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valhallanrose · 4 years ago

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The Red Plague

The art above was created by Nix Hydra, and can be found in the Minor Arcana Art Book (or where I got it - off the fandom wiki page, because who’s going to stop me)

Much of Zelda’s story in the non-apprentice timeline delves into the plague before, during, and in the aftermath of Vesuvia, and I wanted to compile my lore and headcanons for it in one place before I delve into her story fully. I will incorporate as much canon as possible, but given that that isn’t a large amount of info, a lot of this is based off research and personal worldbuilding.

CWs for discussions of disease, death, body horror, I guess spoilers but I’m surprised if it is for anyone considering how the info is everywhere in game in all routes. This is also, again, personal headcanon and I don’t expect it to fall in line with everyone’s thoughts on the plague.

The Timeline

I’m going to go with a comprehensive timeline first, and this part is all based on canon information. I’ll try and provide as many sources as I can as well, but some of this is pulled from multiple books and I might forget exactly where something came from.

As we learn in the Lucio tale, Dawn of the Grub, Lucio strikes up a deal with the wyrm of pestilence (Vlastomil) - his parents’ hearts in exchange for a disease that will allow Lucio to kill them both. The Lucio brought the disease back to the tribe, which weakened his father enough for Lucio to kill him. His mother Morga, however, fights off the disease, referring to it as a ‘summer cold’, and Lucio flees the tribe and joins a traveling mercenary band which allows the plague to spread.

I don’t have a particular reason why Morga would have survived the plague. Her sprites in the game never show any sign of the plague that are generally acknowledged - no red sclera, no veins, no signs of weakness, so on and so forth. The best theory I can posit is that Morga either genuinely had a summer cold, or that the plague only took hold in Lutz rather than them both. Either way, unsatisfying, but we’re going to call Morga the exception and not the rule.

Because Lucio did not fulfill his end of the bargain with Vlastomil, the plague continued to spread, following Lucio as he traveled the continent. This is also the point where the beetles appear - more on them later.

The implication in the game is that the disease reached other countries and areas, but the next canon mention of the Red Plague’s spread occurs in Portia’s route, book X - Wheel of Fortune. A map is discussed where dates, places, and sightings of the plague are noted by Julian in his study of the plague - the Painted Fields, Blue Mountain Ridge, and Annyala Gate are all names that arise.

Nasmira recognizes the name of Annyala Gate and points out that Nazali was at that battle, in which a band of mercenaries was sighted - and their leader needed an arm amputated, which is confirmed to be Lucio. Nadia states that Lucio came to Vesuvia not long after that battle, and the next time the Plague was seen was in Vesuvia.

It is never seen again outside Vesuvia, and this brings us to the three years before the game, where Lucio’s ‘death’ heralds the end of the plague, and it is never seen actively again in the Arcana world.

The headcanons I have are to help establish a solid timeline. Dawn of the Grub tells us the deal is made on Lucio’s 18th birthday, and I personally believe that Lucio’s death occurred on his 40th birthday, giving us about 22 years of time for us to work with for the spread of the plague.

Some more headcanons mixed with canon:

Lucio is newly titled Count in the tale Travel at Night. Based on personal age headcanons, this tale probably occurs at minimum 17 to 18 years pre-canon, putting Asra at (at most) 10/11, Muriel at 14/15, and Lucio at a startling 22/23. It could occur later, as art style can influence perspective on age, but Muriel and Asra really don’t feel like they could be much older than that.

During his mercenary days (sometime between the ages of 18 and 22/23) Lucio was contracted by the former Count of Vesuvia, Count Spada. This battle occurs at Annyala, mentioned above, and is the battle where Lucio

At a certain point, Lucio was contracted by the Count of Vesuvia at the time, Count Spada, for a battle where he "made a name for himself." Story implications indicate that this was the battle during which he lost his left arm. It was amputated by Julian to prevent his death from blood loss. After he won the battle for Count Spada, he became friends with the Count and privy to secrets about Vesuvia and the Palace. Spada would eventually name Lucio his heir, and upon his death, Lucio earned rulership of Vesuvia.

The plague eventually appears and ravages Vesuvia’s population

Plague patients are sent to the Lazaret away from the city and cremated, then scattered on the beach.

Lucio contracts the plague and defies the average lifespan of those who contracted it by lasting a few months rather than 3-10 days.

Lucio dies on his birthday, not of the plague but as a result of the ritual he was attempting to gain a new body.

I tried to map most of that out here, and wow, what a sad little diagram. Nix Hydra, y’all are cowards for not going hard on this. I, however, am not, and I am about to go more apeshit than I already have.

The Spread

Cracking my knuckles on the history degree, baby, I’m borrowing some real life inspiration from across multiple time periods to tie all this together.

I personally think the whole “Oh, the plague arrives wherever Lucio goes and disappears when he leaves” thing is a copout, and we’re drop kicking that out a window.

I do believe, as canon states, that the plague follows Lucio. It spreads obviously to regions he visits, but I don’t think it just disappears when he leaves. I really, really want to believe someone would have been smart enough to see the connection if the plague suddenly appeared and was later yoinked out of existence as soon as Lucio left town every single time it cropped up somewhere way sooner than it was noticed in canon.

I don’t think the plague was as isolated as the game implies, and when it was in Vesuvia, it was probably also elsewhere. The epicenter was Lucio, of course, so Vesuvia faced the worst of it, but I think there would have been pockets with much smaller numbers in other parts of the world.

Earlier I mentioned a few locations cited in Portia’s route as to where the plague had been before Vesuvia - the Painted Fields, Blue Mountain Ridge, and Annyala Gate. I think once these areas were hit with the plague, it would have continued to spread even after Lucio left. Across multiple routes, it’s made clear that the only ‘cure’ to the plague is Lucio’s death, which is why Julian had intended to kill Lucio after making his deal with the Hanged Man. The lack of Lucio’s presence would have kept the plague from continuing to escalate, but in these regions, it probably would have spread when the region’s people attempted to relocate, or ceased when the population died out.

Annyala Gate, or the Great Gate, is a location I can dive a little deeper into. It’s the last location the plague was sighted before Vesuvia, and because it ties into my OC Zelda’s storyline, I have many a thought.

Lucio is in Annyala sometime between year 1 and year 4/5, though I believe it’s on the later end of that spectrum, so let’s say year 4 to clearly predate his title as heir to Vesuvia. For reference, here is a map of the Great Gate as provided by the art book:

Jeebus. Terrible photo quality. Ah, well, on we go.

The Great Gate is situated between the Sea of Persephia (left) and the Salty Sea (right), and as the map currently stands, is the only point on land that gives access to the southern part of the world map. In this area in particular, I feel like a number of factors would have kept the plague alive long after Lucio left.

Narrowest point on the world map for transport of goods between ports and seas, which would be a more efficient route than traveling around the continent to reach the same point

As previously stated, this is the only known access point to the south, and travelers heading through this area could possibly be carriers of the plague or catch the plague from the area

The only way for the plague to stop would be with the death of Lucio, so once it was inflicted upon this area, it continued to spread and infect the population in adjoining areas

The game repeatedly has emphasized the proximity of the Red Beetles (known harbingers of the plague) to water, such as the Nopali village in Asra’s route and the red stains attributed to them in Julian’s route, and we receive further confirmation in Portia’s route that the water supplies are contaminated during the period of the disease

Fun bit of trivia from Nadia’s route - in the Strength book, Nadia mentions that she remembers the beetles, and that once they had been used as part of a pigment used to dye fabric crimson, which was all the rage in Vesuvia. Should this trend have continued, people wearing fabrics dyed with this beetle pigment most likely would become infected, and thus, the cycle continued.

I will also point out here that pigments have been used in makeup across history, and I’m sure applying some beetle-laden makeup would have really fucked some people up. Eyeshadows, blushes, lipsticks...contact with any of these areas, particularly the eyes and mouth, indicate a possibility of infection.

This does, however, leave a fifteen year (ish) period where the plague would have been active in this region until Lucio’s death. Historically, diseases can last such broad swathes of time. For the sake of displaying precedent, I will point out some examples here:

The Black Death, lasting 1346-1353

The third cholera pandemic, lasting 1846-1860

The third plague pandemic, a major bubonic plague like the Black Death, lasting 1855-1960

The HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has been ongoing since 1981 in the US

However, some of the most devastating plagues have lasted only a few years, which I will touch on later when I discuss Vesuvia’s case of the plague. All of the diseases listed above are additionally categorized with death tolls over a million people.

(On a side note, if you would like to contribute to programs searching for a cure for HIV/AIDS, I will suggest donating to organizations like amfAR, the Black AIDS Institute, or the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, all of which are linked accordingly and deserve your support if you are capable of making a contribution)

Remaining question: if the last place the plague was seen was in Annyala, more than fifteen years before it was seen in Vesuvia, what the fuck happened during that time beforehand?

Vesuvia - Before the Plague

Here’s the thing. The timeline given by the devs is a fucking mess. So, what I’m going to propose here is almost entirely theory, and I ask that you keep that in mind.

Lucio ascends to the title of Count by the time he’s about 22 or 23. Spada dies, presumably, and there’s no noticeable mention of his death via plague or the establishment of the court.

For some fascinating lore on how the government in Vesuvia works, I’m going to point you to this post by @sunrisenfool, who has one of the biggest brains and is gracious enough to allow me to reference their work a little for this one.

I don’t think the court as we know it existed when Lucio became Count. I agree with sunrisenfool here that Valdemar has been the Palace’s cockroach for a while - which was actually also confirmed in the Star book of Portia’s route, in which we see Count Prospero (founder of Vesuvia) summon Valdemar and ask for their aid in creating a city that will never die. The remaining courtiers would be gradually established as time continued on, all demons who struck bargains with the Devil in one form or another placed into positions of power alongside Lucio. We also cannot forget Valerius, who made his own deal with the Devil, and played his own role in this scenario.

We know that Lucio was also a pawn, later on, in the Devil’s agenda to bridge the gap between the main world and the Arcane realms. The ritual discussed in Portia’s Star book is described as a vessel to do just that -

“...every 777 years, the physical and magical world will collide...the laws of magic will no longer be immutable, and the world will bend to our will...So long as the Countship and canals remain whole, so shall the power to reshape the world. You need only await the conjunction. Perform the ritual and lead the city to glory heretofore unknown. I, Count Prospero, first of my line, declare the founding of Vesuvia. The city eternal. My legacy.” - Count Prospero

It’s confirmed after this scene that the ritual, using the canals as a conduit, opened a ‘door’ so to speak to the Arcane realms. It’s also said there is a three year window to perform this ritual, and that at the time of game canon, we are at the end of that three year window.

So. Borderline conspiracy time.

Circling back to the lovely sunrisenfool’s work, I’m going to pull a particular excerpt here:

...the Consul of Vesuvia is the second most important/powerful political figure in Vesuvia, directly after the Count/ess. Aside of the political and civic duties I have already explained, the Consul acts as a “protector” of Vesuvia, albeit not in a paternalistic politically-conservative way (which is how paternalistic policies would be understood in our world). Instead, the Consul is meant to rule the City if the Count is absent or incapacitated, therefore being the subsidiary depositary of the secret of the foundation of Vesuvia, and the importance of it’s Canals.

Lucio makes it pretty clear he doesn’t know much of anything about the ritual during Portia’s Star book, but he was told about it by Spada before his death as it was a secret kept close to the court. That gave him something of leverage, even if he wasn’t aware of it,

My thought as to why the plague did not spread in Vesuvia sooner is that Lucio had knowledge of this ritual, however minimal, and the Devil needed him alive to eventually use the ritual for himself. So, as Vlastomil (the wyrm of pestilence who granted this curse) was established in Vesuvia as Praetor, the plague was kept at bay for the time being while the city came under the full control of the Devil’s demons.

I cannot imagine the only person who knows about the ritual is the Count, because that feels like a woefully flawed plan, so I do believe the Consul would have also been privy to such a secret in case the Count was in a position they could not share it due to absence or incapacitation. Basically, a rehash of sunrisenfool’s point, but I digress.

As the window drew nearer for the completion of the ritual and it became clearer that Lucio knew next to nothing about the ritual and how it worked, the Devil decided to take a different approach. The plague was unleashed once again by Vlastomil, with the goal that Lucio become infected and eventually die, and that Valerius take over the Countship. Lucio no longer was useful to the Devil, and should he be removed from power, someone like Valerius - who knew the purpose of the ritual, who was under the Devil’s bargain by this point - would be an ideal candidate to finish the task at hand. Leverage, it works wonders.

I don’t think the ritual performed to gain a new body could have been mere chance. I think Lucio knew more than he let on about the canals and the magic in Vesuvia from Spada. Yes, I know the first three were written before Portia, but come on, the timing is insane. He’s no magician, and performing something that complex and magically charged right at the beginning of the three year window when the ritual is supposed to be performed feels far from coincidental. Fight me.

But, on to what happens in Vesuvia once the plague is free to spread again.

Vesuvia - During the Plague

The first sighting of the plague is in year 20, and I personally believe the plague lasted about two years or 24 months. The period is divided into three ‘waves’ - the first six months, the year leading up to Lucio’s death, and the six months following Lucio’s death.

The First Wave

The first wave begins when the first known case of the Red Plague is confirmed, and in this period, the spread is rather slow.

Here is the introduction of the Lazaret, which I do believe is a building that existed before the plague - this is personal thoughts, but the odds of this being the first major disease Vesuvia experienced feel pretty slim, and I do think this was a previously established quarantine that was renovated/expanded for the Red Plague outbreak. In an effort to get ahead of the disease, the space was designated a quarantine, largely staffed by volunteers when the palace seemed to not acknowledge the growing situation. It would slowly begin to increase until the plague boomed at the six month mark, heralding the beginning of the second wave.

The Second Wave

This is the ‘bad period’ of the plague. I say that loosely, because it’s all bad, but I digress.

I headcanon that the apprentice dies in the beginning of the second wave, when spread of the red plague rapidly begins to increase and the call goes out for researchers to search for a cure. We know how that story goes, so moving on to the details of this wave.

There were two groups at this point in the plague - those assigned to research, working out of Valdemar’s dungeon/lab/carnival of horrors studying the plague, and those assigned to the Lazaret, caring for the sick and dying and maintaining the facility.

I’m going to focus more on the Lazaret for this, as the research aspect is pretty well covered throughout Julian’s route and conversations with him in other routes, and this post is already getting long.

The Lazaret was home to the dying, where they would be cared for in their final days and eventually cremated. My thought is that the remains of the patients were carefully catalogued in the beginning, returned to families willing to claim them, and those left unclaimed were scattered on the beach at the Lazaret. Later on, as more and more people died, less remains were claimed, leading to the black beaches that still mark the shores of the Lazaret in canon. Often the staff here were a mix of healers, doctors, apothecaries, anyone willing to try anything to ease the pain of such a disease.

The staff at the Lazaret began wearing layered masks - the plague mask with its herb-stuffed beak, another facial covering beneath for an added layer of protection, and a head covering that sealed the gaps between the mask and the face. They were also required to wear gloves, tight-fitted sleeves tucked inside, and their pants tucked into their boots to reduce the risk of infection through contact. Their days would start in locker rooms on one end of the facility, removed from the patients, and suit up for the day while leaving belongings in the lockers. The end of the shift consisted of showers and disposal of garments to be sterilized, they’d return home in the clothes they came in, and by the time they returned a new uniform would be waiting for them.

Lucio caught the plague during this period, most likely halfway through. He lasted several months, but the exact length is unknown, aside from he ‘lasted longer than most victims of the plague’ who died between 3-10 days.

I don’t think the averages are entirely accurate. There were most likely some who were asymptomatic until the plague was in very late stages, or those who presented symptoms very early on and survived for long stretches of time. All would die bearing the red sclera, veins, and other symptoms depicted above. Basically, this disease is claimed to be unpredictable, and I think that would also stretch to the duration at which each patient had it. Those who were physically frail likely would have died sooner than those who had been in oprtimal health before the plague, making the times vary rather drastically. I’d suggest perhaps a month at the longest, a few days at the shortest.

Policy wise - during this period, the ports would have closed, and Vesuvia would have shut down. Nobody in, nobody out, not without rigorous inspection and quarantine before exiting to the city to avoid further spread. Often the only people allowed into the city were doctors from other regions affected by the plague called to help research, but during this year, I would estimate Vesuvia lost easily 30% of its population to the Red Plague.

The Third Wave

This wave is the period that occurs after Lucio’s death at the Masquerade, three years pregame. I’ll touch a tiny bit more more on this in the next section, but this is where we see the gradual end of the spread of the plague, and the last cases shown in Vesuvia. It’s the end of the plague period, and I give this about six months for the official ‘all clear’ to have been given by those tracking case counts.

The Lazaret is eventually decommissioned and now sits abandoned, a shadow on the horizon to remind those who survived what had been lost. The city mourned, the gates slowly opened, and gradually, we reach the point of comparative normalcy we see in the game set three years later.

Vesuvia - The Aftermath

Lucio’s death would, ultimately, mean the end of the plague. Rather than immediately disappearing and all those suffering from it be cured, however, I would be inclined to say that the spread came to a halt.

The last wave of the plague, in the six months after Lucio’s death, would have been a decrease in new cases until there were no new ones being reported, and the last of the patients who had been infected finally passed.

The final duties of the doctors at the Lazaret, after all remains are cremated, would have been the incineration of all materials that could not be sterilized. Linens, spare uniforms, unclaimed personal affects, so on and so forth until the time came to return home. I do not remember the exact location, but I am fairly confident of a mention of the MC remembering barrels burning doctor’s uniforms and masks in the days after the end of the plague. It was, for a lack of better words, a purge - an attempt to erase the last physical memories of what the city had endured.

Events like this are traumatic for all involved. They are painful wounds, and for the rate of death I imagine occurred in Vesuvia, the odds that someone lost no one are slim. There was likely a long period of mourning, and as noted in the present of the game, rarely is the plague spoken of outside of the context of the investigation in the primary routes.

Many of those medical staff members who survived were those assigned to research at the Palace. The proximity of the staff to the ill at the Lazaret quarantine likely would have made the rate of infection far higher for the caretakers, meaning that often the staff would end up caring for colleagues in their final days.

Even three years removed, the time of the plague is a raw wound for those in Vesuvia - but I do think the period is fascinating and I love exploring the different facets of it in my own world building. And, well, shameless self promo, but I am eager to write it myself when I get into Zelda’s backstory.

If you made it this far, thank you. Go drink some water or something, idk, wellbeing checkpoint bc what a long ass post

#red plague #worldbuilding #long post #the arcana #the arcana game

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yourdeepestfathoms · 3 years ago

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An Honest Review of Mourning Cloak

this review has spoilers so don’t click Read More if you haven’t watched the episode yet!

Mourning Cloak was a disappointing dumpster fire of an episode that deserves to rot in the deepest, darkest circle of Dante's inferno.

It’s such an insult to Charlie as a character, reducing her to nothing but a puppy-eyed, lovesick, boy crazy little bitch who was willing to leave behind her entire fucking family for the ugliest motherfucker on the planet. Seriously, what’s with this dude’s jaw line?? He looks like he’s made out of melting candle wax for god’s sake.

Ali is a terrible character and every single moment he was on screen, the devil on my shoulder kept hoping for him to just fuck off already.

And then the angel on my right came in and agreed.

The first kiss (more like a make out session) was needlessly long and way too heated, like one of the kissers wasn't a literal seventh grader. I felt uncomfortable watching it. It made my skin crawl, especially considering that Ali was played by a nineteen-year-old and Alexa was only FIFTEEN. That’s not okay!

Like, holy fucking shit AMC, are you that stupid to not realize that you shouldn’t make an underage child kiss an adult?? Everything about that scene is so wrong!

I kept repeatedly pausing the video to close my eyes tight or put my head in my hands every time something romantic happened between Ali and Charlie. I gagged, I snapped, I cringed, I shuddered in disgust. It’s so agonizingly hard to watch because 1) the age gap between the actors and 2) it’s so painfully forced. They barely know each other, probably less than twenty-four hours. I bet Ali doesn’t even know her favorite color, but SURE. They can be together!

Like. I get it. Ali is the first teenager she’s seen since Dakota in a long time. Before that, Charlie has been the ONLY child character to show up consistently, aside from a few very minor ones that are more like toddlers and that band of orphans that disappeared at the end of season five and never showed back up again.

BUT ALSO. Has AMC never interacted with a fucking child before??? Do they think all twelve-year-old girls think about is kissing a boy?????

Her father figure is suffering from memory loss that is most likely caused by dementia, her older sister figure has been missing for MONTHS, the rest of her found family is scattered across the state and she has no way to know if they’re alright, THEY ARE LITERALLY IN NUCLEAR FALLOUT—I do not think a romance with THE ENEMY is going to be her top priority in this situation.

Here’s a better idea that they could have gone with: Ali is like an older brother to Charlie. Charlie wants to indulge in that relationship because she’s a little girl who has lost her real family and desires love and affection. However, she’s hesitant because Ali reminds her of Nick. Nick was also like an older brother to her, and she ended up taking his life. Now she’s afraid that the cycle will repeat.

It has no creepy forced romance AND brings back up Charlie’s very unique trauma that hasn’t been mentioned since SEASON FUCKING FOUR.

Also girly has literally never interacted with a teenage boy IN HER LIFE. You don’t think she’d be the slightest bit wary around one??

Oh, but my mistake, I forgot all girls are innately drawn to tall, handsome boys with messy hair and weapons because we’re all programmed with the sole need to breed with every penis-having individual we even get a whiff of. That’s my bad.

There was also implications of Charlie and Ali running away together, EVEN THOUGH THEY BARELY FUCKING KNEW EACH OTHER.

Additionally, the show attempts to age Charlie up to 13, even though she isn't 13 yet during the episode, she's still 12.

But that doesn't make any sense because she was literally 12 when season 7 began, SO HOW FUCKING LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE THE BOMBS WENT OFF.

They ALSO altered her age on her wiki page. It now says she was 11 when she first appeared in season 4, even though it said she was 10 for the past 4 years. But here they are, frantically changing her age just so they can justify forcing a little girl into a gross ass romance plot that aids the story in no way.

But speaking of the wiki! Her decisions throughout the episode aren't like her AT ALL. Let’s just go to her overview for reference.

The first sentence reads, “Charlie is a quiet and introverted young orphan, and rarely engages with people who are not close to her.”

So there's one thing the episode gets wrong about her because it's not like Charlie to just fucking start liking some dude right off the bat.

But most importantly, it says this: “She largely depends on her parental figures, to whom she displays extreme loyalty to the point of killing those who would hurt them.”

TO WHOM SHE DISPLAYS EXTREME LOYALTY.

She would never in a million fucking years abandon her family—the people that have been raising her for the past THREE YEARS—for a boy for barely knows. She would NEVER leave behind Alicia of all people. Did AMC just forget that little relationship they had?? I mean, we already didn’t get to see Charlie reunite with June, who is essentially her mom, so what other relationships will they ruin for her?

AND THEN! And then they went and gave her fucking RADIATION POISONING. Where there is an extremely low chance of survival. Even lower with their lack of modern medicine.

But the thing is…they don’t even make it believable. They only symptom she shows are the rashes which appeared alarmingly fast. Like, a quick Google search would have given them a myriad of symptoms that would have been cool to see, including, but not limited to: nausea and vomiting, headache, fever, dizziness and disorientation, weakness and fatigue, hair loss, bloody vomit.

The hair loss and bloody vomit could have been really cool to see. Like, maybe instead of fainting like she did, she could have doubled over and thrown up blood instead.

Mourning Cloak but instead of Charlie and Ali kissing, Charlie projectile vomits blood all over Ali. God, that would have made the episode so much better and more bearable.

But nah, she just got some rashes. It honestly just looks like she rolled around in some poison ivy and everyone is overreacting.

There are very few things this episode did good.

I liked that Charlie finally got her own title card at the beginning. The butterflies were a neat detail and I liked that you could see the bowling alley in the background.

I liked the way Charlie threw the bowling ball the first time. Very much like a kid who never played bowling before.

I liked that June was noticeably upset and tearing up when she said that Charlie was dying. After all, June lost her own daughter to disease (granted, pneumonia is nowhere near as horrible as radiation poisoning) and Charlie has basically become her new child, so I enjoyed that they let her actually react to the upcoming demise of the kid she’s been helping raise for the past few years. It’s the least they could do.

I liked that Ali actually died. I’m sure nobody was upset when that happened.

I liked that June got to be a protective mama bear. “You lay one hand on her, I will kill you myself” and “Charlie stays with me, under my care” were both very good lines. Also the way that June went up to Charlie and held her hands out for her when Charlie came out of that one butterfly room crying because Ali died made my heart flutter.

I liked the emotions from Charlie when Ali died. The way she staggers unsteadily out of that butterfly room and trips over her own words is extremely well done, especially with the stammering part. Her flashes of rage when she realized Howard killed Ali and then the sobbing despair were also really good to watch, as well as her eyes-squeezed-shut, teeth-bared expressions. Alexa truly is an amazing actress and I will never stop commending her for her performances as Charlie.

Uhh… I liked the butterflies?? The symbolism behind them is pretty cool and it seems to be fitting enough.

Okay, that’s it. The rest is all garbage. A complete waste of not only my time, bur the actors as well. This episode doesn’t even have any replay ability (at least for me) because more than half of the runtime is spent developing the creepy romance instead of doing soemthing actually useful. Charlie FINALLY got an episode to herself since Ner Tamid and THIS is what they do with it.

I just can’t fathom it. I’ve been giving AMC the benefit of the doubt for a really long time, but I’m at the end of my rope, as I’m sure several other fans are, too. I wouldn’t even be mad if it weren’t for Ali having to be there. If Charlie got radiation poisoning somehow WITHOUT the romance, I would have just been upset because she was dying. Fans shouldn’t be seething with rage as I am now.

I don’t know if Charlie going to die. Honestly, for me, it’s 50/50. But because we don’t really see her anywhere else in the trailers aside from the shots of this episode, I don’t have high hopes. Especially because June said Charlie was to stay with her under her care and then Charlie is just never shown with her???

Still, I’m praying that she doesn’t die yet. She has so much potential with Madison coming back. I want to see her deal with her trauma more. I want to see more of her in general. She’s an incredible character and can be fleshed out so much if the show writers actually gave her a chance.

Overall, Mourning Cloak is a huge disappointment. If I wanted to get super angry and pump my body full of adrenaline fueled by burning hot rage to commit unspeakable acts, I would watch this episode.

Fuck you, AMC. Charlie deserves better.

#i am foaming at the mouth and need to be put down for having rabies #what the fuck were they thinking #ftwd #fear the walking dead #charlie ftwd #june dorie #john dorie sr

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starglow-xx · 4 years ago

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owning a bakery and being discovered by the ada and the port mafia (part 3)

platonic! yosano akiko x f! reader

type of writing: head canons !!

this is part of my head canon series, flour & fluff !!

tag list is open !! go to this google form and fill it out to sign up!

series synopsis: owning a bakery at 20 is tough; even more so when you have to handle members of two opposing organizations! this is your journey to meeting those fools and creating an unlikely bond with each of them. but only at the cost of your peace and sanity.

fandom: bungou stray dogs

content: fluff & platonic stuff but trigger warning!! there may be a sensitive topic for others

*getting grabbed and pulled to an alleyway! alcohol mentioned!*

please remember that yokohama isn’t the friendliest place, especially at night.

previous: part 2 : their beloved president

author’s note: same ages as last time!! (so that means everyone is one year younger than canon; that makes yosano 24)

this one is actually pretty long :0

i got info abt her likes on her wiki page (careful! there’s spoilers!)

and yosano is a queen and no one can tell me otherwise

the doctor is in the house (quite literally)

going grocery shopping was an okay chore in your opinion

it honestly depended on your mood or whatever kind of shit happens when you go shopping

cause like something always, always happens whenever you go do groceries

sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes it’s just plain weird

one time some weirdo proposed to you in the middle of the store asking for a double suicide

he was good looking you’d admit but it’s not like you’d ever see him again

or so you thought

a n y w a y s

every so often, you’d run out of real person food in your apartment

you mostly survive off all of the leftover bakery treats and ingredients—which works out pretty well actually—but bakery supplies unfortunately also run out quite often

and also unfortunately, one time when both fukuzawa & ranpo took a visit to Sakura’s, fukuzawa argued that “no you can’t live off sweets for the rest of your life”

ranpo was scandalized and scrambled to cover your ears

you guys were at it for a while

in the end you sided with fukuzawa causing ranpo to go off about “betrayal from the people he cared most abt” or smth like that

you guys were okay again after bribing him with sweets :)

for bakery supplies you usually have them delivered bc you order them in large quantities bc ahaha no way were you gonna carry like 15-20 50 pound bags of flour no way

when days like those happen, you close up the bakery early so you aren’t walking home when it’s too dark

you scheduled it to happen every first saturday of the month

on those saturdays, you close at 5 instead of at 8

currently, you were at the grocery store looking for basic cooking ingredients such as proteins, vegetables, fruits, and most importantly, snacks

ranpo’s been rubbing off on you

the sun was starting to set and you were walking home with your two bags of groceries when shit went down

tbh you were kinda expecting it cause your grocery run was peaceful for once

but what you weren’t expecting was a wack-a-do to appear out of goddamn nowhere right when you were opening the side door to get to the staircase up to your apartment

like honestly

let a woman do her own thing

the man who grabbed you tried to covered your mouth so you couldn’t scream but you didn’t exactly make it easy for him

you kicked and thrashed around even using the grocery bags—that were somehow still in your hand—as a weapon and the man struggled but he was still bigger than you and was able to bring you to a nearby alley

he reeked of alcohol and you spotted a wedding band on his left hand

not that you cared about the detail in the moment

you kicked him in the groin and in response he let you go only to fall on broken glass that was in the alley way

using the wall to help yourself up, you grabbed a nearby wooden stick and struck him right on his back

your attacker fell and you immediately turned on your heels to escape only to fall back down on the hard cold ground once again

you lift your face up and look back to see the man holding onto your ankle

grabbing a shard of glass—cutting yourself in the process— you begin to swing it at him only for him to easily grip your wrist and stop you

you get ready try and kick him in the groin again but you’re interrupted as your attacker gets sucker punched and flies to wall

you look up to see your savior and you’re blessed to see a beautiful woman, probably not that much older than you are—she’s probably around ranpo’s age— donning a white long sleeve button up, a matching black necktie, knee length skirt, and gloves, along with tights, red heels, and a pretty butterfly clip in her short black hair

but what you really notice is her eyes

ranpo’s eyes were pretty but you like hers just a bit more

you’ve always liked the color magenta

the pretty lady holds out her hand and you take it graciously and thank her as she helps you up

as that’s happening, your attacker gets himself onto his feet and his groan catches both of your attention

he struggles to stand and the pretty lady simples saunters over to him and delivers an uppercut knocking him out cold

you’re stunned and you breathe out a “thank you” making her turn towards you

she notices the condition you’re in

bleeding scrapes on your hands, arms and legs, small rips in your clothes like your tights, blouse, and skirt, and the ruffled state of your hair and clothing

she asks if you live nearby and you tell her that you own the bakery that’s one or two buildings away

when you tell her that, it clicks in her mind that you must be the bakery girl ranpo’s been talking about and the friend fukuzawa was cat sitting for

it’s been abt two weeks since ranpo and fukuzawa first met you and since then, they’ve seen lucky in the office plenty and the boxes of your signature sweets even more

if those two trust you, she has no reason not to

she smiles at you, holds out her hand for you to shake, and introduces herself as the doctor of the armed detective agency

your eyes widen and you smile back at her shaking her hand

“ah! you must be yosano-sensei then! ranpo-san and fukuzawa-san have talked about you! it’s so nice to meet you! im (l/n) (y/n)!”

“they’ve talked about you too, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you (y/n)”

after that exchange she insisted on bringing you home to treat you wounds which you told her it wasn’t necessary

she gave you a pointed look and that was when you realized what state you were in

you sighed and weakly gave in to which she only grinned at

before leaving the alley she walks over to the unconscious man and pulls out his wallet for some sort of identification and home address as you try to see if there’s any groceries still salvageable

after texting the details to kunikida, yosano turns to you poking around the now ruined grocery bags

she simply rubs your back and tells you that the both of you could go buy more groceries together as she was meaning to get some anyways; she even said she’ll pay for you

you refused obviously but she, unknowingly, used the same tactic fukuzawa used with you

“so you’re saying you don’t need groceries?”

“...”

*cue an eyebrow raise from our resident queen*

“...you agency members don’t like making things easy for me huh.”

you gave in reluctantly and at this point you don’t even know why you try negotiating with them

and that’s only three of them

apparently, she was on the other side of the street on the way to buy groceries for the agency when she noticed different produce items on the other sidewalk leading to the alley and she went to check out what happened

ironically, the way to the grocery store from the agency makes you go past Sakura’s but she didn’t realize it until after the two of you had met

before you know it, the two of you are in your apartment kitchen as she cleans and patches up all of your wounds

as she does so the two of you have a little girl talk

you find it quite comforting bc since you opened up Sakura’s you haven’t really had the chance to connect to many people much less other women

you definitely see yosano as your cool, loving, badass older sister

she thinks you’re adorable and agrees with ranpo’s opinion

yup

that’s right

the opinion that you’re like a little kid </3

you called it a betrayal and all she did was laugh at you <//3

“awhh that’s really cool yosano-sensei!—MFPH?!?”

*squishing your cheeks the same way ranpo did* “ranpo-san was right (n/n)-chan, your cheeks are squishy!”

“?!”

after that small fiasco, the two of you talked some more and bonded over your love for flowers, japanese sweets, and much more!!

you even made a date to have a girls day to go shopping and eat out!

you’re internally squealing a bit bc it’s been a while since you’ve gone shopping

yosano notices and she giggles behind her hand not saying anything bc she knows you’ll only throw a fit

the two of you came around the topic of ranpo when lucky passed by

lucky quickly warmed up to the doctor and cozied up in her lap

“i wish ranpo-san was able to meet lucky when he came by the first time, but then again, he’d probably throw a tantrum if i don’t pay attention to him for 5 seconds”

she snorted at that and like fukuzawa, she shared stories abt the slightly older male

“ranpo-san doesn’t know how to ride a train?”

“unbelievable right?”

“for someone so intelligent i expected more from him”

“i’ll be telling that to ranpo-san, (n/n)-chan”

“wha—?! yosano-sensei please don’t!”

like ranpo, she’s also a tease </3

but you love her anyway <3

eventually, she finished patching you up and promised to treat you to a new set of clothes when the two of you go out

“you don’t need to lose a good set of clothes just because of a sleazy man (n/n)-chan! you deserve better!”

you were going to argue that the rips in your clothes were fairly small and could easily be fixed—except the tights—but you stopped in your tracks when you remembered that it was practically useless to argue against an ada member

the two of you walked to the grocery store and bought both of your needed supplies—along with some extra goodies—and then she walked you back to your place bc it was already a bit dark out

but even if it wasn’t, she would walk you anyways

besides, if anything happened to you, she’s 1000% positive that ranpo and fukuzawa are gonna flip the fuck out not that she wont cause she most definitely will

speaking of which

you were drinking a bottle of water as the two of made your way back to Sakura’s when all of a sudden

“(y/n) you do realize that i have to tell shachou and ranpo-san about what happened today right?”

you choked on your water

“yosano-sensei you can’t! if you do they’ll freak! they won’t leave me alone for at least two weeks! one if im lucky!”

“exactly the point”

you just accepted your defeat already knowing that you’d lose

but maybe you can simmer down their anger towards the bastard with sweets and lucky

you arrived at Sakura’s shortly after and after bringing groceries in, you packaged a bunch of pastries leftover from today—bc you closed early—and bc you’re well aware that ranpo doesn’t share any of the sweets you send him with

you even gave yosano her own special box filled with goodies she loves, and a thermos of fukuzawa’s favorite, your special hot honey lemon tea

other than the sweets, you prepared lucky to spend the night at fukuzawa’s

you really really hoped that doing these things would make them calm down

you shivered at the thought of what their responses would be

you felt really bad for giving yosano all these things to carry and that you were keeping her very late

she assured you that she was fine and that if someone tried to mess with her she’d kick their ass

and after exchanging numbers, the magenta eyed queen bid you a good night and walked back to the agency with lucky walking by her heels

arriving back at the agency, yosano was greeted with some concerns asking if she was alright bc she came back from her grocery run pretty late

(she usually goes in the mornings but today was pretty busy so she left in the late afternoon but now it was already dark)

she waved off the concerns and plopped a couple boxes of your signature bakery boxes at ranpo’s desk, the one for her at her own, the last few boxes in the kitchen for any other agent or clerk to grab, placed the thermos on the desk fukuzawa was by, and picked up lucky and handed him to the president

the two males were pleased with what yosano had brought them, and pleased that another agency member had the chance to meet you

fukuzawa was rubbing lucky and ranpo already snacking on treats as yosano expected

but here comes the hard part

or maybe it’s gonna amusing who knows

“i met (y/n) today.”

“we could tell.”

in goes another treat in the green eyed man’s mouth

“would you like to know how?”

“you bumped into each other, had girl talk, made plans to go out, went grocery shopping, and you brought me and shachou presents.”

“great job ranpo-san, you’re almost completely correct.”

this caught the attention of basically everyone bc they knew ranpo was never “almost completely correct”

“we ended up meeting bc she got attacked on her way home from grocery shopping, i treated her wounds, then we had girl talk and did all the other stuff”

ranpo and fukuzawa froze right in their tracks

“i sent all the info of the bastard to kunikida”

“kunikida.”

“yes shachou”

“find out everything about that man and bring it to me and ranpo”

“...yes shachou”

“and yosano”

“yes?”

“text (y/n) and tell her that her cat, tea, and pastries aren’t going to work as a bribe”

just as you finished taking a shower you sneezed

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lucky-sevens · 5 years ago

Text

mechs deep lore compilation post

so! maybe you’ve read the other compilation post i made of basic lore/how to get into the mechs! maybe you want to know more! or maybe you’re a fan already and want to see how deep down this rabbit hole you can get!

well, good news for you: i have gone down the rabbit hole and hit bedrock only to find maki yamazaki standing by my side with a pickaxe! it is time for mechs lore part 2: electric boogaloo also known as ‘wow blue have you considered sleep’

rest under the cut!

i’ve tried to organize this, but given how many random facts there are, it’s hard! decided to start off with lore for each character (in order of them joining the mechs in-universe), including all the carmilla lore at the end; then move into general world lore/a bit of album lore, and finally more obscure/unknown facts, such as explaining the whole scuzz thing! also, citing the sources has been difficult, as a lot of things are from, say, old twitter posts and the like. there might be less links here than you all would like, but bear with me- compiling all this lore is quite difficult!

disclaimer: unlike stuff like the wiki, this includes a lot of my own theories and red stringing, and while i’m noting if something’s fanon or canon, the fanon may occasionally make its way into my theories!

links to the songs will be mostly TheVoidSings’ youtube lyric videos, as i don’t want to find the links to all the different platforms they’re on and the videos are lovely and accessible!

also- i’ve done some significant editing on the mechanisms wiki, as have other talented people- go check it out! it’s a good source of lore!

now on w/ the actual post!

crew

jonny d’ville

his lore is fairly concrete, but since he’s an unreliable narrator, we don’t know what bits can be trusted! his backstory song is one eyed jacks, which gives a pretty clear picture of events, but here in his crew bio he says that he made up new texas, and doesn’t have a very good memory of events in general. (it’s implied that he didn’t lie about killing his father, but we don’t even know that for sure.) a note: unlike the others, we don’t know what happened to his heart in order for him to be mechanized.

the aurora

the aurora’s lore is a mess. here’s what we know for sure, which is an edited version of what i have on her wiki page, (where i have also given a list of her known physical attributes);

she started off as a moon, but was weaponized and turned into a ship. she initially was a navy ship, but mutinied and joined the rebellion, participating in the october revolution, in which nastya died and was mechanized. this may have been her choice, but it is more likely that carmilla and/or jonny forced her into it, as they are the ones who won her from the cyberian navy.

when they stormed the ship, a woman was trapped inside- specialist 278 tereshkova, presumably aurora's programmer. What her and aurora's relationship was like is unknown, but aurora did not make any attempt to save her, so it may have not been positive. before dying, tereshkova managed to program a final distress message into aurora, as well as coding the mechanisms' blog.

she’s likely to be based off of the historical battleship aurora, like nastya is based off of the historical russian princess anastasia.

now, it’s time to get into the main theory about her: that aurora used to be briar rose! i’m collecting all the evidence on it, as well as all the evidence that can disprove it.

here’s a refresher on briar rose’s whole deal, taken from ‘the aurora strikes’-

The Rose Reds were the most effective of the soldiers created from Rose's genetic material, but they were not the first. Rumours spoke of an early prototype, known as the Briar Rose, that had malfunctioned and slain everyone on the desert moon of Briar, where she was being grown. But she was not dead. As the Mechanisms discovered, instead, she slept, at the heart of the defence grid that surrounded New Constantinople. The grid was composed of Thorn-class gun emplacements and was virtually impenetrable. And in its centre, the Briar Rose slumbered, plugged into the system, her anger, her rage, her hatred and her fear, fueling the machines, and focusing their gun turrets.

the main support for the theory here is that over time, briar rose could have fused to the moon, which is one of the very few conditions in which a biomechanical weaponized moon seems plausible and not just like a collection of vaguely cursed words. however, in the fiction ‘by any other name’, which is some collected lab research on briar rose, there’s this line- “During transportation and integration of the specimen, take all precaution and care.”- key word here being transportation. so she must have been moved off the moon.

the fiction i cited to disprove the theory actually has something that further supports it, though- the presence of a mysterious woman in king cole’s lab, who could be carmilla. hood, the revolution’s hacker, notes on a picture of her ‘[No idea. The others I’ve been able to find evidence of, but she’s a fucking ghost]‘. the description is a bit off, though, as she’s described as a short, pale, woman with hair long enough to be pulled back and carmilla is quite tall and has short hair- as well, in a later part of the fiction, the woman is killed and does not revive. however, there’s also another who could plausibly be her, noted here- ‘A tall woman sits opposite Prof. Root with a tray of her own. From her stature, it is conceivable she was one of the figures in the chemical suits. They talk sporadically, but the audio is heavily corrupted.’ she isn’t one of the ones killed later on, either, so that’s possible.

we know carmilla knew aurora when she was a very young moon and raised her practically from birth, so if she is one of those two people, it would make sense.

in ‘the aurora strikes’, aurora pushes to save briar rose- nastya explains this as ‘she can not bear to see another biomechanical organism in pain’. in my own writing about aurora, i interpret that as her having very high empathy, but there could be a more personal connection here. this is also notable as the only time aurora is mentioned in-album beyond jonny calling the mechanisms ‘the crew of the starship aurora’.

nastya rasputina

nastya’s backstory song (cyberian demons) was only performed when they were still dr. carmilla and the mechanisms, so it’s harder to find! thevoidsings has made a lyric video of it here, though, and it gives another very clear picture of her backstory! there’s also the fiction of the same name, which i didn’t understand upon first read-through but is basically a nastya character study, covering different points in her immortal life.

her performer went on hiatus for a while, and as an in-universe explanation, the cyberian sequence was written! in which nastya flies aurora to cyberia, infects herself with a computer virus, and transmits it to the entire planet, causing it to explode. this is all in the cyberian demons fiction i linked above, and with it are two other tangential fictions- one presumably just before those events, and one that’s an outsider pov.

there’s also out, which i’d suggest reading rather than just looking at my summary; basically, nastya has a crisis over aurora changing so that it’s harder to recognize her love, and ends up leaving the ship to float away into deep space- this is presumed to be her death, but that is never confirmed and nastya seems to assume she will wake up at some point.

ashes o’reilly

ashes’ whole deal is quite straightforward, which is a nice break from aurora and (to a lesser extent) nastya! their backstory song is lucky sevens, and it’s elaborated on further in their crew bio; interestingly, ashes was the one most into the idea of immortality at first, and also gave clear consent to carmilla.

ivy alexandria

we don’t know that much about ivy, which is fitting, as she doesn’t either! the most clear information we can find about her is in her crew bio, which can be summarized as: she grew up in a library!

archive footage explains more about her memory situation. she has no memories of anything before she was mechanized, according to this line ‘[...] she can tell you dates, and places, and body counts, she can list for you the exact circumstances of each event of her long, long life (at least, every event since that time, long ago, among a maze of bookshelves in a library that, awake, she can no longer describe to you, though once she knew its every turn by heart, when a woman stood over her and offered her eternity: before that, there is nothing at all).’ she also processes her memories differently than most people- they’re more like records, instead of things that affect her emotionally. (archive footage is also beautifully written and very much worth reading!)

the toy soldier

would say it has concrete lore, but it’s also almost solely responsible for fucking up my timeline and the album lore, so i’m rather angry at it. nevertheless, its entire backstory can be found in the fiction ‘the story of the toy soldier’. additionally, there’s a short story about its time fighting in the revolution of once upon a time (in space); presumably, this is the first time it did so, though it was likely in the war at least twice and possibly even three times. the mechanisms were only watching the second time, though it’s not out of character for it to have participated in the war again, and there’s also the dr. carmilla song, eleven, (which is about a war and uses a lot of rose symbology so it’s likely the revolution) where it is present. notably, carmilla had left the mechanisms by the time once upon a time (in space) takes place on their timeline, and the toy soldier is the only one there. at first, i interpreted that as carmilla meeting the toy soldier before it had met the mechanisms, but there’s two inconsistencies there: firstly, it doesn’t recognize her when it joins the band, and secondly, in the song they leave together. this increases the likelihood of it having been in the war three times.

we actually have a recording of the toy soldier’s first time joining the band- the mechanisms @ lashings! (part one / part two / transcript) there’s also a note of that show in the story of the toy soldier! they bought it because jonny was in jail (x). interestingly, that show is the first recording of rose red, and it’s later noted jonny was in a rose red prison!

now it’s time to get into the main theory regarding it, which also will factor into the write-up of ulysses dies at dawn later! i personally subscribe to this theory, or at least, most of it.

here is frankie @byron-von-raum‘s post- the theory here is that the toy soldier is the rebodied mind of the widow’s fiance. i’m not going to get too into that part, as i don’t personally incorporate it into my lore and more importantly frankie already has a post on it! read that if you’re more interested!

the most important bit here is the evidence it collects regarding the toy soldier living near labyrinth; in one of the pictures from the toy soldier’s backstory, there’s a dionysus brand wine bottle. the consensus he comes to is that the toy soldier lives in a colony of earth that trades with labyrinth, and while i think that’s possible, the all-encompassing nature of the city makes it more likely that they would have a minimum of outside communication, so the toy soldier would just be from the city proper. i will get into the impacts of this/expand on it more in the world lore section!

another thing: the angel has an out of character explanation! if you look at photos of old mechs gigs, jessica law looks similar to the drawing of the angel in the story of the toy soldier! their voice being stolen was most likely a reference to that.

drumbot brian

brian’s backstory is laid out in his crew bio! i’d summarize it, but to be honest, it’s already a summary, so i’d suggest just taking a second to read that! sadly, this is all of what we know about it. the priest from his backstory was apparently made almost immortal in some twisted form of mechanization, and has never forgiven brian for it/is still trying to hunt him down (x).

his bio is also where his morality switch is introduced! (interestingly, it takes a far lower role/is mentioned far less in canon than in fanworks.)

there was originally going to be a backstory album about him called indistinguishable from magic. this never happened, but ben below is working on a new one called the wanderings of drumbot brian! no more knowledge on this currently.

the main theory about him is that he had some kind of alliance/is lying about something to do with carmilla! we know from maki that carmilla didn’t go out of the airlock (more on that in her section), and when brian is questioned on what happened to her, he doesn’t give a concrete answer. this is in contrast to all the other mechanisms, who assume she fell out an airlock. here’s what he said:

I will not point fingers and lay blame. I do not know how it came to pass that Dr. Carmilla left this vessel, whether by fair means or foul, and so I will not engage in this painful discussion. I hope she did not suffer, and that we may forgive the perpetrator of this deed.

he’s speaking very formally here. (fucking nerd). well, no; legitimately, this is not the normal way he speaks in other contexts. he could be masking something. we know that even when he’s lying, he’s not good at it, and this comes off as clearly odd. in support of this, i believe one of the songs on his unwritten backstory album was called ‘the doctor’s demise’ (though i could be remembering incorrectly).

there’s not much more evidence we can draw on here to come to a consensus, though!

something else to note- i’ve written this other meta about his prophetic powers! feel free to read if you’re interested in that aspect of his character!

gunpowder tim

of course, tim already has a whole mini-album to himself (gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser), but there’s a couple more niche things about him, though not as much as aurora and ts!

mainly, the implications that he destroyed the sun. there’s an old mechanisms tweet that states he 'was floating in the wake of a detonated star’. additionally, there’s this old blog post, which turned into a bit of a fiction! the figure speaking is not named, but given the other mechanisms who speak (therefore knocking them off the possibilities list) and the fact that the post was made around the time tim joined, it’s likely that it’s him. now, he says this:

“It wasn’t the deep space that drove me crazy,” he said, his voice low, calm and polite. “It was the sudden realisation that I was entirely responsible for the destruction of my entire civilisation, and happy for it.”

though destroying the moon and his other actions in gptvtmk could possibly count for this, it would fit more if he had destroyed the sun.

both those posts also imply that he was floating in space for an incredibly long time. i don’t know how he survived if so, but it seems very likely that’s what happened.

i considered these posts being too early/having a changed canon now, like the odd use of different pronouns for some characters in the earlier fiction, but they seemed to have gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser mostly worked out by the time tim ledsam officially joined, as they perform it at the only recorded gig from that year with him (port mahon 2011), which was around when the second blog post was made!

marius von raum

we don’t have a written backstory or backstory song to go on for him, but kofi young (his performer) is working on a full album about him called ‘the death of byron von raum’!

the blog post kofi made about it as a summary is the main source of marius lore that we have! i’d highly suggest reading it, but the main points are:

1. it’s going to be very dark and tragic, and shows that marius at heart isn’t really the kind of comedic figure that he comes off as in the band! ruth @thedreadvampy (the mechanisms’ official artist, as well as morgan’s sister and kofi’s partner) has also made a tumblr post that connects to this!

2. the world he’s from used to be high-tech, but has devolved over time into 18th century levels of technology! what this boils down to is; what we assume is marius and an unknown friend (more on this in raphaella’s part) manage to discover ancient technology and attempt to use it! all we have here is this quote om the blog post- ‘In the middle of this, two kids hiding from the soldiers discover an army of ancient mecha and use them to fight back, but only end up plunging the world into further chaos.’.

3. anime protagonist marius!

we also have this small piece of writing, screenshotted here (monogoggle...)-

[image id: a screenshot of writing, most of it out of view/hard to make out. it’s also in the middle of the line, so the breaks are off. however, it looks to say ‘at the controls of RISML/cockpit is cramped and d[...]/has his monogoggle over his/controls are uncomplicated/the neural interface. They [...]’ end id.]

raphaella la cognizi

i’ve been very deep down the mechs rabbit hole for over a month now, and yet i’ve found hardly anything about her!

there’s a small theory i have, though it doesn’t have too much supporting evidence! in marius’ backstory, it mentions two kids, and raphaella and marius joined together (first mention of either of them is together, in this facebook post!) when questioned about marius and raphaella, nastya says a story instead of stories (x). (that post also clarifies that carmilla was not involved in either raphaella or marius’ backstories!) this could potentially point to raphaella being the other person from marius’ backstory. the evidence against it is that if raphaella featured that heavily, r. l. hughes would have said something about the album as well instead of it just being kofi talking about marius, but it’s still interesting to think about!

there’s also a theory that she was the preacher’s daughter from brian’s backstory, but the only real evidence there is that she could have used his tech to mechanize herself (which her doing is only fanon!) and that she performs ‘lost in the cosmos’.

dr carmilla

this is most likely going to be the shortest section, as it’s basically another crew member; that being said, there’s a lot of lore here!

if you haven’t listened to the carmilla albums, i’d really suggest doing that! there’s two- exhumed and (un)plugged and ageha prototype edition! the story there is harder to put together than in the mechs backstories, especially because the songs are mostly out of order, so i’ve decided to just straight up summarize my interpretation, along with what we have to go on from maki, instead of framing it like a theory, as that’s the easiest way! still, please bear all this with a grain of salt- it’s most likely to be contradicted in the new album maki is working on.

carmilla and her girlfriend loreli lived on a planet called terra. for their childhoods, it was a fairly okay place to live (though i elaborate on this a bit in the world lore section!) however, it was bombed; most likely taking the role of an alternate universe hiroshima, as the blurb on her bandcamp says ‘Dr. Carmilla tells the twisted tales of a dystopian future following WWII having ended very differently.‘ after this, the planet sunk into a nuclear winter.

loreli got sick and died; or, she should have, but carmilla saved her by turning her into a vampire as well. this resulted in loreli losing her morals and becoming abusive towards carmilla. carmilla was too deep in love to see this, and stayed in the relationship for several years.

we don’t know what happened to make her strike out on her own, but eventually she did, and created the mechanisms. while with them, she recognized her own failures with loreli, and left the mechanisms (which they all believe was caused by jonny d’ville pushing her out an airlock, rather than her own volition.)

from there, she traveled back in time to the point where loreli was dying, and let it happen- potentially burying herself and loreli alive, which she survived due to her immortality and loreli did not.

however, she was trapped underground for a hundred years. when she is finally found and dug out, she starts enjoying herself (i.e. committing murder). for some unknown reason, she clones herself multiple times, creating the in-universe version of maki yamazaki.

the mechanisms assume she pursued them after she was pushed out of the airlock, and that that was what eleven was about, but i’m not sure why she would do that, given that she left them of her own volition. because of time shenanigans, it could have been far later on her personal timeline; maybe she simply wished to reconnect with them after all those years.

that’s all we have; we don’t know if she died, or anything like that!

world lore

all the folktales and normal history the irl mechs work off of also exist in-universe! (for an example- the toy soldier and ivy start reciting the walrus and the carpenter together in lashings, and the mechs also do alice in wonderland as a song.)

we know the alternate universe theory is correct, mostly because of this piece in the fiction on kofi’s blog-

In those burning instants, he’d feel the weight of it all, and know it was true. The golden age that never came; the city that stood at the dawn of a world instead of in its dying embers. And beyond – to a myriad of Camelots and a thousand thousand Arthurs, unfathomable worlds apart, each different, each fighting the same hopeless battle.

He’d feel the burden of that task pressing down until it felt like it’d crush his chest, and he’d wake every day gasping for breath, feeling older than he ever had, older even than Ector.

And as he screamed inwardly, Galahad would meet his gaze with those crazed eyes of his and grin, and Arthur would know again that whatever had spoken to Galahad was moving him too.

the mechanisms are most likely traveling between several alternate universe versions of folktales, and occasionally alternate versions of earth! (cyberia, tim’s earth, terra...) this is likely why everyone in their stories is human, and is actually low-key evidence against drawing them as aliens (though ofc feel free to have fun!)

i was initially going to put all the album lore in its own separate sections, but a large amount of it is how it intersects with other pieces of lore, and the rest isn’t necessarily niche enough to cite here? my personal advice is that if you want to learn more about the albums, read the fiction! i have a compilation post of all the fiction up on this blog, and you can find it on the website here!

let’s start with the mechanisms’ roles in ulysses dies at dawn, though! we know for sure ashes is hades, brian is the oracle of delphi, and the toy soldier was a nymph (which is actually quite worrying, considering what that means and the inherent issues with consent there, but i digress.) tim most likely took on the role of achilles (more on that here). then, we know some of the mechanisms’ activities and can guess their roles from that. raphaella was helping athena on her research, marius was psychoanalyzing the olympians, and jonny was committing mass murder. it’s a common theory that one (or three) of the mechanisms was cerberus, but sadly i couldn’t find any evidence towards or against that.

i said in the toy soldier’s section that i would talk more about the implications of it being from labyrinth here! the main thing is the fact that, for it to join the rose red war, the city must have interacted with king cole at some point. it’s a risky thing to pose a theory on the toy soldier’s allegiance towards a certain group, but the fact that it seemed to stick with the rose reds here might also mean that the city was, in fact, under king cole’s power. this fits in nicely with the greek mythology aspect of it all; king cole, in that universe, could have been a stand-in for the figure of kronos/saturn!

a few other theories on how the lore intersects:

1. high noon over camelot takes place after the bifrost incident! in terminus, we see communication breaking down, and that could have been the reason the station was isolated. the mechanisms go from it to the bifrost incident, but as they canonically travel in time, that’s not enough to disprove the theory!

2. arthur becomes king cole eventually! this is mostly going off of the fact he’s called ‘the once and future king’, but also the fact that cole used to be considered a good king.

a few loose pieces of worldbuilding:

people from new constantinople seem to be longer lived, and their culture is built around age as a concept. the older you are, the more wise and important you are. specifically, in this fiction, snow is dismissively noted as ‘barely fifty’ and king cole’s age is held up as evidence to why he’s a good ruler.

terra, carmilla’s planet, has two major languages; high terran and low terran! high terran is a more regulated, formal way of speaking, specifically something that only the rich and privileged tend to know. there are many dialects, but the grammar is dictated by the capital. low terran is a creole language formed from several others, including high terran, that most children are taught in school as the baseline. (though they might speak a completely different, less widely spoken language at home!) carmilla speaks low terran but not high terran (although she pretends to know the latter.)

the mechanisms were all (or mostly all) at fort galfridean at one point; don’t have the source to hand, but marius apparently became a prophet to the saxons for staring into the sun for a very long time.

if you’re looking to draw album fanart, there are a few things i know aren’t as widely known; the ones i can think of off the top of my head is orpheus having a ‘foppish haircut’ (the type of thing that falls under that definition is narcissus’ undercut), and snow’s disfiguring scar. there is also official album art; i, personally, have not seen much of it, and i’d encourage coming up with your own character interpretations.

one last theory- it’s highly likely carmilla was involved in the events of the bifrost incident. in the mechscord (sadly, invites are closed due to the difficulty with handling the boom in the fanbase) maki yamazaki has mentioned that part of the criteria for picking a mechanism is ‘good friend for lyf’. at first, i assumed that she meant good friend for life, but when asked on that she was worryingly cryptic (as tends to happen), and she made a joke earlier in character as doc c about accidentally calling odin. though immortal lyfrassier edda most likely became fanon just so they could become a mechanism, this is a piece of evidence towards them actually becoming immortal.

my personal headcanon is that to gain true immortality (which maki has said king cole and the olympians do not have) you have to have some kind of eldritch component, so carmilla had to go to odin for aid. this is supported by the fact that in drive the cold winter away and cyberian demons, their mechanisms are noted as having a rainbow sheen to them!

other lore

scuzz nishimura

scuzz has built up a bit of a reputation for being the ‘cryptid mech’, but her lore is really quite simple! she was a member of the band back when they were doctor carmilla and the mechanisms, but left before they became more popular, so there’s not too much knowledge about her. she appears in this fiction and the only two recorded gigs from that era (lashings and homesick). she’s also visible in several photos!

i know i’ll get people in the notes asking for photos of her if i don’t include any, so have this;

[image id: a cropped picture of scuzz nishimura, looking tired and resting her head on her hand. she looks to be wearing white gloves and some kind of sweater or waistcoat, and her hair is cut short. her cello is also visible, as is someone else’s hand. end id.]

we don’t know too much about her; all we really have is that she was their cello player!

assorted things with no explanation

there’s this old piece from the wayback machine-

[image id: a screenshot of what looks to be the fiction page from a old site for dr carmilla and the mechs. the writing reads;

Writing

( The Aldwich Horror } A short story in which Dr. Carmilla attempts to solve the mysteries of the Aldwich Horror, the strange appearance of a new crew memeber and several zoologically dubious pets.

( Disinterration } A cautionary tale about exhuming corpses.

end id.]

‘disinterration’ is most likely a reference to the carmilla song exhumed, but i’m unsure about ‘the aldwich horror’. the most intriguing bit there is ‘the strange appearance of a new crew member’. i’ve researched the other aspects in an attempt to figure this out. aldwych is a closed london tube station- it served as a bomb shelter during the blitz, which is interesting as both carmilla and tim have backstories involving the world wars (though only carmilla’s is world war ii specifically; tim’s is wwi). the zoologically dubious pets are most likely the octokittens, which we know the toy soldier brought on board, so it would have to be in a place on the timeline after ts joined and before carmilla left. the only mechanism that joins in that space is gunpowder tim, so it’s possible that he is the new crew member.

the mechanisms blogs have a lot of incidental lore, so if you’re this deep in i’d suggest looking at my compilation post of some of my favorite posts of theirs!

and that’s it! we did it! i can finally go to sleep now. i’m so tired. please. i am going to die. i have homework. thank you all so much. please consider coming to my funeral service.

#the mechanisms #the mechs #my posts #compiliation post #meta

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nonchalantatall · 3 years ago

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I have wips I want to work on why are the only things in my brain pasupare × mmj headcanons I can't do this rn

*does it anyway*

They work together for a project shortly after mmj girlies start gaining traction again maybe after their live in hopeful stage

Living in roughly the same region I have no doubt that mmj was at least aware of pasupare's existence and aya especially has been tracking mmj's social media at least like cmon kiritani haruka and momoi airi and hinomori shizuku in one group together and theyve gone indie like that's a big deal

Minori and aya are huge fans of each others groups this is actually canon they told me so

They are both completely starstruck. Minori cannot believe she gets to work with such a cute and amazing and wonderful idol band and aya is losing her mind because that is THE kiritani haruka and THE hinomori shizuku and THE momoi airi

Airi and chisato pulling the strings as group leaders because the actual group leaders are too busy fangirling and crying over each other

Airi loves idols too so shes also going a lil bit crazy and stupid but she is soooo much better at keeping it together

Even though airi despised how she was reduced to a variety show host as an industry idol, she still enjoys watching variety shows and watches pasupare's show every single week. She absolutely adores them and loves their work on the show.

I have it on good enough reasoning within the Craft Egg/Colorful Palette rhythm game universe that both games canon occur somewhat simultaneously meaning that shizu, airi, aya, chisa, hina and maya are the same grade and so are eve, haru, and mino OR the proseka canon starts the year before BEFORE bandori's meaning that the mmj girlies are all one year ahead

If haruka and chisato are the same age, you KNOW there is some industry-induced fucked up rivalry shit going on. Haruka is a household name and chisato has been in the limelight since she could talk they have definitely met before and never understood why they couldn't be friends

So imagine their surprise when minori and aya become absolute besties and they try to set chisato and haruka up to become friends as well

And it works. Even though chisato is still being gripped by the entertainment industry first-hand, haruka quitting took enough pressure off of the two of them and they can be much more chill now

I would do anything to see a how a conversation between maya and shizuku are you kidding? maya tries to talk about something tech related and shizuku is like "Yes, I, too, know much about technology for example I only broke my phone two times last week trying to turn up the volume" and maya doesn't know where to go from there

Hina: Wow, minori-chan, you really did girlboss your way into a y/n fic that's SOOO interesting and also a little bit fucked up but in a totally boppin' way ya know? ahahaa

I feel like I should mention this:

Image is a screenshot from vocaloid wiki page for Mechanical Clown: "Karakuri Pierrot...reflects on depression after a breakup or rejection."

No actually I don't think I want to talk about this one rn I'm not looking to cry

Eve and shizuku both have roots in modeling but were made into idols from almost nothing but that. this isn't a headcanon but there's something to be said here and I think about it a lot

Shizuku and aya click so well. They exist on each other's wavelengths to the detriment of literally everyone else. Aya and her cute, light blue-haired girl best friends who can't read a map for shit

Pasupare covering ice drop or worldwide wander........

MMJ covering wakuwaku meets trip or mo ichido luminous..................

Maybe my brain will let me go back to writing now

(please add on if you have any thoughts)

#featuring my aya and shizuku bias ❤✌#thinking about a mmj luminous once more made me want to cry a little bit #project sekai #bandori #more more jump #pastel*palettes #nonchalantly #hhw × wxs is fun and all but I am BEGGING you to also please consider the idol crossover

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cosmiicmultimuse · 4 years ago

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Eternatus.

[ So, last night I was talking about Eternatus with @another-bloody-multimuse and @nats-rp-world because of the Masters Event ( Howling Shield ), and all of our brains were melting because of the Lore™️, so I’m gonna dump all of my thoughts here for Alamgir, Alex’s Eternatus. ]

[ Under the cut! ]

So, from what we do know, Eternatus’ origin is as follows from Bulbapedia:

“Eternatus is an extraterrestrial Pokémon that came to Earth inside a meteor around 20,000 years ago.”

The wiki also says this, in regards to Eternatus’ connection to the Dynamax Phenomenon:

“Eternatus serves as the source of the Dynamax and Gigantamax phenomena in Galar due to its power leaking out in the form of Galar Particles following its defeat thousands of years ago by Zacian and Zamazenta. Pieces of its body imbued with its power rain down throughout Galar in the form of Wishing Pieces and Wishing Stars. When it is awake, Eternatus causes a phenomenon dubbed the Darkest Day, in which the massive quantities of Dynamax energy it unleashes causes Pokémon to Dynamax and rampage uncontrollably. It can also sometimes keep other Pokémon from Dynamaxing in its presence.”

So, obviously, there’s a lot to unpack about this 65 foot death worm. And there’s also the issue in that paragraph: if Eternatus causes the Darkest Day every time it’s awake, why can the player walk around with it on the Isle of Armor and in the Crown Tundra and be fine? Does Eternatus being on Pasio now mean that there’s Power Spots and Galar Particles?

So, here’s my take on all of this, and my meager attempt to try and string everything together.

What is the Darkest Day and Where the Hell Did Eternatus Come From?

20,000 years ago, Eternatus landed in the meteor, and, according to Bulbapdedia’s page on the Darkest Day that states that it took place 3,000 years prior to SwSh, basically slept for 17,000 years. I wish I slept that good.

The dex entry for Hero of Many Battles Zamazenta in Sword also reveals something: “In times past, it worked together with a king of the people to save the Galar region. It absorbs metal that it then uses in battle.” Of course, this could mean a human king, like the two brothers from the tapestries, but we actually have a king Pokemon.

Calyrex.

Calyrex was said to rule over the Crown Tundra in times past, as a benevolent and merciful king, but willing to fight if necessary. Zacian’s other name, the Fairy King’s Sword, also ties into this, Calyrex potentially being inspired by depictions of the fae or elves.

So, the Darkest Day happens, and, if I’m correct, Calyrex and the wolves defeat Eternatus, who then goes into another slumber for 3,000 years.

So now that we have that: How Do the Galar Particles and Wishing Stars Work?

After Eternatus was defeated, pieces of their body rained down on Galar in the form of Wishing Stars, and given that they’re still raining down to this day ( see your Route 2 encounter with Hop ), it’s safe to say some are probably floating around in the atmosphere.

Wishing Stars are little pieces of Eternatus, imbued with legendary power. Oleana figured out how to slap ‘em into a band, and now you have Dynamax around your wrist.

But then there’s the other piece that got mentioned, like. Twice by Sonia or Rose. And never showed up again. Galar Particles. Released by Eternatus after their defeat by the Hero Duo and Caly, these little guys are what actually allow Dynamaxing. They’re also what allows Eternatus to live, them absorbing Galar Particles pretty much all the time in order to survive.

But, give them too much, by say, over loading them with Wishing Stars ( See: Rose ), and they Eternamax, causing the Darkest Day.

So, Abi, What the Fuck Does Any Of That Mean?

Here’s the tldr of the whole thing:

Eternatus crash lands on Earth 20,000 years ago and is asleep for 17,000 of them, probably holding in this great power the whole time. Since they’re not expending it gradually, 3,000 years before Sword and Shield, they cause the Darkest Day, as a result of their own overload.

Zacian and Zamazenta, lead by King Calyrex, defeat Eternatus, who expends a whole bunch of Galar Particles and Wishing Stars, which would allow trainers to Dynamax in the future, and then returns to their slumber, now without power.

Flash forward to the present day, and Rose decides to fuck around and find out, and begins reviving Eternatus with all the Wishing Stars he can get his hands on to solve an energy crisis, thanks to Bede and Oleana. Darkest Day happens again, thanks to Rose’s meddling, and the wolves wake up to save the day alongside Alex and Hop.

The Darkest Day is not directly a consequence of Eternatus being awake - that would be disastrous given that Alex has captured them and intends to train them.

Rather, the Darkest Day is simply a result of Eternatus being overloaded on power through the Galar Particles and Wishing Stars ( which likely have Galar Particles in them ).

Now that Eternatus has a trainer who can monitor how much power they have, it’s unlikely that the Darkest Day will be occurring again.

That was long as Hell but I hope it was worth the read.

#( For the Bookshelf ): Reference #( Team: Alex Farrell )#( alamgir. )

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petewentzisblack1312 · 4 years ago

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hi i just read the fob powerpoint u made and its amazing!! i really love all the genre bending fob has done across their discography too and rarely see ppl talking about that in a positive way so ur posts are really refreshing! also u mentioned citizens fob and the promo stuff they did for folie is one of my favorite things from that era so id love to hear anything u have to say about it!! i somehow had no clue that the original release date for folie was election day and thats so funny jkfdgn

im SO glad you asked!! i did a little revision on the wiki page and its a lil more complicated than id initially thought (although its still a little funny.... a smidge funny)

citizens for our benefit had A LOT of different things going on. there were fake website hacks, ashlee made sure she got papped holding flyers for CFOB, there was Fresh Only Bakery, pete wore a gold mask with an envelope that said "doctors orders: when you put on your disguise would the world still recognise you?", other bands on decaydance helped out by having like citizens fob stuff on their instruments (the Cab did that) and making posts on their own websites and quoting citizens fob posts and stuff and it was specifically developed with george orwells 1984 in mind (very pete wentz brainchild of them). it really ties in to the themes they explored on the album, which like i said include the cult of celebrity, but also just like society on a whole. all in all, it was all just quintessential fall out boy. im very glad there was a return to form with mania (without the self imposed time limit) and they did their goofy little viral marketing campaign. i also wanna point out that Copeland also had a viral marketing campaign and for no goddamn reason they decided as part of it to fuck with fobs by creating a website called citizens FOUR our benefit and posting it on fob forums. bitches hate to see you thriving smh.

when it comes to the election day thing, as it turns out i got it twisted, and it was a lot more noble than simply being unable to. they made the decision to release their album on election day wayy before, but decided that the election was way too important, and did not want to detract from it, so they postponed the date, but were really insistent they wanted it released before the year ended, leading to the week long release date.

and actually on the topic of the time limit, we have the benefit of hindsight and everything but i cant get over the fact that they were like "we should try to catch our old first idea best idea spark and limit the time we have with this album" and "we should try to blend a lot more sounds and ideas and create a more orchestral and varied soundscape" and didnt think maybe those 2 things together might emotionally and mentally beat the everloving shit out of them. like i can say with certainty that fall out boy sounds best when they can polish their stuff to a shine, (honestly the former idea is done best on ab/ap which is a comparatively weak album bc of it but its thematically consistent!! and also very good dont @ me) and sonically, folie is AMAZING, its a dynamic and beautiful soundscape that really captures the idea of a continuous soundtrack where every part has its place, and i think the theme they explored with it is great, but god id love to know how much less scattered the different parts of the overarching theme would be if they hadnt had the stupid idea to give themselves a short leash on an album with such an ambitious composition. like they got pretty political at times on that album, but it just feels like they didnt give themselves the time to really think about what they were tackling in which song. like on other albums each song is a self contained exploration of a part of the theme whereas thematically folie bleeds into itself a lot more.

tldr, they Wildin.

#dils declares #okay someone reccomend a better fall out boy reference for meta tags.#dils dissects #folie

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bloodontheclocktower · 4 years ago

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August 2021 - Fancy PPC & Other News

Now that you’ve had a few days to point your eyes at our initial photographs, in the last post, it’s time to go into more detail about the pre-production copy. I’ll be separating this post into three sections. First I’ll go over what they’ve absolutely nailed, which will make up the bulk of the post. Then I’ll discuss what we had issues with and how those issues have been addressed. Finally, we’ll talk about what wasn’t included and why it wasn’t included. But before I do, please keep in mind that the purpose of a pre-production copy is to iron out any remaining creases. It’s a dress rehearsal, so don’t panic if the actors get a few lines slightly wrong.

The Good

The Rulebooks are fantastic. We spent so much time getting these right, but there’s always that fear that the text might come out weird and unreadable, or the artwork might look all washed out and crappy on paper. But the rulebooks have absolutely outstripped our expectations and we’re just thrilled to bits with how awesome they look.

The Grimoire is extremely sturdy and well-built. We’ve slapped it around a fair bit and it’s clearly built to withstand a lot of punishment. This is good, because you will end up lobbing it around a lot.

The Character Sheets are just wonderful. Not only do they seem to be even more durable than the previous white sample examples sent through, but they’re also vibrant and very easy to read.

The Felt is fantastic. It’s arguably the weirdest part of the whole box, and certainly not something that your average board game producing factory is used to manufacturing. We honestly had nightmares worrying about how this particular component might need loads of extra scrutiny. But credit where it’s due, Panda Manufacturing have absolutely nailed it on their first try.

The Pages on the outside of the grimoire look so cool. This might seem like a little thing, but we made sure to get the lines on the edge of the grimoire to line up properly, creating the illusion of an actual, giant tome of eldritch lore! It’s those little touches that really add to the atmosphere of a game and, frankly, which make the difference between a good game and a great game. It’s mega satisfying to see it look so real.

The Token Boxes fit together really well. They’re the perfect size to contain all of the necessary bits, but most importantly, they’re very sturdy. In a lot of our prototype copies of the game, the token boxes needed to be held closed with rubber bands, so we’ve ensured that the cardboard around the edge of these versions is nice & thick and keeps them closed naturally, as you can see from the pictures below.

The Bad

The Sleeve around the Grimoire is a little askew. It fits perfectly, but the folds in the PPC were in the wrong spot. It looks a little jarring if you know what it’s supposed to look like.

The Double-Sided Tokens, in some instances, have some pretty heavy drift on one of their sides.

Both of the above issues have been confirmed by Panda as not being representative of the finished product. In their exact words, “this is normal in a PPC since the tokens are cut by a plodder and not die cut. In mass production, drift is a maximum of 1 mm in the worst situations. Don't worry this is typical for a PPC.”

The Absent

The Death Shrouds, Token Bags, and Plastic Sleeves were not in this most recent sample provided. This is because the PPC contains only printed products. We’ve already seen samples of all of these and approved them in advance. You can check the death shrouds out in this update from almost a year ago and the bags can be seen in this one, from May of 2020.

In Other News

If you’ve made a pre-order for Blood on the Clocktower and need to change your postal address, this can be done easily via the CrowdOx portal. If you do need to do this we’d appreciate you having it done as soon as possible, to ensure that your game is delivered to the correct address. We’ll have a final deadline for address changes for you in future. If you’re having any issues, or if you need to change your address to a different country, don’t hesitate to drop us an email at: [email protected]

We’ve received some questions regarding whether we’re still on schedule for our November 30th release date. Our initial estimates, regarding how long each step in the manufacturing would take, were quite conservative, providing for a bunch of potential issues at each step. Essentially, all of the times have a lot of 'padding' on them. At the moment, we’re still on track for the planned date, but if that changes at all it'll likely be to do with the current freighting crisis. We have the funds to absorb extra costs that we might incur, but we’ve got no control over shipping times, unfortunately. Having said that, our freight partner hasn’t yet suggested that we’ll be affected, but if they do then we’ll update the timeline and delivery expectations accordingly.

I’d also like to drop you all a link to the experimental characters section of the wiki, which has come a long way since our last mention of it. You’ll notice that almost all of the experimental characters are now included on it. The wiki really is a fantastic resource for getting to grips with individual characters and finding fun ways to play them, so please do go check it out.

Finally, I just want to point out that this will likely be our final major news on physical production. We’ll continue to check in with you guys every month, and you can expect more useful information to come along between now and release. But really, these final adjustments mark the end of our work on the game itself and the beginning of it transitioning into something that exists on your shelves and at your local board game stores. Thanks again for taking this journey with us, and I personally can’t wait to play this game with as many of you as I can convince to tolerate me!

- Ben

#bloodontheclocktower #socialdeduction #socialdeception #gaming #hiddenrole #tabletop #kickstarter #tabletopgaming #botc #ttgames #tabletopgames

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hoodwinkedtoohoodvsevil · 5 years ago

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sappy "i've loved my spesh for a year now" post

[[MORE]]

one year ago today, i got into twrp.

that's not to say i wasnt familiar with them before june 3rd, 2019. my big love was nsp, so i very much knew and appreciated them! i remember when nsp played on conan i was so happy for all of them and hoped twrp was getting just as much credit as nsp because they totally deserve it! i remember listening to guardians of the zone a couple years back in david's car and latching onto rock n roll best friends (my first favorite twrp song and still one of my faves!) and listening to that a lot. i remember the third starbomb album coming out last april and thinking, wow, this is definitely their best album musically because of twrp's instrumentation! and of course, like everyone else, i was obsessed with starlight brigade when the video came out, and recognized it was twrp's song featuring dan, not just a dan project. but i didn't have their names memorized, and for whatever reason, i thought they were all silent performers? like, i thought none of them talked and sung only talked/performed with talkbox. (i mean, i was like 60% right? at least at the time.)

on this day last year, i was showing my best friend arin and suzy's (gg) hot pepper gaming videos and then i noticed twrp's in the related videos. i was like oh my gosh! i didn't know twrp did one of these! and you can imagine my surprise when sung and meouch started talking fhfhdjdlfj i was literally like WAIT THEY TALK??? I REALLY THOUGHT NONE OF THEM TALKED. it's always really funny to look back on. and even though they spent most of that video suffering i thought they were so funny and likeable that i was like. maybe i should finally actually get into twrp.

and holy shit.

there's so much to twrp that i know i didn't do it all in a day. it's hard for me to get used to a band by listening to all their music once, so i took it album by album. i started with guardians of the zone, because i was already very familiar with it. listened to that on loop for a while, then moved onto together through time since it was their most recent album at the time. then, i went backwards from there.

i searched for all the lore i could. i read wiki pages, spent literal hours reading reddit AMAs, watched every video on their youtube channel and the hour long compilation of their instagram videos. this all took place over the span of like? a few days? a week? it's hard to say really. i fell so fast.

from that point on, i have so many stories, we would be here all day. i remember listening to believe in your dreams on repeat the day i became a d*sney trainer, and the literal day after that, they released hidden potential. then of course, the release of return to wherever, which i listened to nonstop for ages. the album is my jam because i love albums with a cohesive theme and songs that blend into each other. it's hard to beat together through time, but rtw comes really close.

i saw them for the first time live on july 30th, 2019. unfortunately, something happened that night that changed my life for the worse. but that wasn't twrp's fault at all. the show itself was incredible. i'd never been to a general admission concert of one of my faves, it was absolutely surreal that they were all right in front of me. and of course, they put on a hell of a show. they always do. god, i love them.

on august 9th 2019, i went to my first sung stream. it was a party stream and i'm on the east coast, so i stayed up until 3 AM to hear sung give me my first talkbox shoutout. i recorded it and still have the video. it made me smile in the early part of a very dark time in my life.

i made a lot of friends in that stream, we all shared twitters and i'm still friends/mutuals with all of them! and i've only made more friends since, especially at nsp10. nsp10 was incredible for many reasons, but a big one was that the three hours my fiancé and i were waiting outside the venue to be let in, we were just walking around saying hi to my twrp friends, meeting a bunch of them for the first time. and i made new friends! i remember standing in a group, shivering in my heart boner cosplay, and one of the guys saying "you're artie, right? i follow you on twitter, i love your cosplay!" he seemed like he was really gathering the courage to say it to me, he had no idea how happy it would make me! (shoutout to logan! you're awesome!)

really, if any of my twrp friends are reading this, i love you to pieces. meeting you has definitely been a high point of the last 365 days.

again, i have so many stories. but since this is already so long i'm just gonna cut to march 5th, 2020. that was the night i met them. now, i'm not a shy person at all, and over the past few years i haven't really been very socially anxious. i'm able to carry myself in conversation, even with strangers. but i've never met a fave before. let alone four faves at once. so, naturally, everything i had planned on saying completely left my brain. but they're literally the best, so it was still an absolute dream. the first thing sung said when he saw me was "hey you look great!" (my outfit was clearly inspired by his own, fancy orange hat and all, so he probs wanted to Respect The Drip but he was right regardless and also HOLY SHIT) and i had my baby porg gary with me (the sunshine of my life) and they all interacted with him and it was super wholesome.

they played two nights in orlando, and i went to both shows because of course i did. first night was great, second night was even better even though that was my GA show. they played life party on night 2, which might as well be my favorite song of all time. it has carried me through every bad moment since i first heard it. big and small. i have a lyric from it tattoo'd on my arm as a constant reminder that i'm alive, and that is something to be ecstatic about. i also had more room to dance and move around on night 2, and dance and move around i did. then, when the show was over and scatman played, i got out everything else i had. august-november 2019 was actual hell for me, and i was still dealing with the aftermath of it all. but that concert high made me realize, holy shit! all of it is over! it doesn't matter anymore! twrp carried me through one of the roughest periods of my life, and met me at the finish line with a fucking gold medal. i fucking did it. now i have none of the bad, and all of the good. it was one of the best feelings i've ever had, and one of the happiest nights of my life.

since then, twrp continues to keep me going. of course the world has been a total shitshow, but everyone's streams (especially the twrp show) have been the highlight of my week every week.

i've always considered myself a very positive person, but last year was a very bad year for my depression, as well as traumatic at times. and i've always had problems feeling understood. i still do. but twrp said hey! literally nobody understands us. not even ourselves! but that's okay! we want you to be happy and feel loved and supported no matter what. and i really can't thank them enough for it.

this part is mostly for another longer post, but i wanted to mention it since it's also really important. i fully came to terms with being a mlm last year after years of compulsory heterosexuality, and twrp played a big part in me exploring and accepting that about myself. and i was already very secure in my gender identity when i found them, but hearing "this song goes out to all the ladies, fellas, and everyone in between" shook me to my very core. i've never loved a band that literally said "shoutout to trans/nb people" at every concert. god. i love them so fucking much.

so this was even longer than i expected (and i expected it to be long bc yknow. spesh.) but i just have so much love and gratitude for this band. every day of my life i'm so thankful that doctor sung, commander meouch, lord phobos, and havve hogan exist and are spreading all this love and positivity to their fans every day. i've never loved a band like this, and i probably never will. they are truly special.

and it's only been a year!!!!

#artie.txt #twrp #this is super long but if you care about me and twrp and how they've impacted me #then here ya go

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scholarsofthedas · 6 years ago

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Case Study: Feynriel - Regarding Elf-blooded & Elven traits

While roaming within the streets of Kirkwall as Hawke & Co. encounter more shenanigans they didn't ask for. Or maybe they did. Something has, in particular, has piqued my interest.

Or perhaps should I say someone.

Feynriel - an elf-blooded apostate, who Hawke would later be informed by Keeper Marethari during [Night Terror] that he is a "Somniari," or "Dreamer," an exceptional skill that makes him able to enter and change the Fade at will, even killing people within it. A rare talent, if developed at all, that was thought was thought to have been extinct for two ages ( as far as Southern Thedas is concerned), since dreamers attract demons and most prove too frail of mind to survive a demonic possession.

What is quint about this young man wasn't the fact that he turns out to be a Dreamer; while his body physique is unmistakably human. If we take a closer at his facial features and compare to his parents, he much resembles his elven mother Arianni

than his human father Vincento

Such as the spacing between the eyes and its shape, and the tip of his ears appears to be a little sharper (although one might argue it is due to the angle of the picture)

Which is a rather peculiar phenomenon considering that elf-blooded (often refer to offspring sired by a human and elven parent) would appear physically human and are in fact considered purely human. The reason why we don’t usually encounter individuals that have elvhen traits unless they are full elven was that the elven genome has been described as "adaptive" and elven reproduction in this regard has "much more to do with magic" than science or simple breeding.

Even his wiki page has sited that the developers have more or less acknowledged his more elven features, although Weekes has dismissed it as a “mistake” in Feynriel’s model.

What I propose is the notion that it is more to do with the environment. Let me explain:

*[link]

Elves generally don’t mingle with other races much already due both cultural and practical reasons (as offsprings between human & elf is a [elf-blooded] human, general social discrimination and hostility).

Regarding Dwarves, they aren’t very fertile race to begin with due to the fact that darkspawn has taken over and tainted majority of the Deep Roads, not to mention the notion of mating with other races (humans & elves) was in fact so rare it is considered an oddity than a group of its own; In addition, Orzammar is very restrictive on who they allow into their territory, thus being contact with one, let alone forming an intimate relationship (or at all) is very rare. A “half-dwarf” would mainly be a result of a union between a surface dwarf and human.

As we learn throughout the lore, the very essence of elves are deeply connected to the Fade. In fact, it is heavily implied that elves were once spirits themselves but later take on flesh, mortal form.

And the existent of the Veil has muffled (not mute) that connection.

Typically, cities and settlements avoid locations where the Veil is thin for practical reasons such as spirit and demons unless the place is of political and/or religious significance. Not unlike the people in real life have superstitions and/or avoid such places that are said to be haunted or supernatural essence in general. Normal civilians usually stay away from regions and buildings that harbours the Circle of Magi as well. Even where were signs of any civilization in such place where Veil is thin are usually of the wilder folks such as the Avvars and the Chasind in which they are lived in the region for generations and more intimate information we know about them are often the tip of the iceberg. Majority of Dalish clans generally refrain from human contacts.

Now, Kirkwall is where things get interesting.

You see, while most people might have just assumed that it is only the Gallows where weird [magic] shit happens (“expected” in most Circles ).

If one did take the time to search, gather and read all 12 parts of [Codex entry: The Enigma of Kirkwall], one would realize the “City of Chains” and it’s surrounding region (including Sundermount) is one special place of fuck-up.

Literally

The investigation notes conducted by “The Band of Three” has revealed that the underbelly of Kirkwall aka Dark Town is not simply sprawling mess of a labyrinth. The layout plan of the city shows there were patterns in the intersections, back alleys, and boulevards. Some magisters believed in the power of symbols or shapes. In the oldest parts of the city, one can make out the outlines of glyphs in the very streets.

Later notes shows, the records of slaves entering Kirkwall, the numbers did not add up. "For every thousand slaves that came to Kirkwall, a hundred disappeared", that's one out of ten slaves. A disproportionately high number and quite alarming.

"The mages of Kirkwall have a more troubled history than those in other Circles. A greater percentage of them do not survive the Harrowing, and a greater percentage turn to blood magic—almost double that of Starkhaven or Ostwick." (Why the Chantry decided it was actually a good idea to set up a Circle here in the first place boggles the mind. But that’s topic is for another time)

"It is well known that the Veil is thin in Kirkwall, small wonder given the suffering in the city. But we've discovered the magisters were deliberately thinning it even further.” Basically, with the information above, we can come to the conclusion that those ‘missing’ slaves were being sacrificed to whatever blood magic ritual the Ancient Magisters were preparing.

(This is some level of *FMA horror right there; City state-scaled instead of the whole nation. Not that it was any better)

Whether the citizens & inhabitants acknowledge or unaware of the haunting history that their resident used to be the heart of the slave trade in the height of the Ancient Tevinter Imperium, we do not know. Perhaps they choose to be ignorant of such history for better sleep at night.

You might be wondering why I brought up all these grim past and what is it has anything to do with being elf-blooded and elven traits.

The point is, Kirkwall is a rare case that contains all the ‘required’ elements - a city with a fair amount of residents - including an Elven Alienage. But also where the Veil is extremely thin, dangerously so. However, it also means the connection to the Fade is stronger as well - strong enough for the ‘recessive’ -like (word loosely used) gene of the elven blood to surface and affect one’s appearance.

Therefore the word “adaptive” is being used because it is affected by the level of connection to the Fade in the region.

Conclusion: I have come up with 2 theories + 1 potential variable.

Theory I.) “Inborn” - The elven-gene is affected by where the child was conceived and where was the mother during her time of pregnancy. The energy from the Fade is absorbed by the child and nurtured at its most vulnerable stage - the fetus, in the purest form.

Theory II.) “Postnatal” - where the mother was during her pregnancy might be irrelevant. What is more important was the environment the child themselves was in. Just as the local diet and culture practice would affect the physique of a person, so does the energy of the Fade would influence the essence of the said elf-blooded individual, nurturing them as they grow up.

Variable) The parents of the child - the elf-blooded child who has an elven mother has a slightly higher chance of having their [physical] elven traits surface than compare to elf-blooded child who has mother of other races (Humans, Dwarves, Qunari(?)) due to the fact that the child is [usually] more closely connected (emotional & physically nurtured) by the mother as the result of the pregnancy.

Let me know what do you think?

Drop us an ask or discuss away in the notes and/or reblog!

Thank you for reading.

- Curator Justine ✹

----------------------------

*FMA - Full Metal Alchemist [Brotherhood];

#dragon age #dragon age meta #dragon age theory #dragon age theories #dragon age elves #elf-blooded #elven traits #the fade #Feynriel #elves #kirkwall #fan theory #original post #long post

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maxmakkaroni-blog · 6 years ago

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Me and fandom

In almost all of my 23 years, I can’t remember not being a fan of something. As the youngest one in my family I grew up with 2 cousins and my sister, all at least 4 years older than me. Growing up in rural Bavaria, my cousins introduced me to fandom before I could even talk properly, as they plastered everything in their rooms and themselves with merchandise of soccer clubs they loved. So, it is funny enough that I never even started to care about a single soccer club, other than my 5-year-old me assuring them that I was in love with Bavaria Munich in order not to get a wedgie. However, when I was old enough, I was allowed to tend for their neglected video game consoles for a limited time whenever I was over, which is the first time I really understood what fandom actually meant. Both cousins had games for the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise, games that focus on displaying semi-realistic skateboarding action with real-life brands, skaters and locations. The first time I was exposed to this type of media I became obsessed with it. I would call my mother over to read me the names of the skaters and levels, I started to recognize the brands in the game in real life, I wanted my cousins to tell me about this Tony Hawk guy. I even wished for an actual skateboard, a hobby that I still casually but passionately perform to this day even going to contests to see some of my heroes of the sport. This must have been in late 2000 however, so researching on the internet was not a real possibility, plus I was barely literate enough to write my own name. Luckily enough, some of my friends also started to get into video games via their older brothers etc., so there soon was a small community around video games, small in every sense of the word. It was mostly me and my friend Peter, who came from an even lower income family than myself and unlike me he was allowed to basically play video games all day, every day, so we used to sit in front of a television for hours, playing all sorts of video games and eating chunk food. For a long while skateboarding and video games of all sorts were my obsession. Franchises like the Tony Hawk’s games, Metal Gear Solid, Fallout, Need for Speed and many more were part of my daily life. As soon as the internet became more accessible and I was smart enough to wrap my head around it, I would watch videos about these games via pages like YouTube and spend a lot of time finding out more about my favorite skateboarders. While watching a compilation of the video game Skate 2, I found my new obsession, which was going to be music.

Though at this point the band that was playing in the video is merely a nostalgic guilty pleasure, Korn turned me into a full-blown music fan. No one in my family was ever even interested in music despite liking something that may have been on the radio, but this band had really touched me in a completely new way. I would get every album, watch every interview, learn about their instruments, analyze all their lyrics, buy their merch with my pocket money and generally annoy everyone out of their mind with this band. Oddly enough no one around me seemed to like the band all that much, but a lot of the community that came with it for me was on the internet anyway. As much as I don’t care for the band now, I’m still more than grateful to this band as they were the reason why I picked up the bass guitar and started making music, which is to this day still the biggest joy in my life. The pattern of passionately plunging into fan communities also established here. Even today, whenever I find bands, fictional universes, authors or anything else that tickles me in a certain way, I tend to immerse myself completely. For fictional universes I usually lose myself in endless reads on wiki pages about the happenings and characters of whatever I am into, trying to know absolutely everything about this universe, whether it is Harry Potter, Fallout or Elite. Being part of the fan communities is also a big part of enjoying the experience. For me, Reddit and YouTube are the places where I have the most interaction with other community members. Whether it is a discussion over lore on r/falloutlore or comments on a video about the latest patch of Elite Dangerous, I always seem to find time to stay in contact with people I will probably never meet, but have the same passion about fiction that I have. As far as fan fiction goes, by far the most contact I had, is with a more unusual approach to fan fiction, which is modding. Modding means modifying existing video games and adding new user generated content for others to enjoy. This can mean everything from improving graphics and mechanics of games, to using the game engine as a foundation for expanding the story, which is what I was always interested in. I consider this fan fiction in video games. Fans of a franchise take the existing narrative and either fill the holes or add more to it, all the while creating their own virtual places with new characters to interact with. For me, the games that I adored the most for this were the Fallout games, as they actively encouraged modding with every part of it. They are open world role playing games in a futuristic post-apocalyptic setting that still has a foot in 1950s America, that allow the players to go about the story at their own pace, making it easy for modders to easily add more and more without interrupting the pacing of the story. The mod community of these games are still as active as when they were brand new.

As far as my fandom in music is concerned, everything is a lot more personal and therefore much harder to describe. For me, the music that I listen to and the musicians I obsess over seem to always seems to reflect where I am in life. Not to say that I inevitably tend to lose interest in all the music I listen to at some point, there are certainly constants. Artists and bands like Mark Kozelek, Neil Young, Sufjan Stevens, Mr. Bungle and many more are always in my rotation of music that I love. Listening to music is also not the only way I enjoy it. Like already mentioned, I like to get to know the people behind the music, analyze the lyrics, learn the songs on my instruments, find out more about their gear, their creative process and pretty much everything around the music itself. Though it may not seem like it, I am a very different fan of music than I am a fan of all kinds of fiction. For one, the community aspect is way less pronounced, as music is a way more personal hobby unless it comes to my own music. Most of my friends don’t share my musical taste and it has pretty much always been like that, so I like to think of my music fandom as something that only exists between me and the music that I can relate too, which is more than fine by me.

It is safe to say that fandom is an enormous part of my life and I don’t think this will change much. Being a fan of something does not only mean enjoying something to a great extent, it also means being part of a community that shares your interests. Fan interaction takes mere entertainment and turns it into something far more personal, yet communal. All the things I have been a fan of left a major impression on me as a person, whether it is a video game series, a band or some fictional universe, and I certainly look forward to getting into new and interesting fandoms that further accompany me through my everyday life.

#fandom

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gigsoupmusic · 6 years ago

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Static-X - Wisconsin Death Trip tour (+ Soil, Wednesday 13 and Dope) - Leeds, Stylus gig review (28/09/2019)

"Wisconsin Death Trip" is the first studio album of Static-X that came out in 1999 and helped the band gain the following of industrial rhythmic metal fans. In 2014 Static-X leader Wayne Static (Wayne Richard Wells) tragically passed away which shocked and saddened their fans and followers. This year due to high demand and 20th anniversary of their first record the original members of Static-X - Tony Campos, Koichi Fukuda and Ken Jay - decided to go to tour with a help of a nameless guest vocalist (named Xer0 on their Wiki page). This autumn they are also visiting the UK together with three other bands that also gained their loyal fan bases back in early 2000's - Soil, Dope and Wednesday 13.

To give enough time to all four bands the concert started unusually early - at 6pm. First on stage came Dope. The set list was short but extremely satisfying as they played their most successful tunes such as "Die MF Die", "I'm back" and cover version of Dead or alives' "You spin me round (like a record)". The band - Edsel Dope, Chris Warner, Andre 'Virus' Karkos and Daniel Fox - interacted with the audience sharing their excitement of being a part of the tour, how unusual it is for them to perform this early and how f-up America and the whole world currently are. The whole performance was professional, energetic and showed that Dope is still going strong.

Next performed Wednesday 13 together with Roman Surman, Jack Tankersley, Troy Doebbler and Kyle Castronovo. All band members were wearing gothic/horror/vampire-like make up. Vocalist's skin was all covered in black paint that perfectly suited a number of different costumes that he was changing during their performance. Music and entourage took the whole tone of the concert to a different level making it more theatrical and unpredictable. Towards the end of their set all of the band members were covered in neon pain that contrasted with low light and their gothic appearance. During their last song "I love to say F--k" Wednesday performed topless with an umbrella that flipped everyone off. With their performance Wednesday 13 created one of the most visually interesting shows to this day. The third band to perform was Soil - Ryan McCombs, Adam Zadel, Tim King and T.J. Taylor - with energetic, deep, heavy songs. The band also interacted with people in the audience, mentioned Wayne Static and gave inspiring speech of how "Everything starts with YOU, and everything ends with YOU". While performing "Halo", the last song of their set and at the same time their most well-known single, Ryan joined the audience and his dancing fans in the middle of the pit with his old school mic. After Soil left the stage people were still buzzing as many of them did not expect to be this close to the vocalist. And last but not least it was time for Static-X to come on stage. Pictures of all four original members, including Wayne, were appearing on the screen emphasising that their performance is a big tribute in honour of their lost brother. From the first song "Bled for days", to the middle of the performance during a short pause when a tribute to Wayne Static with his picture appeared on the screen, right until the very last song "Push it", every corner of Stylus was filled with dancing people. Mysterious anonymous vocalist perfectly suited the band's aesthetics with a mask and Wayne's iconic hairstyle and similar singing style. All four members were full of infectious energy. It was a memorable performance filled with nostalgia, excitement and heavy industrial rhythm. The fact that fans of Static-X are still asking for the band to perform shows that the band has a uniqueness that is hard to find even nowadays. And their decision to tour with three other rare-to-see bands is a true gift to all music lovers. R.I.P. Wayne Static - 1965-2014 ----- All photos taken by Alina Salihbekova https://www.instagram.com/asalihbekova/ Read the full article

#Dope #Leeds #review #soil #StaticX #Wednesday13 #Wisconsindeathtrip

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christinaroseandrews · 7 years ago

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Part 1

First off, I’m going to have to break this review up into pieces. I’ve got too much to rant about - complete with screen grabs - that tumblr will hate me. Not to mention, I want to show you the pain and then talk about some of the more salient problems with this book in depth.

A little over a month and a half ago I said I was going to do something stupid. I was going to read my way through Faleena Hopkins’ book You Don’t Know Me. I got through the first half in a fairly decent clip - the writing was not good, the characters weren’t good, the plots were flying more than mosquitoes in summer... and then I got to the part where I just started continually shouting.

Laws of physics, laws of nature, laws of storytelling were all thrown aside as if they were garbage and then literal garbage was shoved into its place.

This was not a good book. This is not me ragging on her as an author. But I am not joking when I say I’ve read stuff by actual teenagers that was much, much better than this. And because I had to suffer through it, you have to suffer through my ranting. Aren’t I nice?

The story takes a common trope “Secret Love Child” and combines it with another “The Missing Heir” and adds a dash of “Draco in Leather Pants” and “Poor Little Rich Boy” into the mix. By the way, if you can’t guess, TV Tropes is my wiki-walk rabbit hole and I have no regrets. The same cannot be said for this book.

Rue Calliwell (and I don’t care if I misspell the name - the author doesn’t; why should I?) is trying to make it in Los Angeles. She works the graveyard shift at a local grocery store while trying to catch her big break as a dancer. When Jack Stone, one of America’s Famous Billionaire Playboys, suddenly appears on her doorstep hopping mad, she wonders what died in his Wheaties and maybe if she can kiss away the frown he’s fixing her with. (Yep, she’s dreaming about some brother banging.) After dragging the story out for way too long, it’s finally revealed that Rue is the bastard daughter of Jack’s father and that he’s been embezzling from his company to stock up an inheritance of $50 million that has Rue’s name all over it. If she refuses the money, it goes to the KKK and she can’t allow that to happen. While her other brother, Sean, treats her to a Pretty Woman makeover, Jack wrangles their best friend Alec (and super hot lead singer of a band that’s never mentioned and isn't important to the plot in any way) to seduce his sister and then break her heart. Because that’s what all pissed off brothers do, dontcha know?

So where do I even begin with this?

How about at the beginning... I have over 120 notes that I made on this as I read it. I’ll share some of them with you.

This is the opening paragraph to this book. There is so much wrong with this I just can’t even. From the random thought, to the run-on sentence (a Faleena Hopkins Trademark), to the weird-ass descriptors. Frowning Forehead? Are there lips on this forehead? Another face? Not to mention that there are missing en-dashes and it’s in a confusing tense. (Most of the book is in first person/present tense... because of the contraction, the sentence can be read as both present and past tense.)

The story introduces us to Rue, Jack, and Sean in pretty short order. Rue is supposed to be the heroine. The one we’re rooting for. Jack is the antagonist. One of the two wronged brothers and the one who thinks that Rue has an agenda. He is not a nice character. Then there’s Sean who is too good for this world and is written like every single stereotypical gay best friend but he’s got a “SECRET!” You have one guess what that is going to be.

If you can’t tell, this is in reference to Jack. But not only do we have a wild apostrophe, but we also have Exorcist levels of neck contortion. Not to mention a super awkward sentence.

This is also a Faleena Hopkins Trademark.

See...

I also mentioned that the story was in need of a good editor. Not just a proofreader, but an actual story doctor who could prune the 15 or so subplots down to something manageable while actually giving us a romance. Not a sex story shoved into a family drama. By the way, this story BARELY qualifies as a romance and I’m not totally convinced it is. The main characters end up together, but it is in no way satisfying and the focus of the story wasn’t on the relationship. More on that later.

But let’s go back to the editing.

Sorry about the italics not translating between Goodreads (where I can access my notes) and what’s in the actual book. Trust me when I say that this woman hasn’t met an italic she didn’t love, except when she should use them.

As you can see, there are now enough errors for me to mark it down a star for poor proofreading. And I’m not even a quarter of my way through this. The errors continued including something I find a death knell... the author spelling her main character’s name wrong. I’m not going to bother sharing more of her proofreading errors, unless they are really eye-roll enducing.

Another reason why this book is so bad is because the foreshadowing is heavy-handed as fuck. Like I’m going to hit you over a brick with it but I want you to act surprised when the reveal takes place. It’s that bad.

Here’s one of the most egregious examples.

We didn’t get the actual reveal of what was in the summary until 7% of the way into the book. Which is 21 pages and 5 Chapters into the book. Even then, the author played with it for a while, making it so that Rue didn’t believe the lawyer and thought this was some elaborate reality show prank. Yeah.

The author also wasn’t terribly good at hiding her foreshadowing.

This was in the character’s head. You don’t hide that kind of thing in your own head. It’s why most mystery writers don’t write from the POV of the killer, “The Strange Case of Roger Ackroyd” aside. It gives away the mystery. Coupled with the over abundance of POVs and this heavy handed handling of the character. I would have dropped this plot line entirely.... More on this later. Trust me, what goes on with Sean is a rant in and of itself and is enough for me to rate this one star.

Now let’s get into the flashback portion and will portion of the plot.

This is where the first gif really starts showing through.

Part of me really wanted to send Hopkins the Wikipedia article on cancer. The other part of me wondered: if this is what she considers hyperbole, then what other horrors did I have in store?

I shouldn’t have asked.

This is brought up, but never actually addressed. Also I need to talk about how the father gave Rue the money. He gave it to her in a lump sum. $50 million. Not a trust. Not a foundation. Just here! Cash!

The author tries to address it later. But fails.

And that’s assuming that there aren’t locality taxes and again congrats you’re in a higher income bracket.

The biggest problem with this is that the father would know better. Or have the money offshore... not something that would be transferred into a U.S. checking account to make the IRS piddle their pants like an errant puppy. The father who claims to have loved the mother and the daughter, would make sure that the daughter had the money to keep her comfortable for the rest of her life and not able to spend it or give it away all in one go.

I used to work for a lawyer’s office who specialized in estate planning (and real estate) - in most cases, if you have more than $250,000 in assets that will survive your death, it’s recommended to have a trust because the federal government takes so much.

These tricks are one of the many ways that the rich stay rich.

As I mentioned before Rue gets a makeover, courtesy of Sean.

I’m thinking of the now deleted video of hers... But here’s the author.

So of course from here on out, I’m picturing Faleena as Rue... which did not help matters.

The reason why I say this is a nice lampshade is literally until she finds out that Jack and Sean are her brothers, she’s fantasizing about sleeping with them and kissing them. Which again is “Ew!!!” for the reader and not funny and kinda crosses the pseudo-incest vibe that Amazon will allow and goes into Incest because again, we the reader know what the score is, it’s in the damned summary.

This is a huge problem in the book. The sainted mother who died of the mystical cancer is the sole woman who doesn’t get the slut/bitch/sexist treatment. Huge problem. Not even Jenna is immune (which happens later) and Jenna falls into another bad trope which I will get to later.

There’s more, but let me tell you, headhopping in the first person, present tense is tough. You’re deep into one character’s head. That takes talent.

Crappy talent. But talent.

This is where I’m going to stop my first post. We’ve just got the first mention of the love interest, Alec. And opened up another problem.

How is Alec Sean and Jack’s only friend? I say this as someone whose best friends growing up were identical twins. Most siblings, especially those that aren’t twins, won’t have the same bestie. They don’t want the same bestie. It’s a thing. They may have friends in common, but most best friends tend to be someone else. Mostly so they have someone they can rant to about the other.

If you think this is bad, wait until you meet Alec and the new siblings have a night on the town.

It’s going to be great....

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bleedandevolve · 7 years ago

Text

Monsters and Men vs Bleed and Evolve: Why change?

I’ve spoken a lot about Monsters and Men, our previous forum and name, and I realized I should have made an entry like this sooner. Basically, I want to address what’s with all the change and why.

I’ve already covered some topics, like how enemies are starting to become their own mechanic instead of having to stat out new characters, essentially, every time you want to beat something up. How starting gear got a bit of a change with the pokemon zodiac, and other things as well. I’ll try not to re-cover those topics here.

Story time!

When I started Monsters and Men, it was because I fell in love with tabletop rpgs and had no one to play them with. My cousin, who was the only Dungeon Master I knew, decided he hated running games and abruptly stopped. I turned to the internet, but knew I wanted something specific, that I didn’t want to reinvent my old forum Chasing Our Spirits, because when I look back on it, it felt like a colossal failure to me. I wanted something similar though. I wanted to take pokemon and “ruin” it so to speak, then mash it together with tabletops. Pokemon has always been my biggest love of any sort of fandom, ever since I was very, very young, and Pokemon Yellow came out. I got a Gameboy Color just for that, and it took me hours to figure out how to leave the first house because I was a dumb kid. I sobbed when the batteries died in my Gameboy and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t play anymore. I watched the Pokemon anime whenever I could, I even went so far as to demand the Pokemon mac and cheese shapes over any other kind of shapes (the shapes are the best tasting and you won’t convince me otherwise).

I joined a few other pokemon roleplays after Chasing Our Spirits was closed down, and realized it still wasn’t fitting what I needed. That eventually spurred me into making my own again. I tried to delve into the world of tabletop rpgs, of which I was completely new to. A lot of my cousin’s rpgs were improvised on the spot, with little to no mechanical involvement. Anywho, I contacted my old friend Amissa, who I knew from back when I started this whole mess, with a little rp in a pokemon collectible's roleplay section on their forums. The roleplay was Shadow over Alleos, which I also consider a disaster, but it did teach me a few things.

We started working on what would become Monsters and Men. She had more experience than me with tabletops at this point, but I spearheaded the mechanics, thinking that I could get by with what research I did on FATE and Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying System.

Oh how wrong I was.

It became abundantly clear to me immediately after we opened in beta that we weren’t attracting people who wanted to tell a story where dice played a role. They wanted to “win” the roleplay, and quickly broke my system to make themselves very powerful. Being young and naive, it took me a while to figure out how to put my foot down and start trying to fix things, not to mention my social anxiety making it difficult for me in general. But slowly, I kept trying to fix things, and improve them. Members largely came and went, though we had a few who stuck by our side (thank you guys, you have no idea how much that meant to me).

But I still felt like I was only band-aid fixing everything. I didn’t know enough about tabletops to really fix the system in a way that wasn’t tedious to use (our later system) or completely easy to break (our earlier system). While the later system made things harder and more threatening, the fact that you had to go through useless skills to make better ones and then drop the old useless ones actually made zero sense and I don’t know why I kept running with it.

In addition, I had the luxury of seeing a few sites try to mimic my system and watched how the system fared there. I kept coming to the same conclusion though: something needs to change. A lot of things need to change.

Let me show you the problems I had and how I’m addressing them:

Problem: Skills are tedious to use because so many of them are garbage. Solution: Revamp the skill system entirely. I’ll go over how we almost completely changed skills at a later date when I’m sure I have more of it figured out, and more testing is done, but suffice it to say, I launched myself into research. I started backing rpg manuals on Kickstarter, I asked for them for Christmas, I went out and bought them and began to hoard them. I read them cover to cover, things ranging from Pathfinder to Dungeon World to Fireborn. I’m still in this process, making sure that I’m not missing anything, to make sure that things are ready to go and hopefully in better shape this time when we re-open.

The problem with the old system was that skills had to be “Generalized”, then you could “branch” a skill when it reached a certain rank to “Specialized” which could do more cool things, and then “Unique/Expertise” which could do the best stuff, but you had to level all of those skills individually. Instead of being useful, it just created a step ladder of skills that you never came back down from.

Problem: Enemies take forever to stat up and it makes combat slow to a crawl and makes people (like me) not want to post ever. Solution: At first, my solution was that I was going to improve the skill system. However, when I figured one out that I liked, I ran into the issue that it would be impossible to do without a second person. And impossible to automate, even if I paid the big bucks to someone to develop it for Xenforo. Not to mention paying them to maintain it through updates! So then it clicked, as I said in the last entry...Why did the two systems have to be the same? Who said? Well, they were wrong. I’ll give you guys an update on the new enemy system soon, I promise!

Problem: Equipment is either too powerful, or not powerful enough. Solution: Tear it up and start anew. I’ve been through so many different equipment systems I can’t even remember a lot of them. But the one I have right now I’m pretty satisfied with. I hate to say it again, but stay tuned! I’ll go over the new system soon. Problem: Pokedex (and wiki pages in general) pages were all over the place. Solution: Fuck it, make a new wiki. Start fresh. (Noticing a pattern in how I solve these issues?) It will, of course, suck to move all of that information over, but we’re changing so much to begin with that it’s not even worth trying to fix up the old wiki. Problem: Lore is all over the place, or not covering things that people need. Solution: Hand it to our local lore nerd lorekeeper Aurora. She’s extremely passionate about the setting of Bleed and Evolve, and I trust her completely with it. We have a pretty great connection when it comes to what we want out of the world of Cimmeria, and I know she’ll give it her all. I really want Cimmeria to feel like a living, breathing world you can immerse yourself into and be completely taken away. Did you ever want to know how much metal and what kind of metal 100 scrap traditionally is? Weight included? We got you covered.

Problem: There’s no good way to restrict certain types of characters (escaped pokemorphs, ect). Solution: Meta currency, my friends. Separate from scrap, which is in-game currency, the meta currency “Diamonds” will be gained from different activities, like being a Storyteller. Diamonds can be exchanged for access to a rare character type, like an escaped pokemorph. Problem: Quests are very same-y and boring. Solution: Change the system! You can see what I did in an earlier entry, but the short answer is that the whole system needed to be gutted. We had it automated on Monsters and Men, but I would trade it in a heartbeat for what it is now. What’s the bottom line answer to the question I asked in the title? We changed because I hated the direction we were going. We changed because it wasn’t working, it was time for something new. And we changed because I knew more this time around. There are so many different reasons why we rebranded as Bleed and Evolve, but one of them was because I wanted to shed some of the problems Monsters and Men had. Not to forget about them, but to start anew. We needed to make way for something better.

On that note, I think I’m going to stop this entry here. Stay tuned for more Developer Diaries, possibly one tomorrow as an update to The Enemy Turn! - Thief

#pokemon roleplay #dark pokemon #pokemon rp #tabletop rp #pokemon tabletop #gritty pokemon #bleedandevolve #forum rp #forum roleplay

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