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bomberqueen17 · 12 days

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who let me out

Most of the time I spend on Tumblr has been taken up in writing these Aubreyad book recaps so I haven't been talking about my own life but there's not a lot to say.

However!

I am making a voyage to England next week which is extremely exciting, and yes I'm going to see the museum exhibit about that archaeology dig I was so excited about. I have been so stressed lately that I have barely thought about this and in fact last night I finally was like "do i need like. socks n underwear for this trip. idek." and i haven't even looked at weather reports so I don't know what clothes I need. But I did live in the UK for a while once so I'm fairly confident that my good raincoat and new waterproof boots will be a good start towards an autumn wardrobe.

So I hope to talk about that more, coming up.

Meanwhile, rambling about personal life stuff

The last stint at the farm was so fucking stressful. I had to work the market sometimes, which means a full day of work on Saturday. We had so much work to get through, and several people who help us weren't available, so we had to do it all ourselves, and that meant some ten-hour days, meant some exhausting slogs. At the end I was like "do you know what I'm not going to do while I'm on vacation?" "no, what" "ever touch raw chicken." I singlehandedly had to package like 1000 pounds of raw chicken in two days, after having packaged 200 whole chickens the day before. I was just so tired of the way raw cold chicken feels in my hands. Ugh ugh ugh.

I got so stressed I just wasn't sleeping, which sucked. Oh, I'd get into bed, and I'd fall asleep at my normal time-- usually around 10pm-- and then I'd wake up at 2am and that was it, I was up for the day. I tried various things-- went to bed at 9, woke up at 1-- lay there pretending to sleep-- got up and wrote-- got up and walked around-- one night I watched the entirety of the Master & Commander movie from 2003 on YouTube. Why not! I did remember some of it from 20 years ago, how funny.

(My dad liked that movie. His favorite thing to do during movies was to quibble about historical inaccuracies. But this movie had so much fanservice for reenactors in it that he was quietly delighted. His quibble was that the violin and cello duets were too good, they should've recorded amateurs. He had a point.)

Anyway. I was researching various methods of helping one sleep-- the only one at my disposal was weed gummies and I spent one very miserable night just lying there high and bored and not sleeping and wasn't totally sober when morning came and that fucking sucked. I commute on foot or I never would have risked it, but being very slightly still high and exhausted and trying to do repetitive physical work was really, really dispiriting.

but we got everything done. In the end. And I left. And once I got home I went to sleep and I have not had really any appreciable trouble sleeping since. I can even nap, sometimes!

Heck.

One of the things I'd meant to take care of while I was at the farm was that of course on my birthday, my fucking driver's license expired. On the one hand, thank you DMV, it used to be that everyone's license expired on the same day, so you'd have to go wait in massive lines to get it dealt with. Now it's... not evenly distributed exactly, because people's birthdays are a random distribution, but it's a perfectly logical and reasonable way to organize expiration dates. But it meant that in the midst of this exhausting miserable stint of work when I didn't have time to do anything really fun for my birthday (don't cry for me, my mom made me a cake and my BIL bought me ice cream treats) I also was consumed with angst about needing to renew my license. i was so sure they'd yell at me because I hadn't renewed before it expired-- but they wanted me to do an eye test, and I could not, could not coordinate that, I'm overdue for an optometrist appointment by several years and I just could not fucking make it happen.

So I went to the DMV yesterday and was like "i both want to renew this license and upgrade it to the enhanced version since that will be required for planes soon" and they were like "we need both your passport and your social security card and two proofs of residency." and i was like you need the social security card and proof of residency to get the passport. and they were like yeah but we need all four things too. so I went back home with the form and found the various necessary proofs, but then I was able to make an appointment to go back. Great!

(They say, "make an appointment online!" but if you look up the DMV website there's nowhere to do it, and if you go to the website of that branch of the DMV there's nowhere to do it. Want to know why? Because it's not through the DMV it is through the county clerk's office. Now U Know: Go to the county clerk's office and navigate to their section on the DMV. It's separate! Who fuckin knew! Now you do! [In my case this was erie.gov because that is my county, but it may vary for you and if you are not in new york state i have no advice for you.]

All having an appointment means is that you are in a separate queue to be seen, which is likely faster than the general pool but may not be. Still, I thought it was a good idea.

And then it was early for my appointment and I was getting my shit together and I had my social security card and an old W-2 with my address and social security number and my old license with my address on it and for some reason I thought I could use my checkbook but that's not what they mean by a cancelled check but whatever. I had just a random pile of shit. And

where was my passport

where is my passport?

i'd had it in my pocket but i was sure i'd removed it from the pocket and put it into my purse. but it wasn't in my purse. "did you see it inside the house," asks dude patiently, who also is prone to losing shit and who knows me very well. "I don't know," I have to answer. "I remember putting it in my purse and it isn't there." I search the place I put my purse a thousand times, I go through the desk where I was sitting to collect the other proofs but i knew, I knew I had not brought it in there. Time is slipping away, I will miss my appointment. God time is slipping away and I can't find the thing. I ransack the house. I finally run out to the car, did I leave it on the seat in the car? It is not in the car.

In desperation, as it is fully time to leave the house and I will be late if I don't, I gather up all my other papers and go out to the car. "I will just go," I say, "and ask them, did they find it, because that is the last place I am absolutely sure I had it." Because the woman had looked at it to see if I had my social security card between the pages. And she'd handed it back to me. But my memory is such that the rest of what I did is not certain; I remember taking it, I remember putting it into my pocket, but this might be a story I am telling myself. This is the way in which I am a very good liar, because I do not remember things very well, and my well-honed abilities as a storyteller mean I am very, very good at instantly constructing what it would make the most sense to have done, and telling that story even to myself. But. here's the horrible truth: i don't know if it really happened that way. Many things I have witnessed, important things, I remember the story of but I'm not entirely certain they happened that way. Any story I tell may be fictionalized, and I usually dont' know it.

So anyway.

Got out to my car and there on the ground in the road (I am parked in the street) there is my passport lying next to the driver's side door of the car. When I had checked the car earlier, I had only gone to the near side, the passenger side, and looked in the window. It had never occurred to me that my memory of putting it into my purse might have been me just setting it on my purse and it not going in, which is clearly one hundred percent what happened.

So that was. A fucking wild ride, and I did not cry but only because I was too overwhelmed. I made it to the appointment and I could not hear the very nice clerk very well so I kept nodding at her in blank incomprehension and then not doing what she'd asked me to do. But this is the thing-- if you think of the most brutally competent people on the entire face of the planet Earth you might be tempted to imagine like, IDK, Marines or something, but that would be wrong, it is the clerks at the DMV. They will Get It Done, whatever the fuck it is, and they will NOT put up with your shit, but they will also not be mean to you. They will not usually waste time in smiles or gratuitous displays of humanity, but they are never cruel, they are implacable and pitiless but they are fair and they will help you and they will not smile about it but they will tell you which option to tick off on the form so that you don't have to pay a bunch of extra money, and they will be understatedly kind if you are frightened, and they will calmly and impassively repeat their instructions until they penetrate your uncomprehending skull, and you will get what you need to get because this is deadly serious and they are the kind of bureaucrat that actually make the world go round. It is not sunshine and rainbows but it will absolutely get done even if it takes months and years.

Anyway there's some kind of divinity in low-level bureaucrats who actually have to talk to frightened people, I tell you what.

The only time my clerk smiled at me was when I didn't hear her and she had to repeat that the screen was asking me if I wanted to register to vote, which is an automatic part of all their transactions. "Oh, no," I said, "I'm already registered," and she said "then press no," and I said "I do really appreciate the reminder though," and she smiled at that.

(They also ask you to enroll as an organ donor. NYS is an opt-in state, and many people just don't opt in; opt-out states have much higher enrollment for obvious reasons. Please opt in unless your religion or beliefs proscribe it! There are never enough organs and your grieving family will almost never remember to opt you in at the moment of extremity. You could save so many lives, and improve so many others. This PSA brought to you by someone who spent the pandemic lockdown in the home of a member of the local hospital's liver transplant team, who was so busy because all the New York hospitals had shut down their transplant facilities in order to turn the ventilators over to Covid patients, so everyone in New York who was getting a liver was getting it in Rochester. From my guy's team. So it was a stressful time. But I am successully re-enrolled as an organ donor. I am quite sure I already was one but the only two options were Yes or No so I checked Yes.)

Anyway I have so much to do and am so burned-out that I'm repeatedly getting stuck staring at things in odd rooms, so. We'll see how this goes. I have five days left to get ready for this trip wish me luck.

#about the author #personal updates

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mikesbasementbeets · 7 months

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it’s a little frustrating sometimes to watch people try to “debunk” gay mike evidence by quibbling over things that are. kind of beside the point? like arguing that mike’s consistently negative (or even neutral, if you want the benefit of the doubt) reactions to girls aren’t “disgust” therefore they don’t mean anything. but like 1. yeah i agree, cates gate isn’t about mike being “disgusted.” mike’s face when el kisses him isn’t “disgusted.” mike’s reaction to el, to max, to girls in general doesn’t really read to me as “disgust” either. so 2. what DOES it read to you as? incredulity? confusion? discomfort? those…. still aren’t positive reactions.

the point is that mike actively and blatantly Does Not react positively toward el kissing him. and he also Doesn’t react positively to dustin’s description of a girl being “hotter than phoebe cates.” he asks “is she cute?” with maybe preemptive incredulity (in line with will's question "girls go to science camp?") over a girl who goes to science camp being cute, or perhaps just a neutrally curious state over dustin's new girlfriend, but then dustin doesn’t say “she’s hotter than phoebe cates.” he says, “think phoebe cates. only hotter.” that’s a prescriptive statement. you want to know if she’s cute, mike? think about phoebe cates, and then imagine someone hotter than that. and mike’s expression doesn’t improve in the slightest. think about someone hotter than phoebe cates, dustin tells mike. and mike? remains confused and entirely unintrigued. no, he’s not disgusted, but the point is not his negative reaction, it’s a complete lack of any sort of positive reaction. if he’s listening to dustin, he should have, in that moment, thought of phoebe cates. and his reaction?

nothing.

(but. this is also just to say... i don’t even think it's fair to call most of mike’s facial reactions “proof” of his sexuality in any argument… i think they’re fun little easter eggs that add an extra visual element to his gay characterization. but. it’s not WHY people think he’s gay. it's funny to point out BECAUSE he's gay)

[edit: AND this is not even to mention the direct line drawn to this in season four via stobin's discussion of fast times, linking phoebe cates to 'people who like boobies.' #notmikewheeler]

#y’all want gay to mean nothing less than ‘disgusted by women’ and pretend that’s not homophobic #‘he’s kissed a girl without throwing up so he can’t be gay check mate’ maybe check your homophobia 👍#this was inspired by a bylr confession anon that i shouldn’t have seen bc i have that blog blocked but it showed up anyway. this is why #(i know i called this proof uh. two years ago but it's not 'proof' i recognize that. also not going on another tangent but. there is no One #irrefutable gay mike proof and that's also the entire point. you can point out specific things out of context and say hey i think this #points in this direction. but if you pull EVERYTHNG together and analyze IN FULL then the entire narrative only makes sense from a gay mike #perspective. imo. 'well i think this one is a reach' ok fine but if you see it all together and your only argument is 'idk it's just not #that deep' i mean. fine i guess but the burden of proof is on you then. the issue is then that no one who is against gay mike is willing #(or. um. able.) to put together a COMPREHENSIVE analysis that supports bi mke as a Full narrative without brushing a bunch of stuff aside #as 'eh idk i don't think that means anything' and instead fall back to 'it's just a headcanon i don't have to prove anything to you'#but refuse to recognize that gay mike is not actually a headcanon it's a theory. backed by analysis. we are not the same.)#idk. got annoyed might delete later 😗✌️#beets posts

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fshoulders · 20 days

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Just saw someone on here say the Baz Luhrmann Romeo & Juliet is “considered the most faithful movie version of Romeo and Juliet” and had to stop myself from chasing them down the internet like the meme goose going “BY WHO?! BY WHO!?????” Don’t start internet beef over this, self! They didn’t say THEY liked it best! They might be an innocent bystander! Also you are weirdly aggressive about Shakespeare!

Okay, deep breath, short post. Short post! We can do this!

Romeo and Juliet has an oddly small cinematic footprint, compared to its cultural impact. That’s probably why Luhrmann’s version can still hold any primacy. (Gods, are there English teachers showing this in class? Because they don’t have to fast-forward through the Zefferelli nudity? What a thought. Stay on target.) I can only theorize that other Shakespeare plays get more adaptations because they’re centered on a huge male role, so they can be a Serious Showpiece for a single male actor. R&J doesn’t operate that way.

And in my experience (having seen four or five live productions, off the top of my head) it’s a play that really lives in the theater. Stupid as it sounds, every time I see Romeo and Juliet live, some part of me feels like this time, it might end happy. The letter might not go astray: the messenger won’t get caught in a quarantine, Romeo will know Juliet isn’t dead, and everything will turn out fine. It’s so often noted that the play isn’t structured as a tragedy, but as a New Comedy (like Midsummer Night’s Dream, et c. — a story about young people defying their parents for love) that goes wrong: somehow this works on me, in person, such that I really think maybe we’ll pull it off! The kids will be all right, the parents will be chastened, and all will end well. It breaks my heart, every time, when it doesn’t.

I have small quibbles with the Luhrmann R&J, but I won’t enumerate them here. I simply want to point out that Luhrmann makes the most appalling directorial choice he possibly could. And he’s not the only one! This choice was in vogue during the 19th century in England (which is also when Bowdler took the naughty bits out of Shakespeare, so…yeah. Not very concerned with being faithful to the text.) Luhrmann, and the rest of the 19th century text-criminals, have Juliet wake up while Romeo is still dying.

I suppose some of you are now going, “why is that such a terrible thing? It allows for more acting!” Well, yeah, that’s why the hams of the London stage liked to do it in Romantic and Victorian times. Everything for more melodrama!

But it’s a sin against the text, and I’ll tell you why. That breathless stupid hope I talked about above, that the entire play’s structure induces? The hope that everything will turn out right? It builds up in you like a flood, and everything goes wrong again, and the entire weight of your hope is penned up in your heart, and they came so close! It was so close to being all right, but Romeo kills himself, and nothing will be all right.

And Juliet wakes up, still a citizen of the Country of Hope where this trick is so clever and Romeo’s going to save her, and she finds him there. And nothing makes sense to her. He was supposed to be here, but he was supposed to be alive. It’s a cruel inversion of her hopes, it’s her love made Death at last, it’s her whole world collapsing. We know how close it came to being all right, but she doesn’t know. She despairs. She sees he poisoned himself. And then she kisses him. And she says,

“Thy lips are warm.”

Now she knows as clearly as we do how nearly they were together, how close they came to a happy ending. Total understanding crashes over her, and crashes out of us. It’s the perfectly weighted moment of catharsis for the entire play. No lie: just typing her words above, I started crying with no warning. It’s the sharpened point of the play in Juliet’s heart, and ours. Those four words are the most devastating, understated thing. They are the cold, uncaring touch of Death.

And if she saw him die, they don’t work. They make no sense. She sounds like a fool saying them. And the whole weight of the play lands wrong, because some director thought he knew better than William Shakespeare how to wring the salt tears from human hearts.

#Shakespeare nerd #favorite play #Romeo and Juliet #performance history #fuck bowdler #fuck the Victorians #failed happy ending #fuck baz luhrmann #responding over here #theater #william shakespeare #Shakespeare #i have too many opinions #i have studied this intensely #close reading #catharsis #drama #in my feels

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officialleehadan · 1 year

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Father Returned

Hello darlings! Today's story was brought to you by Stella! Darling, thank you so much for all your support!

Prompt: Vampire Whispers

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Kaesaia had not particularly looked forward to her father’s return from his royal progress. It wasn’t that she disliked him, because she didn’t, but he was also a fairly terrible example of fatherhood. Kaesaia didn’t hold it against him, but it did make their relationship prone to disagreements. She as strong-willed after all, and he did not appreciate defiance.

He would be furious when he found out about her plan to take the throne of Zasu, but Kaesaia really didn’t care about his opinion. If she did, she wouldn’t have come up with the plan in he first place.

Now, with a pack of vampires about her and more soon to come, she was more secure in her power as she had ever been before. She had powerful allies who were very much devoted to her cause, and a plan more ambitious than any she ever dared. It would pay out in spades of course, and she was pleased with the way it was progressing. There was soon to be more vampires coming in. Their wicked band was still growing, but the others had been further away when Taien called for them.

They would arrive soon enough, and when they did, her plan would go into action.

For now, however, her father was returned, and she had to make sure he did not discover what they were up to. He might or might not approve once she sat the throne, but he certainly wouldn’t if he found out before she was ready.

“I see you have some new faces among your circle here,” King Moggesan noted as they finished up the beautiful roast that served as their meat course, and moved onto dessert. Although he regularly ate with the court, her father preferred to eat more simply in his private quarters, particularly when he had been traveling. He would never admit it to most of the court, but Kaesaia knew that fancy food sometimes upset his stomach. “And among your guards. Was that a half-dragon I spotted?”

“You have been telling me to make friends,” Kaesaia said with a demure little smile that was more than enough to make her father suspicious, but in an amused sort of way. “It’s nothing, Father. Simply an attempt to surround myself with people of interest. The younger court is so dull.”

Which was true, as it happened. The younger courtiers barely seemed to have a thought in their heads, but for their various allegiances to her awful cousins. They, of course, had their own opinions, but Kaesaia didn’t care much about them on the whole. With her vampires watching them, things had been almost peaceful at court. It was a relief.

“Perhaps I have done you a disservice by expecting you to manage them,” Moggesan mused and sipped at his wine. He took it well-watered these days, and sometimes forewent wine entirely in the evening. “Have they been causing you problems with them?”

“No more than the usual little difficulties,” Kaesaia waved him off. He didn’t care about her quibbles with her cousins, and wouldn’t execute anyone unless they were directly caught committing a crime. It was better just to leave things to Taien. Her father had his own difficulties to manage. Soon, Kaesaia would be one of them, but that was a discussion for later. “Things have been quiet, all things considered. My new friends have been a welcome distraction to the court.”

“Your stepmother says that things have been amusing,” he commented with a leading sort of lilt to the statement that turned the statement into a question. “Given her opinion on court matters, I was surprised. She rarely mentions such things to me.”

“I believe she has been playing chess with one of my new arrivals,” Kaesaia told him warily. She wasn’t exactly sure what Gaertress thought of her vampires, but she was too cunning not to know that there was something going on. All the same, she and Okoryo had taken to playing chess off and on in the evenings. Kaesaia figured that Oko knew what she was doing and left her to it. “Okoryo is her name. She has been advising me on my fashions for the coming seasons.”

It was a red herring of course. Her father thought little of women’s clothing other than his opinion that clothing was needed in public. The suggestion that Oko was there as a wardrobe mistress would distract him from thinking anything else about her. It was for the best. Okoryo was one of the most visible members of her wicked band, and the one that drew the most attention from everyone who saw her.

“My wife seems pleased by the company,” Moggesan said, and nodded for their next course. “Now, my daughter. Tell me of your latest amusements. I have been traveling for most of this year, and I wonder what I have missed for my absence.”

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Vampire Whispers:

Blood Moon

Thought to Thought (Subscriber Only!)

Sugar-Sweetened Wine

Arrangement of Favors

Unwary Steps

Distasteful Hunt

Who Would Be Queen (Subscriber Only!)

Blood and Bone (Subscriber Only!)

Hidden Reasoning (Subscriber Only!)

Sweet Sister Dear

Sister's Guide

Perfect Teleportation

Warning of Age

Arrival (Subscriber Only!)

Laundry List

Returning Royal

Father Returned (New!)

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MASTERLIST

#Writing #writing prompt #story #novel #romance #love #spilled ink #spilled writing #spilled romance #spilled feelings #writeblr #lee hadan #LGBT #inspiration #long post

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mylittlerwde · 9 months

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Ehh, Blake did enroll at Beacon without so much as a name change, and half the time makes big speeches, uses her semblance as a target decoy or runs around in white coats. Ilia fits the 'ninja' profile way better, though I doubt she'd make any headmaster's alternative maiden list. Pyrrha also used her magnetism *super* visibly during the food fight, so I dunno how covert she was really being semblance-wise. Weirdly enough, some element powers might blend right into Yang's sporadic light shows or 'just trying out new dust rounds guiz'. That quibbled, I don't think *any* of the Beacon mains could really keep this under wraps-Ren might be lowkey enough in isolation, but there's no way Nora's gabby butt wouldn't spill that tea somehow.

I agree, and I don't agree, Anon. Sort of.

For one, I'm not thinking of later volume Blake but more on early volumes, Blake. Who was mostly quiet during the early vol 1-3. From what I remember, the only big eye-catching speech in the early volume was the faunus rally, i think.

(And having been in the public eye once or twice isn't that big of an issue since Ozpin chose Pyrrha, who is a well-known fighter and has been on cereal box.)

Plus, Ozpin wouldn't know how she would change in later volumes, so I'm not thinking about it in that way.

I do agree that Blake wasn't really hiding, even if in the universe of Rwby, she was hiding.

But the one thing im confused about is your point about her semblance? What wrong with the fact that she leaves decoy it not like they linger they disappear just as fast as they appear. If you're talking about how maiden power wouldn't blend in, then you misunderstood me. I brought up semblances because I was going off the idea that they would go into hiding afterward. As Pyrrha was freaking about having to leave her friends behind, i think.

When I said Yang wouldn't be picked because of her semblance, it was more on the fact that her semblance calls attention to her no matter what. If she had to go into hiding, her semblance would always call attention to herself. She can't be subtle about it. It's loud, bright, and destructive. Plus, it's too tied to her emotions. All someone has to do is call her mean names, and she would probably begin blasting lightening.

And when I wrote about Pyrrha's semblance, it was a mix on how she kept her card to her chest (Pyrrha semblance wasn't that known from how the other characters reacted to learning it and correct me but mercury fought her to learn her semblance. I think.), and how she doesn't go all out with it. Think to how she subtly moved her opponents weapon to when she eventually goes all out against Cinder. It says a lot about Pyrrha. If she needed to, she could keep the maiden power secret or at least make it look like she was using dust.

(I can see why Pyrrha was picked she really was the best choice.)

While she does use it in the food fight it a event not many people would know. As far as I remember, most of the students had left during the fight, leaving only people she had told about her power.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is if Blake and Pyrrha were forced into a fight where they had to keep cilivans from seeing them. Their semblance wouldn't call attention to them. They could go through the fight and get out with no one knowing.

I hope that made sense. But no matter your right about Blake. She wouldn't be the best choice at the end of the day as I can't imagine early Blake who wanted to help Faunus and was forthright with her views would go into hiding.

So that leaves Velvet as the best choice. Or Glynda wished they explained why she couldn't be the maiden.

#rwde #mylittlerwde ask #Oh im so stressed #i hope i did this right

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alyosiuscreightonward · 8 months

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Dear Diary. As the New Hampshire primaries are just around the corner, I am truly so sick and tired of seeing such bullshit on my electronic babysitter.

If you’re anything like that young child that I met, then you’re truly an idiot. This child, probably about sixteen or so, who thinks he knows something about politics. He sits in front of screen scrolling through various social media sites and he believes all of the fodder.

I remember asking him if a woman should have autonomy over her body. I sincerely think he did not know the definition of autonomy. He began to quibble with me and another guy about the bible and how those words were playing out in front of him. So…I brought up Ezekiel 23, Verse 20 - “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emissions was like that of horses.” Google it.

Then there’s Leviticus 18. Talking about being naked. Child. Please. The fucking hypocrisy of it all. To the best of my knowledge, certain men in power, or those higher in the caste system, they’d use a young boy for their pleasure. If you care to, the Bible has several sketchy and several blatant areas of nakedness and nasty things like lying between her breasts. Gick. I know. What you do, I don’t need to know just like most men will never admit that they urinate in the shower.

Then I see the electronic babysitter spew the volcanic vortex of voluminous vapid viscous vitriolic vomit from various vacuous vacant vagabonds s such as they are valedictorians of valuelessness.

If you’d like to get extremely technical down to the molecular level, just past the double helix, Nimarata Randhawa, is an anchor baby. Yet she continues to deny her heritage. I celebrate my ancestors because I’m Swish. I’m half Swiss and half Irish. My people came from Switzerland and Ireland. Also, she gives off those Susan Collins of Maine vibes. Say one thing today, Thursday, and then by Friday night, “What I meant to say was…”

Then there’s another triggering moment: something about the two most hated politicians are … and I know. I’m not an idiot. Then there’s Florida.

Look here Motherfucker, listen and hear what I say: No matter who are for or against, you’ll get screwed in the end. I’ve been involved in politics a great portion of my life. I remember, I was involved with a group called, “Young Americans for Freedom,” and they protested the Vietnam war. I clearly remember being at a rally where Bob Hope spoke about his involvement as an entertainer and his thoughts about the Vietnam War. Child. Please. If I could actually recall what he said, I’d post it here, but I was like eight or nine back then.

To bring this RANT to a close, yes, we all can say quite clearly that we ALL have issues with politicians starting off with the Dog Catcher up to the President and the folks in between. Chaos, negativity, and just plain bullshit from the past. Yeah, we fucking know. As a Grey Panther and just your every day pedestrian Arrogant Bitter Old Qween, I am not going to apologize for anything, but do know this, we currently have an ADULT residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They want us to live in our truth, they want us to thrive and they want us to have cognitive dissonance. The others want to scam us, bamboozle us, give us lots of smoke and mirrors and then without realizing it, its round up time. Time to cull the herd and unbeknownst to y’all, some are getting on the box car and getting a number tattooed on their wrist.

Lastly, it was “Infrastructure Week” for how many months? Where’s the Healthcare Plan? If someone can actually show ONE PIECE OF LEGISLATION that benefitted absolutely everyone in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico and I’ll make sure Ronnie Milsap is your Uber Driver.

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faeriejones · 2 years

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Hello, it's Kringle again! Your reblogs suggest hunger. I hope you got a snack! This is pretty fun! One of the things I've lamented about fandom migrating to tumblr (ooh I'm so old) is it feels harder to meet folks, so stuff like this that actually encourages people to talk is so helpful. Plus, since you've aid you used to keep from interacting with fandom in the past, I bet it's nice to have a little structure!

I hope to hear about how you feel when you do see "Moonage Daydream"! I was lucky enough to have a theater nearby playing it.

As for your question, it's obvious from above I've been in fandom a long time. But I was kinda "out of it" for many years because of a combo of not having a big passion I was, say, writing fic about and not really understanding how to navigate tumblr. See, I *love* interaction! Fandom was the first thing I ever used the internet for!

I am pleasantly surprised to find such an active, creative classic rock fandom here. And so many people are younger than me, so it's really great that this music is speaking to people these many years later. So that's been really nice. And folks have mostly been super welcoming and it's just really great to be part of a fandom again! My one quibble is really that it's a bit small, so little things get magnified more than they might if there were more people.

So two questions for you: Do you have a favorite book I've read about classic rock or its musicians, and do you have a most prized record? (You see I just started a record collection! Though I have yet to buy a turntable lol.)

--Kringle

hello, kringle! haha, yes—i had a bit of a sweet tooth last night, so i stocked up on chocolate chip cookies!

and i agree, it is a tad difficult to meet new people, especially when you’re migrating to a new fandom, because it seems like nearly everybody already knows each other. like you said, participating in activities such as secret rocker santa is a great way to make mutuals/potential internet friends because it encourages people to talk! also, i’m so glad you feel welcome here because you don’t deserve anything less <3 there are loads of really interesting, creative, and genuinely kind people here, and i can only hope that amount can increase over time. it’s nice to have a sense of community in a space where you can just chill and freely express your ideas.

(oh! and i will definitely give you an update when i (finally!) watch ‘moonage daydream’!!!!))

to answer both of your questions :

1) my favorite book about a classic rock musician at the moment would have to be ‘the ox : the last of the great rock stars’ by classic rock historian paul rees. it’s a biography about the who’s bassist, john entwistle, and it’s so lovely! it not only focuses on the production of his music, and the major impact that john had on bass playing, but it also candidly details his personal life (since the man has been an enigma to so many for such a long time) i highly recommend that you take a gander at this!

2) oh man, this one’s tough to answer because i basically treat all of my records like they’re my children lol. i’m going to cheat a little bit because i can’t narrow it down to just (1) record : i think it’d have to be ‘ram’ by paul mccartney because it’s just a visually and audibly pleasing record. i also have this record called ‘sounds of the humpback whale’ that i got at a flea market last year. it’s random, but it has sentimental value to me because it reminds me of my younger brother who loves animals (and it’s more of an ambient selection, might i add lol)

oooh! what records do you have so far? (edit : i’m dumb, don’t get a crosley sjehdbdjs)

#srs22 #ask

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outtooman · 2 years

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Customer: "You are too slow to ship new products" is the answer from the smart clothing shopping guide

Doing clothing store sales, you will definitely encounter such a situation. Some old customers ask as soon as they enter the door: Why hasn't your home been new? I see that every time I go to other houses, it is different every time. It seems that the speed of changing new ones in our house is not fast...

What was your reaction at this time? Coping with ease or embarrassment?

Take a look at the answers below:

Shopping guide: "Yeah, I also think it's a bit slow, but we can't do anything about it. The company has a time limit..."

Shopping guide: "Yeah, Sister Zhang, it's been a few days late this time, and we're in a hurry. Fortunately, the new product arrived yesterday, and it's a coincidence that you were in time today..."

Shopping guide: "We are indeed a few days late this time. I'm sorry, Sister Zhang, for making you wait for a long time. What do you want to see today..."

Shopping guide: "I'm so sorry, Sister Zhang, due to transportation problems, our new products only arrived yesterday, and we haven't had time to put them on the shelves yet..."

The above 4 answer methods seem to be no big problem, but in most cases, if you answer like this, some customers will leave after a circle, some customers who try it on do not buy it, and some only buy one or two pieces. There is not much improvement in overall sales.

So how to solve the problem of "customers say the goods are slow"? And cleverly resolve it, so that customers who have entered the store can take away a few more clothes.

Understand the customer's intentions, what are they thinking?

A lot of information can be seen from the customer Sister Zhang who said to the shopping guide, "It's too slow to ship new products in your home", which must be understood:

1. The customer is a regular customer:

Only the old customers have requirements and suggestions for the brand, and the new customers are too lazy to say it, just like parents always nagging about their children's minor problems, but they are too lazy to talk about other children's children;

2. Customers are multi-brand consumers:

Usually, you likely spend on 2 or more brands. After comparing, you find that others have a lot more new products than yours, so you say that your new products are slower;

3. Customers like your home more:

Among the many brands she consumes, she likes yours a little more, otherwise, it's alright not to come, you can't hear her saying "it's too slow to put new products", I still hope that the brands you like can be changed;

And how do customers know that others have more new products than yours? It's obvious by looking at the display.

To a large extent, in the eyes of customers, "Your new products are too slow" is equivalent to "other people's new products are much more than yours".

So the new product display situation at this time is likely to be that the new products in other brand stores account for 70% to 80%, while your store manager's new product display area is only 30%.

In this case, of course, customers will say that your new products are too slow; at this time, it will become unconvincing to insist that "we have new products that arrived yesterday or today, but they are not displayed."

At this time, customers will think: Even if you have new products yesterday, it is much slower than others. Others XX brand launched 80% new products last week. I kindly remind you, why are you quibbling with me?

So when the speed of new products in the store is indeed slower than that of other brands, the old customers also reminded them. What should be better at this time?

How to respond quickly to customers?

For such old customers, you must be grateful. If every old customer doesn't remind you and just quietly goes to the brand of new products, then maybe you don't even know when the store went downhill.

So when the old customer says "your family is too slow to get new products", we can do this:

Customer: Your home is too slow to get new products;

Shopping guide: Ah, do other people have a lot of new products on display?

Customer: Yes, other people's XX brand is almost new;

Shopping guide: Oh, sister Zhang, thank to you for reminding me, I have been telling our store manager to display all the new products. She said that the weather is not here, so I will put it in the warehouse first, and I am so angry, you should follow her Tell me, she still doesn't believe it;

Store manager: Really, is the XX brand really about to have new products? Xiao A, please welcome Sister Zhang, and go to the warehouse to check the new products. Most of them, I have to go to the XX brand's home to see them;

Shopping guide: Alright, alright, hurry up and replace all the stores with new ones at night! Sister Zhang, come, come and sit...

Afterward, she selected a new model for Sister Zhang from the warehouse. Even if the store has already displayed samples, it doesn't matter. Just let the customer buy about 3 pieces.

He also informed me that there are too many goods in the warehouse, and it is difficult to find the styles. This time, I can only try these pieces for Sister Liu. They will be displayed at night, and I will let Sister Zhang try more next week.

In this way, it not only attaches great importance to the problems raised by customers but also does not disappoint customers and thinks that "your family is always slow to deliver goods", leaving yourself an opportunity to explain and remedy.

After the customer leaves the store, how does the follow-up remedial work?

Next, when customers leave the store, they must not leave the problem behind, but continue to make adjustments to address this problem and do the following:

1. Look at the display area of competing brands:

Check the entire floor or even the entire shopping mall's new product display area of competing brands, and write them down one by one. For example, brand B's new product display area is 75%.......

2. Look at the proportion of new product sales:

Count how many products were sold last week or the last 2 weeks, and how many are new products, accounting for 63% of the total number of products.

3. Look at the display area of new products:

Look at the number of goods poles (positions) in the audience. The new products account for several goods poles, and what percentage of them account for. For example, if the store has 10 poles of goods and 3 new products, the display area will be 30%. …

4. Expand the display area of new products:

Assuming that the display area of new products of all competing brands is more than 70%, then the new products of their own should be displayed at more than 70%, and the remaining 20% to 30% of the position can ensure that the number of used goods sold can be equal;

How to increase the display area of new products when there are few new products?

At the same time, when solving and remediating the problem of new products being slow, you will encounter a new problem.

It is a fact that there are few new products. Under such circumstances, how can the display area of new products be increased to 70% of the whole store? Continue to look at the following two points.

1. Repeated sampling of new product inventory:

Repeated sampling of new products in stock, even all of them, can temporarily solve the feeling that new products seem to be less, and give people the impression that new products are updated quickly and have many options.

2. Basic filling for used goods:

Another way is to fill in the basic styles of old goods with new ones, such as black pants of similar thickness, skirts of similar styles or colors, etc.

Through the filling of old goods and matching them with new goods, the whole shelf looks fuller and enhances customers' desire to choose and try on.

In this way, when the display of new products is pulled to about 70% of the whole store, the whole new product remedial work is completed.

The above is the correct operation for customers who think that the new products in the store are slow and there are few new products in the store. In many cases, the premise that a customer can report a problem to you is that she has a certain attitude toward your store.

Therefore, in the actual communication, we must understand the customer's intention, carefully analyze the situation in our store, and actively make adjustments, to make customers satisfied and the rate of return getting higher and higher.

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theivorybilledwoodpecker · 2 years

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Prolifers seem to be blaming doctors for not providing abortions in the cases where people have had their lives endangered and yet...it's so strange. I seem to remember doctors explaining very clearly that they needed better exceptions...here. Let me jog everyone's memories with a few key statements (sources in hyperlinked text):

From an article on May 12:

"The questions implicit in these phrases—What constitutes an “emergency”? How does one define “substantial” or “reasonable”?—are left unanswered. “These laws presume a certainty that doesn’t exist in medicine,” Cara Heuser, a maternal-fetal-medicine physician in Salt Lake City, said. “How ‘life-threatening’ the situation has to be—I don’t know what that means.”"

....

"Nikki Zite is an ob-gyn in Knoxville, where an arsonist burned down the local Planned Parenthood clinic on New Year’s Eve. Zite told me about one of her patients, a mother who had a terminal health condition and who elected to have an abortion. “The pregnancy was not going to kill her, but it would accelerate her death,” Zite said. “She and her husband and her physician reached out to me because she had decided that she did not want to bring a child into the world when she was going to die shortly, and also because she wanted to be around as long as possible for her current children.” It is difficult to imagine even a hard-line pro-lifer quibbling with a dying mother’s wishes for herself and her family. Yet her dilemma may not count as a “medical emergency” under Tennessee’s trigger ban.

Likewise, most abortion bans do not make exceptions for catastrophic fetal anomalies that cannot be detected until late in pregnancy, such as anencephaly and certain cardiac and renal malformations. Depending on the situation, these are pregnancy losses by another name. Zahedi, who for a time was one of only a handful of providers nationwide who performs later abortions, said that state legislators “don’t understand the nuances of situations in which a fetus has major anomalies that are not consistent with life. How long do we wait? Do you have to carry the pregnancy to term?” In these cases, she went on, patients are “taking a risk to their life, to continue a pregnancy to term or to stillbirth, with the knowledge that they won’t go home with a live child at the end of the day.”

...

From an article on May 26:

"Maria Phillis, an obstetrician/gynecologist, told the Washington Post, “There’s not one button that says, ‘This one thing is threatening a woman’s life.’ A lot of it is a slow decline, and at what point is a physician empowered to say that there is an emergency?”"

...

Dr. Lisa Harris in Michigan told NPR some common complications such as heart disease have a 20-30% chance of causing death during pregnancy.“

Is that enough of a chance [of death] or does it have to be more? I hate to even put it like that,” said Harris, who was a guest on Michigan Radio’s Stateside. “But is that enough of a chance of dying that that person would qualify under Michigan’s ban for a lifesaving abortion? Or would their risk of dying need to be 50% or 100%? And so those kinds of things are very unclear.”

...

So prolifers, doctors aren't to blame. You are. They warned you, and you ignored them. If you don't remember them speaking out, why not? Why don't you?

#Abortion #Roe v. Wade #Abortion is health care

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arcane-ish · 3 years

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(Relation-) Ship Scorecard

Vi/Cait: I struggled with this one. Like I feel like I should upgrade them higher because imo the pathos was well done and I enjoyed the pacing. Downside that it was more emotional angst and less flirty/sexy stuff. I have some issue with the Cait/Vi/Jinx “triangle” as a concept, but I do think the fanservice of Vi meeting Cait’s parents, them going to the council together and of course Vi being forced to choose by Jinx was god tier level. However, my personal feeling is that the writing for Caitlyn in Act 3 was a bit bland. It’s like they stuck her iinto a very standard idealistic good girl role and didn’t make a ton of use of her unique personality and “voice”. So personally would like to leave them at B+. I like them a lot, the fan service is still excellent. Might have been higher if they had found a way to slip a believable kiss in or found a better balance against Vi/Jinx.

Vi/Jinx: The highs were insanely high (ie Vi telling Jinx they should run away together, Jinx despite all differences attacking Silco to protect Vi, Vi opening up about prison), but I have some quibbles. Imo Jinx’s fear that Vi doesn’t accept the new her was very believable and well done. However, I wasn’t so keen on Jinx’s jealousy of Caitlyn. Mostly because I feel like previously Powder’s abandonment issues seemed to be more about her screwing up and being worthless, not about not wanting Vi to spend time with other people. Nor did they bother to work out that Powder has a specific hate for enforcers. So it felt a bit contrieved for the sake of creating drama. Vi backing away as Silco takes off with the heavily injured/potentially dead Jinx also felt off. They are still insanely cool and the story about sisters who love each other but who might have grown apart is very cool in concept and again the conflict of whether Vi and and how much should accept Jinx was set up in a very interesting way. So I would say B+ for Act 3.

Mel/Jayce: Act 3 fleshed out Mel’s backstory and clarified that she does feel some loyalty to Piltover. That said, even though they didn’t break up, continued their relationship and clarified that no, Mel is not just all about manipulation or self interest and Mel and Jayce are arguably more on the same page than ever, both having gained more depth (particularly Jayce with his trip to the Shimmer production plant), Act 3 didn’t really give them a ton of moments together that I consider emo (yes even when they are shown in bed together or when Mel is flirty with a shirtless Jayce), imo outside that smile right at the very end. I would say for them Act 3 was about both of them being a bit misguided and being reminded by others, most notably Viktor of you know, morals. I guess Mel’s mom had potential mom in law from hell energy. One could say they have an interesting foundation now, both seem to have every intention to stick with each other for now and no obvious points of conflict are there (well except for Mel’s mom’s meddling), so let’s see what season 2 plans for them. Overall, I would say they were a C in Act 3 due to lack of pathos. (I should probably note that this is written under the assumption that I don’t believe that Mel is dead [neither are Jayce or Viktor naturally])

Viktor/Jayce: I thought they fared considerably better in Act 3, once of course of course with the callbacks to Act 1. Viktor I think also worked as a conscience of the topside characters and imo he did it more effectively, with more emotional oomph than Cait. Relationshipwise what struck me as noticable is that Viktor is very secretive, has a lot of his adventures on his own and doesn’t share most of it with Jayce. Structurally imo it’s still problem that Jayce gets to fan out so much more compared to Viktor, getting to interact with a variety of characters in all kinds of ways (Mel’s mom, Vi, Silco). I do think Jayce’s concern and wanting to balance things did come through (even if he was distracted by various things earlier in Act 3) as did elements of VIktor’s trust in Jayce. Over all, I would give it a B.

Silco/Jinx: They were given considerable screentime and attention, lots of pathos, most notably on Silco’s side and of course reached their culmination in a way. Overall I think it was decently done. I think one could argue that Silco’s villain journey (in regards to his revolution and relatinoship with the underworld) petered out a bit, but I can be won over to the idea that that might have been intentional and their way of doing a complex character. Relationshipwise, I think Act 3 showed that as fairly one sided/slanted to Silco’s side, which probably is slightly more healthy than if Jinx cared more (basically I think it showed off in a variety of ways how Jinx cares less, but not as far as Jinx doesn’t care at all). Overall I would say ... I dunno A- within the context that it is supposed to be unhealthy and dramatic (and it’s good that it wasn’t dragged out too much)?

Jinx/Ekko: Yes! They did something with them! Got a cool fight scene! Ekko got believably introduced as the sane thrid path of how society could be run! Considering how barely present they were as a dedicated dynamic in the other Acts literally anything is an upgrade. On a “shippy” side, it irked me that Ekko was that pessimistic about Jinx, yes even though it makes a ton of sense, consdiering she killed one of his crew in front of him in the beginning of Act 2. And yes even though of course we know he’s just talking a big game but then in the end can’t actually bring himself to kill her. Still, his pessmism is still bothersome and both characters seemed to shuffle off into their own conflicts fairly quickly with little mention of each other. (for example, in a more “shippy” version of Act 3 one coudl imagine for example Silco rather than his chembaron plot instead having a plot where he wants to hunt down Ekko for “killing” Jinx or Ekko being a presence at Jinx’s ghastly dinner). So, grade C, still underdeveloped, which is still up from the D they had before. Maybe other seasons could build from this if the writers are so inclined and build a more positive relationship (especiallly with how Ekko smybolizes hope in a lot of ways), but right now there isn’t that much there yet.

Viktor/Sky: So that was a thing ... kind of? Personally I liked my headcanon about her being associated with the Firelights or the revolution more. I fele like I should compliment them for wringing a minimum of genuine pathos and sadness of something that was pretty much a nothing storyline (so, Viktor gonna tell Jayce and her family that Sky died in an unfortunate lab accident?), a minimum of depth was injected in them revealing Sky had been working on a project and Viktor cared at least enough to to grieve a little bit. Still, the truth is that it was barely developed and Sky essentially became a fridged women (I read a lot of commentary with compliments in how the show handled Mel and that she isn’t just a plot point but is giving he rown agency and motivation => well the same didn’t hold true for Sky) So overall grade D (minimum amoutn of pathos for essentially fridged side character story, I guess she did a good job of showing off Viktor’s caring side).

(not grading Mama Medarda X anybody yet because it’s still too unclear)

Previous grades:

Vi/Cait: B+ JayVik: C JayMel: C Jilco: ??? going on B Vi/Jinx: A

#arcane #jaymel #jilco #piltover's finest #jayvik #jinx #vi #caitlyn #jayce #viktor #sky arcane #mel medarda #ekko #jinx x ekko #ekko x jinx #silco

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stillness-in-green · 3 years

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No, Re-Destro Is Not Destro’s Literal Son

and

Yes, I Will Die On This Hill

I have a number of small, persistent quibbles with some of the widespread misapprehensions I see included in BNHA fanfic, quoted as fact in meta posts, even cited on the wiki. Quirk cancellation restraints, what the 20% quirklessness data point means in practice, when Kurogiri comes into existence relative to the time of the Shimura Family Massacre, things like that. My biggest one, though, is as the title suggests: the idea that Yotsubashi Rikiya is Yotsubashi Chikara’s son.

I don’t entirely know where this confusion comes from. As far as I can tell, the early scanlations didn’t get it wrong—one rendered the line in Chapter 218 about Destro having a child he didn’t know about as being children, plural, but otherwise, they were all accurate enough. It seems people just assumed that the child mentioned in 218 must be Re-Destro, who was, after all, right there on the panel. Even though the scanlations never said it, even though the official translation never said it, even though ample evidence in the manga disproves it, the idea still got around that Rikiya is Chikara’s son.

I have and will maintain that this is obviously wrong if you stop to think about it for even a moment, but unfortunately, most people don’t. The error can be found on less well-tended parts of the fandom wiki[1]; it’s in tumblr meta posts about the villains; it’s in fanfic.

And now, god help me, it is on the official anime website, too.

“Stillness-in-green, maybe you should consider that you might just be wro—”

I will face BONES and walk backwards into hell.

But if you want, you can come with me, and I’ll explain on the way. Hit the jump.

Dialogue + Narration

There are two places where the relationship between Chikara and Rikiya is explicitly addressed—the lead-in to the dinner scene in Chapter 218 and the fight between Clone!Shigaraki and RD in Chapter 232. If you include the Ultra Analysis databook, the number goes up to four: once each in Re-Destro and Destro Classic’s character blurbs.

Let’s take a look at each of those places, shall we?

The relevant Japanese text here is in the first narration box: 子ども, kodomo.

Kodomo is not gendered. It literally just means child. The key kanji is 子, ko. Like most kanji, it has a lot of potential readings, and you can add other kanji to it to modify it. Add 息 and you get musuko, son. Pronounce 子 as shi instead of ko, and you get a term that is frequently, though not exclusively, used to refer to boys. Add 女 to that reading and you get joshi, woman/girl. 子 is in a lot of words, many of them gendered! Used for kodomo as Hori does here, though, it does nothing to indicate a gender one way or the other.

Also too, it does nothing to indicate that Rikiya is the child in question; it simply states that there was such a child, somewhere in the world. Now, the natural assumption for anyone who knows how the graphic novel medium works and who understands basic literary analysis would be that the significant character we just met is, in fact, the child in question—except that everything else we learn about Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army here makes it entirely impossible.

I’ll do a full breakdown on why that is in the next section. In the meantime, here’s the next reference:

Here, we’re looking at the phrase the Viz translation renders as, “His blood runs through these veins.” The literal Japanese there is, Desutoro no matsuei chi o tsugu mono! In a literal translation, chi o tsugu mono means, “one who inherits the blood,” or, more loosely, “blood successor.” It’s matsuei—末裔—that’s the key word here.

Japanese has several words to express the concept of “descendant.” Matsuei is one word; the data book uses shison. So what’s the difference? Well, I’ll talk about shison in a moment, but I had an inkling of it just from looking at the kanji in matsuei—“end” and “descendant” respectively, leaving me with an impression of something like a final descendant or the terminus of the bloodline. Further research confirmed it: shison can refer to any lineal blood tie, but matsuei refers to a bloodline’s final inheritor, the person at the end of a long line of many, or even countless, generations. It’s the difference between being able to point to a grandparent and the kind of painstaking genealogical research that lets you[2] point to a famous royal from eight hundred years ago—matsuei is a word that very much assumes the existence of those countless generations.

So not only does Rikiya’s line there not imply that he’s Chikara’s son, but his specific word choice also tells us that he cannot be Chikara’s son. That’s, uh. Pretty conclusive, I would say.

Lastly, though, there’s also the data book. This is, perhaps, the actual closest you’re going to get to a manga equivalent of those character blurbs on the anime website, at least until such time as Hori deigns to give the MLA types character profile pages. (I live ever in hope.)

There are two relevant bits of text, one in Re-Destro’s entry, and the other in Destro Classic’s. The first describes how Re-Destro organizes the MLA as Desutoro no chi o tsugu mono: the same phrase he uses for himself in the manga, minus the matsuei. @codenamesazanka (the one who told me about the databook references among other citations, bless) rendered it as “Destro’s blood successor”; I have also seen it given as “the successor of Destro’s bloodline.” Note again, the lack of reference to a father/son bond.

Chikara’s entry uses that other descendant word I mentioned before, 子孫, shison. Notice that the term uses that ko kanji from kodomo before? As it does in joshi, 子 here reads shi. The other kanji, 孫, means grandchild. Thus, literally, grandchild-child—or, in the vernacular, simply descendant.

And then we have the anime website.

So, for comparison’s sake, the anime website uses 息子—the same combination of kanji that I said earlier gives you musuko, son. Heck, it even uses 父, chichi, for Destro—father. It’s as explicit as it’s possible to be, and I just don’t know why or how the anime website could fuck that up so bad when absolutely nothing in the manga describes the two Yotsubashis that way, and, indeed, one specific word choice actually rules out the possibility.

So, that’s all the manga says directly. It’s not the only evidence there is, though. In fact, the next piece makes it even more clear how colossally and impossibly wrong a father/son connection for Destro and his modern successor is.

Timeline

The long and short of this section is, “Since Harima Oji was Sako Atsuhiro’s great-great-grandfather, there is no possible way that Destro—who pre-dated Harima—can be Re-Destro’s father.” If you read that sentence and nodded your complete understanding and agreement, feel free to skip ahead to the last section. If you’d like the full explanation it takes to reach that sentence’s conclusion, though, read on.

So, aside from the word matsuei, the timeline is the most telling piece of evidence to my eye. I address it secondly rather than firstly because it’s less direct than the explicit narration; it relies on drawing conclusions based on things we’ve been told elsewhere rather than on the immediately relevant text. Oh, Mr. Compress’s relationship to Harima is explicit enough, but on what am I basing my claim that Destro predates him?

Regarding that, there’s no explicit year relative to My Hero Academia’s current events given for when Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army were active; the same is true for Harima Oji’s escapades. However, we are given some broad-strokes information, relative not to current events, but rather to the history of heroism as a legal institution in Japan.

We know that there was a widespread, lengthy period of chaos following the rise of quirks—called meta-abilities in those early years. At some point, however, people began to search for a way for meta-humans to live in peace with non-metas. The compromise that was reached was the foundation of professional heroism in Japan—while the use of meta-abilities would be legal in private settings, it was only by becoming licensed by the state as “heroes” that people could use their quirks in public.[3]

The legislation curtailing the use of meta-abilities—and the appropriation of a dead woman’s language to popularize a law establishing exactly the opposite of what she used that language to call for—is what catalyzed the rise of the original MLA. Thus, we can position Destro as being alive and active around the same time that heroism as a legal institution was being formed. Since we further know that he committed suicide in prison, we can assume that his child was conceived at some point prior to his capture. Ergo, Destro’s child, were they alive today, would be as old as Japanese professional heroism itself.

Next, consider Harima Oji, the Peerless Thief, a criminal who targeted the riches of “sham heroes.” We’re specifically told that he was active in the days in which the current system was settling into place—e.g. he only became active once the Hero System was established enough to have produced corrupt heroes. We’re told he preached reformation—he wasn’t just some pre-existing criminal who saw a shiny new target in heroes; he had specific grievances which he wanted addressed by the system, and which the system was not addressing.

The earliest Harima could possibly be active, then, is concurrent with Destro—Harima fighting against the corrupt people who had found their way into the new heroic institution, and Destro fighting against using the institution of heroism to oppress non-heroes. What I think is more likely, though, is that Harima came after Destro—Harima needed to have had time to realize what kinds of fakes had been drawn to this shiny new career path, maybe even to spend some time trying to change things the legal way.

I don’t suspect they were separated by very long—I would imagine Destro was easily within Harima’s living memory, and might well have influenced why he chose the path of protest that he did—but I do think they were separate.

Moving forward, then, Mr. Compress is four generations distant from his famous ancestor. Thus, even if you assume that Harima is of the same generation as Chikara, that’s what you’re looking at for Chikara’s child: someone who, were they alive today, would be old enough to be the great-grandparent of a thirty-two-year-old man.

Re-Destro’s probably a few years older than Mr. C, sure,[4] but that man doesn’t have Ujiko’s slow-aging quirk. Unless you want to start pulling theories about cryogenic stasis the story for some reason never saw fit to mention out of thin air, Re-Destro is in no way old enough to fit the bill.

This is backed up by one other piece of the timeline as well, and one more place we can look at language:

The small child at the center of the image is Rikiya, so young that he’s in schoolboy shorts for a meeting otherwise so formal that he’s been made to wear a tie. He’s, what, six to nine here, tops? And the adults speaking to him say that they’ve been in hiding for generations—代々, daidai, the kanji for generation followed by a kanji that just means, “See that kanji written right before me? Yeah, just read that one again.”

The original MLA was active for only a handful of years, and, per Chapter 218, they didn’t dissolve until Destro was captured. Thus, we can assume they have been in hiding since then, but not before then. With that in mind, this is another line that renders a father/son relationship impossible.

Remember, Chikara already had a child in the world circa his capture. If Rikiya were Chikara’s son, then Destro’s capture and his army’s subsequent dissolution could not have happened any farther back than nine months plus however old Rikiya was in this exact moment of his youth. Rikiya, who we see here as a child of less than ten.

Ten years in hiding doesn’t make one generation; it damn sure doesn’t make multiple ones.

Now, you could make theories about cryogenic statis that would explain this ludicrous discrepancy, sure. You could also theorize about e.g. artificial insemination,[5] or time stop quirks, or any number of other possibilities in the vast panoply the HeroAca world offers. The point is, though, that you don’t need to. There was, in the manga, no discrepancy that needed to be explained. It is only fanon misinterpretation and a glaring disinterest in the series’ villains from official sources that have presented this issue.

I’m praying that it’s all just a misunderstanding on the part of whoever maintains the website, and that the anime itself will render the relevant bits of dialogue correctly. Given the extreme cuts and alterations that My Villain Academia has been subjected to thus far, though, I’m sure you can appreciate my being concerned.

…So that’s the meat of it. The idea that Rikiya is Chikara’s son is wrong simply on the basis of what’s said in the text, and it’s doubly wrong on the basis of the timeline. There is, though, one other thing I think points towards Re-Destro being exactly the descendant he says he is, not a son playing down the connection out of humility or something. This one is a lot more headcanon-y, though, so I saved it for last.

MLA Social Dynamics

It’s quite simple. We have, in the MLA, a group of people that venerates Destro’s bloodline to an obviously unhealthy degree, putting up portraits of him wherever they can get away with it, tagging his successor with a “Re-” as if to invoke reincarnation or miraculous return, entirely willing to throw their lives away for what they think was his cause, and others’ lives if those others say anything too scathing about the words Destro wrote, quite as if they treat Destro’s memoir as some sort of holy writ.

They venerate Destro that much, and you’re trying to tell me that they wouldn’t just call a spade a spade and acknowledge RD as the son of their great leader? Come on.

Since long before I turned up the matsuei factoid in researching this piece, since long before Mr. Compress gave us such a helpful generational comparison, I’ve held the opinion that, given a group that holds their leaders in such high esteem, with such particular regard for bloodline, the only reason Rikiya does just call himself a descendant, rather than citing the specific term for what he is, is that the specific term is distant enough that it actually does sound more impressive to just say “descendant,” rather than something like, “great-great-great-grandson.” That kind of thing just begs the question, “What took you guys so long?” or, “You and how many other people, buddy?”

Mr. Compress may have the panache to carry off a line like that, but Rikiya’s a different story. If he had something so amazing up his sleeve as, “I am the son of the great Destro,” I have to think he’d just say it proudly, not fall back on the impressionistic vaguery of something like chi o tsugu mono. Even if I had no other evidence to work with, I’d think the same—all the evidence you need is right there in the character writing of who Rikiya and the MLA are and how they talk about the man whose dreams Re-Destro was raised to carry.

A closing note: I will allow that Rikiya is being overdramatic when he uses matsuei and its connotation of countless generations. There are a few other things we can use to trace the history of heroism—Ujiko’s age, and the 18-years-or-less periods that One For All was held by its pre-All Might bearers—and running those numbers leads me to believe that it is, in fact, entirely possible to count the number of generations between Rikiya and Chikara, and the number, while higher than one, is probably not all that high. Certainly matsuei is being more dramatic about it than is entirely warranted, hence the poetic flourish of the official translation’s, “His blood runs through these veins!” The theatricality only makes me fonder of him, however.

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

FOOTNOTES

[1] It was changed and reverted on Re-Destro’s page at least twice before it finally stuck in January of this year. Chikara’s page took until July to be corrected, and it’s still wrong on various other subpages.

[2] Or your kids, if you have those. Only the last generation in the bloodline is the matsuei, but that’s a moving goalpost as long as the bloodline is still propagating.

[3] This summary of events combines what we know from both My Hero Academia proper and the Vigilantes spin-off, which I recommend to anyone who’s at all interested in finer-grained worldbuilding on Hero Society Japan than the main series makes time for.

[4] I personally headcanon him as 42.

[5] To which point I would refer back to the word kodomo, and note that that word choice indicates that Destro had a child in the world. Not a sperm sample kept in a freezer somewhere, waiting for the right would-be mother: an actual child. Some quick research on my part says that the farthest that term stretches is in using it to refer to yet-unborn children, fetuses still in the womb. Seeing as Japan doesn’t even allow inmates conjugal visits in real life, much less in a setting where villains are so dehumanized that Tartarus is an acceptable punishment for them, the line about Destro “having a child out in the world” takes us right back to a date of conception no later than Destro’s final night of freedom.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha meta #yotsubashi rikiya #yotsubashi chikara #re-destro #destro bnha #meta liberation army #my writing #i have thoughts on the anime's nonsense too but #hahawow #that's gonna take a little longer to get coherent #preview: it's not about capitalism #it's about fear

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spockandawe · 3 years

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Well, this is interesting! So, in that post yesterday, there was one line that really baffled me, a thing about people brushing off a character as an asshole “because he shows literally zero growth.” I kind of set that aside because it was such a weird non-sequitur, and guessed that it was just someone’s sentences not quite keeping up with their train of thought, which has happened to me many times. Apparently I was wrong! I already spent long enough on that one post, I’m tired of talking about that, but this is new and interesting.

Okay. I kind of wanted to see if I could talk about this purely in terms of abstracts and not characters, but I don’t think it’ll work. It would be frustrating to write and confusing to read. It’s about Jiang Cheng. Right up front: This isn’t about whether or not he’s an abuser. Frankly, I don’t think it’s relevant. This also isn’t about telling people they should like him. I don't care whether anyone else likes him or not. But I do like him, and I am always fascinated by dissecting the reasons that people disagree with me. And the process of Telling Stories is my oldest hyperfixation I remember, which will become relevant in a minute.

I thought I had a good grasp on this one, you know? Jiang Cheng makes it pretty obvious why people would dislike Jiang Cheng. But then the posts I keep stumbling over were making weird points, culminating in that “literally zero growth” line.

So! What happened is that someone wrote up a post about how Jiang Cheng’s character arc isn’t an arc, it’s stagnation. It’s a pretty interesting read, and I broadly agree with the larger point! The points where I would quibble are like... the idea that it’s absolute stagnation, as opposed to very subtle shifts that still make a material difference. But still, cool! The post was also offered up as a reason why OP was uninterested in writing any more Jiang Cheng meta, which I totally get. I’m not tired of him yet, but I definitely understand why someone who isn’t a fan of his would get tired about writing about a character with a very static arc. Okay!

Now, internet forensics are hard. I desperately wish I had more information about this evolution, because I find this stuff fascinating, but I have no good way to find things said in untagged posts, reblogs, or private/external venues. But as far as I can tell, that “literally zero growth” wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, it’s become fashionable for people to say that Jiang Cheng is an abusive asshole (that it’s fucked up to like) because he doesn’t have a character arc.

Asshole? Yes. Abusive? This post still isn’t about that. This is about it being fucked up to like this character because he did bad things and had a static character arc.

At first, that point of view was still deeply confusing to me. But I think I figured out the idea at the core of it, and now I’m only baffled. I’m not super interested in confirming this directly, because the people making the most noise about this have not inspired confidence in their ability to hold a civil conversation and I’m a socially anxious binch, but I think the idea is: ‘This character did Bad Things, and then did not improve himself.’

Which is alarmingly adjacent to that old favorite standard of ‘This piece of fiction is glorifying Bad Thing.’ I haven’t seen anyone accusing mxtx of something something jiang cheng, only the people who read/watched/heard the story and became invested in the Jiang Cheng character, but things kind of add up, you know?

Like I said, I don’t want to arbitrate anyone’s right to like/dislike Jiang Cheng. That’s such a fucking waste of time. But this is fascinating to me, because it’s like..... so obviously new and sudden, with such a clear originating point. I can’t speak to the Chinese fans, obviously, but exiledrebels started translating in... what, 2017? And only now, in 2021, do people start putting forth Jiang Cheng’s flat character arc as a “reason” that he’s bad? I’m not going to argue if he pings you in the abuse place, I’m not a dick. I’m not going to argue if you just dislike his vibes. I’m just over here on my blog and in the tag enjoying myself, feel free to detour around me. But oh my god, it’s so silly to try to tell other people that they shouldn’t like him because he has a static character arc.

I want to talk about stories. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to say, because it’s impossible to make broad, sweeping statements, because there are stories about change, there are stories about lack of change, there are all kinds of media that can be used to tell stories, and standards for how stories are told and what they emphasize vary across cultures and over time. But I think that what I can say is that telling a story requires... compromise. It requires streamlining. Trying to capture all the detail of life would slow down most stories to an unbearable degree. Consider organically telling someone ‘I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich’ versus the computer science exercise of having students describe, step by step, how to make one (spread peanut butter? but you never said you opened the lid)

Hell, I’ve got an example in mdzs itself. The largely-faceless masses of the common people. If someone asks you to think about it critically like, yes, obviously these are people, living their own lives, with their own desires, sometimes suffering and dying in the wake of the novel plot. But does the story give weight to those deaths? Or does it just gloss by? Yes, it references their suffering occasionally, but it is not the focus, and it would slow the story unbearably to give equal weight to each dead person mentioned.

Does Wei Wuxian’s massacre get given the same slow, careful consideration as Su She’s, or Jin Guangyao’s? No, because taking the time to weigh our protagonist with ‘well, this one was a mother, and her youngest son had just started walking, but now he’s going to grow up without remembering her face. that one only became an adult a few months ago, he still hasn’t been on many night-hunts yet, but he finds it so rewarding to protect the common people. oh, and this one had just gotten engaged, but don’t worry, his fiancee won’t mourn him, because she died here as well.’ And continuing on that way to some large number under 3000? No! Unless your goal is to make the reader feel bad for cheering for a morally grey hero, that would be a bad authorial decision! The book doesn’t ignore the issue, it comes up, Wei Wuxian gets called out about all the deaths he’s responsible for, but that’s not the same as them being given equal emotional weight to one (1) secondary character, and I don’t love this new thing where people are pretending that’s equivalent.

When Wei Wuxian brutally kills every person at the Wen supervisory office, are you like ‘holy shit... so many grieving families D:’ or are you somewhere between vindicated satisfaction and an ‘ooh, yikes’ wince? Odds are good you’re somewhere in the satisfaction/wince camp, because that’s what the story sets you up to feel, because the story has to emphasize its priorities (priorities vary, but ‘plot’ and ‘protagonist’ are common ones, especially for a casual novel read like this)

Now, characters. If you want to write a story with a sweeping, epic scale, or if you want to tightly constrain the number of people your story is about, I guess it’s possible to give everyone involved a meaningful character arc. Now.... is it always necessary? Is it always possible? Does it always make sense? No, of course not. If you want to do that, you have to devote real estate to it, and depending on the story you want to tell, it could very possibly be a distraction from your main point, like the idea of mxtx tenderly eulogizing every single character who dies even incidentally. Lan Qiren doesn’t get a loving examination of his feelings re: his nephews and wei wuxian and political turnover in the cultivation world because it’s not relevant, and also, because his position is pretty static until right near the end of the story. Lan Xichen is arguably one of the most static characters within the book, he seems like the same nice young between Gusu and the present, right up until... just before the end of the story.

You may see where I’m heading with this.

Like, just imagine trying to demand that every important character needs to go through a major life change before the end of your book or else it didn’t count. This just in, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg go through multiple novels without experiencing radical shifts in who they are, stop liking them immediately. I do get that the idea is that Jiang Cheng was a ~bad person~ who didn’t change, but asdgfsd I thought we were over the handwringing over people being allowed to like ““bad”” fictional characters. The man isn’t even a canonical serial killer, he’s not my most problematic fave even within this novel.

And here is where it’s a little more relevant that I would quibble with that original post about Jiang Cheng’s arc. He’s consistently a mean girl, but he goes from stressed, sharp-edged teenager, to grief-stricken, almost-destroyed teen, to grim, cold young adult (and then detours into grim, cold, and grief-stricken until grief dulls with time). He does become an attentive uncle tho. He..... doesn’t experience a radical change in his sense of self, which... it’s...... not all that strange for an adult. And bam, then he DOES experience a radical change, but the needs of the plot dictate that it’s right near the end. And he’s not the focus of the story, baby, wangxian is. He has the last few lines of the story, which nicely communicate his changes to me, but also asdfafas we’re out of story. He was never the main character, it’s not surprising we don’t linger! The extras aren’t beholden to the needs of plot, but they’re also about whatever mxtx wanted to write, and I guess she didn’t feel like writing about Jiang Cheng ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But also. Taking a step backward. Stable characters can fill a perfectly logical place in a story. Like, look at Leia Organa. I’m not saying she has no arc, but I am saying that she’s a solid point of reference as Luke is becoming a jedi and Han is adjusting his perspective. I wouldn’t call her stagnant, the vibes are wrong, but she also isn’t miserable in her sadness swamp, the way Jiang Cheng is.

Or, hell, look at tgcf. The stagnant, frozen nature of the big bad is a central feature of the story. The bwx of now is the bwx of 800 years ago is the bwx of 1500+ years ago. This is not the place for a meta on how that was bad for those around him and for him himself, but I have Thoughts about how being defeated at the end is both a thing that hurts him and relieves him. Mei Nianqing is a sympathetic character who’s also pretty darn static. Does Ling Wen have a character arc, or do we just learn more about who she already is and what her priorities always were? I’m going to cut myself off here, but a character’s delta between the beginning of a story and the end of a story is a reasonable way to judge how interesting writing character meta is, and is a very silly metric to judge their worth, and even if I guessed at what the basic logic is, for this character, I am still baffled that it’s being put forth as a real talking point.

(also, has it jumped ship to any other characters yet? have people started applying it in other fandoms as well? please let me know if this is the case, I am wildly curious)

(no, but really, if anyone is arguing that bwx is gross specifically because he had centuries to self-reflect and didn’t fix himself, i am desperate to know)

And finally. The thing I thought was most self-evident. Did I post about this sometime recently? If a non-central character experiences a life-altering paradigm shift right near the end of the story (without it being lingered over, because non-central character), oh my god. As a fic writer? IT’S FREE REAL ESTATE. This is the most fertile possible ground. If I want to write post-canon canon-compliant material, adsgasfasd that’s where I’m going to be looking. Okay, yeah, the main couple is happy, that’s good. Who isn’t happy, and what can I do about that? Happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, etc.

It’s not everyone’s favorite playground, but come on, these are not uncommon feelings. And frankly, it’s starting to feel a little disingenuous when people act like fan authors pick out the most blameless angel from the cast and lavish good things upon them. I’m not the only one who goes looking for a good dumpster fire and says I Live Here Now. If I write post-canon tgcf fic, it’s very likely to focus on beef and/or leaf. I have written more than one au focusing on tianlang-jun.

And, hilariously. If the problem with Jiang Cheng. Is that he is a toxic man fictional character who failed to grow on his own, and is either unsafe or unhealthy to be around. If the problem is that he did not experience a character arc. If these people would be totally fine with other people liking him, if he improved himself as a person. And then, if authors want to put in the (free! time-consuming!) work of writing that character development themselves. You would think that they would be lauded for putting the character through healthier sorts of personal growth than he experienced in canon. Instead, I am still here writing this because first, I was bothered by these authors being named as “freaks” who are obsessed with their ‘uwu precious tsundere baby’ with a “love language of violence,” and then I was graciously informed that people hate Jiang Cheng because he experiences no character growth.

#jiang cheng #mdzs #the untamed #disk horse #long post/#abuse/#only tangentially #but better safe than sorry i hope

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felassan · 4 years

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Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

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

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

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