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simon-roy · 5 days

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The idea of logging on a colonized alien planet brings my mind back to the planet Lalonde from Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn books - a world that had very hard wood as its only meaningful export, and was also stuck developing its economy from agriculturalism (due to investment shortages, though).

All this is to say - Hey! What are some foundational inspirations for your sci fi verse? You gotta have some like recommendations of classic or older sci-fi for us, right? What are some of your suggestions of books and authors to read?

OK SO - My sci-fi tastes have sort of ended up in some very specific niches. Growing up, I was a Larry Niven +Jerry Pournelle man, in part because my dad amassed a huge collection of their books - then gave 90% of them away before i was old enough to read them. So one of my teenage missions was rebuilding that library, trash and all!

Stuff like Footfall, Ringworld, Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, Protector (yes i attempted to name a comic series similarly, and paid for it) "The Mote in God's Eye"... you name it, I read fuckloads of these books. And while they tend to land on a sort of human chauvinist "mankind will win based on his inherent adaptive human-ness, and the aliens will fail because of their rigid alien-ness", this shit was very foundational to me.

Their more collaborative series, The Man-Kzin Wars and War World, also loom large in my teenage mind. The Man-Kzin wars are super fun - humans meet a race of tiger-men, and go from being NWO peaceniks to roughneck cat-skinners in a generation! PEACE AND LOVE WONT DEFEAT TIGER MEN!

Similarly, war world (like lots of that 70s/80s military sci fi) was a sort of catch-all for western military nerds to play with their favorite factions - it was a planet where all the un-ruleable ethnic groups and nationalities had been deported by the authoritarian earth government, and left to rot... until a race of genetically engineered fascist super men land on the world, and start trying to rule the place. Pretty fun shit.

As I got older, I turned hard into William Gibson, and read the absolute shit out of both the Neuromancer trilogy and the Bridge trilogy, as well as his short stories. Bruce Sterling was part of that wave for me, too, and I religiously sought his old paperbacks out too. In terms of novels, "Distraction" is my favorite coherent Sterling Novel - though the short stories in the "Schismatrix" novel/collection of his remain my absolute favorite space opera pieces.

At this age, too, I found my top-top fave Sterling Stories - "Taklaman" and "Bicycle Repairman", both gritty pseudo-cyberpunk stories of the highest degree, in this collection:

This thousand-plus page collection of short stories and novellas was basically my bible for a few years - i put sticky notes on each story i loved and meant to return to, until the book was so festooned with sticky note bookmarks i abandoned the practice altogether. If you have the chance, just buy this book and chew on it for a few years.

As i got into my 20s, Charles Stross became my lode star - his books like Accelerando and Glasshouse were total game changers for me. They come with their own peculiarities, but I loved his transhuman/posthuman musings (or at least i was obsessed with his stuff for a good few years - the venn diagram of his obvious interests and my own overlapped enough that his books were great fodder for a growing sci-fi loving brain).

But since then, my main literary squeeze has been the great man, JACK VANCE. Working on Prophet, my friend @cmkosemen made a remark about how much the early issues of the series reminded him of a book series called "Planet of Adventure" or "the Tschai Cycle", by Jack Vance. The book has a beautifully simple setup - a man from an entirely undescribed spacefaring human civilization crash-lands onto a weird planet. But on that planet, he finds four separate civilizations, each who possess a population of enslaved humans, culturally and physically molded to the needs of their masters. And each book of this series covers our generic hero's interactions with each bizarre expoitative culture. I was extremely intrigued.

Soon thereafter, I found my current absolute favorite book - "THE DRAGON MASTERS". A book about an isolated medieval world... which gets visited, once every few generations, by a black pyramid starship, flown by a reptilian race known as the Greph. The greph capture humans to (surprise surprise) breed them into hyper specific slaves... who in turn become Greph-like in their thinking and demeanours. But the last time the BLACK PYRAMID landed, a bunch of angry medieval dudes stormed the thing, blew it up, and captured a bunch of greph... who became the breeding stock for a whole new human world of slave labour. By the time we meet this planet, the two rival lords of the human-populated regions have been breeding greph slave warriors, or "dragons", for generations, for combat against one another. But soon, the black pyramid will return...

I love this book I even spent a good few months during covid talking with the Vance Estate and several publishers about developing it into a graphic novel, but nobody could quite agree on how it could get made with old Simon getting a paycheque... so sadly it fell apart. There are concept drawings floating around my patreon and other corners of the internet. But one day I'll use 'em...

My other favorite books of his, to name a couple of the MANY books of his I love:

THE BLUE WORLD: A caste system of humans, descended from a crashed prison ship, live on floating settlements on an ocean planet, paying protection to a giant long-lived intelligent crustacean. But one man is tired of giving up all his crops to this tyrannical megafauna...

THE MIRACLE WORKERS: Rival lords on a planet descended to medieval tech (surprise surprise) fight using armies... and rival SORCERORS who employ the powers of suggestion to voodoo each others' warriors... but when facing non-human intelligences, these sorceror's skills fall short.

But there are heaps more, and I love most (thought not all) of the ones i've read. They're generally short, concise, and full of all sorts of bizarre bullshit.

THere are more books i've read and enjoyed in my life, of course, but these are the core ones that I think of when I think of my career as a sci-fi reader... let me know what your top recs are!

#sciencefiction #science fiction #book recommendations #jack vance #larry niven #jerry pournelle #simon roy #griz grobus #charles stross #dragon masters #william gibson #bruce sterling

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writing-in-april · 3 years

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Postmarked In The Past

Spencer Reid x Female Single Mom Reader

Summary: After sixteen years of no contact Reader reconnects with Spencer because she has to reveal the secret she’s been keeping since she stopped sending letters to him.

A/N: Hey heyyy! This is my sixteenth fic (it’s actually was totally unintentional to choose the 16th for this fic even though the daughter is 16 in this fic lol 😂) for my 30 fics in 30 days for April!! This one is based off of this request and is part of my unlinked Spencer Reid & Letters series! Thanks for all the love and support lately- I was going to put out my plan for my 1500 follower celebration yesterday or today but if you saw my post I’ve been struggling so it’ll probably come on the 19th or the 20th. Submit an ask here- I love hearing from everyone 🥰Thanks for reading and hope y’all enjoy 🥰

Warnings: Reader keeps a huge secret she definitely shouldn’t have, Reader is a single mother-the daughter doesn’t have a specified name but she is specified to be 16, Reader is very defensive when her daughter finds the letters, mentions of a one night stand

Main Masterlist Word Count: 2.5k

Spencer had been a bright spot in my life, one that had been snuffed out all because of me. When I had found myself pregnant with his child, after I had visited him once, I bolted. For a long time I justified my actions, saying to myself that it was better that Spencer was unburdened while his career was just starting out. But, deep down I knew how wonderful Spencer would have been as a father, how he would have moved heaven and earth to make everything work. And, that guilt haunted me.

The memories I had of him were so far in between, every moment with him had been so fleeting at the end. I struggled to sometimes even remember how he looked as it had been sixteen years since I last laid eyes on him.

I had to strain my memory to remember the way his gelled hair curled around his ears and how sometimes I saw him let the curls free only around me. His eyes had been brown, I could remember that. But, pinpointing what shade they were when they glinted in the light or were drenched in the shadows was lost to me. I knew he had been tall and lanky, his hands reflecting that with how spindly they were. To remember how those fingers had felt on my skin, or how his lips had marked me, or how he would gently stroke my hair was too difficult. Whether it was because I couldn’t remember or that I didn’t want to, it was just too hard for me to want to try to strain my memory anymore.

The labor had been the most difficult thing I had gone through, no one had been there to hold my hand. And, I didn’t really want anybody else except Spencer holding it. I had gritted my teeth and accepted it, pushing through the physical and emotional pain, especially since the pain of losing Spencer had been entirely because of me. I had been given a beautiful baby daughter that day and it was then that I started to force myself to forget Spencer, she looked too much like him to be able to bear.

The only things that remained in my life that involved him were the letters I sent to him in the last year of our relationship while we were long distance and my daughter. The letters were able to be shoved in a box at the bottom of a closet, but my daughter confronted me with my actions everyday by existing. I loved my daughter very much, I just tried to avoid the topic of her father by concocting a lie and making myself forget all of Spencer’s features so I wouldn’t see them as much in her. My nightmare would be the two things converging to confront me with my guilt, I don’t think I could handle that.

—-

At the kitchen table I saw my daughter, holding a letter. Her holding a letter wasn’t at its core a bad thing of course, but I could tell by the slight yellowing of the paper that it was getting old. Immediately panic spread through me; there were no other old letters she’d be looking at besides mine, the ones I sent to Spencer.

“Those are private.” I snapped defensively, definitely too hostile to be reasonable. It was obvious by my tone of voice that I was hiding something.

“Private?!” She yelled, giving away that she had already read at least a few of them. I clenched my eyes shut to prepare for her question, “Are these from my father?! Who you said was a one night stand?!” I vividly remember explaining the lie I had concocted for her, her being confused why I would only be with her father once. It was a hard subject to dance around, a difficult lie for me and her to swallow. But, the alternative was too painful for me to be honest with her, or honest with Spencer. And, I knew it made me selfish, at the time it had been so Spencer wouldn’t stop his blossoming career. With time I realized that I really had done it because I had been scared. The guilt had started to sting worse when I realized that.

I had been caught, there was no weaseling out of this. I hanged my head in defeat, finally admitting to the large lie I had even roped the rest of my family in, “Yes.”

If she had been a dragon she’d be breathing fire on me while she spoke, “And why would you keep this from me! Did he do something bad or something?! Is that why you didn’t tell me?!”

“No-I-“ I stammered a few times until I found the words, “I- I did it because I didn’t want to hold him back… We were so young, and I knew he’d quit his new job across the country to come back to me.” Keeping the details still vague was my only armor right now. I kept to myself how those letters were the way we communicated for months when he started in the academy. We were only able to meet up once a month, and one month I unexpectedly fell pregnant. I never sent another letter or came to visit him again once I found out.

She clenched her jaw at me, looking back down at the scores of letters that we had written, and I had hidden. Her next question now made me clench my jaw, “C-can I see him? Or call him? Or send him a letter?” If you don’t know how to contact him anymore I’m sure we can-“

I was nervous as to where this was going. There was no way I could contact Spencer again after all these years, the guilt already ate at me everyday. Seeing and remembering his face would only make it worse. Fear was fueling me and I cut her off because of it, “No- I- I don’t think it’s a good idea...I just need more time- until I’m ready.” I started to shrink away from her, my authority slipping through my fingers as I became more and more vulnerable.

“You’ve waited sixteen years, you’ll never be ready.” The spite in her voice was stinging, she wasn’t completely wrong in her statement.. And when I didn’t answer she then stormed away, slamming the door to her room.

——

Our relationship in the few weeks following was strained at best, estranged at worse. She barely spoke to me since then, the biggest conversation we had was about what was for dinner- and that had been about two sentences long.

I was slowly coming around to the idea of perhaps finding a way for her and Spencer to reconnect. The guilt that I had been so afraid of becoming worse if I confronted it head on, only grew worse by avoiding it. I was actually going to talk to her after I got home from work, until I realized what she did.

She left her own letter on the table titled Dear Mom, detailing where she was going without giving any specifics. There was one part that gave her reasoning for writing her plan down, she didn’t want me to have a heart attack even if she was mad at me. Plus there were a few sentences about how she had used her own money that she had been saving up, which was supposed to be for college only serving to make you even more frustrated. At the bottom she wrote- I’m going to find my Dad, please don’t follow me or call the police.

I scoffed to myself, wondering if she expected her warning to not to follow her to be followed. Of course I was going to follow her, there was no way I was going to just let her go off on her own like that.

It wouldn’t be too hard to find her. Spencer may have changed apartments since then, but one quick google search of news articles he was mentioned in showed me that he still worked at the BAU in Quantico. It was probably a safe bet that my daughter did the same thing and was planning on visiting him at his office.

The plane ride there had been tumultuous, not in the sense that there was any chaotic occurrence or severe turbulence on the plan, more like in my mind. My hands shook, my foot tapped, and my mind raced while I took the long flight from Las Vegas all the way to Quantico. My mind went round in circles whether or not I viewed Spencer meeting my daughter- our daughter as a good thing. It was difficult to accept that even though they’d both most likely be mad at me, they deserved to meet. Especially since I knew how good of a father Spencer could potentially be. Once I had landed I didn’t stop, getting a cab straight from the airport to where the BAU offices were located.

The building looked daunting in front of me. It wasn’t a skyscraper by any means, but the task that I was here to do was so big it felt like one as I stared at it while trying to work up the courage to go in. The guilt however, was too hard to ignore.

My mind was on autopilot as I told the secretary at one of the front desks. It was too stressful to focus on worrying, so exhausted from the emotional roller coaster I was riding. An agent had assured me that she was safe which made some of the stress melt from my shoulders luckily.

“Here she is.” The agent gestured to the office, empty of any other person except my daughter. I felt even more relieved now that I saw her with my own eyes.

When I entered she waited a second before speaking timidly with disappointment, “He’s not here, he's on a case.” Her demeanor had deflated almost immediately as she saw me escorted up.

“Who told you that?” My arms crossed around my chest, nervous and furious all at once. I didn’t need to tell my daughter how in trouble she was, by the pout on her face she knew she’d be getting grounded for a long time even if I did let her talk to him.

“This nice lady named Garcia, she works with him. But, she did tell me I had to wait for you until she called him” For the first time since I had read her letter to me I cracked a smile. When we had still been communicating, Spencer often wrote and spoke about his teammates. Besides a fleeting photo of the team shown to me by him while I had been over here visiting, all my perceptions of the team and how they might look were all based on my imagination.

Despite that, when a vibrantly dressed woman clicked her heels into the room, I knew it was her. Spencer had perfectly described her, shining bright compared to the dull colors of the bureau’s office.

“So your Spencer’s baby mama.” Yep, she was definitely as blunt and beautiful as Spencer had described. I blanched at her comment, though I didn’t deny it, which was all she needed to know to confirm.

“Can you give me his number?” I skittered past the question, not wanting to confirm it out loud.

She beamed brightly at me, already starting to punch in the numbers with the phone on the desk in front of me. “You can call him now if you want on this phone, they just stopped working for the day.”

When she handed me the phone, it had already started ringing. I couldn’t help but panic, almost refusing the phone until my daughter nudged me forward to grab it. My finger trembled severely as I wrapped my hands around the phone, but I still managed to hold on to bring it up to my ear just as someone picked up the phone.

“Hello?” It was him, he sounded so similar to the boy you knew, that boy was a man now. He sounded more haggard compared to sixteen years ago; I wondered what all had happened since then.

“Hey- Spencer it’s me.” By the hitch in his voice that came through the speaker, he knew who it was.

At first I heard nothing from him, only some rustled feedback in the speaker. My shoulders were practically at my ears now afraid he might hang up. He did eventually stumble out a greeting, “H-hi? Why are you calling me after all these years- aaand on a phone at my work?”

“I’ve got to be honest with you,” I cryptically answered with an evident shake in my voice. I was biting my nails now, not caring if I chipped the polish on them. My daughter grabbed my hand to comfort me even though she was probably still furious at me which helped coax out my next statement, “cause I haven’t told you why I stopped talking to you…” I breathed in deeply once before I finally admitted the secret I had held for so many years, “Spencer, you have a daughter, she just turned sixteen.”

Dead silence was all I got, that was until I heard a choked out sob from him, “Why?”

He didn’t need to elaborate any further, it was quite clear what he was asking. Again another meek shaky reply came from me, “There were a lot of reasons- the main one was I didn’t want to hold you back.”

My daughter was now crying as was I, I hadn’t given her my reasoning until now. Maybe one day I’d give Spencer all the reasons why I had hidden it from him for so many years even though it was painful. I had held a lot of guilt about not ever contacting him again or even sending another letter. Spencer deserved to know everything, especially about his daughter who was the spitting image of him in almost every way.

“Can I talk to her?” I agreed, which seemed to surprise my daughter. I think she thought I’d be furious enough with her to not let her speak to him. She would still be getting many privileges taken away from her, just not this one as it was my fault she never knew her father in the first place. My fingers shook even more as I moved to click the speaker button so he could hear her speak.

“Hi- dad.” They spoke for a while, while I took the back seat, barely interjecting. They both deserved every ounce of father and daughter time that I had deprived them from throughout the years. My chest did feel lighter now that I had told him, now that my daughter was getting the chance to know him. Hearing them laugh and giggle with each other almost immediately only cemented how much she was her father’s daughter.

When the phone was handed back to me, after seemingly hours of talking (Garcia had even popped in a few times to get me more coffee) Spencer asked,“Can you stay in Quantico till I get back?”

I smiled, happy that I’d finally be able to see and remember his face again after all this time, “We’ll be here waiting, it’s time you meet your daughter in person.”

Ask Me Anything

—

Tag lists (fill out this form to join): If your url has a strike through it means tumblr won’t let me tag you- check in your settings if you allow yourself to be searchable

All works: @shotarosleftpinky @oreogutz @90spumkin @kyra-morningstar @s1utformgg @boxofsparklingmuses @multixfandomwriter @takeyourleap-of-faith

All MGG characters: @muffin-cup @willowrose99 @princesssmooshie @peterpanouat @anaagraceeberr @ashcakes1918 @reid-me-a-story @cosmic-psychickitty

Spencer Reid/CM: @calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss @slutforthegubes @onlyhereforthefanfics @jareauswifey @princesssmooshie @peterpanouat

Letters Series: (Group of Unlinked fluff fics about Spencer and letters): @whoreforthebau @sierraraeck @90spumkin

#spencer reid #spencer reid angst #spencer reid x reader #matthew gray gubler x reader #matthew gray gubler #matthew gray gubler fluff #mgg #mgg x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #30 fics in 30 days

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puff-poff · 3 years

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The Culture of the Demon World

One part of The Promised Neverland that I always wanted to learn more about was the demons and their culture. Demons are a whole new race with their own language, religions, traditions, food, and history, and I want to learn more about their society. So, I decided to do a bit of research on a few specific aspects of the demon world. After writing everything down and connecting the pieces while trying to remain true to canon, I finally have something clear enough to share with you all.

Without further ado, I present to you my analysis of demon culture.

Part One: Clothing Just like in real life, the clothing demons wear depends on their social status and wealth. The middle and lower-class demons wear loose, flowing clothes with wide collars and sleeves. They most likely do this just in case they aren’t able to eat human meat and maintain their form; baggy clothes won’t tear if the demons start to degenerate. This is why the wealthy demons wear tighter clothing. Tight-fitting outfits show that you can afford plenty of human meat and that you aren’t worried about degenerating.

Many demons, both poor and rich, wear long, layered clothing, but it’s hard to tell if this is a societal standard or a byproduct of cold weather. Almost all of the demons we see are wearing long-sleeved tops and ankle-length bottoms, as well as a jacket, shawl, cape, or scarf. However, the feet and hands are almost always uncovered.

A major part of demon clothing is, of course, their masks. This extra page explains the styles and functionality of the Goldy Pond demon’s masks:

Like the rest of their clothing, wealth plays a part in demon’s masks as well. Detailed masks with large horns, like Luce’s, are worn by rich demons who want to flaunt their wealth, while lower-class demons wear simple, paneled masks with short horns. Demons who want a more functional mask might choose one without horns so they don’t get in their way. The aristocrat demons also have a unifying feature between their territory’s masks to differentiate themselves from the leaders of other territories. Whether or not your mask shows your mouth appears to be a personal preference since Legravalima, Mujika, Sonju, Awla, and Mawla all have uncovered mouths despite the character’s drastic differences.

Another detail I would like to point out is the material of the masks. Most demon masks are likely made of a material similar to clay, but there are a few demons with special masks that appear to be made out of something else. Nous and Nouma, for example, have athletic masks coated with shiny material that’s probably similar to polyester. However, it was Legravalima and Sonju’s masks that interested me the most. Legravalima’s mask is smooth, glossy, and seemingly made out of metal. A metallic mask is likely a sign of royal status and immense wealth. This explains why Sonju had a metallic mask as a child, and why he doesn’t have one now. When he was a prince, Sonju wore a shiny mask with a design similar to Legravalima’s. After running away with Mujika, he grew out of his mask and now wears a clay one of the same design.

This might just be the art style of the series changing over time, but I also find it interesting that Sonju’s mask suddenly becomes glossy in chapter 156 during the battle at the royal capital. It’s his first time stepping foot in the palace since he ran away, and it’s as if his mask is suggesting that returning to the palace has given Sonju his royal status back.

Part Two: Architecture In many ways, the architecture in the demon world reminds me of places like the Sant Francesc Church in Spain and Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. As time goes on, old buildings are expanded and improved with modern additions to accommodate the changing world. This can be seen in the paradise hideout, where a newer building was constructed next to the original settlement.

The old, traditional demon buildings are made of clay and other types of stones. They don’t appear to have many windows, and the few windows they do have are holes without window panes. Many of the older buildings were carved out of mountains or trees, or at least rest atop a mountain with steps carved into the side. This traditional style of demon architecture is similar to old Pueblo architecture and adobe homes.

The newer demon architecture likely came into style sometime before Goldy Pond was built, seeing as Goldy Pond has buildings similar to those in modern demon villages. It resembles the European Tudor style with its grid window panes, timber frames, and sloped roofs. The walls were probably made using the wattle and daub technique and painted white or cream. Some of the buildings have stone foundations, but unlike the old style of architecture, the stones are laid like bricks. Buildings made using the new style of architecture also have shutters, awnings, and Juliet balconies.

This picture of the royal capital’s streets perfectly shows the mixing of the old and new architectural styles:

Here, you can see the original clay buildings with the balconies, awnings, and wooden frames of the new style added on. The buildings in the foreground have open windows while the ones further back have grid panes. One of the structures on the right is built in the style of the older demon homes, but it uses modern stone bricks and balconies. This blend of architecture helps show the development of the demon society through the years.

Part Three: Food Human meat is the most important food in demon culture since it’s what keeps the majority of demons from degenerating. I won’t be talking a lot about the farms and human meat in this post since it’s already been explored by the manga and people smarter than me. If you want to read more about demons and human meat, I recommend this post by the-silliest-idiot and this translation of the fanbook, particularly the Q&A sections.

As explained in the manga, the appearance of demons changes depending on the type of meat they eat. The aristocrat demons eat human meat, Parvus eats monkey meat, and the demon horse Sonju rides eats horse meat. As explained in the fanbook, humanoid demons will lose their human appearance if they don’t eat human meat, but monkey demons like Parvus can retain their appearance for a while. To keep themselves from degenerating or changing forms, humanoid demons don’t eat a lot of meat other than the human meat from the farms. When the demons do eat other meats, they eat bugs, fish, and birds, probably because those animals are difficult to change into.

While it’s unclear if demons eat the plants in the forest, we know that there are plenty of edible berries, nuts, fungi, and other plants that the human escapees eat during their travels. Demons also have a variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts that they grow and harvest. In just these two panels, we can see that the demons have their own versions of pears, hazelnuts, pineapples, kiwi, and mangos (the mangos seem to be popular in the royal capital).

All demons, regardless of wealth or social status, appear to have equal access to all food except human meat. Lower-class demons get low-quality meat, but the same berries and nuts being sold at street markets are present in the Tifari offering.

Part Four: Language Unfortunately, I’m not smart enough to decode the old demon language. In the words of the fanbook, “Sugita created demon god's name, but every other text from the demon language that appeared afterward was Posuka's creation.” The language was made up by Posuka, and I’m not sure if there’s enough dialogue to translate a full alphabet. The old demon language looks like a combination of Japanese and Enochian, but that’s all I can gather from it. It’s also unclear if the language has a written form.

However, the old demon language isn’t used anymore. The language died out for two major reasons; a general lack of knowledge and to separate language from the old faith. The aristocratic demons know the language well enough, but we don’t see many commoner demons speaking it. The modern demon society writes in English, as shown by the signs at Goldy Pond, and it’s likely that they also speak English despite the story being written in Japanese. There's also a chance that the demons speak Old English since the promise was forged during medieval times. If this is true, then the aristocrats and heads of the farms could have a more modern accent because they often talk to people from the human world.

Part Five: The Arts Sadly, we don't know much about art in the demon world. The promise was made around the 11th century, so art in the demon world is likely reflective of that time. I can only assume they have their own literature, art movements, and music, but it's mostly speculation. One thing I noticed is that the demon world has a lot of embroideries, whether it be on the edges of a cape or banners inside the palace. This fits with my theory of medieval Europe-inspired art and languages. During medieval times, top layer garments such as coats and cloaks were commonly embroidered along the hemline and cuffs. This kind of embroidered clothing is worn by many demons throughout the series.

Banners, tapestries, and flags were also commonly created by artists during medieval times. Lines of flags are seen throughout the demon world, and a few buildings in the capital have banners hanging outside. The palace has a few banners of its own, though they're fancier than the ones in the capital streets.

Damask fabric is another example of demon artistry being influenced by medieval Europe. Damask is a reversible fabric created by weaving. The royal demons seem to have jumped on the damask train before the promise was sealed because it can be found in many places throughout the palace. Most notably, Legravalima's dress is partially made of damask, though the silhouette is very different from that of a medieval damask evening gown. Damask was commonly used to make curtains as well, like the ones draped around the Tifari offering.

We don’t know much about literature in the demon world. The books we see were written in the human world and sent to the farms, but surely the demons have their own books and stories. Seeing as the rest of the arts in the demon world were inspired by medieval Europe, I can only assume that their books, fables, and plays are as well. Much of medieval literature was based on religion and chivalry. There were also many fables and myths derived from old stories and religious texts. Demon children probably read many stories about the Evil Blooded, the runaway prince, and heroic knights who protect the demons from harm. There likely are many stories written in the old demon language as well. Similar to Latin and Old English in the Middle Ages, the old demon language was probably the main written language until the 11th century, when the demons began using English as a primary language.

I imagine that Anglo Saxon, Byzantine, and Norman (ha get it) art heavily inspired art in the demon world. The palace is likely covered in tapestries and murals depicting historic events. Metal and tilework were probably once a major part of demon artistry, but the practices died out over time. Instead, many demon artists practice painting and embroidery. Pieces of art in the demon world would be very vibrant and colorful, especially the works displayed in the palace.

When it comes to music in the demon world, there isn’t much to go off of. We know that the farms have access to instruments and sheet music because of Leslie and Nat. Barbara also sings a Japanese children’s song in chapter 113. Unfortunately, we don’t get much information about music in the demon world outside of the farms. I assume that demons primarily play string instruments and piano because of their long fingers. They also have more fingers than humans, meaning they can make a variety of chords that humans can’t. More fingers also allow demons to add more strings to their instruments. Even though it’s possible that demons have their own special instruments, we know that they also have human instruments like cellos, trumpets, and pianos.

Conclusion: There’s a lot more I wish I could talk about (mainly the elements of culture), but I’m stopping for now so this doesn’t get any longer. Feel free to correct me or add on anything I missed. If you made it this far, thank you for reading this incredibly long analysis of demon culture and I hope you have a great day.

#am I reading into this too much? yeah #the promised neverland #the promised neverland manga spoilers #tpn #yakusuko no neverland #ynn

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felassan · 3 years

Text

Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.”

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’”

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’”

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.”

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

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charming-charlie · 3 years

Text

Washed Away pt. 4

Title // Washed Away pt. 4

Pairing // Evan Buckley x Reader

Warnings // Baby swears but you know what, this is a cute chapter.

Summary // Who knew hanging out with Buck and Christopher for a day would lead to a life or death situation?

Word Count // 1.6k

Prompt // Hi! Can i request a fic where you were with Buck & Christopher when the tsunami hit? They could be dating or crushing on each other. If nothing comes to mind, then it’s completely fine to ignore this request! Have a nice day!’

Author’s Note // This is Part 4 of the Washed Away series. || Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Tagged List // @aprildecker-blog @coffeewithoutcaffeine @daddysfavoritesexkitten @chenfordlove @comeasyoudar @carnationworld // If you want to be added or removed from the tagged list, please drop a note.

The pier. A carnival. Maybe even a first date. A tsunami. You don’t even remember what happened after that. Your adrenaline was pumping hard and fast as you raced to console Buck, who was screaming Christopher’s name over and over again. You were afraid he would rip his vocal cords if he kept that up.

The water had receded enough for you and Buck to climb off the firetruck. What was left was a flooded road that was up to your waist, but it was much more manageable compared to before.

Together, the two of you flagged down whoever you could and asked people if they had seen Christopher. Buck described the little boy, and you held onto the last shred of hope that you could, but no one saw him. Or maybe no one wanted to see him.

Given the circumstances and what happened, you were fearing the worse.

Your arm looped around Buck’s and he didn’t pull away. If anything, he needed it. He seemed so exhausted, so defeated. It was such a contrast from the happy-go-lucky guy hours earlier. This seemed like an entirely different Buck, and you shouldn’t be thinking it, but you were grateful to see more sides to him. It showed you what kind of person he really was, and if anything, Buck was truly a hero. You believed that now more than ever. He just needed to be reminded occasionally.

The two of you walked down the flooded street, looking for any sign of anything. People seemed to be finding their way, gathering their bearings, and just trying to survive. There didn’t appear to be any luck, until…

“Hey, there’s a kid under here!”

Someone shouted from across the watery road. Buck spun around so fast; you were slightly afraid he would get whiplash. He grabbed your hand, pulling you to the wreckage.

The two of you, along with a few other people, removed a heavy metal liquor sign, the ones that hang on the sides of buildings with the arrow pointing to the entrance, off a person who was trapped in the middle of the debris.

Buck was holding his breath. For a moment, there was a gleam of hope, a flash of relief.

And then it was gone.

It wasn’t Christopher at all. The kid was a girl, a teen maybe, and she was sobbing for help. A woman grabbed her arm and supported her, and the two sauntered off wherever.

Buck stopped them quickly. “Hey hey excuse me, I’m looking for an eight-year-old boy.”

“Yeah, yeah I think I saw him. He was headed over to that cupcakery place up the way. They are handing out water,” a surfer-looking dude in a wetsuit chimed in, and once again, the spark of hope exploded in Buck’s eyes.

Your shred of hope was dwindling to a thread, mere fibers, after the ordeal you and Buck had. You were trying to keep hope like Buck was, but it was hard. Every single piece of help was leading to a dead end and you did not like the idea of sticking around if the worse news actually became a reality.

Does that make you a bad person? If you didn’t hear it, it wouldn’t be true, right? Perhaps you could hold onto that mantra for a little bit. Maybe some of Buck’s hope will wash over to you. You sure could use some right now.

“Thank you,” Buck said, and he grabbed your hand. The two of you sprinted in the direction where someone thought they saw Christopher, but your sprints quickly slowed to a walk since treading in water wasn’t exactly a cakewalk.

You were silent. You must’ve been for some time because eventually Buck spoke up.

“I’m sorry,” Buck told you. It was in a whisper and you strained your neck trying to hear him over the gushing liquid around you.

“For what?” you asked. There was nothing he could possibly be sorry for. None of this was his fault. Literally, this is just some freak accident that no one could have predicted.

“This wasn’t how I wanted our first date to go,” Buck was avoiding your eyes, like he was still looking for Christopher in the flood. In all fairness, you weren’t looking at him either.

Maybe you didn’t respond quick enough, or maybe the sudden silence wasn’t what Buck wanted to hear, because the ex-firefighter continued to speak, a little louder this time, and you heard him perfectly.

“Eddie needed someone to watch Christopher and I’m practically Uncle Buck, so I accepted, but I really did kind of wish it was just me and you. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christopher, and I love hanging out with him but I kind of wanted to hang out with you. Just you. Trust me, if it were just me and you, it’d be a memorable first date,” Buck said as his head hung low.

He wiped the sweat off his brow with his free hand, although the hand that was holding yours loosened its grip against your fingers, like he expected you to suddenly pull away from him.

You didn’t and you squeezed your hand to reassure him. “I don’t know,” you said with a little smile, “as far as first dates go, I feel like this is pretty memorable.”

That seemed to put a spring in his step, and he smiled too. He glanced over at you, nudging you with his impressively muscular arm. “I hope you’re not just saying that to make me feel better.”

You teetered slightly to the side to avoid a washed-up car, allowing your body to press next to his for a second. Honestly, it felt good. Maybe you just craved a human touch and the handholding wasn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe your feelings ran deeper for Evan Buckley than you thought. Whatever the case, you knew it wasn’t the moment you wanted, so you weren’t disappointed by the sudden confliction of feelings.

“No,” you said, shaking your head. Your hair was practically dry at this point, although rough and tangled from the seawater. “I was hoping you’d ask me out. I wasn’t expecting Christopher to join us, but I like the kid.”

It was true. With Christopher’s medical problems, you got to know him very well, since you were the nurse at his school. Eddie made sure to contact you once a week, at least, just to check on his son and make sure everything was okay. You got to know the Diaz family, and that included Uncle Buck. Your life changed for the absolute better the moment Christopher walked into it. It was that boy and the family he had that provided you with something spectacular. You were holding the hand of that spectacular thing right now as the two of you walked down a flooded street.

“You like me more though, right?” Buck had a bit of a snarky smile now. That made you feel a lot better. Perhaps this conversation is distracting him from everything going on. You both could use the distraction. Plus, both of you haven’t talked to each other properly all day. Christopher was always right there.

“It’s kind of hard to not like someone that saves your life,” you shrugged it off, toying with him a little. Was it sort of wrong to tease him when the two of you were looking for Christopher? Then again, maybe that was what you both needed right now. Again, distractions can be necessary.

“Oh, that’s right. So basically, that sort of means you’re in my debt now, right?” Buck asked as he looked over at you. There was that damn gleam in his eyes. He was teasing you back and hell, he was enjoying it too.

“Let’s not get carried away with the specifics,” you answered, only to hear Buck emit a small laugh. It was good to hear him laugh again. It was good to see him smile. The cupcakery was miles down the road, the two of you had a while, and the distracted conversation was most welcomed.

“I like the specifics,” the ex-firefighter retorted. You could feel his thumb grazing the back of your hand.

“Okay fine, I’m in your debt. How in the world could I possibly pay you for saving my precious life?” you threw out your best acting skills, which were not that great to begin with, and the laugh lines around Buck’s eyes became more prominent. Your knight in shining armor was actually enjoying this.

“See, that’s all I want, a little bit of gratitude.”

“Dear Mr. Buckley, I am so incredibly grateful that you saved my ass during a freak disaster,” you began to really get into this fake acting thing, but Buck saw right through you.

He splashed you and you laughed, clinging onto him just a little bit tighter.

It was needed. After the ordeal that you two had, this was definitely needed. You didn’t know what lied ahead at the cupcake bakery a few miles down the road, and you were mentally exhausted trying to play every scenario out in your head.

During your trek, there was no one else that needed saving. Buck didn’t run into the face of danger. Instead, he was by your side, holding your hand, as you both waded slowly through the water. Occasionally you stepped on things that you did not want to know what they were, but he was there and calmed you down through it.

The sun was setting. The two of you kept walking. Maybe, just maybe, you two can save Christopher.

And maybe each other.

#evan buckley #evan buckley x reader #evan buckley x you #Buck #buck x reader #buck x you #9-1-1 #9-1-1 on fox #9-1-1 fic #oliver stark

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nickjunesource · 3 years

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Full article below.

Max Minghella is sitting in his backyard in the LA sunshine, his t-shirt an homage to the French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, his adopted shepherd mix, Rhye, excited by the approach of a package courier.

“You okay, sweetheart?” he asks — the dog, not me — tenderly.

Minghella, who at 35 has dozens of screen credits to his name, is best known as The Handmaid’s Tale’s cunning chauffeur Nick Blaine, a character who it’s difficult to imagine saying sweetheart. In airless Gilead, of course, a cautious hand graze with Elisabeth Moss’ June can pass for a big romantic gesture. In a Season 1 episode featuring child separation and hospital infant abduction, Nick’s major contribution is to trade stolen glances with a sex slave while “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” pumps discordantly along. I ask Minghella about playing the series’ closest approximation to a dreamy male lead against the show’s dark narrative of female subjugation.

“I know this is not the answer you want to hear,” Minghella says with none of Nick’s hesitation. “But I like that stuff, right? In the pilot, I think Nick only had a handful of lines. It wasn't clear that this is what the character would turn into. And it's quite fortunate for me personally, because I'm not a massively sort of intellectual person in my real life. I love Fifty Shades of Grey. That's like my Star Wars. It suits me to play a character like him.”

Minghella surmises that this enduring romanticism is an outcome of nurture. His father, the late British director Anthony Minghella, made grand romantic dramas like Cold Mountain and The English Patient. And there was the young, cinema-mad Max sitting on the living room sofa, absorbing everything. “It’s taken me a long time to understand this,” he says of his prolonged childhood exposure to love stories. “My dad made The English Patient when I was 10. So it was two years of watching the dailies to that movie and then watching 50 cuts of it. And then [The Talented Mr.] Ripley he made when I was 13, and it was the same thing.” These were an adolescent Max Minghella’s alternative to reruns. “I think they did shape my perspective on the world in a lot of ways, specifically The English Patient. That was a complicated love story, and I wonder sometimes how much it's affected my psychology.”

Some sons rebel; others resemble. Minghella’s co-star O-T Fagbenle, who plays June’s other lover from before the time of Gilead, got his first job acting in Anthony Minghella’s romantic crime film Breaking and Entering. “Anthony is one the kindest, most beautiful men that I've ever had the privilege of working with before,” Fagbenle says. “And Max has his gorgeous, sensitive, open-minded soul.”

Though Minghella spent his childhood on the set of The Talented Mr. Ripley, playing an uncredited Confederate soldier role in Cold Mountain, and tooling around with a Super-8 camera Matt Damon gave him, he insists his upbringing was normal. He grew up in South Hill Park overlooking Hampstead Heath in London with his father and mother, the choreographer Carolyn Choa. (Minghella also has a half-sister, Hannah Minghella, who is now a film executive.) Yes, technically, it was London, but that’s not how it seemed. “I feel like I grew up in a very small town. Every school I went to was in Hampstead. I was born in Hampstead,” Minghella says of the small map dot of his life before university. “When I went to New York, I felt I was going to the big city.”

Despite his illustrious surname, movie-watching was far from restricted to the classics. “Beverly Hills Cop is definitely the movie I remember having an unhealthy obsession with. I think I saw it when I was 5 for the first time, and I'd watch it just two or three times a day for years. I'm just obsessed with it.”

Plenty of actors can trace their love of movies back to a love of stories, but for Minghella the relationship seems to flow in reverse. When he left for Columbia University, Minghella opted to study history for its connection, through storytelling, to film. It was during the summers between his years of college that he started taking acting more seriously. Before his graduation, he’d already appeared in Syriana, starring Damon and George Clooney. Soon, he’d make a splash as Divya Narendra in The Social Network in 2010 and be cast in Clooney’s Ides of March. As all young actors eventually must, Minghella moved to Los Angeles.

It’s been over a decade since he last lived on the Heath, but, perhaps unusually for a person who’s chosen his profession, Minghella is adamantly not a “shapeshifter,” in his words. Home for Christmas this year, he started sifting through old journals stored at his mother’s house, “just like scraps of writing from when I was extremely young up through my teenage years,” before coming to America. “It was hilarious to me,” Minghella says of staring at his childhood reflection. “My review of a movie at 7 years old is pretty much what my review of a movie at 35 will be. My taste hasn't changed much. And when I sort of love something, I do tend to continue to love it.”

Which brings us back to his enduring love of romance, born of his bloodline, which is all over Minghella’s own 2018 directorial debut. Teen Spirit is a hazily lit film about a teenage girl from the Isle of Wight — the remote British island where Max’s father Anthony was born — who enters a local X-Factor-style singing competition. (It stars Minghella’s rumored girlfriend of several years, Elle Fanning.) The story is small, but its crescendos are epic.

Minghella calls the movie — an ode to the power of the pop anthem — “embarrassingly Max.” Max loves a good music-driven movie trailer — he’s watched the one for Top Gun: Maverick “many” times. And Max loves the rhythmic beats of sports movies like Friday Night Lights. Max loves movies with excesses of female energy, like Spring Breakers. He likens Teen Spirit to an experiment, his answer to the question, “Can I take all these things that I love and find a structure that can hold them?” The result is a touching “hodgepodge” of Minghella’s fascinations, inspired by the songs from another thing he loves: Robyn’s 2010 album Body Talk (itself a dance-pop meditation on love).

Minghella hasn’t directed any films since, but he sees now how making movies fits his personality — organized, impatient — more organically than starring in them does. Directing also helped him to appreciate that acting is “much harder than I was giving it credit for,” which, in turn, has made him like it more. Besides The Handmaid’s Tale currently airing on Hulu, Minghella appears in Spiral, the ninth installment in the Saw horror franchise and, from where I’m sitting, at least, a departure.

“I do like horror movies, but the thing that was really kind of magical is that I was feeling so nostalgic, right? We talked about Beverly Hills Cop earlier. I was just missing a certain kind of movie,” Minghella explains of his new role as Chris Rock’s detective partner. He was yearning for simple story-telling, like in the buddy cop movies of his youth, especially 48 Hours. It almost goes without saying that a buddy cop movie is another kind of love story. “And then I read the script and it was very much in that vein.” He clarifies: “I mean, it's also extremely Saw. It's very much a horror movie.”

His renewed excitement for acting translated onto The Handmaid’s Tale set, too. Veteran Hollywood producer Warren Littlefield describes casting Minghella in the role of Nick as an effortless choice: “Sometimes you agonize over things. [Casting Minghella] was instantly clear to me, and everyone agreed.” Now in its fourth season, the tone of the Hulu hit is graver than ever. Gilead is more desperate to maintain its rule, and so more audacious in its violence. Perhaps it’s fitting that the show’s romantic gestures finally match that scale.

In one particularly soaring moment, Elisabeth Moss’ June and Minghella’s Nick meet at the center of a bridge and crush into a long kiss. It’s been two seasons since they held their newborn daughter together, and it’s hard to see how this isn’t their last goodbye. Littlefield, like Minghella, is here for the romance among the rubble. “It's spectacular when they come together. In the middle of all of the trauma is this epic love story,” he says. “Max is just magnificent in the role.”

For Minghella, the satisfaction is more personal. He works with good people, he likes his scenes, and he thinks Nick is a complex character. Minghella read The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time in college in 2005. Like all the things Minghella has ever liked, he still likes it. He’s as proud of this most recent season as he is the show’s first. And he watched Nick and June race recklessly back to each other across the expanse of the screen exactly how you might expect. “I watched it like a fan girl.”

#max minghella #the handmaids tale #the handmaid's tale #nick blaine #nick x june #june x nick #osblaine #*

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mageofseven · 4 years

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Hi I just recently discovered your blog and I’m in love with your writing! I have a little request if you don’t mind. The brothers (and undateables I’d you want to) finding MC bruised and beaten and later discovering they got into a fight with another demon. Thank you in advance if you decide to write this!

Awww thank you so much! I might end up doing the Undateables in another post, but I'll just stick to the Brothers for this one.

And thanks for requesting 😊

TWs: violence, vague s*xual assault

Spoiler warning: 1st year spoilers in Lucifer's and vaguely in Belphie's section

Lucifer:

Was checking out the area under Diavolo's orders.

Apparently there have been some people sneaking around in the old Colosseum and normal methods to keep other demons away from the historical landmark have been futile.

That and word has made it's way that some criminals have been using the place to secretly make dealings

So when he got there, he had expected to find some such people lurking around

Instead he found MC on the ground in the center, bruised and bleeding with their arm bent in a very concerning way.

He rushed up to them, calling their name and checking them for signs of life.

Honestly, the man was having major flashbacks to the day he lost his sister.

This was exactly where Lilith fell and Lucifer had to watch his sister, all broken and in pain until Diavolo came and he had to make the deal that changed everything

The deal that eventually led to MC's existence

Yet here they were now, in exactly the same place and state and the demon couldn't help but break down for a minute with panic he tried so hard to conceal.

The human let out a groan and the man could only sigh in relief.

"MC, oh thank the Devil..."

"Luce...?"

"You'll be alright." He promised. "I'll take you over to have Simeon heal you."

Despite the internal panic and flashbacks of such a traumatic event, he still handled the situation well.

Once MC was all healed up, he asked them what happened.

Apparently, they found a note that someone had stuffed in their school bag, asking for them to meet at the Colosseum.

They thought it was weird, but curiosity had gotten the better of them so they went and were attacked while exploring the ancient building.

The demon had meant to kill her, but sensed Lucifer approaching so they dropped the human and ran for it.

Ends up getting as much info from them about the attacker as he can.

Even if MC doesn't want the demon to die for what they did, they get no say in the matter.

Because of their status as exchange student, this attack is a political issue and the consequences Lord Diavolo warned his people about originally must be put into play.

Politics aside though, Lucifer would never let any being who hurt MC get away with it.

Becomes a lot stricter with what they can and cannot do

Like, they're not even allowed to go for a walk around the block without either him or his brothers accompanying them.

Even changes up their class schedule to make sure they have at least one of his brothers with them per class and they even have to walk MC to their next one.

Any arguments about this from MC or the brothers fall on deaf ears.

He will never let anyone lay a hand on them again.

Mammon:

School day had ended and he was on his way to pick MC up from their class.

Since Lucifer decided the day they came that he was responsible for their safety, he always had to do stuff like this.

He was late today though since his teacher held him back after class.

Blah blah F on the test, blahh blah summer school, blaah blahh blaaaah. Whatever man; he wasn't listening

And because of them, he was late. So much so that when he arrived at the human's classroom, they weren't there.

Lowkey panicked.

Shit. Shit shit shit, where'd they go???

Practically runs in the halls trying to find them

Knows Lucifer will have his head for this if he can't track 'em down.

Ends up hearing some kind of ruckus in the courtyard

And finds a big group of students forming a circle and chanting "Fight!"

"Oh yell!" Is momentarily distracted from his problem and joins the group. "Fight! Fight! Fight--."

Oh shit. That's his human in the circle!

Mammon's brain just started buffering as he watched MC dodge and weave, even getting some good hits in. The second brother was actually pretty impressed.

The lower demon in the fight eventually lost his footing and fell to the ground, giving an opening for MC to give a big kick between his legs and the demon let out a shrill scream. His green skin started smoking and changed to grey as it hardened and suddenly seemed more like stone than a person.

The circle of students started cheering and Mammon's jaw practically hit the floor.

Holy shit, the human did it!

MC fell the ground, panting heavily and bruised from head to toe.

Mammon finally rushed up to them.

"Damn, MC! You're gonna give me a heart attack!"

All of a sudden, some students started running and others just quickly jumped back, revealing Lucifer and Diavolo.

....yep, he's dead.

The two older demons started asking MC questions as they caught their breath and Mammon tried to sneak away.

Lucifer grabbed his brother by his jacket, but otherwise paid him no mind as MC told their tale.

Apparently this demon that sits behind them in their Devildom History class had been giving them crap for a while; calling them names and pushing them around. Today they even started touching them in places that made them wanna break the demon's hand.

MC snapped and told them such. The demon only grinned. Honestly, he was probably waiting for them to say that.

From there, he dragged them out by their hair and the rest is rather obvious.

Diavolo had some of his men carry the demon away. Apparently, the stone-like skin is defense mechanism, essentially the equivalent of a turtle hiding in their shells for that sub-race of demon.

The prince assured MC that the demon will be dealt with and tasked Lucifer with getting them healed up.

Mammon was hung upside down from the roof for a few hours for letting this happen, but MC was patched up and okay in the end.

Leviathan:

He usually buys all of his otaku stuff off of Akuzon

But occasionally, he likes to go out and by manga at this store downtown.

It's a once in a blue moon sort of thing, but he still does it

MC felt like taking a walk so they joined him

The two explored the shop as Levi fanboyed about seemingly every other series he passed.

The otaku had already started a pile of manga he planned to buy.

He didn't even notice when MC left his side until he approached the counter to pay

Boy just assumes you bailed on him at first and sinks into self-loathing mode

Until he heard a scream from outside.

He abandoned his manga and raced out, just in time to see another demon run for it and MC leaning against the building.

Their right arm was bleeding from the holes and claw marks made into it.

The third brother started freaking out and rushed them home, even leaving his books there.

When they get back, Lucifer patches them up with a first aid kit and a little bit of a potion.

MC explains how they were shopping with Levi when all of a sudden they saw Beel outside the store waving at them

She went out to talk to him, but then suddenly, it wasn't Beel anymore.

Apparently, it was a shapeshifting demon and, since they specifically choose Beel's form to take, Lucifer assumed that they must have been watching them for a while and planning this attack. They likely chose Beel because they knew he was someone MC would let their guard around.

Levi felt like crap for letting them get hurt, but MC said it was their fault for being tricked.

Lucifer decided it was both their faults and gave them both a long lecture

Satan:

The fourth brother invited MC out for coffee

The blonde actually really likes the atmosphere of coffee shops and wanted to share it with them

The two ordered their coffee and sat at their table while talking about books. He recently read a book on artic fauna from the human world and was comparing the information he read with their own knowledge

It was a very relaxing experience like most of MC's quality with Satan.

Before the two of left, MC had to stop in the restroom.

That demon waited patiently for the human at their table, but when almost ten minutes went by, he became a bit annoyed and puzzled.

Not wanting to be rude, but also ready to leave, Satan approached the bathroom door

He paused mid knock when her heard a low growl followed by a cry from MC

Now in his demon form, the blonde kicked the door off its hinges. It wasn't locked or anything, but the man was super pissed.

Found a demon pressing MC, who had a gash in their head, against the opposite wall

'An eye for an eye' is more or less the philosophy he followed here, or rather, a head for a head.

He took the demon and slammed his head into another wall over and over again.

MC had to run up and tell him to stop after the other demon passed out.

They left the demon on the floor of the bathroom and Satan, with his arms around MC to keep them close, headed back to House of Lamentation

The human didn't want the other brothers to see them like this and worry so Satan snuck them into his room and went to get the first aid kit.

It was quiet between the two as he patched them up.

"I'm sorry for scaring you." He said as he finished with their stitches. "Seeing you hurt like that just made my blood boil. They deserved it, but you shouldn't have had to watch."

"It's okay... thank you for saving me."

The two spent the rest of the night huddled together in his room, reading and just settling down from the incident.

Asmodeus:

Shopping trip!

Asmo was a bit too enthusiastic about it, but that's part of why MC was all too willing to go

He mainly just wanted to see MC in cute outfits, but also bought a few for himself

Any self-consciousness MC might feel on her own is long gone when they spend time with him. He's always hyping them up and complimenting them and overall making them feel beautiful.

Time spent with Asmo is always a good time and well spent.

The fifth brother does actually leave their side for a bit after they found someone hot to flirt with

MC didn't mind and just let the Avatar of Lust do his thing as they continued to look through the racks.

At some point a very good looking demon approached them and started flirting with them

It became obvious that this dude was one of Asmo's demons, another demon of lust

Even with this in mind though, their attention really did make the human feel special, even if they probably said such sweet words to everyone

MC underestimated the demon, thinking that just because Asmo wasn't the aggressive sort that the demons under him wouldn't be either

Ends up following him out of the store and makes out with him against the wall of the building

They didn't understand why they were doing this, but the human's mind had been feeling foggy for a while now.

Suddenly, MC's whole body started to feel heavy and they were so dizzy that their vision was just a blur

Ends up passing out and waking up a few minutes later to Asmo crying as he stood over them and begging them to wake up

"Azzy?"

The man threw his arms around them.

Finds out that the fifth brother went looking for them when he saw that they weren't in the store anymore. He came outside just in time to see one of his underlings try to suck their soul out of their body.

As soon as they heard their superior's voice though, they dropped the human and ran.

The two went straight home and Asmo was extra clingy with them for the rest of the day.

Beelzebub:

The two of them went together to Madam Screams since they were both craving sweets.

Beel was really hungering for a cherry pit pie (though of course he planned on order other things as well) while MC was really hankering for some chocodevil cake.

The two happily got in line to pick out their treats, but MC stepped out to get a clearer view of the case with all of the treats to see if they wanted anything different instead.

Ends up getting attacked by a famished, minor demon of gluttony and slammed down on the glass case containing the sweets.

Beel jumped into gear; he changed into his demon form and threw the other demon off of them.

During the skirmish, the two ended up breaking down a wall and crushing three tables.

When the fight ended, the big guy rushed up to MC to make sure they're okay.

The human was bleeding and had a lot of glass shards embedded in their back and arms.

Though worried, the sweet boy keeps himself together and carefully takes out the bigger shards.

Rushes them home, treats forgotten.

Once home, Lucifer is the one who gets the rest of the glass out of their back and cleans up their wounds.

Beel stays by their side and lets them squeeze their hand when Luce's clean up hurts too much.

Luce gives his younger brother a lecture for all the stuff he had broken back at Madam Screams, but is surprisingly lenient with him.

The older brother didn't say it (and honestly, he should have), but he was proud of his brother for stepping up and protecting MC, but at the same time, expected nothing less from him.

Yeah, Lucifer will likely get sent the bill, but MC's safety is more important.

Belphegor:

Belphie had fallen asleep during class; no surprise there.

The rest of the students left the room when class ended, but the seventh brother continued to sleep at his desk.

MC found his sleeping face cute and didn't want to wake the demon

So instead, they hung around the classroom, waiting for the Avatar of Sloth to awake; the school day was over and the classroom wasn't going to be used for anything else so they thought there'd be no harm in hanging around.

Sadly, they were wrong.

Another student, a jerk from their Seductive Speechcraft class had waited for them to leave the classroom in order to harass them, but when they didn't come out, he came in.

Eventually had them backed up against the wall and forcing their hand up their shirt, causing the human to yelp.

He tried covering their mouth with his other hand, but MC bit them, angering the demon and leading them to putting their hands around their throat as he yelled at them.

The entire time, the minor demon never saw the Avatar of Sloth sleeping at his desk.

Big mistake.

Belphie woke up and saw the scene before him, turning into his demon form real quick.

Didn't hesitate to grab a hold of the bastard and make him let go of MC, who was now gasping for much needed air.

The seventh brother used his miasma aura to weaken the demon as he was now the one doing the choking with the lower demon.

MC covered their face and cried in their corner on the floor.

It was too similar to That Night™️ and the human was bordering on panic attack because of it.

Once the minor demon passed out, Belphie turned and saw MC crying on the floor.

He rushed up to them, but stopped once MC started screaming and begging for him to stay back.

That look in their eyes... it was the same fearful look he remembered from That Night™️

And it killed Belphie inside because he never wanted them to be scared of him ever again.

He waited for the human to calm down and, with their permission, slowly approached them.

He wanted to hug them, but was afraid that they'd just be reminded of it even more so he held back.

Surprising him, the human hugged him instead.

He held them tight for as long as they needed and started to notice the bruises forming on their neck

The two went home after that and reported the incident to Lucifer before Belphie dragged MC with him for a nap.

He chose Beel and his' room since he knew the attic would probably be too much for them right now.

Cuddled close to them and apologized for all of it. For falling asleep and leaving them defenseless. For the other demon's attack. For scarying them. Above all, that he was sorry for That Night™️

Masterlist

#obey me #obey me otome #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me mc

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bloededhoine · 3 years

Text

world building cause twn doesn't part 4: elves!

everyone loves elves! they're a fantasy genre mainstay, archery is so sexy, and they have those E A R S. plus, they play a pretty important part in the witcher universe!

series masterpost

colour code cause i fucking love colour codes - already happened/introduced, probably s2, important background info, stuff that might be in the prequel, extras

background

i'd recommend going through the last parts, or at least the tl;dr's first

elves arrived on the continent about 2000 years before humans, and are divided into 5 distinct cultures of varying importance: aen undod, aen elle, aen seidhe, black seidhe, and aen woedde

elves only came to the continent in one group, but not all of that group stayed. the different branches based on where they settled make up the different cultures

the main two languages in the witcher are common speech and elder speech (aka hen llinge), the former used by most humans and the latter used by the elder races

aen undod

the aen undod are the oldest elven culture, having existed years before the conjunction of spheres

their home world faced some huge catastrophe, so the aen undod left in search of new worlds, leaving their descendants to become all the future elven cultures.

the aen undod spoke the oldest dialect of elder speech, laith aen undod, or one speech

aen elle

the aen elle use a language derived from hen llinge called ellylon, in which their name means "of the alders"

they don't actually live on the continent, having abandoned it years ago for their own world.

however, when the aen elle arrived in this new world, it was already populated by humans and unicorns. unfortunately, these elves are notoriously ruthless and both the native species were eradicated.

the capital of the aen elle world is tir ná lia, and is described as stunningly beautiful, featuring open air buildings made of marble, alabaster, and malachite. here it is in the third witcher video game, by djkovrik on nexus. their screenshots are amazing btw.

[ID: screenshot from wild hunt showing tir ná lia. the city is built on cliffs above a sea, there are waterfalls falling from the cliffs and bridges connecting them. there are mountains in the background and the buildings are fairly small and out of focus, they seem to be in the gothic revival style with ornate windows and steeped roofs. end ID]

the ruler of the aen elle was auberon muircetach, king of the alders and aen saevherne (aen saevherne is the honorary title of an elven mage who has extensive knowledge of magic, geneology, history, and many other subjects). auberon was also ciri's 5 times great grandfather. this gwent card pretty much sums up his vibe: scary yet sexy.

[ID: illustration of elven man with long white hair on a brown horse. he has defined cheekbones and facial features and is wearing a gold crown and blue robes with a red sash, gold belt, and leather boots. he is holding a white unicorn head in one hand. the unicorn's horn is cut off, and is bloody around its neck and where its horn was. end ID]

auberon's consort was another aen elle named shiadhal, with whom he had one daughter, lara dorren. lara is so so so important for the witcher, as she is the beginning of the elder blood, or hen ichaer.

hen ichaer is a gene that carries incredibly powerful magic, and those who have it are usually sources. i talk more abt this in part 3.

for better or for worse, lara dorren fell in love with a human sorcerer, cregennan of lod, and left tir ná lia for him. auberon took this as cregennan "stealing" his daughter and therefore the hen ichaer, and developed a pretty hefty vengeance and dedication to "take back" what was his (yikes).

this also set a precedent of people "claiming" the lives of carriers of the hen ichaer

auberon also formed an elven cavalry known as the red riders or wild hunt (dearg ruadhri in ellylon) and he appointed eredin bréacc glas as their commander. the initial purpose of the wild hunt was to travel to different worlds and capture slaves for tir ná lia, although they later became auberon's tool to find and exploit carriers of hen ichaer.

the wild hunt also uses specially trained mages known as navigators to open portals to other worlds, the most notable of these navigators is caranthir ar-feiniel, who doubled as one of eredin's most trusted men.

the aen elle also live a pretty long time, average is around 650 years, so the timelines are kinda hard to keep track of.

notable aen elle include: auberon muircetach, shiadhal, lara dorren, eredin breácc glas, crevan espane aep caomhan macha (aka avallac'h, also an aen saevherne and lara dorren's ex), caranthir ar-feiniel (also avallac'h's foster son), ge'els (the viceroy of tir ná lia), and imlerith (general of the wild hunt)

aen seidhe

put simply, the aen seidhe are the elves that did not leave when the aen elle did

the aen seidhe don't really have a society like the aen elle, they're pretty dispersed across the world. but, there are certain areas the aen seidhe have claimed as their own.

one of these little civilizations is dol blathanna, also known as the valley of flowers. unfortunately, it's not an independent state, as it was conquered by aedirn in the 1150s. however, then-king baldwin thyssen did allow the elves to retain a lot of their cultural identity and live in peace.

dol blathanna includes the village posada and the capital silver towers, which is where filavandrel aén findháil is from. he's that sexy man right there

[ID: photo of white elf man with blonde hair going to his shoulders. he is wearing tattered green robes and is looking slightly to the side with his lips pursed. end ID]

not that anyone cares, but here's him in the hexer. it's not important to the lore or twn it's just fuckin funny

[ID: old man with white frizzy wig. he is wearing a headband that appears to be rocks on a string. he has what looks like a potato sack tied around his shoulders over a green tunic. he is scowling. end ID]

outside of dol blathanna, there aren't really any places where elves can live with minimal human interaction, although the blue mountains are home to a few incredibly powerful elves

side note: dol blathanna is technically part of the blue mountains, but is in the far southern foothills so they're usually treated as separate entities.

the blue mountains are also a natural border dividing the northern kingdoms from the far east, and where filavandrel went to live after he got fed up with dol blathanna.

they're also the home of ida emean aep sivney, who's also an aen saevherne and future member of the lodge of sorceresses.

next season, we're going to meet the beautiful elven sorceress francesca findabair, also known as enid an gleanna (hen llinge for daisy of the valley)

here she is with fringilla vigo (nilfgaardian sorceress) in twn season 2. note that enid is preggers! that's very odd and i will go into detail on it later

[ID: photo of two women walking side by side. the one on the left is black and has black hair in braids going over one shoulder. she is wearing a silver dress with a similarly coloured floor length coat. the one on the right is biracial and has strawberry blonde hair in a braided updo. she is wearing a floor length blue gown with gold embroidery and a metallic brown cloak. she is pregnant. end ID]

enid is crazy interesting and important for the story of the witcher (and confirmed for season two!), so i won't go too in depth about her now

as i mentioned in part 2, nilfgaard tends to favour elves, leading to a lot of militaristic forces allied with nilfgaard. most notably, the scoia'tael, or squirrels. the scoia'tael are an incredibly ruthless and effective nonhuman guerilla force, generally divided into commandos, units that patrol a given area and eliminate the northern (or simply human) threat.

there are a lot of scoia'tael, so i'll just give you the commanders for now: angus bri cri, coinneach dá reo, iorveth, isengrim faoiltiarna, riordain, and toruviel.

you might remember toruviel as this sexy angry lady from twn, and she is possibly going to get a much bigger role later... pay attention to toruviel.

[ID: young elf woman with white skin and red hair tied over her shoulder. she has a bloody nose and is wearing a light green top with a dark brown leather studded belt. her belt is also around an olive green coat. she looks quite angry. end ID]

the scoia'tael were very well organized, but also quite dispersed, so when nilfgaard needed more specific tasks done, they would assemble specific military units (usually led by some of our favourite squirrels)

the vrihedd brigade was the most important of these units. they were especially notorious for their cruelty in the second northern war, so i'm sure we'll meet at least a few members next season.

their leader was colonel isengrim faoiltiarna (aka the iron wolf), and his officers coinneach, iorveth, riordain, and angus.

francesca findabair is not directly involved with either the scoia'tael or the vrihedd brigade, but she does work quite closely with them very often.

also important to note that not all scoia'tael are aen seidhe elves, most (including all higher ranking commanders and officers) are, but there are a number of nonhumans including dwarves and halflings.

unfortunately, the aen seidhe are slowly going extinct, both from years of genocide from humans and their slow reproductive cycles (elves live a Long time, but can only have children towards the beginning of their lives)

that's why it's so surprising to me that enid is preggers! we don't exactly know her age, but by my calculations she was over 150 in twn (pretty far past the age elves can have children).

because of this, elves are pretty divided between fighting against human rule and seeking coexistence. there are arguments for both camps, mainly that humans are colonizers and should not be trusted for the former, and that elves are dying out already and need to live with humans to survive for the latter.

the most prominent stand for the fight was in the 1060s when an aen seidhe named aelireen led an uprising against humans. most of the elders told her that it wouldn't end well, but she didn't listen and led hundreds of young elves into battle. it was an utter massacre, and basically all elves who could have children died.

yikes

unfortunately, the movement for coexistence was just as unsuccessful. it was led by our man cregennan of lod, lara dorren's husband. the poor simp just wanted to live in peace with his wife, but a lot of humans thought he was a traitor because he married an elf, and he and lara were murdered in 1137 in redania.

the last real push for independence was with the formation of the scoia'tael in the 1260s. I say 1260s because the very beginnings of the scoia'tael were right around 1262-1236 (the start of ciri's timeline) but they became majorly important around 1267. although, even the scoia'tael realized they needed humans to survive and began working with nilfgaard.

however, some scoia'tael are less keen on being nilfgaard's attack dogs, leading to further division amongst the aen seidhe.

black seidhe

remember the elves i talked about in part 2 as being the ancestors of the albans? this is them!

the black seidhe are native to the south, more particularly the valley around the alba river. they are practically extinct, but the nilfgaardians carry a lot of their cultural identity in the nilfgaardian language, a variation of hen llinge.

aen woedde

the wood elves, or aen woedde, is the elven culture we know the least about, they primarily live in the areas around nilfgaardian forests and speak hen llinge.

the only notable wood elf is aenyeweddien, or iskra, a member of the rats, a gang of semi violent youths in the northern realms. we'll learn more about the rats in future seasons.

tl;dr: elves, especially the aen seidhe and aen elle cultures, make up a large part of witcher lore. they are most notable for their long lifespans, magical and historical knowledge, and militaristic alliances with nilfgaard.

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olderthannetfic · 3 years

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It's really surprising that you're so well versed in older fandoms and yet participate in new popular ones (that cdrama, kpop) is this by design? Im in my twenties and my interest turnover is already way slower than it used to be

You know, that’s a really interesting question. I wouldn’t say it’s by design exactly in that I do tend to just follow what strikes my fancy, and I can’t force myself to want to write fic for just anything. (I find it easier to like reading fic without serious involuntary emotional investment, but writing takes more. Vidding I can do on command most of the time, but I don’t usually bother unless I have a lot of feels or I’m fulfilling someone’s prompt.)

However, me getting into BTS was 100% due to me wanting to understand BTS enough to explain to people who weren’t very interested but wanted to know what was going on in fandom lately. Under normal circumstances, I run the dance party at Escapade, the oldest extant slash con. We borrowed vividcon’s thing of playing fanvids on the wall--all of them set to dance music--as the soundtrack for the dance party. This means I’m creating a 3-hour mixtape of fannishness, which has amazing potential to make people feel in the know about Fandom Today... and equal potential to make them feel alienated if nothing they care about shows up. Only about 100-150 people attend the con, so it really is possible to make a playlist that feels inclusive yet informative--it just takes a huge amount of work.

Every year, I do a lot of research on which fandoms are getting big and look for vids from vidders people won’t have heard of, so there is an element of consciously trying to keep up with things. Generally, I only get into these fandoms myself if I had no idea what they were and then suddenly, oops, they’re my kryptonite, like the buddy cop android plot in Detroit: Become Human, which sucked me in hard for like 6 months on the basis of a vid.

(So if you’re into cross-fandom meta and associated stuff as one of your fannish interests, you tend to have broader knowledge of different fandoms, old and new, than if you’re just looking for the next place you’ll read fic. It’s also easier to love vids for unfamiliar things than fic.)

But though I was only looking for a basic primer on BTS, BTS has 7 members with multiple names and no clear juggernaut pairing, not to mention that AU that runs through the music videos and lots of other context to explain. The barrier to understanding WTF was going on at all was high enough that to know enough to explain, I had to be thoroughly exposed... And once I was over that hurdle, oops, I had a fandom.

In terms of old vs. new, here’s the thing: kpop fandoms in English and c-drama fandoms in English right now feel a lot like anime fandom in English did in the early 00s. I had a Buddy Cops of the 70s phase in the middle, but my current fannishness is actually a return to my older fannishness in many ways.

What do I mean about them being similar?

Yes, I know some wanker will show up to say I think China, Korea, and Japan are indistinguishable, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way that I used to routinely meet Italian and French and German fans, Argentinian and Mexican, Malaysian and Indonesian and Filipino too. English-language fandom of SPN or MCU may have all those fans from all those countries, but it feels very American most of the time. English-language fandom of a non-English-language canon is more overtly about using English as a lingua franca.

It also tends to attract people who as a sideline to their fannishness are getting into language learning and translation, which are my other passion in life after fanworks fandom. (I speak only English and Spanish and a bit of Japanese, but I’ve studied German, French, Russian, Mandarin, Old English, and now Korean.)

Nerds arguing about methods of language learning and which textbooks are good and why is my jam. This is all over the place in English-language fandoms of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean media. Those fandoms also tend to be full of speakers coming from a Germanic or Romance languages background who face similar hurdles in learning these languages. (In other words, if you’re a native Japanese speaker trying to learn Korean, the parts that will be hard for you are different than if you’re an English speaker, but you’re also usually not doing fandom in English.)

There’s also an element of scarcity and difficulty of access and a communal attempt to construct a canon (in the other sense) of stuff from that country that pertains to one’s fannishness. So, for example, a primer explaining the genre of xianxia is highly relevant to being a n00b Untamed fan, but just any old thing about China is not. A c-drama adapted from a danmei webnovel is perhaps part of the new pantheon of Chinese shit we’re all getting into, but just any old drama from decades ago is probably not... unless it’s a genre precursor to something else we care about. Another aspect here is that while Stuff I Can Access As A N00b Who Doesn’t Speak The Language may be relatively scarce, there’s a vast, vast wealth of stuff that exists.

This is what it felt like to be an anime fan in the US in 2000. As translation got more commercial and more crappy series were licensed and dumped onto an already glutted market, the vibe changed. No longer were fans desperately trying to learn enough of the language to translate or spending their time cataloguing what existed or making fanworks about a show they stuck with for a bit: the overall community focus turned to an endless race of consumption to keep up with all of the latest releases. That’s a perfectly valid way of being fannish, but if I wanted that, I’d binge US television 24/7.

Anime fandom got bigger, but what I liked about anime fandom in English died, and I moved on. (Okay, I first moved on to Onmyouji, which is a live action Japanese thing, but still.)

Hardcore weeaboos and now fans of Chinese and Korean stuff don’t stop at language: people get excited about cooking, my other other great passion. Times a thousand if the canon is something like The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, which is full of loving shots of food preparation. People get excited about history! Mandarin and Japanese may share almost nothing in terms of grammar or phonology, but all of East Asia has influence from specific Chinese power centers historically, and there are commonalities to historical architecture and clothing that I love.

I fell out of love with the popular anime art styles as they changed, and I’m not that into animation in general these days. (I still own a shitton of manga in art styles I like, like Okano Reiko’s Onmyouji series.) I’ve become a filmmaker over the last decade, and I’m very excited about beautiful cinematography and editing. With one thing and another, I’m probably not going to get back into anime fandom, but it’s lovely to revisit the cultural aspects I enjoyed about it via live-action media.

BTS surprised me too, to be honest. I really dislike that early 90s R&B ballad style that infests idol music (not just Korean--believe me, I resisted many rounds of “But Johnny’s Entertainment though!” back in the day). While I like some of the dance pop, I just don’t care. But OH NO, BTS turn out to be massive conscious hip hop fanboys, and their music sounds different. I have some tl;dr about my reactions in the meta I wrote about one of my fanvids, which you can find on Dreamwidth here.

But back to your comment about turnover: I know fans from the 70s who’ve had one great fannish love and that’s it and more who were like that but eventually moved on to a second or third. They’re... really fannishly monogamous in a way I find hard to comprehend. It was the norm long ago, but even by the 90s when far more people were getting into fandom, it was seen as a little weird. By now, with exponentially more people in fandom, it’s almost unheard of. I think those fans still exist, even as new people joining, but we don’t notice them. They were always rare, but in the past, only people like that had the stamina to get over the barriers to entry and actually become the people who made zines or were willing to be visibly into fanfic in eras when that was seen as really weird. On top of that, there’s an element of me, us, judging the past by what’s left: only people with an intense and often single passion are visible because other people either drifted away or have seamlessly disappeared into some modern fandom. They don’t say they’re 80 or 60 or 40 instead of 20, so nobody knows.

In general, I’m a small fandoms and rare ships person. My brain will do its best to thwart me by liking whatever has no fic even in a big fic fandom... (Except BTS because there is literally fic for any combination of them, like even more than for the likes of MCU. Wow. Best fandom evar!) So I have an incentive to not get complacent and just stick with one fandom because I would very soon have no ability to be in fandom at all.

My appetite for Consuming All The Things has slowed way down, but it also goes in waves, and a lot of what I’m consuming is what I did back in 2000: journal articles and the limited range of English-language books on the history of m/m sex and romance in East Asia. It’s not so much that I have a million fandoms as that I’m watching a few shows as an expression of my interest in East Asian costume dramas and East Asian history generally.

I do like to sit with one thing and experience it deeply rather than moving on quickly, but the surface expression of this has changed depending on whether I’m more into writing fic or more into doing research or something else.

But yes, I do do a certain amount of trying to stay current, often as a part of research for fandom meta or to help other people know what’s going on. Having a sense of what’s big doesn’t automatically mean getting into all those things, but I think some fans who are older-in-fandom and/or older-in-years stop being open to even hearing what’s new. And if you’ve never heard of it, you’ll never know if you might have liked it.

#fandom meta #fandom history #Anonymous

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neonir · 3 years

Text

LETS TALK ABOUT THE PLANES

D&D has a bunch of planes, these are essentially a whole list of universes within the universe, while most adventures will take place on the material, many will dive into some other planes, or at the very, very least will interact with some of their inhabitants.

Gunna go over a handful of them for now

Structure: What the plane looks like, it’s general layout

Inhabitants: Who lives there, what they do.

Main threats: What your tombstone will say

Notable things: Fun facts about a neat place!

Further reading: If you want some things to look into on your own time

THE BLOOD WAR DUO FIRST:

These next two guys *hate each other*. The exaaact reason behind this can change on the setting, but essseeeentially a whole bunch of angels came down to act as vanguards against the abyss to stop demons from coming up and ruining everything. But it turns out, being in a super evil charged plane for extended periods of time, doing nothing but killing and being killed will do a number on you. Needless to say, they all kinda "fell" and are now devils, holding onto their old lawful nature, but replacing their good with evil and remain almost entirely dedicated to just killing every devil they can get their hands on

Demons meanwhile just kinda wanna ruin everything cause that's just what they like to do.

Anyways depending on the setting the blood war is either done and demons are in an even deeper pit for now, it never ended and they’re still at it to this day, or maybe it wasn’t called the blood war in that setting they just hate each other. Either way this is one of those wonderful cases where the guy you hate and the other guy you hate, both hate each other more, and constantly kick each others heads in. It’s swell.

THE NINE HELLS:

Structure: There's 9 layers of it, each one is ruled by an archdevil. Each layer has a different theme, each theme is more or less based on the guy running it. Or vice versa. Don't ask me they're matchy is the point.

Inhabitants: This is where devils live. The Devil is in the details, because of this they make deals. Lawful evil. Bad guys, but when they agree to something, they'll keep their end of the deal. By the letter of the law, not the spirit. Again, ruled by Archdevils, which are just the most powerful (politically, magically and physically typically) of the inhabitants of that layer.

Main threats: Devils are rude and super duper want your souls. Also demons keep invading. Which the devils really, really, REALLY hate. Also each layer can be anywhere from "on fire" to "Literally colder than the antarctic" so just jot that down.

Notable things: Devils like to make deals for the souls of mortals, specifically because they can claim these souls and either use them as a fun alternative to firewood, or can have them turned into handy dandy devil soldiers to fight demons for eternity.

Further reading: Archdevils are each different types of interesting and have a lot of shared lore to play with. Asmodeus is the top dog and has a lot of drama history with pretty much every archdevil in the place.

THE ABYSS:

Structure: Depends a little on the setting, but it can be anywhere from 99 layers to infinite layers, but it's essentially a big roiling pit of bad. Nothing is consistent and the only thing it exists for is to tear the rest of the cosmology apart. It's bad limbo, and limbo's already a mess.

Inhabitants: Demons live here, yes, that's different from devils. Chaotic evil. This is just a bunch of assholes. Literally looked up "How to be a dickhead" in the dictionary and then ate the book and spat on its writer because that's literally all they know how to do. They're ruled by Demon Lords, who are just kinda the biggest dicks of them all.

Main threats: This whole place is pretty much just the worst. Everything here just wants to ruin your whole deal. The only organization is enforced by big bad dude's literally beating the less big bad dudes into submission so they can order them to beat up less bad big dudes.

Notable things: Many powerful beings have carved out chunks of the abyss to call their own personal homes. These guys tend to freaking suck.

Further reading: Really you're gunna wanna investigate the river styx, it'll kinda cover a lot of useful stuff about how these guys go about stuff. More or less these guys are just bad for the sake of it.

THE AXIOMATIC ANACHRONISTIC PALS:

So these two are just kinda "Raw chaos" and "Pure order" There's actually other similar planes that share a lot in common with each of them, Archeron and Pandemonium, but they're just kinda like "What if you had these two planes...but they were kinda BAD!!!!" And we've just covered the bad versions of law and chaos so screw that nonsense tbh.

MECHANUS:

Structure: A wonderfully designed infinite series of interlocking floating continent sized gears that are in constant motion, be it fast or slow all simultaneously fitting into one grand ever turning perfect machine. This'd probably be one of the most wonderful to behold things in the setting. Shame if you kick a rock over you might be sent to infinite jail.

Inhabitants: Modrons! The lovely little goofy mechanical box/ball boys who fly around with very specific tasks (Such as counting every single living thing alive in the entire universe) or just organizing things "The right way". Each one listens to the one above it, which comes to an ultimate point with Primus, the ultimate law in the realm of absolutes. There are also some very cool dudes called "Inevitables" which are just the shit.

Main threats: Well, Primus likes for its shit to stay the way it put it. Don't make a mess. If you are here, be here the way it allows people to be here. Otherwise you get an inevitable on your ass and these guys *do not* fuck around. They literally can't.

Notable facts: Did you know you can go to get contracts done up in primus' halls to ensure legitimacy? Did you know if you try to break one of these contracts one of types of inevitable called a marut comes over and rather politely yanks you and the person whose contract you broke back to Primus. You may then attempt to justify WHY you thought it was a good idea to break your contract, and should it not be a good enough reason, the Marut will then proceed to beat you unerringly into a fine paste.

Further reading: Look into modrons and the plane itself mostly, it can be hard to find details on the inevitables so don't stress too much about that. Primus can be interesting to investigate depending on how much history you wanna look into.

LIMBO:

Structure: Man fuck I ain't even gunna try. This place is a mess. It's literally whatever the fuck it happens to be at the time.

Inhabitants: A lot actually! Lots of folk call this place home from the very zen and chill Githzerai and their "Live and let live" jedi vibes, to the remarkably less chill Slaadi, who are big funky many coloured frog men who vary from "silly frog man" to "Sentient Hole in Reality" depending on how far up the pokemon style evolution chain they've climbed.

Main threats: Well, the whole place is more or less non euclidean mass of ever churning raw chaos. Aside from that, watch out for Slaad Lords, which themselves can vary from "Funky dude with god like powers who uses them to wander around doing whatever comes to mind" to "Lord of entropy who wants to more or less bring about the heat death of the universe"

Notable facts: With some force of will, one can actually instill some amount of order into this place, which is how the Githzerai make their homes, literally just concentrating on keeping an area of it "approximately home shaped" collectively defining the place they live as what it is.

Further reading: Honestly the slaad lords are equal parts fascinating, hilarious and on occasion a little dissapointing. The history of the slaad is neat (Primus is kinda responsible for their existence) and the plane itself has been through some stuff. The githzerai are one half of the race that once gave the mindflayers an unparalleled beating before turning their sights on each other and then bugging off in their separate ways.

NEXT TIME MAYBE: ELEMENTAL PLANES, THE ETHEREAL AND THE ASTRAL.

IF I’M LUCKY I WILL NEVER HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THE FEYWILDS OR THE SHADOWFELL.

#d&d #5e #neonir's personal rambles #I actually wrote all this up as a response to a fairly simple question #and then it was a page long #and so I figure #fuck it wrote all this shit up might as well post it somewhere else as well.#Dungeons and Dragons #dnd

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something-fanfiction-ie · 4 years

Text

Masterlist

| D (Drafted): works started, or planned for future posting. |

| ITW (In the Works): works being actively edited or written for posting. |

| F (Finished): works (specifically series)... finished. Not a rocket science system here, bud. You get it. |

Spencer Reid

• 24 Hours: The reader is buried alive by The Gravedigger, with no means in which to pay the ransom, the BAU must race against the clock to find their agent alive.

•Dream Series [1 2]: On a case involving the death of five teenage girls, the reader comes to the realization that things don’t always happen at the most convenient times. (ITW)

•Trick Series [1 2 3 4 5]: After a chance meeting in a bookstore, Spencer Reid must question everything he knows about the girl he thought was straight from his dreams. (D)

•The Years: Seven years after nervously confessing her feelings, the reader finds herself in the most unusual of situations with Spencer Reid, himself. (D)

•Seen Me Naked: After accidentally sleeping with her new coworker, Reader tries to navigate the sexual mine field that is the BAU. (D)

•Love, Spencer: Spencer is in love with Reader. Reader is in love with Spencer. That should be it, but life is never as simple as that. (D)

•Better Circumstances: Following the death of a mentor and a friend, Spencer seeks comfort from someone he hasn’t seen in a very long time. (D)

•Not My Sister: Spencer and Reader must set aside their differences when she finds herself at the middle of a case she can’t say anything about. (D)

Tom Holland/Peter Parker

• Fan Series [1 2 3]: Tom is crushing hard on a fellow celebrity, who just so happens to be crushing on him right back. (F)

• Falling Series [1 2 3]: The reader has kept their feelings quiet for long enough, revealing her heart to her best friend and falling into the unknown. (F)

• Mutual Series [1]: After an attack on the Reader’s gang, they must go to an old friend who runs the mob overseas for help. (D)

• Daughters Series [1 2 3 4 5]: The prince of Braydal is forced into a marriage he never wanted, but will have to live with. When things start to turn upside down, he finds his wife is the only person he can turn to. (D)

• To All the Boys Series [1 2]: The older brother of your best friend has asked you to pretend to be his girlfriend in order to get back at his ex. You weren't aware this was a rom-com. (D)

• Tom Foolery [1]: A series of short one-shots based on daydreams or just plain ole dreams.

• Interview About You: Tom has never been good at keeping secrets, especially during press tours. You just didn’t realize this was the secret you needed to keep him from spilling.

• Breathe: When word gets out that Tom carries an inhaler, its almost as if the world explodes.

• On Set: The young author of a new bestseller hangs around the set of the movie production, but it isn't because she’s worried they’ll mess up her book.

• Scars: The reader bears some emotional baggage, too afraid to tell Tom.

• Loves All of You: An hour in the life of a system dating Tom Holland.

• I Love You 3000: After the birth of his firstborn child, Peter Parker must say goodbye to the woman he loves.

• Tear Me to Pieces: Forbidden love always seems to be the sweetest, calling at a pair of parabatai just moments after escaping a demon-infested house.

Steve Harrington

• Bullshit Series [1]: The night of the Halloween party, you have to console your very dear friend after Nancy Wheeler breaks his heart again. (D)

{updated 28 May, 2020 20:43 EST}

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fweasleyswhore · 3 years

Text

Who We Are - F.W.

Chapter Five: Your Facade

Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four

a/n: its really outta pocket how late this is, but, i am sorry depression been hittin hard lately im going to try and upload around every three days now !

word count: 2.2k sorry short

warnings: none! just fluff and a tad of uncomfy a lot of ground work for next chapter also this is a series specific taglist just as fyi

tags: @you-make-children-cry @bohemianspacebabe @levylovegood @louist-pics @rochellestark @hufflepuffzutara @weasleybeb @whoreforfredweasley @fortheloveofthecharacter @ayesha-mae @ma0422

“Darling! How I am so excited to meet you!” Before I could reply I was pulled into a bone-crushing hug by Mrs. Weasley. I was quickly pulled out of the train by the twins, barely able to tell Lee goodbye before I was being surrounded by redheads. If I didn’t know who they were I would have felt like I was being circled by vultures. Placing names to the faces I saw wasn’t so difficult, I knew all of the family from my time at Hogwarts, the only thing I didn’t know was who the two taller men behind Mrs. Weasley were. I only got a glance at them, they were both redheads, obviously of the Weasley clan. One had a dangly earring with longer hair that reached his jaw, the other was slightly taller and stockier, his hair wasn’t as long as the others but had more of a curl to it. They were engaged in a conversation I couldn’t hear or focus on as I was being pushed out of Mrs. Weasley’s arm’s. She held me at arms length smiling.

“Thank you so much for letting me stay with you, it really means a lot to me,” I spoke softly, bringing one of my hands up to squeeze hers that rested on my shoulder. She nodded enthusiastically. She opened her mouth to reply but was cut off by Mr. Weasley. “No problem, not at all.” He said nodding down at me. He extended his hand which I shook gladly. “Oi stop coddling Y/N!” George spoke up from behind me pushing next to me. “Yeah we want to spend time with her too.” Fred said linking his arm around my shoulders. George let out a chortle that pulled my and Fred’s attention toward him. “I meant for mum to coddle us, you know, because we are her kids.” I felt Fred’s arm drop from around me and I glared at George who smiled wide and looked between us. “Alright children let's get going.” Mrs. Weasley clapped, pulling all of our attention towards her. I let out a short sigh and grabbed my trunk. The ride to the burrow was uncomfortable. I sat in between the twins in the backseat with some extra luggage. Fred started to rest his head on my shoulder around the halfway point which would have been cute if I could relax into it, instead it just made me feel more cramped. I shut my eyes, trying to relax my breathing as my nerves took over me, counting my breaths until we were there. Getting into the Burrow was a flash, moving bodies tumbling up the winding stairs. The house truly was a beauty to behold, seemingly stacked and held together by magic, the outside was remarkable. The inside felt like an ever present hug, little nooks filled with cushions and blankets could be found in nearly every room. It truly was cozy and everything I longed to feel in my own home. Home was void, it was a place where I stayed but it never made me feel the way the Burrow made me feel. “Now Y/N, go put your stuff in Ginny’s room, you and her will be staying together and with Hermione later when she joins us.” Nodding along to Mrs. Weasley’s words I followed Ginny to her bedroom. It was cute there were posters on the wall for quidditch and on her dresser she had a few stuffed animals, they had their fair share of tears and missing buttons but I’m sure that was just from use. “So what’s it like?” She asked as I set my bag down on the cot set up opposite her bed. “Being Fred’s girlfriend of course! Mum’s ecstatic, this is the first time one of the boys have brought someone they are dating home.” I felt heat and embarrassment crawl up my neck like a ferocious fire breathing dragon until my entire body felt hot head to toe. “No, we are just friends.” “Are you sure?” “Very.” “But George said-” “Kids! Dinner is ready!” Mrs. Weasley’s voice flooded the house and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding in. “Go ahead, I’m going to change.” Ginny nodded and left, shutting the door lightly behind her. Did the family think me and Fred were dating? Did Fred think we were dating? Multiple questions raced through my mind, each one making me grow hotter, but I couldn’t quite place why. I decided against my winter apparel, opting for sleep shorts and an oversized shirt. It wasn’t the cutest but it was the coolest thing I packed and knowing how many people were down stairs I could only assume how much hotter the air would get. Winding my way down the stairs and through the rooms I finally found the one filled with people. The family was surrounding a table where it looked like there was a feast right out of the Great Hall spread out.

“Ah! Y/N, come! Sit sit, um here.” She pointed to a chair on the far end of the table, on each side were the two men I saw from before but didn’t know. Feeling nervous I nodded and went to take my seat. Luckily Fred and George were across from me and that calmed me a bit knowing the meal wouldn’t be met with awkwardness. Soon my plate was full and the entire family seemed to be going in between a big conversation and small ones on the side.

“You must be Y/N.” Said the man on the left of me.

“Yes and you are?” He chuckled and sent a confused look to the twins, I followed his gaze and saw Fred looking rather displeased, sending him a glare.

“Charlie, and that’s Bill.” He pointed around my shoulder to the man on my right. I smiled warmly and waved and he nodded with a sly wink.

“I’ve heard about you two, you’re the oldest ones right? And you are in Egypt most of the time?” I asked Charlie in between bites of beans.

“No I’m usually in Romania with Dragons, Bill is in Egypt working with his voodoo.” Placing my attention on Bill, silently asking him for confirmation.

“I don’t do voodoo, Charlie is just being an ass, it's his specialty.” He was cut off by Charlie laughing, rolling his eyes he started again. “I’m a curse breaker, I work for Gringotts.” My eyes widened as I felt curiosity bubble up within me. If I had to guess I would have assumed that Bill was the one working with dragons, his hair pulled back into a ponytail, his tooth earring, leather boots, it just felt more fitting. Charlie's build definitely proved his occupation; I just would not have guessed it.

“What does a curse breaker do exactly?” I asked. “Well obviously, you know, but are there any cool perks?”

“Yeah Bill what are the cool perks?” George asked with a sly smirk, his eyes danced between Fred’s hostile gaze and his older brother, chuckling to himself.

“Yeah other than getting sunburnt.” Fred groaned. I sent him a look but he missed it too busy prodding around with his food angrily. George had an amused look on his face, obviously directed at his twins behavior but I couldn’t place why.

“He knows nothing about burns, trust me.” Charlie piped up. He rolled up his left sleeve which held a scar that curved and danced up his forearm and around his elbow.

“Baby Chinese firebolt, I was trying to put it into the incubator when it realized I wasn’t mama.”

Dinner went on, Fred didn’t utter a word for the rest of dinner, just poked his food with a grimace on his face. I didn’t let his sour mood ruin mine, I was divested in conversation with Bill and Charlie, learning all about their jobs and travels. Bill told me about an old woman who made jewelry in the center of the town in Egypt where he stayed, he told me about how she imbued each item with a different magical property, some were protection charms and others were sister pieces used to send messages between their owners. Charlie taught me about the different types of dragons and what it was like to work with them. They were both so kind, answering each question I had with a smile on their face. I was so divested in whatever Bill was telling me I didn’t notice everyone had left the table at that point.

“Why don’t we move into the living room?” He asked looking around, I followed his eyes, noting the once lively table empty. In a weird way it made me feel cold, a shiver tore through me.

“If you don’t mind I am going to find the twins.” I spoke getting up. He smiled understandingly. “I think Fred might be in their room, second level first door on your left.” I nodded, sending him a small smile as thanks.

“Wait I said twins, not Fred.” I looked back to him, his smile evident as if he had just caught me.

“I know.” He said, cheeky grin never leaving his features. I felt my cheeks heat up, turning on my heel I left and found my way to the stairs. Harry was watching Ginny and Ron play wizards chess in the kitchen, Charlie and Percy were arguing in the living room about the ethical uses of dragons as means of labor while their parents were both reading. I didn’t see George or Fred and took Bill's advice and bounded up the stairs.

Knocking lightly on the door I was met with no response, tried again, nothing. Despite my better judgement I pushed the door open. The room is exactly how you would expect it, slightly messy with blueprints and products strewn about. On each side was a twin bed, one with green covers and the other with blue. On the right side Fred was laying on his stomach, head facing his wall and limbs falling off the sides. George wasn’t in sight.

I tiptoed around the things on the floor and found his side, sitting down gently in case he was sleeping. There was a tension in the air that made me uneasy and I wanted it gone. I just wanted to spend time with him, I didn’t want to feel like I had to hold my breath.

I ran my fingers through his hair, unable to hold myself back. I felt him let out a sigh under my touch. He began to shift, picking his head up and adjusting himself so he was facing me.

“Hey stranger.” I said softly, sending him a smile. His face was unreadable, part way between smiling and frowning like he was fighting himself inside. He scanned me, up and down like he was trying to read my intentions by a quick look.

“What are you doing up here?” He asked. His voice held no emotion and it stung slightly to see him be so blank with me.

“I want to see you, we haven’t been able to hang out all day and I missed you.” I kept my head down as I spoke. A beat of silence rang throughout the room. I looked at him for an answer, my eyes met his and I watched the resolve fade away, like a barrier breaking beneath his exterior, his eyes lost their cool touch and they warmed up, returning to their familiar honey pools I know.

“Get in here.” He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me down to his level. I helped him, situating myself around him, tangling my legs with his and putting my hands on his chest. Both of his arms were around me, pulling me into him like he hadn’t seen me in months, he buried his head in my neck, his hair fell across my face making my giggle at the feeling, realization struck through me as I evaluated his movements in his head.

“Freddie are you ok?” I asked, my voice was more serious now but his behavior was just hard to read, it felt like since I met his family he had pulled back, the back of my brain was telling me it was because I did something wrong.

“Yeah I just,” He paused holding his breath. “Please don’t let me go.” His words vibrated against my neck. I felt his arms tighten around me as he spoke, like he was in a dream he didn’t want to wake up from.

“I wouldn’t dream of it Freddie.” I whispered back, deciding not to push it. Leaning down I placed a small peck to his ginger locks. I felt his mouth curve into a smile against my skin and it made butterflies erupt in my stomach. I felt giddy and drunk, being wrapped up in his arms, smelling, holding, being held by Fred. It was intoxicating and I couldn’t possibly wish for more.

#fred and george #fred weasley #weasleys wizard wheezes #george weasley #harry potter #fred weasley x reader #weasley twins #fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley fluff #fred weasley fic #george weasley x reader #george weasley imagine #george weasley fic #george weasley fluff #fres weasley series #harry potter fanfiction

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bewitching-elizabeth-olsen · 3 years

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Press: Streaming, With Only a Little Trepidation

“I’ve never had more fun on a job before,” says the WandaVision lead who spoke with the Ted Lasso star about their shows, the Scarlett Johansson lawsuit, and what happens to the theatrical moviegoing experience now.

In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Emmy nominees who have collaborated on a previous project. Here, we speak with WandaVision star Elizabeth Olsen and Ted Lasso co-creator and star Jason Sudeikis, who previously starred in the 2017 film Kodachrome.

VANITY FAIR: Elizabeth Olsen and Jason Sudeikis met for the first time just before filming their 2017 indie Kodachrome, but they already had at least one thing in common: a “big old crush” on Ed Harris, as Olsen describes it. “He did not disappoint at all,” adds Sudeikis. “He stuck up for us. He cared about us. He cared about the movie.”

A guide to Hollywood’s biggest races

Now, the two have much more in common, as first-time Emmy nominees. Olsen is nominated for lead actress for her work as Wanda Maximoff in WandaVision, a Disney+ limited series that explores grief and loss, through a superhero story wrapped in a parody of TV sitcoms. Sudeikis earned four Emmy nominations for Apple TV+’s darling Ted Lasso, which he cocreated, cowrote, and stars in as Ted, a cheery American football coach who attempts to coach an English Premier League soccer team.

In early August, Olsen and Sudeikis reunited over Zoom to chat with Vanity Fair about transitioning these characters to TV, their views on the new streaming empires, and what they think of the lawsuit Scarlett Johansson recently brought against Disney regarding the strategy to stream Black Widow simultaneously with its theatrical release.

Vanity Fair: It’s been quite a few years since you shot Kodachrome. What do you remember about where you were on your trajectories at that time?

Elizabeth Olsen: Of life? It was when I was at a down trajectory.

Jason Sudeikis: Personally or professionally? I feel like from the outside, it only seems like you operate in one direction [motions upward].

Olsen: From a personal standpoint. So, I was excited to get to do a small movie, an intimate job that had some levity. And that was really nice. And I have a big old crush on Ed Harris and I still do.

Sudeikis: Yeah. To know that the director was like, “hey, we’re thinking about Jason Sudeikis for this role” and then Ed Harris stayed on, It was like, “all right, pleasant surprise. Pleasant surprise.”

Your current projects, WandaVision and Ted Lasso, may seem very different but do have one thing in common: they both feature characters that originated elsewhere. Wanda is obviously from the Marvel films and Jason you played Ted Lasso in commercials. Why did you feel these characters would work on a TV series?

Olsen: I got really comfortable in the Marvel movies, taking up my piece of the story and my piece of, how does my little arc work in this much larger arc with 30 other characters? And so the idea of all the focus being on me and Paul [Bettany] totally freaked me out. And that it was on television felt weird because these characters are superheroes and maybe they should be seen on big screens and not televisions. But the entire DNA of the show was meant for television. It was written for television. The arc has to be told through television. And from an actor’s point of view, it was something I’d never done. I’ve never done sitcom acting, let alone go through the decades with it.

And I’ve never had more fun on a job before. We got to go to work and just feel like an idiot all the time. And all of us, we’d be like hamming, hamming, hamming, and use each other as these barometers of “are we doing this too much? Is this now just a parody? Is this a joke? At what point are we supposed to dial it back?” And at one point I did, I think, a quadruple take, and that was the first time the director asked me to pull it back and just do a double take. So it was pretty incredible to get to expand on the character and this world, but do it from a totally different perspective. I’m so grateful for that job.

Sudeikis: Have you hosted SNL yet?

Olsen: God no!

Sudeikis: No? Well, I’m not going to agent you and be like, “if they ask, would you ever want to?” But, look, I know you’re funny. It was really fun to watch you do multi-cam sitcom acting. And then the genre thing, it made me be like, “oh, she would crush on SNL”. You’re always going to internalize stuff because you’re, in my opinion, very, very talented and very, very smart. So then even when you externalize things, like a quadruple take, it would be joyful to watch even in the attempt. Watching the show, it didn’t seem at all like an aberration or like you were putting it on. It felt well conceived and well thought out. And it almost made me wonder if the creator was aware of that or was it all just an act of faith on their part.

Olsen: It was a total act of faith. What they did is they took comedy actors who are really funny and gave them the more dramatic stuff. Because they thought that would balance out when we failed. And we’re like, “You guys are very smart for doing this.”

Sudeikis: Now, are you putting that on them or was that articulated to you day one?

Olsen: We talked about it. We were so open about it. We’re like, “this is very clever that you guys put some of the funniest actors in MCU in these dramatic parts.” But SNL, I watch it every Saturday when it’s live. I’m obsessed with SNL and that’s why I would never! It’s like the ocean. I respect the ocean so much and that’s why I don’t need to go in it.

Sudeikis: I don’t know. I think we’ll see. This is going to be like Charles Foster Kane’s declaration of principles. “I would never host SNL.” And then, “And your host, Elizabeth Olsen.”

Olsen: So tell me about Lasso: small to big.

Sudeikis: Me and my buddies, Joe [Kelly] and Brendan [Hunt], did those commercials in 2013, 2014, and we then sat down to talk about it in 2015. And it was kind of like, “okay, is it another set of commercials? Is it a movie?” I knew what the character was and we all grew up with great sports films, by Ron Shelton and Rudy and Hoosiers and things like that. But then also liked Nora Ephron, you know? We wanted to make something that had a little bit of romance. And romance may not be sexual, it’s also a platonic version of romance. And the story just sort of spooled out of us in a way that garnered a pilot episode and then a well-beat-out outline for a season. Because we were kind of modeling it after the British Office where it’d be like six episodes, six episodes, and then maybe an hour and a half special, like a movie type thing. Not wanting to take up too much space and not knowing how long it would go. And so it only could be a TV show, was the way it felt.

And so then it went away for a while because that was in 2015. And then lo and behold, it comes back around when I met Bill Lawrence for this other project. That one didn’t work out, but he was like, “Do you have anything?” I said, “Well, we have this.” And I remember having a whole bunch of stuff in this office, more work than I think he realized. He’s like, “Oh yeah, this is definitely, this is a whole thing. Okay. Wow. You guys have really thought this through.”

Olsen: Did you have a [writers] room or did you already write most of it?

Sudeikis: No, we definitely had a room. It was like I knew the chords, I knew the structure of things. We had a great room of 11 people for the first season. With hiring people, we just had good fortune. I didn’t know it was interesting at the time, but asking people during the interview process who their mentors were, who were the people that encouraged them, who made you think you could do this for a living—you can learn a lot about a person by listening to them talk about their mentors, their heroes.

Olsen: With the jokes, I feel like they’re so quick, but they’re so specific to people who watch sports and who knows sports. Well, not all of them, but a lot of the jokes are. Do you have a list of ones that you want to get in there or are these coming up in the room? Because it gets me as a big sports person.

Sudeikis: It really depends on it. There’s some ideas that I’d had for years and years that are just from old notebooks that I used to carry around when I worked on SNL before you would type things into a phone. And storylines and themes and characters that have just been ruminating in my head based on other ideas for either movies or sketches that didn’t make it. And then a big part of the room is that we have this collective consciousness that isn’t all sports.

And then with specific soccer jokes, we do try to include jokes that we call “two percenters” that only football fans would like. Just as our little tip of the cap because we wouldn’t be here without that group of people digging our shit back in the commercial days.

Your shows were on Disney+ and Apple TV+. Did you have any concerns about them being on streaming services, which were relatively new at the time, and finding an audience?

Sudeikis: It’d probably be more so if it was like Goodyear TV+, if it was some brand that didn’t already rule the world of entertainment and technology.

Olsen: I did a version of that with Facebook. And I didn’t like that experience. I loved my show [Sorry for Your Loss] and I loved everyone that I worked with. But the Facebook relationship was frustrating because of the lack of television experience and how the platform is organized. When we went to season two, we had a meeting that our show called for Facebook to have with us, so that we can give them our notes about their platform and why we think it’s really hard to find our show on their platform and how it’s congested. So I was anxious going into Disney+. But I knew it was Disney. And I think I was more anxious with the Marvel characters being on television than I was about the Disney+ element.

Sudeikis: Golly, I didn’t even consider that. And you’re absolutely right, because Facebook would be closer to Apple. Truth is we didn’t have a choice. We pitched it to a bunch of different places. They were the only ones that would open the door and say, “yeah, come in out of the rain, you can hang out in here. You can do your little show in here.” And so, the trepidation was alleviated by the fact that there was nowhere else open to us.

Olsen: Facebook and Apple I feel like aren’t that similar.

Sudeikis: No, but they hadn’t created content before.

Olsen: Well, Facebook now is [scaling back] scripted content.

Speaking of streaming, both of you have starred in big theatrical movies. Are either of you worried about the theatrical experience, in the way that COVID has changed how movies are being released at this point? We saw how that’s playing out with Scarlett Johansson’s recent lawsuit.

Olsen: I’m worried about a bunch of things. Not worried on Scarlett’s behalf. But I’m worried about small movies getting the opportunity to be seen in theaters. That was already a thing pre-COVID. I like going to the movies and I don’t necessarily want to see only an Oscar contender or a blockbuster. I would like to see art films and art house theaters. And so I do worry about that, and people having to keep these theaters alive. And I don’t know how financially that works for these theaters. I do hope that there’s some sort of solution that the larger companies are coming together to keep, at least in L.A. this is going to happen. But I do think it’s going to be how it kind of used to be when studios owned theaters. And I have a feeling that we might go back to that being the only way to keep them alive with such expensive real estate. But when it comes to actors and their earnings, I mean, that’s just, that’s just all contracts. So it’s either in the contract or it’s not. What about you? Are you worried about Scarlett?

Sudeikis: Of course. How could I not? She’s married to my comedy brother [SNL’s Colin Jost].

Olsen: I think she’s so tough and literally when I read that I was like, “good for you Scarlett.”

Sudeikis: Well, I mean, it is appropriately bad-ass and on brand. I think it’s also married to yes, the COVID of it all and success of the streaming sites. But also just technology. I mean this thing [points at his TV] is as good as any movie theater, and all that stuff is getting cheaper and cheaper. If you’re a family of five and you’re going out there and it’s a whole thing. And yet the communal experience, towards Lizzie’s point is, is one that you can’t replicate in home. You can’t replicate through social media. I think both of our shows have succeeded greatly on their own merit, but it’s certainly written further through people’s love of them socially. Which would have happened back in the day around a water cooler. And while that’s nice, it’s still not the same as sitting next to everybody and getting scared at the same time or cheering at the same time and laughing at the same time.

I do think though, if we just use anecdotally, Kodachrome as an example, more people probably have seen it because it got on Netflix than they would have in the theater. And the more that happens, the better. So it’s like there is that reach that as long as those streaming sites are still paying to make those little movies, they have the opportunity to be seen. And so it is this balance. I just hope that with that still comes creative autonomy, and we don’t lose sight of that.

What about the experience of making these shows will you take on to your next project and the one after that?

Olsen: Well, I definitely had a shake-up to use my full body as an actor. I had to create a character and voices. And just all the technical stuff that I have loved doing my whole life was just shook up a bit. And so I’m now really excited to do more of that and to feel a bit freer in building characters. And so that has really informed the next thing I’m working on now and preparing for. It’s just kind of put me back in my actory body in a really good way.

And hosting SNL.

Olsen: Of course, now I’ll host SNL because stage fright has nothing to do with that. I can do a monologue in front of people and make them laugh.

Sudeikis: Not a prerequisite. Having worked there for 10 years, not a prerequisite. Well, the tacky answer is it’d be tough not being the boss again. And I’m fucking flabbergasted that people have picked up so much what we set down for them. You know what I mean? From colleagues on the writing and acting side to just regular folks back home, people I’ve never even met. It’s thrilling. I have to try to make sense of that for myself. And I think a lot of it has to do with it being something so personal. And so that might be the thing to lean into.

Olsen: It’s interesting you say that because immediately three days after wrapping, I had to go into a film where we’re not in WandaVision land, obviously. I mean, they kind of are a muscle, these Marvel movies. Instead of going back to that routine of it, I tried to do what you’re saying. I was like, “okay, so what can I play with that I haven’t gotten to that’ll at least satisfy something inside me that I want to play with right now?”

Sudeikis: I don’t know when I’ll get to do that again, when I’ll do that next. Because yeah, it’s Lasso—

Olsen: Lasso forever.

Sudeikis: At least for a little bit longer.

Olsen: Is it what you said, three seasons and then a special?

Sudeikis: I mean, the special would have been the third season with the initial thing. Now you sound like you’re my agent or manager.

Olsen: Oh good, that’s what I came here for. That’s what I wanted to do.

Sudeikis: Who sent you? I know the end of this story. I mean, the fact that we have a third season could fucking blow it all and ruin what would people like so much of the first season. We might be in the middle of doing it now in the second season. I don’t know. We’re just doing it the same way we did it last time. So we’ll see. But yeah, that’s a big old, long winded question mark.

Olsen: Or an ellipsis.

Press: Streaming, With Only a Little Trepidation was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

#Elizabeth Olsen #WandaVision #Avengers #Scarlet Witch #Wanda Maximoff #Sorry For Your Loss #Avengers Infinity War #Avengers Age of Ultron #Captain America Civil War #Ingrid Goes West #Godzilla #Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness #Marvel #MCU #Candy Montgomery #Love and Death #Avengers Endgame

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

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Ask Explo--

...you know what, you’re right. Name change effective immediately.

Askplosion #10:

(unrelated to everything by the way but I DEMAND THE ANON WHO MENTIONED “REMARRIED EMPRESS” A WHILE BACK COME FORTH AND ANSWER FOR THEIR CRIMES. IT’S SO GOOD BUT IT’S UNFINISHED AND I’M HOOKED, HOW DARE YOU)

Asks responding to previous posts:

It’s okay! I figured that was what it was but it’s been so loooong.

Ah, wow.

Um, that’s definitely not a part 2; I think that’s more like a four-parter/five-parter or something.

Sorry! No can do!

That’s totally fair!

I think the reason I so quickly agreed with it is like--

I’ve been watching the Inuyasha sequel and it’s not like I don’t think the narrative’s apparent punching bag Moroha (who is fourteen years old) shouldn’t be punished when she does something wrong/sneaky/manipulative, but they punish her as if she’s Miroku (who was eighteen years old).

Basically, I want the punishment to take the age into account, or at least only affect Marinette on a more personal level and not be “Heart Hunter” where they take totally understandable feelings of heartache (remember, it wouldn’t have mattered which miraculous she took because Hawk Moth got the Miracle Box and Fu regardless; even beyond her emotions, I feel like she chose the best option available to her considering which temps she knew the location of) and then punish her for them by memory wiping Fu and taking away all of her temps and giving Hawk Moth the grimoire translation.

Yes!! I really wanted to respond to this one, thank you! (It’s this one and then there was another one talking about Luka and Adrien, then talked to me about how I refer to Luka as “soft” but not in a bad way; I unfortunately don’t remember the whole thing.)

Ahaha, and yeah, I feel you. Anti-salters are a very strange conundrum I still haven’t figured out; like, I get not liking salt, but...

I mean, when I don’t like certain content, I just blacklist it. If I end up seeing it anyway due to cross-tagging or a lack of tagging, then I just blacklist the person themself. You won’t see me going after people for that very reason; I only see what people send/ask me if it’s content I don’t like.

I’m glad you’ve found some peace in this blog! Hopefully it continues to be that way for you in the future!

(and yay, a fellow INTJ!!)

New Asks:

There are female writers? ;P I just assumed they were all locked in a closet until the male ones were like, “okay, pretend to help us here, we need one female writer to claim girl power.”

As for Ladybug all like, “Cute, isn’t she?” I think it was rhetorical (she could also be messing with him but “Glaciator” tells us that she didn’t know he crushed on her so who knows). The writers do this thing where Marinette is all panic-y and occasionally self-conscious as herself, but then as Ladybug, she suddenly gets a bit of an ego. I think it’s meant to be there in order to make Chat Noir look less... idk, “obnoxious” when he starts boosting his own ego; trying to balance the two by giving them both big heads, so to speak.

Honestly, I feel like Adrien needs less screen time. :|

Even when he’s not on-screen, characters are usually talking about him, or you see his face in Marinette’s room/somewhere in Paris. I’m become so jaded by the guy that I don’t even think it’d matter if they remade the series and gave it a “totally good and interesting Adrien.” That’s how badly the show has made him out for me; “Adrien Agreste” the character is just... sigh, I’m so done with him.

And yeah, this whole idea about, “Marinette is [x], we need more AAAAAADRIEN!” comes off really bad, lol, especially when Adrien has very little going for him.

(this ask ends off like there should be a part 2 but there isn’t one in my inbox, so sorry if there’s meant to be something else!)

The exact lyrics according to the wiki:

My wish for a cat who's in love, with our own Ladybug. Is that he'll get what he's always wanted! She doesn't know she loves him, only sees Adrien, But Christmas miracles always happen!

Yeah, especially nowadays, those lines bothers me. Not only does it imply “true selves,” but that it’s Chat who should be getting what he always wanted and Ladybug is the one with a problem.

Like, excuse me?

Probably Stormy Weather, even in the first episode. Ladybug and Chat Noir couldn’t even touch her until they arrived on top of the TV station.

+ With all those effects and shots, it made it feel more action-y than typical episodes.

Marinette, Aurore, Luka, Anarka, Jagged...

basically any name that I haven’t really heard before (”Luka” makes me think of Vocaloid but the Luka there was female), or a name that relates a lot to the character (like “Aurore” for “aurora” since she loves weather things).

dfjbghfkdgfdgnjfdg this anon really like, “I NEED ANSWERS!!!”

It’s as if these characters hit 18 or something and just grow overnight, I swear. I’m hypothetically fine with some more variety in character height (it’s not like the show tries to be realistic, after all), but maybe don’t give us official heights if they’re gonna be this weird/inaccurate.

Especially when they change it just for the sake of a shot anyway. If you watch “Simon Says” when Ladybug and Adrien stand next to each other while looking at the picture of Adrien’s mother, the very next close-up has an obvious difference in their heights from what you just saw.

They’re 3D models!!! This shouldn’t happen!

I... honestly never thought of the “less threatening” thing! Dang!

And yeah, Marinette isn’t helpless or incompetent, but because of the Adrien crush, it makes her that way at times since she’s always falling on him and--

...ugh, actually, yeah, don’t wanna think about those implications. Hard pass.

Gross.

I’m not familiar with that one, though Astruc deletes his tweets all the time (there was one tweet where he confirmed that Luka was poor and it only exists in screenshots now because it didn’t get archived and he deleted it almost like he realized that he was pointing out the blatant classism in the show, oops).

Yeah though, I haven’t seen anything like what you’re describing. Sorry!

It’s okay! Sorry for having you clarify but him choosing and Marinette deciding to never give it back are very different things.

I don’t recall Chat Noir having much purpose in the final fight (in terms of both contributing and actual fighting; I know Cataclysm broke the object to release the akuma but was it needed?) so Marinette might either go cat-less or get a temp. Plagg could also be helpful in his own right because he’s small and blends in with the night, so he could hypothetically sneak up on the bad guy.

Afterwards, there’d need to be a new cat, but Adrien would also have to reconsider his actions and really think about what happened. I could also see Plagg going to Adrien’s house, half to apologize for giving the idea to Adrien that Adrien leave without telling Ladybug, but also half to call him out for giving up without consulting anyone. Adrien is a lot of conflicting things (see Adrien’s passivity compared to Chat Noir’s recklessness) so he’d have to find a middle ground within himself.

Marinette might carry Plagg around in her purse for a while and let Plagg have a say in who he goes to. Plagg might grieve for a bit over not having Adrien around (even if Adrien was flawed, Plagg didn’t ask for any of this so Marinette is doing her best here).

O-oh.

That’s always the rough patch with “endgame ships.” Once it’s obvious to the audience that they’re endgame, no more effort needs to be put into them.

The other thing too is how Kagami, for example, is friends with Marinette. Even once Adrimi sinks, she’ll presumably stay friends with her. Luka, meanwhile, is Juleka’s brother.

They have lives outside of their love interests. Adrien is so into Ladybug that he doesn’t have that; I mean, Nino is Adrien’s best friend like once in a blue moon.

The entire class is just watching an episode and then calling on raised hands to answer what was wrong with what they just watched.

“Everything?”

“I mean, yes, but I’m sorry, you have to be more specific to get credit.”

I think Aeon herself is fine. It’s mostly just her transformed and that transformed name that I have a problem with (she doesn’t even look uncanny so I don’t get it). I heard there was something wrong with the name “Aeon” but searching the name doesn’t give me anything I would qualify as such so I have no idea. I just wish she was given a little less “I’m programmed to--” (makes her seem less sentient) and more “[anything that doesn’t have to do with pushing the love square]” because I feel like they might’ve done the latter to make her more “likable”? I think fans of anything usually like the “matchmaker” character provided it’s for a ship they like. Also strange that they make her a robot but Max and Markov don’t extensively interact with her, but that’s a nitpick and not a criticism of her character.

...I’m rambling, my bad lol.

(Ohhh, she was supposed to be a mummy? Like, foreshadowing her “dying”?? That went right over my head but I guess that’d be where the name Uncanny Valley came from? No clue.)

Best case scenario is probably the middle or the end of Season 4.

And yeah, it really doesn’t matter to me what they do with the love square. Marinette had gone through too much suffering and the show goes out of its way to show how much stress Marinette is being put under (and also keeping Luka away during episodes like “Gamer 2.0″ even when it makes sense for them to be there, as if trying to make sure Marinette doesn’t have enough moments with him to forget Adrien).

Like, ah, yes, I totally believe that Marinette is in a position where she can make reasonable decisions about her love life while all circles of her life are on fire.

If the Sonic movie of all things can have an interracial couple, there’s no reason why this show can’t, just saying.

And, even with Marinette, she’s white-passing (according to what basically everyone says, I’m really awful about recognizing race so this isn’t my field; I wasn’t aware that Ondine was Asian, for example).

Does Nadja count? Manon’s dark-skinned (I’m still not over the fact that all the kids in this show are dark-skinned; it’s not like it’s a problem from a representation standpoint - though all the kids are also all generically bratty/whiny so there’s that - but the percentages in this show are weird) while Nadja is really light-skinned, meaning either a dark-skinned husband or Manon is adopted.

Though I guess the problem then is that we don’t know, so there’s no established couple there.

Non-Miraculous Asks:

w-who gave you the right to say such things????

Uhhhh, that might be too broad of a question, I’m sorry!

I know this isn’t satisfactory, but I will say that my favorite genre is Fantasy/Romance (it’s why I adore Red Shoes so much; by the way, an anon asked for my opinion on that a while back and I will get to it! I’d need to watch it again to get screenshots) and my least favorite is probably Tragedy/Horror.

I don’t think I’ve watched enough to really be able to say? I’ve kind of been all over but I’ve never fully gone through any of them outside of Miraculous. I’ve seen bits of Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Star VS the Forces of Evil (don’t know if that counts), and I meant to watch Yuki Yuna is a Hero but never got around to it. I saw the entirety of Puella Magi Madoka Magica but you guys know how I feel about that one.

Maybe Cardcaptor Sakura by default then? It was definitely not perfect but I liked some of the character dynamics (I also have a clipcut of it - basically where I go through a series/movie and cut out parts I don’t like so it’s only good stuff - so I’m cheating a little) and the male love interest was a tsundere type that I actually ended up liking, which is really rare.

!!! That sounds sweet~ I know Sailor Moon is popular so I’ll definitely take your word for it on that one.

I would also accept a “reincarnated”/”destined lovers” trope if maybe the ship themselves are the one who set it up in the first place. I have a Lukanette AU, for example, where they basically got together and then prayed to the shrine of the renewal god that they’d “always be together,” which ended up allowing them to reincarnate over and over (as if they set up their own soulmate AU ;P) and continuously find each other.

Though I guess that’s not technically a “meant to be trope,” but still, it’s a form of it but where it was totally consensual on both sides.

Also, I finally thought of a show that ended with the ship I wanted: Gargoyles. I didn’t see the entire series, mind you, but I saw most of it and Goliath and Elisa were just... quality, I adored them.

+ With Beauty and the Beast being my favorite Disney movie, they fit right in with my tastes.

I forget that AangToph (I think the “official” name for the ship is Taang, but don’t quote me on that) exists sometimes, maybe because I’ve never shipped Aang with anyone; I’ve got no problems with the ship though.

Ugh, and this is what I mean when I talk about people who set up these reasons behind people shipping something based on what they saw a few people do. It’s like, “you only ship Adrimi/Lukanette to spite Adrienette!!”

Meanwhile, me having shipped all three at one point and then dropped off the love square.

Also, me shipping Zutara has nothing to do with it being dark/edgy because I’ve never seen it that way (intriguing, sure but dark and edgy? lol) and also avoid dark/edgy ships like the plague.

I still laugh at people who are like, “you can’t ship it because it’s not endgaaaaame!” as if shows can dictate how and why I enjoy something. Like sure, if you want to let a show/movie spoonfeed you how you’re supposed to feel, then by all means, go ahead.

I suppose people may be theoretically happier that way, but it doesn’t make for an analytic mind.

I legitimately thought that “AssClass” must’ve been the actual name for something until it registered with me what it actually meant.

And eh, I guess it depends on the comparison and how accurate the comparison actually is? Like, comparing Puella Magic Madoka Magica to Miraculous... they’re not really close at all, but comparing... idk, Bunnyx to Homura or the concept behind “backfiring wishes”... maybe?

(note that the rest of this post is more Puella Magi Madoka Magica salt so you can stop reading here if you’re not interested in that; I’m not sure if this is all the same anon but I don’t mind letting people vent so I let them go off~)

why can’t we just have nice things

I agree, and I give a little eyeroll every time it’s like, “oh, this person had [miraculous]”

+ even just in general, I feel weird about any show that mentions/implies that real world famous people are [x] or [y] in their show. It breaks my immersion; real world locations are one thing but when it’s specific people (unless they’re made up characters like Santa Claus) or games just--break me.

I also don’t know what to think when there aren’t magical boys but you have these magical girls in this frilly outfits/skirts. The demographic is girls so I presume the reason must be like, “you can look pretty and still beat people up” (;P) but having so many magical girl shows without a hint of a magical boy makes me suspicious that it’s for fanservice. Sailor Moon has Tuxedo Mask but I also don’t know what that guy did outside of the meme of him doing nothing so I’ve got no clue.

(edit: I should correct myself that I’m not talking about Sailor Moon specifically; I don’t know magical girls that well, though I do know there are ones clearly intended for fanservice (you could say that for anything, to be fair, but still). It’s just that I see things like super short skirts or very “questionable” shots and I’m just like, “hm”)

Hmmm, good question. I feel like there has to be a lot but I’m also the type who doesn’t watch a lot of TV lol. I’m just familiar with cliches and tropes and such.

The reason I try not to use “ism”s of any kind is mostly because it’s too broad. Like, you know how the English language only has one way of saying, “I love you,” but other languages like Spanish have multiple?

It’s like that, and sometimes I think it’s too easy to throw those words out there. A “small” (possibly completely unintentional/misunderstood) offense is sexism, and then a “large” offense is called the exact same thing. I’d rather go into why something is sexist than just call it that, y’know? The only exception I make is “classism” because I feel like that’s not as... I dunno, divisive?

Anyway, for that same reason, I can’t answer firmly that, “Madoka Magica is sexist.” I will however say that it makes me uncomfortable with how the show makes out the girls being emotional because they’re young and female and then proceeds to make their life a living hell before they’re old enough to properly answer to it (I know that’s the point but that kind of makes it worse?). It doesn’t help with how all the girls have different personalities, so it’s not like you have only “crybaby girls” who are being taken advantage of; it’s basically like... all girls.

Not helped is the fact that their soul gem not only deteriorates naturally, but it can also do so faster if the girl falls into despair, which then turns them into a monster (and I know it’s kind of like an akuma thing, but the fact that it’s only girls is... I dunno, it comes off wrong?). It seems cheap that the soul gem deteriorates no matter what so it constantly needs fed even if the girl is consistently happy.

I would probably opt for the show being centered more around Kyubey being new to this or something - like, magical girls are a new thing - and then have Kyubey being surprised because they presumed that the soul gem would deteriorate naturally since “emotions are powerful but destructive to the person having them,” but then all the girls team up and help each other work out their problems. Maybe the reason magical girls are usually alone isn’t even because of the grief seed (I think that’s what it’s called?) thing not being able to be shared, but because Kyubey intentionally separates magical girls so they can’t do what the main group is doing, but Madoka is so into the idea that, “We shouldn’t have to be alone,” and so she’s constantly pulling all the girls together, which keeps them healthy.

Maybe Homura’s backstory could be that Madoka originally was more sheepish and more afraid to put herself out there, especially since she was a magical girl (who are encouraged to go it alone), which is why their soul gems were both deteriorating; they were friends but kept more of a distance, or maybe they were a team but that’s all they were. Then Madoka gives Homura the last grief seed to save her and that’s what inspires Homura and makes her see Madoka as something more than a teammate, which is why Homura actively tries to save Madoka specifically (which then encourages Madoka to want to keep everyone together as friends).

In the case that Kyubey doesn’t separate them out of concern of fRiEnDsHiP, but for another reason altogether, and then it’s ultimately their own downfall when they allow the girls to hang out and realize that it’s doing a lot of good for them.

“cute and innocent”

That was exactly it. It’s on Kyubey’s trivia section on the Puella Magi Madoka Magica Wiki.

Before the anime's first dark plot twist aired, head writer Gen Urobuchi said on his Twitter account that the "Kyu" in Kyubey's name comes from the English word "cute". This was a lie meant to further mislead fans into thinking that Madoka Magica is an innocent happy show. In a later episode, it was revealed that "Kyubey" is, in fact, short for "incubator".

In my personal opinion, a spoiled plot can’t be “ruined” if it’s a good plot. If you told me that Kagome was trapped in the Modern era for three years and then decided to stay with Inuyasha at the end of Inuyasha, it wouldn’t/shouldn’t decrease the value when I finally see it for myself because it’s good. That’s not to say that everything should just be spoiled right out of the gate, but it’s saying that maybe your plot isn’t good if you have to rely on shock value to make it work??

I FEEL THAT “ASSIGNING IT TO THE WHOLE GENDER” THING SO BAD. It just adds to my “the girls all have varying personalities so it’s not like Kyubey’s only after emotional crybabies or anything” salt.

I have no idea about any of the stuff about the writers so I can’t confirm or deny them. I will very much agree on the target audience thing though, especially with the whole “keeping the dark plot a secret” because really? Who is this for then? Like, the first two and a half episodes are for one demographic and then the others are--???

I dunno. Me personally, I just like feel good stories. I do like some good conflict and drama (for context, Remarried Empress is basically a webtoon that gives you things to feel salty about and then makes its own salt fic as its plot, allowing for endless streams of feels and catharsis, so I’m definitely not against drama), but there are other times where I just want to feel good watching something.

I feel like the show expects the characters to be selfless/perfect and then punishes them even though it’s their writing that’s causing them to act out. I can’t really talking about “out-of-character” but sometimes it’s just obvious where “we did this because we needed a plot/conflict.”

Like, hello? We don’t need the main characters screwing up; why can’t we just have some feel good thing where they take the day for themselves (seriously, imagine a Miraculous episode where Chat Noir actually tells Ladybug to take a couple days for herself, like maybe someone else gets the earrings for a few days as a temp while Marinette gets to breathe; IMAGINE IT). Not everything needs to be high-stakes to be interesting and you need those calmer moments so that the action-packed ones feel more intense.

SAYAKA DESERVES BETTER.

I feel like the magical girl genre as a whole can be way more complex than it’s made out to be. I think people hear the word “magical girl” and think “cute girls in short skirts talk about girl problems and fight evil with the power of friendship and accessories.”

Ugh, just the mention of Rebellion makes me sigh internally.

Congrats on working on your own magical girl story! I hope it goes well for you!

I know it’s not technically a magical girl show, but there was also Totally Spies that Astruc worked on to some degree (I think there was some characters who were based on/a loose reference to the mains from that show but I don’t remember exactly).

The thing about the female characters suffering is that they could make for good lessons on positively directing one’s emotions (like Usagi from Sailor Moon, for example, maybe having a problem with taking her anger out on her friends, but learns that she can save that rage for the bad guys; “Gamer 2.0″ from Miraculous could’ve done that, honestly, by having Ladybug absolutely WRECK all of her gaming opponents in “violent” (cartoon violence obviously) fashion). It’s just a shame that it’s not taken advantage of.

Sayaka??? Selfish???????

*does not compute*

(Also, I wasn’t tired of them, don’t worry! It was a little overwhelming in my inbox but it’s me who’s allowing all the asks to flow in so the blame isn’t on you lol.)

I’m not sure where this obsession came from with, “you have to be selfless and you’re not allowed to use your powers for yourself.” It’s like the world’s going to end if a character leaves to go Self-Care or something. I think what happened is that shows got this idea that promoting only the giving of others is great and it’s not important to take time for yourself (even with “Gamer 2.0,” it was still Marinette playing games with everyone else, and they treated her dedication and seriousness like a bad thing when she literally did not have time to waste and they didn’t give a reason why it was good for her to take a break, only that she should).

This usually leads to the “demonization” of characters who sport a lot of self-confidence or any sort of ego. It works on both sides; Marinette is a punching bag because of her anxiety and occasional lack of confidence, but if she had an ego as Ladybug, there are parts of the fandom who deem her “obnoxious” (i.e: “Reflekdoll”). There’s a delicate balance between “be confident” and “be humble” and it’s a tightrope act.

#((Yes! This strategy works for not losing asks.))#((In other news--))#((I gotta test out this new microphone so I wanna do a ''Voiced Askplosion'' where I record my answers instead of writing them))#((Anyone who sends me a 🎤 alongside their asks will get a voiced response next time!))#((I probably can't answer everything but you know how it is~))#(((i swear that someone is going to do it just to see if they can get me to swear when I read out their asks)))#((or... like--))#((''ok i don't actually have a question''))#((''but plz say the words 'adrien and marinette are meant to be' because i want to hear how much u struggle to say it''))#category: salt #other: non ml talk #category: ramble #character: Marinette Dupain Cheng #category: fandom #episode: Evillustrator #character: Chat Noir #character: Ladybug #character: Adrien Agreste #character: Stormy Weather #category: me myself and i #category: staff #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Marinette Dupain Cheng #character: Aeon #character: Uncanny Valley #relationship: love square #MC's Renders #render: persona

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felicia-cat-hardy · 3 years

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Max Minghella On 'The Handmaid's Tale,' His Dad, Romance, & 'Spiral'

“You okay, sweetheart?” he asks — the dog, not me — tenderly.

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