few runs I've done, I've gathered that Artemis and Hermes are the first of the Olympus gods who knew of Melinoë's existence in her youth as Hecate's pupil. She helped Hecate hide the truth of Melinoës survival (at least from the Olympus gods)--and when Melinoë was ready, it was only then that Artemis leaked through Apollo that Hades' daughter was coming to fight Chronos and had survived the fall of Hades. So the boons you get are because the twins, Artemis and Apollo, played a role in connecting you to Olympus for the fight against Chronos. There seems to be more in this background that I'm curious to learn about. Just from their banter, it's clear Artemis has spent much time with Melinoë and Selene in some form. I don't know if they have duo boons in this game (or boon-hex? Selene gives you a hex), but I'm curious to see what these two's duo boon(s) would be if they have them.

The game also does that thing the first game did so well of shifting the world as you progress and have changes in the relationships about you. Nemesis is one of the new characters in Hades II who doesn't seem to like you very much initially, but with your dialogue with Odysseus nearby, you get the sense that it wasn't always this way. When you gift her a nectar, Melinoë subtly starts calling her "Nem," and you can tell the two of them are very slowly mending whatever it is they have (Odysseus chuckles nearby probably seeing the progress). You also meet Doom Incarnate (Moros) and have to unlock having him at the Crossroads by invoking him, which is also pretty fun in terms of letting you slowly do more runs and experience the world more in order to gather enough "resources" to call him. It allows a natural progression of characterization and getting to know the people around Melinoë, in my opinion.

Dora's also one of my favorite character already. There's something so funny about Melinoë encouraging Dora as she tries to scare and haunt her as a proper ghost, but then also rather touching that she just accepts that Dora just likes to hang out in her room and not go out much. I love Arachne too, and how she's just chillin' like, I'm bored and alone and just spinning webs, so here Melinoë, have some clothes I made.

This game makes me love it as much as I loved the first one. In some ways, in terms of how they executed establishing background and connections between Melinoë and her companions (Odysseus' calls her a "little goddess" as a child! Hecate plays hide-and-go-seek with her!), I think they've started out much stronger than they did in the first game. And this one already starts with a sort of high-stakes situation from the get-go. Melinoë's entire family has been taken by Chronos and she grew up apart from them. The game does well of letting you step into the world even if you haven't played the first one--and playing on your affection for Hades, Persephone, and Zagreus if you did. After all, considering how hard you worked as Zagreus to bring back together that family in the first game, the second game logically comes back with a vengeance with Melinoë at the loss of such a family and a need for vengeance against Chronos for ruining it. The world feels familiar, yet the cast of characters are so different.

And the designs of all the new gods! And the new designs for the old gods! They're all extremely well-done. I've been a longtime fan of the artists for the characters and the environments. They've done stellar jobs on it again for this one, and there's more touches to icons and designs of the UI I like too. The dialogue log is one of my favorite things too, as someone who might miss a piece of dialogue here and there when I take off my headphones. The voice acting in this game is also a whole notch up from the previous game. Not to knock anyone from the first Hades, since I think they did a great job, but I do feel like the voices have been more professionally recorded this time around. Or something about it is a little more polished. Kudos to Supergiant for another game that's an A+ in my book thus far. Ahh!

I could keep going, but honestly, I think it's best to have people experience the game in Early Access. I mostly just wanted a record for myself to look back on for being a small part of Hades II's journey and share some of my excitement and the random analyses I had. It'll be fun for me to look back on how I read some things and how I felt when the finished version of the game comes out eventually.

#personal #hades 2 #hades ii #hades ii spoilers #readings and ramblings

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cendrineartist · 4 months

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You may enjoy...

- Sixku 18 https://creativeramblings.com/poetry/sixku-18/

- ‘After the Fires of Day’: Favorite haiku from the book https://creativeramblings.com/poetry/after-fires-day-qa-series-5/

- Photography: A game of mahjong https://creativeramblings.com/my-photography/game-mahjong/

- A behind-the-scenes look at “Seizing the Bygone Light: A Tribute to Early Photography” https://creativeramblings.com/latest-news/behind-scenes-look-seizing-bygone-light/

#photography #books #nonfiction #poetry #haiku

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homeschoolcourse · 2 years

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Prescribed Materials For Leaving Certificate English 2023 Higher Level Course

This course is designed to help students achieve their desired grades in the Leaving Certificate English 2023 exam. Students who have been studying for the Leaving Certificate English exam for some time may be struggling to reach their goals. This course will provide students with the skills they need to succeed in the Leaving Certificate English examination. This course has been developed by experienced teachers who have been teaching for many years. They know what works best and what doesn't. This course was created to help students prepare for the Leaving Certificate English 2023 examination in Ireland. This course is suitable for those who wish to study the subject in depth. It covers all aspects of the subject including grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, reading comprehension, writing and speaking. The primary components of the English Higher level syllabus will be covered by students as part of this course, including: 2022 Exam Paper analysis Reading Comprehensions QA and QB Language Styles – Narration, Aesthetic, Persuasion, Argument and Information Compositions Poetry Single Text – Macbeth Comparative Course Texts

#Leaving Certificate English

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notmysophie · 2 years

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Baltin: Are there lyrics and moments that surprise you in your writing?

Hozier: Yeah, I'm sure there are examples like that. Let's take, from the first album, "From Eden," I think it's just a general filtering of how you feel the world is going. So "Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword/Innocence died screaming." It's just that feeling of things are going south, they're going the wrong way. And part of it is too I try to make subtle references to other artists who have pointed in the same direction. So I think on the EP before, there's a song called "Nothing F**ks With My Baby," which is pretty heavy handed (laughs). It references this old W.B. Yeats poem, "The Second Coming." Sometimes you channel it in different ways and usually it is the best way because it feels natural and it feels right.

Meanwhile, his fans be like: "fuck yeah, lets kill idealism, chivalry and innocence! So cool, edgy king!"

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebaltin/2019/12/17/qa-hozier-on-tom-waits-poetry-mixing-pop-and-politics/

#Hozier #Fans being cringe #Also kinda funny though

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lilradridinghood · 3 years

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got a poem published about dealing with eczema

#finally picked a pen name yay #man this is kinda graphic #blood mention #eczema #poem #poetry #my writing #my poetry #qa poetry

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macrolit · 2 years

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Any poem on depression?

Hope you're doing okay. I'll let my followers respond.

#poetry #poem #depression #depressed #qa #literature

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rek88k · 5 years

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🎵~Feeling like shit~🎵

#making a bad sescion and skipping poetry i just like. dont have the enrgy to deal with it today #still have to go to teo other classes bc midterms gfdi #ughhh #melody vents #like i know ive been shutting myself off from people for the past week im just so fucking tired #like i should probs be honest with myself and summise that its not just the #extesential gripping anxiety #probs a bit more sonething that rhymes sith grapeession #that qas a bad rhyme the poet in me is scolding #its been a while since i just. exuded thoughts into the world #need to do it more often tbh. probs should start a diary but arms are to heavy to write half the time these days #ugh #anyway bye i love you all #and despite yhe melodrama #....melodydrama...#im fine

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delightfullysubatomic · 2 years

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All of Tim Key’s written interviews and interviewish things I could find

I put stars next to the more interesting (imo) ones, but they’re mostly pretty good as generally there’s only a few from each year.

Ones added later in bold

2022

July: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2022/07/tim-key-boris-johnson-poems-last-days

Mar: https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/things-to-do/tim-key-interview-hampstead-heath-8757860

Mar: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/qa/2022/03/tim-key-qa-i-consumed-the-office-like-toast

Mar: https://www.bigissue.com/culture/tv/tim-key-the-witchfinder/

Feb: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tim-key-interview-my-life-without-this-time-with-alan-partridge-new-series-the-witchfinder-6j9k6ddpg

2021

Mar: https://www.comedy.co.uk/live/fgwg/tim-key/

* Mar: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/poetry/2021/03/why-tim-key-s-poems-are-only-thing-getting-me-through-lockdown

Feb: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/feb/28/sunday-with-tim-those-comforting-evenings-in-the-pub-will-be-back

* Jan: https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a35278796/no-more-jockeys-tim-key-alex-horne-mark-watson/

2018

Aug: https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/103127-tim-key-i-get-more-relaxed-and-reassured-by-each-seat-filled-with-a-nice-person/

May: https://www.northernsoul.me.uk/interview-tim-key-poetry-comedy/

May: https://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/features/straddling-dapper-sketchy-tim-key-new-show-megadate/

2017

** Oct: https://www.beyondthejoke.co.uk/content/4657/interview-rarely-asked-questions-tim-key

June: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/jun/29/tim-key-the-funniest-thing

May: https://www.shortlist.com/news/tim-key-comedy-poet-interview

Mar: https://www.radiotimes.com/travel/gap-year-the-cast-and-creator-on-their-real-life-misadventures-while-filming-in-asia/

Feb: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/full-moon-parties-fake-names-fifa-stars-gap-year-gap-year-48770

Jan: https://www.oldvictheatre.com/news/2017/01/q-and-a-with-tim-key-on-art

2016

Dec (?): https://www.culturecalling.com/uk/features/art-an-interview-with-tim-key

2015

Aug: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/aug/13/tim-key-poetry-taskmaster-edinburgh-fringe

Aug: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/my-edinburgh-tim-key-xwk9tkpn6q7

* Jul: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/tim-key-and-alex-horne-how-we-met-10377655.html

Mar: https://www.timeout.com/london/comedy/matt-crockett-50-comics-gallery

2014

Oct: https://nowthenmagazine.com/articles/tim-key-tim-key-single-white-slut

Oct: https://oldfirestation.org.uk/2014/10/02/tim-key/

Sept: https://www.lep.co.uk/arts-and-culture/theatre-and-stage/if-i-was-like-that-in-real-life-id-get-punched-in-the-face-a-lot-2624092

Aug: https://www.theskinny.co.uk/comedy/interviews/tim-key-single-white-slut

Aug: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/live/2014/aug/08/tim-key-live-qa-post-your-questions-now

Aug: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/03/performers-edinburgh-festival-highlights-best-show-ever-seen

https://issuu.com/festmag/docs/preview_2014_web

* Jul: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jul/06/tim-key-standup-you-look-like-plum-if-say-good

Jul: https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/63070-edinburgh-festival-fringe-2014-interview-nick-helm-and-tim-key/

* Jul: https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/62195-edinburgh-comedy-awards-2014-past-winners-reveal-what-the-top-comedy-prize-means-to-them/

Jul: https://www.fest-mag.com/edinburgh/comedy/tim-key-poet-without-a-plan

Jun: https://www.broadwaybaby.com/news/the-tim-key-three-minute-interview/200

* May: https://www.vice.com/en/article/zn7q5j/tim-key-profile-gavin-haynes

Mar: https://themusic.com.au/features/24713/zC7f3sHAw8I/26-03-14

Mar: https://thisweekculture.com/article/tim-key-single-white-slut/

Feb: https://www.timeout.com/london/comedy/tim-key-interview-a-slut-in-the-bedroom

2013

Dec: https://web.archive.org/web/20140122114612/http://www.empireonline.com/interviews/interview.asp?IID=1816 (Empire Unsung Hero for Alan Partridge film)

Dec: https://metro.co.uk/2013/12/06/tim-key-i-was-beguiled-by-the-artist-4217078/

Nov: https://www.shortlist.com/news/tim-keys-guilty-pleasures

May: https://www.jonnyburch.com/timkey-interview/

2012

Nov: https://cherwell.org/2012/11/11/king-of-offkey-comedy/

Oct: https://thegownqub.com/2012/10/24/an-interview-with-tim-key/

Oct: https://theboar.org/2012/10/tim-key-overcoats-and-ohps/

Oct: https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/whats-on/theatre-news/comedian-poet-tim-key-heads-3018302

Apr: https://www.theaureview.com/music/the-au-interview-melbourne-international-comedy-festival-tim-key/

2011

* Dec: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/my-secret-life-tim-key-poet-and-comedian-35-6277076.html

Nov: https://emmafreud.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/the-comedians.pdf (Tatler)

Nov: https://londonist.com/2011/11/comedy-preview-interview-tim-key

Oct: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/authors-on-song-lyrics-they-wish-theyd-written-533ds0m3pfj

Aug/Sep: https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/37675-tim-key-interview-the-poet-discusses-edinburgh-alan-partridge-and-sexy-baths/

Aug: http://threeweeks.co.uk/weekly/3wks2011_edweek3.pdf

Aug: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/five-rules-of-fringe-comedy-m8fvf73828h

July: https://web.archive.org/web/20111108073345/http://thehumourdor.co.uk/post/7726696568/an-interview-with-tim-key

Mar: https://snipelondon.com/books/tim-key-chats-about-winning-the-edinburgh-comedy-award-alan-partridge-and-writing-the-perfect-poem

Feb: https://thebadgeronline.com/2011/02/interview-tim-key/

Feb: https://www.redbrick.me/interview-tim-key/

2010

Nov: https://www.loudandquiet.com/interview/tim-key-laugh-boat/

Nov: https://completemusicupdate.com/article/tim-keys-powers-of-ten-playlist/

Oct: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4w4xy3/living-a-lie-573-v17n10

Aug: https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/27756-the-slutcrackers-tim-key-answers-5-questions/

https://issuu.com/festmag/docs/preview_2010 [p33]

Jul: https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/27117-jonny-sweet-and-tim-key-return-to-edinburgh-after-successful-year/

Jul: https://web.archive.org/web/20100723193743/http://fest.theskinny.co.uk/article/99678-ode-to-joy

May: https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2010/05/09/interview-with-tim-key-1283

Mar: https://amp.smh.com.au/entertainment/comedy/keys-little-odes-of-silliness-20100312-q2xe.html

Mar: https://www.whatsonstage.com/west-end-theatre/news/brief-encounter-with-party-animals-tim-key-and-tom_14146.html

Feb: https://www.varsity.co.uk/culture/2011

2009

Dec: https://www.list.co.uk/article/22492-tim-key-dispels-wikipedia-myths/

* Dec: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/features/tim-key-a-man-of-his-words-1841773.html

Nov: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2009/nov/28/we-need-answers-mark-watson [with Alex and Mark]

Nov: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pp8v4b/i-can-write-like-tim-key-less-successful-though

Aug: https://www.fest-mag.com/edinburgh/archive/the-invisible-party (about Party / The Invisible Dot)

2008

Feb: https://www.vice.com/en/article/znyng4/literary-v15n2

2007

Jan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6303173.stm (about Cowards)

#Tim key #the insanity continues #by which I mean my insanity #to be updated #links

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felassan · 3 years

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Gamers For Groceries 2 event

A Twitch stream event from a few days ago. It can currently be re-watched here (it was fun & interesting, so I do recommend to check it out direct). This post contains some notes on things of particular interest & relevant timestamps, in case this is useful to anyone (for example bc of accessibility reasons).

First up is the All About Animating panel, a series of mini-interviews with game devs (animators) asking what they do, how they got there, and advice for anyone interested in getting into the industry. Some or all of the devs that were interviewed are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and a lot about the craft of game dev animation in general. This segment runs from timestamp ~38 mins 40 secs to 1:07:50. Some notes:

[sounded like DA4] Right now the creature team are working on different creatures in a way which involves going through a lot of mocap data

At BioWare they have a pretty big technical animation team, to support their animators, so each tech animator has a different specialty. Tech anim involves animation support, character art support, and rigging the characters so that the animators can pose them

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] One of the featured animators’ area of specialty at the moment is faces and hair (building the control structure for face animations). First they had to decide how the face rig and its control structure would work. This involves a lot of performance capture of live actors for things like cinematics and gameplay animation, therefore the rigs for bodies and faces have to be able to accurately capture the full range of expressions and emotions that the actor is portraying. Right now the stage that this dev is working on most is setting up the heads that they’re getting through the pipeline from character art e.g. making adjustments based on feedback from the cinematics team. “Polish - just trying to get realism”

Hair tech has come quite a long way in the last few years [in the industry]

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] Hair is very complex to get right. “In the past most games have used card-based hair, which is basically like sheets of polygons with a texture on it that looks like hair, through layers of transparency. But real hair is strand-based, digital strands, so we’re starting to look into that kind of tech - try to get more realistic, more beautiful hair, but there’s always a performance cost to hair. Layers of transparent things are always an expense, they need to balance like, it looks good and moves well, but it doesn’t make your computer or console chug. [...] I guess we’re in the prototype stage but we’ve almost got a set pipeline. It’s always fun to experiment”

In Mass Effect 2 or 3, Miranda’s hair was as expensive as a whole character (!)

[on balancing hair costs/performance, general] It depends on things like character importance and how many characters are on-screen at the time. When you’re in gameplay fighting a bunch of monsters you’re not going to be giving full beautiful hair to all the characters and the monsters, as it will cost too much. (Having a helmet on is a convenient way to get rid of hair.) But if it’s a cinematic scene, with 2 characters talking to each other in a dramatic context, there’s a better budget for nice hair allocated

Some of the hair in Anthem was quite expensive in cinematics. They kept getting bugs from QA saying (for example) that a character’s hair was tripling the performance cost in the scene, so it would go back to character art so they could take away some of the hair cards. “Tough balance, quality versus cost”

“I wish all the characters could have beautiful strand hair”

For p-cap, a lot of the time they don’t want to be too prescriptive in terms of the direction that they’re giving the actors, as the actors know what they’re doing and have a lot of experience, so they give them vague instructions that they then riff off of

[sounded like DA4] They recently did a mocap shoot

[sounded like DA4] There’s a bit more productivity happening now in the pandemic situation; now that the animators are not all going to the capture lab in Vancouver in person for shoots, if it’s not their turn to direct a shot they can instead be working on something else on their computers (multi-tasking). ((Lead DA4 Producer Scylla Costa recently gave a talk at a games festival on the challenges of DA production during the pandemic. In part of this talk he talked about various benefits and drawbacks to the remote-working situation. He also talked about and showed some behind-the-scenes stuff for p-cap and mocap. Notes, images and link here))

[sounded like DA4] Special mocap suits were sent out that they can use with a laptop to go anywhere and shoot motion capture. It’s not as high fidelity as what comes out of the capture lab, but it’s really good for prototyping stuff. Before the pandemic they did some of this (going to a park and shooting some running around)

[sounded like DA4] In one of the shoots they had some actors who were really well-trained in dancing. They were trying to get them to do some combat stuff. This was a bit challenging in the pandemic situation as there’s only so much they can demonstrate/portray as an example to the actors from a distance on camera. “It’s hard to describe what a ‘dodge to attack’ is through the camera to somebody who has no idea what combat looks like in video games”

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] The pandemic has really affected performance capture for the face side of things badly, as in order to record, the actor gets dots painted on their face in specific locations by a makeup artist. They can’t do that right now because of social distancing/restrictions, so they haven’t been recording faces at the moment

The more detailed a face, the more joints it has, the more the cost to performance is

---

There was also the Writers’ Block panel, featuring DA writers Mary Kirby, Sheryl Chee and Patrick Weekes, and DA editor Karin Weekes. The timestamps for this segment are ~2:37:50 - 3:26:20. Some notes:

PW has never been weirder than when they were writing Cole on DAI

PW thinks that they accidentally wrote part of “Timber” by Kesha into Solas at one point and they were like “Well, okay, I have to stop listening to Kesha”

For Sheryl, after a while Blackwall’s VA always nailed doing his lines. She loved the quality of his voice and so after a while would always hear his voice while she was writing. This really worked out

^ Mary had this with Merrill. As soon as they cast Eve Myles she listened to several hours of her in Torchwood, and then just wrote to the way that she spoke as much as possible

^ PW had this with GDL as Solas and FPJ as Bull. As soon as they heard FPJ’s delivery, they were like “Oh, okay, I have to write some lines differently, because Bull is smarter than I realized”. With GDL they were like “Okay, he’s going to put poetry into anything I say, in the best way possible”. In early drafts of Solas lines there were parts where they [PW] wondered “Is this too melodramatic? Is this too tragically-angstful?” and then they would hear GDL and be like “Oh! [It’s fine] Game on!”

For localization, German words are often quite long so they often have to make sure that everything fits on the GUI

They think scenes like the romance scenes sound prettier in the Italian versions

Behind the curtain in creating the in-world languages: PW: “There are some awesome websites that have every elven word, like ‘Here are the translations and verb tenses and conjugations’ [etc], [...] and usually Mary and I get very sad slightly looking at those pages going like ‘Does that mean that we have to stick to that?’ [...] The rule is, if I’ve looked at the Wiki and the words, and I go ‘Here’s the correct grammatical way to do it’, and if that turns out to be too long or too many disconnected syllables and it just looks bad or sounds bad, then we shorten it to something simpler, because the key is we want to give the flavor of a foreign language, but we don’t have the world-building budget and capacity to make something that is going to be dictionary-real [in a way that] someone could go through and translate all the background things written on the old temple walls”. Part of the reason for this is the consideration for VAs, who already have to act while bearing lots of things in mind, like the cues in the script for each line

Mary: “For building a language, the first things that I started with for qunlat, elven and dwarven, was what words do we need to use the most? Greetings, farewells, words for friend and enemy, basic things that will come up easily in conversation. After that it’s ‘How difficult is this for other writers to use?’ Can they just pick it off the Wiki? Do they need just one word? Do they need to write whole sentences, and how does that work? Qunlat has almost no grammar to it because asking anyone to learn how to use Qunari grammar and conjugate verbs in a pretend language is impossible, and then once you’ve done that a human being has to be able to read it, while not knowing what any of it means”

PW: “One thing that I was really impressed with with Mary in particular doing, Mary was one of the big lore people across the entire DA series; I can look at a word and go like, ‘That has two A’s in a row, that’s definitely a Qunari word. That word is kind of long and maybe has some apostrophes and has a couple of flowy vowel sounds, that’s probably elven’, I think that’s what’s important. You want players to be able to look at a word, players want to feel smart, [like] ‘Oh I don’t know what that means but I totally know that’s a word from the Qunari people!’”. Mary: “Every language has its own set of phonemes, the sounds that they make, and the sort of word structure and spelling so that it gives a flavor to that language. Hopefully that is always chosen to be pronounceable, because again, very important that the words can be said by human beings :D”

Sheryl: “One of the fun things to do is to make up swear words in the fake languages [...] Recently Brianne wanted a word, I don’t know if she managed to find one”

The origin of bosh’tet in ME: it’s just saying “bastard” and slurring it

PW: “I feel like there are times when past writers kind of leave traps for future writers, where past writers will go ‘Okay, I’m going to write this detailed phrase in a codex entry but don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if it can never be said aloud, because it’ll never have to be voiced!’ and then, next game, guess what guys! Look what you have to make someone [a VA] say! And you’re like [facepalm], c’mon!”

Karin: “Now, four games in, we have pages and pages of all these examples, and I wanna say this, well that’s how we said something before, well that’s ridiculous, I don’t wanna say that, but now we’ve said it and it’s out there, so it’s like, how do we, y’know, how do we evolve, and sometimes we just go ‘Screw it! Languages are living languages! We’ll just say it like this now!’”

PW's favorite is the sarcastic Mythal’enaste, “Because it’s the sarcastic Mythal's blessing that basically means you’re getting screwed over somehow. I love it because Mythal nasty! Whoever wrote that clearly never thought that someone would have to say this out loud”

Sheryl wrote Bull’s joke icicles line. She also wrote Isabela’s big boats line - Jennifer took it out but then DG was like “No it has to come back”

They have a pun test, they get a few of them and have to allot them wisely so as not to oversaturate on the puns. “Is this good/bad enough to be one of the times that we pull the trigger? We did have one of those recently, I obviously can’t talk about it, but it was pronounced Okay to go ahead”

The ‘baby-est’ writer is Brianne, who’s been there 8 years

It makes PW sad that the players never get to see the writers’ temp-text [placeholder text when portions are a WIP]. “People have the best temp-text". Mary: “The number of conversations that I’ve temped in like ‘WELL. I hope nothing BAD happens HERE’”

Q. If you could bring in anybody from outside of gamedev, who would you like to work with and do a writer’s session with? PW: “I will say romance novelist Nora Roberts, she is really smart and also she knows how to write inside a genre, and do wonders within it. Her structure is so good. If you pick up one of her books, you know here’s when this is gonna happen, here’s when they’re gonna meet, here’s when this first moment will happen. We’re all experienced and I feel pretty good about that but I really like all of the things she does that way, and also I am a sucker for romance so I would love to bring a romance novelist in and just have them look at our scenes and go ‘Okay here, no, they should pull the tie so that the article of clothing comes open, we need a sense of how warm the skin is here’ - something like that. I’d wanna see what they could do with that”

“Luke writes the best worst lines”

“I’m always impressed with Mary getting away with lines. There are lines that I look at like, wow, you buried that one. [...] The only players who get that line, I feel like they earned it if they went that far into it. [...] And then Varric or Merrill says a ridiculous line in a one-time throwaway”

Karin: “The group dynamic, you’ll see conversations or snippets of a lunch chat or a thing we’ve been joking about and you’ll see it get pulled in, and how all of you [the writers] are able to take a normal kind of thing - as normal as we get as a group anyway - and then turn it into a moment, and use it to further the plot or use it to further a character. It’s just the cleverest thing and it happens in so many different ways. [...] The little snippet of life, then how you crafted it into this very cool thing”

Quartermaster Threnn was written by PW in half a day. “When I was writing Threnn, ‘Okay, this is a good-hearted [person], I was doing a little bit of Steel Magnolias, southern, no-nonsense, but like, blue collar Steel Magnolias’. This is someone accustomed to the ways of the world so she’s going to call a spade a spade. If you come up to her and you’re an elf she doesn’t recognize you and says ‘Buckets are over there’ because she thinks you’re there to clean, [but] ‘Anyone calls you a knife-ear you come to me I’ll take care of it’. It’s problematic but she’s trying - the good-hearted person rooted for the wrong group on every occasion. She was a proud Loghain supporter, she gets really exited if he comes to Skyhold. That was a fun character for me to write because I had a viewpoint in my mind. I remember someone was like ‘Threnn is really important to me’. And you have to honor that, cause you’re like ‘Cool, it means so much to me that this connected with some part of you’”

---

Also of interest was the Mass Affection panel, in which BioWare devs looked back in over a decade of history to remaster a classic. It featured devs who worked on MELE. The timestamps for this segment are ~3:36:09 - 4:24:37. Some notes:

When the pandemic hit the MELE team were in a relatively awkward spot. They were really entering into what they consider full production and were on-boarding a bunch of teams, as well as training and on-boarding third-party external partner specialized teams worldwide. When the pandemic hit, BioWare and EA were super on top of it. They were tracking it weeks beforehand, getting everyone their computers ready, and getting everything encrypted. When the middle of March 2020 hit they were home rightaway. EA were nothing but supportive throughout the entire thing. They got money every quarter for stuff. It functionally ‘hit’ at 4-6 different times for them as the pandemic occurred in different places throughout the world at different times depending on each country’s response plan (and their external partners were in different countries). “So it was one of those things where it was just like, every day we’d come in like can we still work with this company anymore? Do we need to find someone else? Do we need to pull people in off the other projects at BioWare to fill gaps here and there?”

There was a bug on Virmire at the part when you’re coming into the STG camp. If the Mako had its new boosters on and you came hurtling in really fast, it cut to the cutscene, but the Mako hit a jump and when Ash was like “What do we do now?” the Mako ended up literally flying around in the background sideways and then crashing into the camp

Another bug: when they were re-tuning the guns, the physics force on some of the guns with Hammerhead rounds was so high that when you were fighting some of the Thorian Creepers, you could ragdoll them so hard that you could basically embed them in the roof. They’d be moving so fast that they’d penetrate all the walls with their legs dangling out. It was so easy to do and you could do it to everybody. You could launch a geth halfway across an Uncharted World

Another bug: with Shepard’s casual appearance in ME3, if you didn’t have it set up perfectly correctly it would default to Grunt for some reason. You’d be walking around as Grunt, going on dates as Grunt, and your face would be all scrunched up because it was all mapped to human bones still, so it was just, like, Nightmare Fuel of Grunt

Another bug: in ME2 on Illium when trying to recruit Samara, the Asari enemies just would not stop screaming - regardless of whether they were hit or not, it was endless screaming. Later one of the devs got an audio file of the scream, endless and looped, and now one of the devs has it on their phone and uses it for their morning alarm tone

“Shepard would come up to characters and they’d just be screaming”

---

There was also the Programming Variables panel, talking about what hurdles game programmers face. Some [or all?] of the devs that were part of this panel are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and about the craft of game dev programming in general. The timestamps for this segment are ~ 4:24:46 - 5:06:02.

[source]

[insights/notes from Gamers For Groceries 1]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #long post #longpost #in case this is of interest to anyone #mass effect #anthem #covid mention #cole #spirit boy #solas #lul

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jasontoddiefor · 4 years

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Summary: In which Ahsoka Tano has the most embarrassing Masters in at least two languages. Terms of endearment, Disaster Lineage Style. Aka: continued adventured in Jedi Order Conlang! Read on AO3.

“That stupid Senator, honestly!” Anakin started for the fifth time in the past twenty minutes.

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan shared a look behind his back. Ever since they had returned to their quarters from the meeting, Anakin had been throwing a hissy fit about how the Senator of a semi-important Core World had talked about the Jedi, specifically Obi-Wan. His comments had been downright insulting but Obi-Wan had led them through the negotiations anyway and achieved what they’d come here for.

There was no reason for Anakin to still be angry, and yet-

“-honestly every reference to that mission on-“

“Skyguy, you can stop proclaiming your undying love for Obi-Wan now. We get it,” Ahsoka said from where she was lying on her bed, checking her comm for messages from her classmates or teacher. Ahsoka had been supposed to take her exam on pre-Reformation Alderaani love poetry before they’d been called in for this mission and hadn’t had the time to sort out how she was going to get her grade in the exam now. She’d studied hard for it, even gotten Torrent Company to question her about it during downtime.

She might be just a little stressed about this exam. She’d certainly prefer taking on a squadron of clankers over this and Anakin wasn’t helping. Obi-Wan, who was sitting in a rather comfortable armchair, didn’t seem to mind. He was probably too used to Anakin’s antics already.

Hearing her words, Anakin stopped pacing around the room to look at her, first with annoyance as then something suddenly occurred to him and he began to smile downright mischievously.

“My undying love?” He echoed, then, in one swift movement, turned towards Obi-Wan, taking the other Jedi’s hands in his. “Oh, Obi-Wan, cahshee, ¿paialunru foh keelel zera ollun vii foh keelak?”

The words rolled off his tongue with a smoothness Ahsoka had not expected of her Master. Anakin’s Dai Bendu was always a little rougher, like the voice of a singer who had been praising another for hours already with their chants and was now a little hoarse.

“Enoah keel kyan kat fehl, kytal epal padenah fahk ve xariel ta. Denik anohrah kat fehl ru im sedorem det aainji foh tamaji kawa-”

“Oh Force, cadeo qa, Jaieh!” Ahsoka hissed, blushing brightly. Anakin’s words were downright obscene as sweet as they were. The fact that he had delivered this whole speech without breaking character and starting to laugh only made it worse. “Obi-Wan, do something! Make him stop!”

Why did she have to end up with those two as part of her lineage? She was sure Barriss never had to deal with Master Luminara saying such embarrassing things.

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and sighed, so for a brief moment Ahsoka actually had the hope that he was going to put an end to this. Then, he too took on a sappy expression, fake like that of a cheap holonet soap opera star, matching Anakin down to the almost teary eyes.

“Yes, Anakin, ankyia kat fehl, do stop embarrassing our Padawan.”

She was sorely disappointed.

Ahsoka had read actual old love letters with less of an emotional impact than Anakin’s dramatic confession. It seemed like no matter what he did, Anakin always had to outdo everyone else.

Translation:

“Oh, Obi-Wan, cahshee, ¿paialunru foh keelel zera ollun vii foh keelak?”

“Oh, Obi-Wan, sweety, have I told you how much I love you?”

cahshee would, in modern contexts, be something like “sweety” or “sugarpie”. Most people wouldn’t use it in serious contexts anymore as it is a very sappy and over the top expression.

vii is specifically for romantic love.

“Enoah keel kyan kat fehl, kytal epal padenah fahk ve xariel ta.”

“You are my inner peace, the Light that guides me out of the Dark.”

kyan specifically refers to inner peace, the peace of a person. This is pretty much the state of being every Jedi aspires to achieve.

kat fehl is “of me” i.e. the possessive. Dai Bendu doesn’t have possessive pronouns so you have to make these rather clunky descriptions. Using this additionally instead of just saying “Obi-Wan is the light” makes it so much more personal and really highlights that without Obi-Wan, Anakin wouldn’t be able to achieve that state of peacefulness/inner balance.

kytal is Light as in Light side of the Force opposed to xari, the Dark side of the Force.

paden means to guide or to teach.

Putting this together, we basically have Anakin declaring that Obi-Wan is all that is good. He is Anakin’s compass, without whom he’d been lost in darkness. Even more so, his mere existence teaches Anakin which path he must take so that even when all around them the world is burning down, true darkness is threatening to suffocate him, Obi-Wan will save him and will stay by his side.

“Denik anohrah kat fehl ru im sedorem det aainji foh tamaji kawa-“

“My eternal home and no word I speak will be lovely enough-”

sedorem means word or truth. This means further that not even the truth can accurately describe how much he loves Obi-Wan. Anything that has to be said out loud is basically useless as it doesn’t accurately portray his emotions.

anohrah means home, but also refers to the main Jedi Temple.

You pretty much can't get any sappier. This speech is the love declaration you want and will never get in life because it just goes beyond everything.

“Oh Force, cadeo qa, Jaieh!” – “Stop it, Master!”

“Yes, Anakin, ankyia kat fehl, do stop embarrassing our Padawan.”

Obi-Wan is calling Anakin something that literally means “heartsong” but actually implies soulmate. Word can be used platonically or romantically. Here too the possessive makes this even more personal.

So basically their exchange is the following:

Ahsoka: We all know the dude was stupid and mean to Obi-Wan. Stop being so embarrassing about it now, we are all over it.

Anakin: Is this an invitation to proclaim that Obi-Wan is not just my soulmate, but also the reason I can be who I am and all that just to embarrass my Padawan?

Ahsoka: Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope-

Obi-Wan “I live to make fun of teeny tiny Padawans” Kenobi: No, I will, actually, go along with Anakin’s dramatics and reaffirm them.

#star wars #ahsoka tano #Anakin Skywalker #obi wan kenobi #obikin #fanfic #jedi #dai bendu #conlang #can be read platonically tho #your choice

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mrmeatys · 3 years

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sprites by @/trollbriidge <3

name: Doctor Qastor Pocary (originally Viscera).

nickname(s): Qas (universal)

age: [REDACTED] (42 sweeps, looks much younger than his age implies)

hatchdate: June 3rd

zodiac: Gemini

pronouns: he/him, they/them hy/hym.

gender: gender nonconforming.

sexuality: bisexual.

hemocaste: Candy Red (#ff0000), albinistic qualities.

symbol: An altered version of Caduceus.

lusus: Red Headed / Giant Centipede (Scolopendra subspinipes, about 50 ft long, deceased).

strife: scalpel, or anything sharp.

trolltag: overzealousPanchymagogue

height: 6’4” without heels. 6’8” including horns.

build: tall, slender, and just a bit lanky.

hair: naturally white, but he dyes it back. He wears his hair in an undercut, but let’s the top grow out into waves. He keeps the shaved parts of his head clean cut, however.

eyes: candy red, his pupils can become like slits sometimes.

scars: lots of surgery scars, most prominently on his chest and along his spine.

likes: the fine arts, the field of medicine, romanticism, fine wine, pomegranate, intimidating others.

dislikes: those who are more cocky than even him, pompous and stuck-up attitudes surpassing the average professional or social elite, dirty spaces and lack of organization, signs of aging on his person.

hobbies: performing surgery, collecting oddities and medical/anatomical art pieces, singing, piano, reading books on medicine, strange bodily phenomena, romance novels, and poetry.

abilities: his eyes are capable of glowing, but not much else. He is incredibly strong, especially for a mutant, and has quick reflexes. These, aside from his eyes, are caused by the lifespan increasing drug he’s been experimenting with for sweeps.

occupation: Dr. Qastor Pocary is a renowned medical author that supplied the fleet with the most efficient and incredible medical practices, he remained anonymous until about 30 sweeps ago when he revealed himself as a candy red mutant, despite obvious problems with this notion the fleet has kept him employed and informed to a certain degree, as in return Dr. Pocary would now personally perform surgeries and practice new procedures with their sponsorship rather than writing in the shadows about his own personal surgical successes.

voice claim: Grell Sutcliff from Black Butler

face claim: Cillian Murphy

Character Connections:

Zenith: Qastor is the one who proposed PROJECT ZENITH, a series of experiments and alterations on Zenith’s body to enhance, but also control, his already intense psionic capabilities. It has been alluded that Qastor deeply regrets this proposal, whether it is because of what Qastor did to Zenith or what Zenith did to all those doctors and scientists is unknown.

Commander Ritwiq (NPC, deceased): Qastor’s ex (complicated flush-pitch feelings) who he killed and dissected in his home lab after a fatal rejection from Ritwiq to Qastor during their breakup.

Lacrim Konqus: (shenktrolls) Qastor’s new assistant on the job. Lord have mercy on her soul.

#qastorpocarybio #long post #qastor pocary

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daily-klingon · 4 years

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Klingon Poetry

A Reddit question on Klingon poetry brought out the poet in me.

(It doesn’t take much to do that. I’m Welsh.)

I used the lyrics of the Klingon Victory Song from here as inspiration, because of its strict meter - just four syllables per line.

yIjaH, Qey' 'oH

bagh Da tuH mogh chojaH DuH ro yIjaH, Qey' 'oH yIjaH, Qey' 'oH yIjaH, Qey' 'oH

majaq. 'o' tugh 'IDaq. majun. pa'Daq jagh baH! ‘o lo' tlhuHQo'!

tep lagh negh 'uH mughato' tu' yIjaH, Qey' 'oH yIjaH, Qey' 'oH yIjaH, Qey' 'oH

wo' naj, cha' DIch Do' chIj, wa'DIch 'ejDo' 'el Da' Qib'a' bopar

Victory Song

Ya-zjah kay-oh bah-dah too-moh Sho-jah doo-roh Ya-zjah kay-oh Ya-zjah kay-oh Ya-zjah kay-oh-ooo

Mah dok, u-do jih dok, mah zjoo Par dok, cha-bah! bu-rak, chu-qa

Telbar nay-goo Moo-go toh-doo Ya-zjah kay-oh Ya-zjah kay-oh Ya-zjah kayoh-ooo

Boh-naj ya-deetch Not-veer bah-reech Key-jol kel-baj keh-dah oh-kie

Using the same strict meter, I came up with this.

SuHaw'. jIQam. You flee. I'll stand. qoHpu' SaDam. I regard you as fools. Sujel. vIbam You tremble (at the thought of battle). I'll face it. SanwIj vISam I'll seek out my fate.

qaD

Here’s a challenge for your courage. Write a short poem in Klingon.

The poem can be about anything, but it is preferable for the poem to reflect the Klingon spirit in some way, including your own personal concept of what it must mean to be a Klingon. Poems must be in ta’ Hol. You may use clipped Klingon, slang terms, or even no’ Hol here and there - but the default language is ta’ Hol.

Your poem can have any form: but if you want to give it strict meter, use the above 4-4-4-4 form, or 4-4-4-4-4; or you can use the 7-9-7-9 meter from the Klingon Drinking Song (the one about the River Skral running crimson red on the day above all days when Kahless slew the wicked Molor dead).

If this is not your battlefield, fair enough. Your fight is elsewhere. There is no shame in backing away from this challenge.

For those of you who do wish to face the challenge, here are the entry rules.

Submits are acceptable, but I would prefer if you emailed me a RTF Rich Text File, DOC or DOCX Word file, ODT OpenOffice file, or even PDF. I’m not the judge of this - you are. The only investment is your time. Entries are free, but please - no more than two poems per entrant.

Mark each email with Daily Klingon 2020 Poetry Challenge in the subject line. This is important. My inbox loves to send emails straight to the junk folder if it isn’t from someone on my safe list.

My email address is [email protected]

Your entries will be posted on this blog, one day at a time, as long as your entries provide me with sufficient information to credit you fully - the name you wish to be known by, your preferred pronouns (optional, but it would be an honour if you were to let it be known), and a rough idea of where you live (e.g. West Virginia, South Sudan, Planet Earth).

This challenge opens now. It closes at midnight British Summer Time on August 31st, 2020. That’s UTC +1:00. September 1 2020, I begin posting entries.

I would be very disappointed if I had zero response to this.

#poetry #challenge #Klingon language

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tikkisaram · 4 years

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Something Flowery — My Top Seven E. E. Cummings Poems about Plants

Flowers and other botanical beauties constitute an important element of E. E. Cummings's works. He uses them in several contexts; some of them are less positive than one might imagine, given the typical associations that flowers conjure. Here is a small selection of examples:

1. Nocturne

Flowers as an embodiment the beauty of a loved one is a bit of a cliché, and although Cummings is generally as unconventional as possible, he starts this poem off using the metaphor in a rather straightforward fashion. Still, it is not without interest, especially with the use of the divine number seven to elevate the comparison. Later on — describing heartbreak — he goes in a more interesting direction, saying that the flowers "smile like death".

Seven flowers which breathe divinity, Seven wondering blossoms of embrace, Open their glory to the moon, Kissing white immortality.

2. [my lady is an ivory garden]

A similar poem to the previous, sharing even the garden of ivory, but one in which the use of flowers as a metaphor is accompanied with a hefty dose of irony. Every part of the "lady" is described as a generic flower, occasionally with a descriptive adjective or two. A certain degree of fondness for the comparison is clear, however, and a tender beauty — or at least a strong infatuation — is conveyed.

her feet are slenderest each is five flowers her ankle is a minute flower my lady's knees are two flowers Her thighs are huge and firm flowers of night

3. [suppose]

Young Death buying flowers from old Life seems to allude to a curious — presumably romantic — relationship between the two men. There is a complication, however, in the form of the "lady" Afterwards — though her very existence is uncertain. Beneath the obvious ideas of life, death and life after death, there is a decidedly sexual undercurrent in the poem, one describing the difficulties of coming to terms with sexual identity.

suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.

4. [Nobody wears a yellow]

This poem is a logical continuation of the previous, adding Nobody to our cast of personifications. He is set apart from the binary labels of age used for Life and Death, and the pun on 'queer' could not be more obvious. The lapel flower is reminiscent of the Victorian practice of wearing a green carnation, which gay men would use to indicate their identity.

Nobody wears a yellow flower in his buttonhole he is altogether a queer fellow as young as he is old

5. [in a middle of a room]

Shunned and peripheralised by society at large, a queer man decides to shoot himself. His dehumanisation is cleverly conveyed by the use of the indefinite article 'a' for all descriptions of his actions. A powerful picture of the tragic effects of intolerance.

in a middle of a room stands a suicide sniffing a Paper rose smiling to a self

6. [!blac]

The fall of a leaf is a curious sort of flight — it clearly does not equal that of a bird, but there is a certain amount of freedom in its whirling. The separation of the leaf from its binary, black-and-white surroundings represents sexual liberation, but also hints at its limits. The poem is playful with form, with the letters twirling down the page in a similar way to Cummings's later poem [l(a].

le af

a:;go e swh IrlI n

7. [once White&Gold], 18, 95 Poems

The sad thing about flowers is that — despite their seemingly undying beauty — they soon wilt and disappear. Cummings returns to the simple metaphor of flowers as love, but in this case what was once fine is now faded. Love's sorrows are nothing new, but it is hard not to see a condemnation of the pressures of society here, especially given the other instances of flowers in his poetry. This poem is also unusual in its use of rhyme and consonance, which Cummings usually dispensed with.

daisy in the Dust (trite now and old)

#blessay #poetry #poetry analysis #e.e. cummings #flowers

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