#and the OS map doesn't give it a name

[theemeraldforesthideout]

Cromlech Buwch

[skyfallscotland]

Ok so Rebecca did a one hour panel today in Sydney with Lynette Noni hosting, where she asked questions and then they opened it to fans. I've kind of summarised the things I haven't seen mentioned over and over, but I don't frequent the subreddit anymore or use TikTok, so there might be overlap. In any case, it's long. Settle in. I've sectioned it into plot/character relevant first, then themes and interesting facts about her and her writing. Basically, you all came with me. 💗

• In book three (and every book thereafter) we'll be going to more and more new places. She specifically worded it as "watching the map expand" whether that's significant or not, I don't know. (I was thinking Isle Kingdoms for OS, but maybe that's just my wishful thinking).

• She implied Jack will have a reason (explained) for uh...being a power-hungry prick? lol

• She's hella defensive of Dain, which I love. #DainApologistsClub 😌 Some highlights include:

"You guys give Dain so much shit for the same thing Xaden does. You really do and you're so fast to forgive Xaden and not Dain. Why? Is it because he's hot?"

And, "when push comes to shove, all Dain did—yes he violated her boundaries, as does Xaden—but all he did was trust his dad when his best friend no longer spoke to him. That's it."

"When Dain looks at her (in the interrogation chamber) and says 'if you had just told me, none of this would have happened', he's not just talking about the interrogation, he's talking about Liam, he's talking about if she had just trusted him (in Fourth Wing) it never would have happened." 😢

• She was asked about Liam's appearance in the interrogation chamber and definitively put to rest any signet theories involving that. "She's so alone in that moment and...I don't read fan theories but sometimes they reach my ears; she's completely disconnected from her magic in that moment, she can't even reach out for Tairn or Andarna, which are the bonds that are actually most important to her. She can't reach out for Xaden. And that's the one person who would have prevented that from happening the last year, so it's natural that's who her mind would summon."

• She's thought about a spin-off series, but she's just trying to survive this series.

• Someone asked her if there'd be any redemption and romance for Jack Barlowe and honestly, thanks guys, I don't think she's ever coming back to this country 💀 ("Are you getting enough sleep? Uh...I mean, from his prison cell maybe? No.")

• Someone asked "what is Garrick's signet and why hasn't it been shown yet?" (shoutout to this girl, she's the real MVP) to which Rebecca said "it's very much in book three, I love it."

• Someone asked about the orange dragons and unpredictability re: Amber, Jack, Varrish and then Imogen and Brennan. Rebecca said some dragons might look for traits like their own and some look for balance because it's a partnership; and that Brennan as a strategist needed that little bit of unpredictability in his life (lol, I think he got it).

• She didn't always plan for Violet to have two dragons. Originally it was going to be one (Tairn) and the editor had hoped that she would sway towards a weaker, smaller dragon and she thought that was a little too close to Abraxos in ToG, and so they compromised and gave her both. She also went on to say she doesn't like overpowered heroines and since Tairn is extremely powerful, Andarna balanced that out. (I'm not...I'm not sure how that works out? But that's what was said.)

• We are definitely going to find out more about the original six (and Lynette asked if that was a spin-off possibility and was shushed, so she's thought about it at least, but I get the idea she's thought about a lot of possibilities 😂)

• There's no timeframe for the release of the final two books.

• Someone asked if Violet's dad was Malek to which she was kind of shocked. He's not a god, guys. And low-key I JUST WANT TO KNOW HIS NAME. 😤

• On Sgaeyl: "You do (get more of her) but holy crap is she pissed. So—I'll tell you that about Onyx Storm—she is really, really mad at Xaden and she's not exactly speaking to him at the moment. So it's hard for her to speak into that bond when she's not speaking to him." 💔

• She was asked about the Violet dated Halden theory (which was fucking hilarious because the poor girl misspoke and asked if Xaden dated the prince and we were all really confused about which TikToks the poor thing had seen (note to self: consider cam/xaden), anyway after we got to the bottom of that, Rebecca replied, "I think you should read the third book." Which I'm taking to mean, the man is making a damn appearance and we're gonna find out for ourselves 👀 Hey, if I'm lucky maybe we'll even find out his surname

• Finally she said she has EP on the Amazon series, they've all been exceptionally protective of it and that she's happy with how it's going (they're not near casting yet and she doesn't want to really comment on that ever, to leave each role open to as diverse a cast as possible). She said the production team has come to the signings in LA to meet readers and see what they love and are passionate about when it comes to the series to make sure that's honoured.

"Like I mean, I've seen certain...like what can I say without getting tackled to the ground? Let's just say they've already taken steps to make sure that what you guys love about the story is envisioned and that it's not run amok. And I'm very happy with it, they're super protective of it." Which could just be me reading into it, but the first place my brain went was the dragons 👀🐉 and the CGI or whatever.

• She was asked about where the inspiration for the universe came from and she said that when her Entangled decided they were going to do romantasy they asked her for five pitches and Fourth Wing was one of them (she won't say what the others were because she might still write them someday). She said she likes the fated mates trope but she wondered what that would look like if the dragons were the ones mated, not the humans and the humans who couldn't stand each other were forced to be around each other because of this. 

• Her first ever book was romantasy but it didn't sell

• She's never really written enemies to lovers before.

• She likes found family themes because she was raised in a military family and moved around a lot, so that makes it hard to keep in touch with your extended family, and after she married her husband and became a military wife, it was their found family that was there for her—it was her found family who helped her move her house, who sat with her when her husband was injured in Iraq, etc, so she thinks it's very important to show that your family is also the people you choose and that can be just as strong as any blood tie.

• She was asked (by Lynette) why she wanted to show death and the reality of war and she said, "I've been surrounded by it. My husband's been at war since 2003, he spent 22 years in the army, first as a 19 Delta cavalry scout and then ten years as an apache pilot and we buried our friends. And I saw what it did to him, and I saw what it did to our friends, I saw what it did to our children, to us, and I love being able to examine it from a fantasy perspective just because I think fantasy gives us a unique environment from which to critique our own world by viewing it through the lens of another. And I've always delved into those themes as to why we do this to each other and where is there hope to stop it?"

• As an author her favourite scenes in Fourth Wing were the dagger stealing scene (very important to their chemistry and romantic development—"she's the only person he's taught ever, how to actually kill him") and the first kiss scene.

In Iron Flame it was the interrogation scene and how that ends with Dain and Xaden and everything coming together.

When asked about a similar scene from Onyx Storm that elicited the same strong emotion from her she said "you're not gonna like it" and that's it 💀

• She would consider writing fantasy again after she's done with the Empyrean world, maybe one of her other pitches, but she won't truly think about it until she's survived this one.

• She spoke about the "kill your darlings" writing advice and how if you love a scene but it doesn't move the plot, you've gotta cut it, and how she did that with the final scene in Fourth Wing, which was originally 7k words of Violet POV pulling information out of Xaden.

• When asked about fan theories she actually said something I found a little sad. "I don't listen to fan theories. One, I'm not on TikTok—it's a little bit more important for me to be alive than to listen to what other people think they know about me, and two, I don't ever want fan theories to bleed into my writing."

〰️ And that's it! If anyone's going tomorrow, please voice record the whole thing and report back lmao 🙏 🫶🏼

ETA: part two is here, x

[ziskeyt]

Okay, if you're looking at this and thinking of switching to a different word processor here's some information that might be helpful. If you're looking for free, your computer/phone's note taking app should work fine for writing, but it's not my preferred. Discord is also free and you can start your own server to house your writing in with different channels for each chapter or work, however you want and what works for you. Microsoft Word/Libre office are going to give you an experience pretty similar to GDocs (imo, obvs), so if you're really liking your workflow in GDocs, do a trial of either and see which you like best/works best with your OS. But if you're looking to get some software for writing specifically at a single device, I cannot recommend Scrivener enough. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an easy way to write on one device and then pick up on another (unless this has changed recently, but last I checked, capability was pretty iffy. I'm homebound rn so I only write on the computer and haven't had need to check) However, despite the lack of on-the-go functionality like that, there's honestly nothing I've found better for writing. Scrivener is made to be a writing software. It's made to house longform projects, and projects with a lot of metadata and references and images. It's a file with a lot of word files inside of it, essentially. Here's what my current fic looks like in Scrivener:

All of my chapters are new text documents for easier reference for myself, and uploading to AO3 (though, formatting is an issue between the two). I have files for background information that's important for me to reference, every named character, language, maps, and extraneous scenes I get in my head but may or may not make it into the fic itself. AND one of the coolest things a friend showed me a while back (thanks @mrsd-writes!) is the ability to look at two documents at the same time in the window. Here you can see the general setup i have when writing recently, which is my WiP chapter and the map of the region I've embellished from the BotW game map (though I changed view to ch1 to avoid spoilers lol)

As you can see you can just drop images into a document in scrivener to have as reference. I know @woulduknowmore somehow put the interactive BotW map from ZeldaDungeon in her document, so it has some pretty cool capabilities.

Anyway, Scrivener is fantastic for writing projects where you end up with a whole bunch of extra files, or if you want to break up the work by chapter or section and still have it easily on hand. You can change what the application itself looks like (as you can see, I have it in blue, it's a setting). And once you've completed a work and you want to get it ready for sending out/publishing it can compile it for you pretty decently -- I used it to write my thesis as it has a whole setting for papers. You'll find what program works for your style and needs -- I just know that Scrivener can seem intimidating or possibly strange so I thought I'd say a bit about why I love it so much and only use it. I'm by no means a whiz with it, but if you want to try it and have questions I can see if I can help!

writer survey question time:

inspired by seeing screencaps where the software is offering (terrible) style advice because I haven't used a software that has a grammar checker for my stories in like a decade

if you use multiple applications, pick the one you use most often.

[confusions-shed-of-ideas]

Guys I just realised something

So y'know how the names of the travelers in Octopath Traveler spell out "octopath" right

The order is Ophilia, Cyrus, Tressa, Olberic, Primrose, Alfyn, Therion and H'aanit

It's pretty cool and all but some people tend to mix up the order due to there being two Os and two Ts

So besides how the game was created to present the characters in this specific order, here's why that shouldn't work

If you split the first 4 letters (OCTO) from the last 4 letters (PATH) and label each of the letters in each group 1 2 3 4 from left to right, you find that the characters with the same number have the same type of path action

Let me explain

1) The first O and P: Ophilia and Primrose. Ophilia's path action is "guide" while Primrose's is "allure". Both give you the ability to bring npcs along with you on your journey and make them fight for you in battles when needed, so both are essentially a "gather and summon npcs" type of ability

2) The C and A: Cyrus and Alfyn. Both Cyrus' "scrutinize" and Alfyn's "inquire" are used to examine/talk to npcs and gain information. Despite Alfyn's being more direct and Cyrus' path action having a possibility to hurt your reputation, both do pretty much the same thing

3) The two Ts: Tressa and Therion. Tressa has "purchase" while Therion has "steal". This one is pretty straightforward as they can both acquire items from npcs

4) The last O and H: Olberic and H'aanit. Both have path actions which allow you to fight the npcs, Olberic's is called "challenge" while H'aanit's is called "provoke". The difference is that H'aanit calls forth her beasts to fight for her while Olberic can actually physically fight the npcs. Still a fight nonetheless

While I suppose swapping the two Ts wouldn't make too much of a problem (besides the actual sequence of how the characters appear/how they're set in the map being mixed up), swapping the two Os would mess up this whole path action sequence

I like noticing niche details like this. They're fun

With that out of the way, here's something else I noticed

The path actions are split into two categories: "noble" and "rogue". There's a certain percentage of success in completing the "rogue" path actions, and failing will harm your reputation

The characters with "noble" path actions are Ophilia, Alfyn, Tressa and Olberic, while those with "rogue" path actions are Primrose, Cyrus, Therion and H'aanit

But in the octopath sequence, Cyrus, a character with a rogue path action, is placed amongst characters with noble path actions. Same thing with Alfyn but vice versa

I suppose calling the game "Oatopcth Traveler" just doesn't have as good of a ring to it

[wovenstarlight]

ok here's some example scenarios for the options from this thread/poll: STW with compasses, SHJ with colormarks, STW with empathy, and SHJ with name tattoos

(also on ao3)

--

Taewon wears long sleeves on purpose. Of course it's part of his work attire, but there's also the fact that he prefers to not know where his soulmates are during his workday, if only for peace of mind.

Unfortunately, he has his jacket off and his shirt sleeves rolled up today to deal with some hands-on work, so it's with great resignation that he watches one of his compasses swing from side to side, faster and faster, until it's mapping movements very close and directly behind him.

He hears the door creak open. "Hello, Chief Song," Sung Hyunjae greets jovially, and Taewon bites back a long, heavy sigh.

*

Sung Hyunjae enters his home, and pleased as he is with the signed kiseungsu contract, he gives in to the tune that's been looping in his head all day and hums softly. This doesn't sound like Soyoung's usual fare; has she discovered a new genre? Either way, as he sheds his coats, he hopes she's not getting distracted on the job. House keys go back in the inventory, shoes are toed off at the door and replaced with the fluffy slippers Evelyn gifted him as a joke, and gloves get pulled off and-

Hyunjae stares at his hand. Vivid pink, splashed across the skin of his palm, stares back at him.

"Ah," Hyunjae says, voice cracking.

*

Taewon watches warily as Sung Hyunjae approaches Han Yoojin and gives him his phone. He doesn't know what Sung Hyunjae is feeling right now; it's hardly as though he can read the man on the best of days, but tonight's emotional cocktail is much harder to decipher than most. There's notes of what feels like simmering frustration in there, which makes Taewon want to shove his way between them and push them apart- but then there's also what feels like... Well, it's a warm sort of feeling, which already makes him reel, but the thing that really freezes his feet in place is that it feels almost like-

Well, almost like fondness.

Taewon watches warily as Han Yoojin hands the phone back with a newly named contact, as Sung Hyunjae changes it, as Han Yoojin stares at him through dull, tired eyes. Taewon feels confusion and exhaustion creeping over him in equal measure, and lets it convince him to leave the duo alone and get back to work.

He doesn't register until much, much later that the confusion and exhaustion wasn't his own.

*

Sung Hyunjae finds it interesting to watch the tattoos reshape themselves on his skin everyday. It's part of his daily routine; right after he washes his face and shaves, he strips off his shirt and takes a moment to examine the names inked on his skin, mapping them against yesterday's and noting where they've changed.

Song Taewon, first and oldest, swooping along his collarbone. The lines are as deliberate and neat as ever, handwriting developed to be readable. But he must have gotten an early start, because they're also a little sharper around the edges today, almost carved into his skin. Hyunjae will focus on guild work, then.

Kang Soyoung, curving across his right shoulder. Her name hasn't been written in English for a long time, but it still pleases him to see the careful Korean letters every day. There's a notch at the top of her Os so that they look almost like hearts. She must be having a good morning; surprising given that she's awake this early. He hopes she slept at least a little.

Moon Hyuna, at the top of his spine. He doesn't know exactly when she wrote herself into his life, what with the location making it hard to notice, but she's placed herself in a (characteristically) playfully antagonistic position. He has a second mirror to check her name, and today, all seems as usual, though it's written in a vibrant red instead of the usual brown. He wonders what that's about.

And last and latest, on his left palm, Han Yoojin. The swooping handwriting is even looser today, spanning more skin, the bar on the H curling around the veins on the inside of his wrist. A good night's rest for him, then. In the afternoon, he'll slip off his glove to check, and the handwriting will be amusingly spiky from dealing with the young monsters. But now, early in the morning, the letters are still soft with sleep, and Hyunjae smiles as he drops the shirt in the laundry basket and goes to fetch his towel.

[bestofblackwidow]

The "Let me go - it's okay," she told him the last time we saw the Black Widow, it was - to say the least - emotional. "Let me go - it's okay," she said to Hawkeye, plunging to her death on the arid planet Sleeping in Avengers: Endgame for the ultimate sacrifice to save the world. While the deaths in the Marvel Cinematic Universe go on - sorry, Iron Man - there was probably no more heart-stopping moment, since the former SHIELD spy who became Avenger gave her life to recover the Soul Stone.

Still, it left the MCU in a bind. For years, a Black Widow film had been mooted, right back to 2004 at Lions Gate Entertainment before the rights reverted to Marvel. When Scarlett Johansson first appeared as Natasha Romanoff - the former KGB assassin with a very particular set of skills - in 2010's Iron Man 2, it didn't take long before questions were asked about a solo outing. Marvel Studios conductor Kevin Feige even held discussions with Johansson, who was then only 25. But there was a caveat, he said. "The Avengers comes first."

While others - Thor, Captain America, Black Panther and even Ant-Man - had their moments in the spotlight, the Black Widow was forced to wait. And wait. And wait. Not that Johansson thought that her character demanded the same treatment; if she was going to be in front of a Marvel movie, there had to be a reason. "Is there anything exciting to do creatively, as an actor?" she says. “Will we be able to do something extraordinary and strong? And something that stands on its own? "It's what makes the independent Black Widow an intriguing prospect: an inauguration of Phase 4 of the MCU promises to step back in time before her dramatic death to answer the provocative questions that still hover over her Crucially, the script transports audiences back to the events right after Captain America: Civil War, after that huge internal confrontation of the Avengers.

Without relatives or an organization that employs her, the Black Widow is alone, says Johansson. "It gave us the opportunity to really show her when she's kind of out of her game, you know? Because of that, anything was possible." The actress was there "from the start" at the script meetings, as they began to figure out how to delve into Romanoff's origins. "You are trying to map all of this ... which is extremely stressful," she laughs, "because there are no guidelines."

Fortunately, Johansson was not alone. In another inspired choice for the MCU canon, Feige recruited Australian director Cate Shortland, best known for discreet dramas like Somersault and Lore. While she was surprised, Shortland was encouraged by the creative freedom that Marvel was offering. “They allowed me to be myself and encouraged me to make a movie that I was passionate about,” she says. "We were allowed to have a lot of nuances and make a character-oriented film."

After several Skype sessions with Johansson, who also receives producer credit, Shortland worked with a Russian researcher to embody Romanoff's dark story: "the red in my ledger", as she told Loki in 2012 in Os Avengers. As she sings in the trailer, "We have to go back to where it all started" - the promising teaser clips of Romanoff as a young man (played by Ever Anderson, daughter of Paul WS Anderson and Milla Jovovich) in a childhood that seems far from idyllic. That's what makes Black Widow a family reunion of the kind that only Marvel would have the courage to conjure. Joining Romanoff is Yelena Belova, a sister-sister and fellow murderer who trained alongside her in the so-called Red Room, the punitive Soviet facility that produced 'Black Widow' spies.

"Their stories intersect," promises Shortland. "They clash." Played by Lady Macbeth's British star Florence Pugh, Belova is more than a physical match for Romanoff. Still, emotionally is where it really matters. "What Yelena does is kind of point to Natasha's pain," says Pugh. “She is part of Natasha's story. And I think that's why we have an opportunity to look at Natasha's story, because Yelena has been knocking on the door and says, 'Hey, let's deal with this pain. ”As Johansson comments, Belova is not just a carbon copy of his own character.

"She is completely alone. She is strong and different. She is so different (from) Natasha." Beside them are Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz) and Alexei Shostakov (David Harbor), two father figures whose own stories intertwine with Natasha and Yelena. "This is the coolest thing with this whole group of people. They all had parts of their past that they regretted," says Pugh. “They’re older. They’ve had more life experience. They know more about the system, about this world they’re all living in.” Harbor, the Emmy Stranger Things nominated star, managed to put an indelible mark on the muscular Shostakov, better known as the Red Guardian super soldier, the Russian equivalent of Captain America. "There is a gangster quality to him," the actor smiles. "And he's covered in tattoos. He's got a beard and those gold teeth. He's crazy." But after years of making bad decisions, he's also full of remorse.

"He's in a bad situation," adds Harbor. "And he needs redemption." Weisz's character, Melina, is another who experienced the rigors of the Red Room, a place that put her in contact with Natasha and Yelena. Marking his first dive at the MCU, Weisz acknowledges that the film addresses the idea of ​​discovering his favorite family. "It's definitely about finding out where you belong and where you came from, and what your background story was, and who you really are, and what matters to you - your ideology, I think." Along the way, Feige made reference to The Kids Are All Right - the 2010 Lisa Cholodenko film about a same-sex couple raising two teenagers. "Which is so weird," laughs Johansson. "You would never expect that from a Marvel movie." no it was the only strange nod to the film. Harbor speaks of Shostakov in terms of Philip Seymour Hoffman's drama teacher in the dramatic black comedy The Savages.

Or even expressing "the pathos of a small town, independent, family-run, weird movie... like Little Miss Sunshine". More understandable cinema references include "things like Logan and Aliens and The Fugitive," says Shortland. "We saw movies like that." Certainly, it's easy to see comparisons between Sigourney Weaver's determined Ripley, from James Cameron's masterpiece Aliens, and Johansson's Romanoff, an Avenger who has no superpowers. "We saw it as a force," says Shortland, "because she always has to dig really deep to get out of shit situations." According to the director, everyone in the production invested in deepening Romanoff - even Scottish composer Lorne Balfe (Pennyworth, His Dark Materials), who replaced Alexandre Desplat's original choice. Balfe looked at the character's origins, says Shortland. “He said, 'I want to put it on the ground, because it has been dug up in the movies in the past. I want to give her that flesh and blood. 'And he created this soundtrack that is really Russian."

However, perhaps the real blow here is to recruit Shortland, the first female director to face the Black Widow (and only the second, following Captain Marvel co-director Anna Boden, to enter the MCU). "This film would not be what it is without Cate Shortland," says Pugh. "I think having her eye, and having her mind with this script, has taken her to a whole different realm." Johansson agrees. "" You can feel it was made from a female perspective ... cooked there. "Although Ray Winstone's casting as Supervisor of the Red Room Dreykov (whose daughter contributed to the abundance of red in Romanoff's book, according to Loki) add more to the psychological battleground that the Black Widow will explore, it also deals with victimization, a very pertinent topic in the current climate. The Red Room itself is where trainees are brutally sterilized. "You will see that these women are hard working and strong, and they are murderers - and yet they still need to discuss how they were abused," says Pugh. "It is an incredibly powerful piece."

Judging by the 2020 Oscars, where Pugh and Johansson had their own private relationship session on the red carpet, the two actors got along very well. "She has a really beautiful career ahead of her ... she's a very special person," says Johansson, excited when Pugh's name is mentioned. More specifically, Pugh may well have more Marvel to chew on, if it is rumored that her character will take on the 'Black Widow' mantle for new adventures. By learning Parkour, kickboxing and knife fighting for role, Pugh can safely cut things physically, though she's reluctant to claim that the Black Widow is just a setup for future outings. "Even though it is obviously where everyone wants to go and want to think - think about what comes next - this film never really seemed to be what he was trying to underline." According to Johansson, however, test the audience who saw the film thinks otherwise. "Her character and her performance are so dear." Now, after more than a year of pandemic-related delays to July 2021), it will not be just a few lucky spectators who will be able to see. Black Widow will even be the first Marvel movie to debut simultaneously on the Disney+ streaming site (with a 'main hit' fee), an understandable move considering the uncertainty that still exists around the world. And in fact, after the success of the Marvel TV shows WandaVision and The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, it doesn't seem like such a strange home. Johansson believes that fans will respond to Black Widow, with this flashback of an earlier part of her life, bringing more poignancy to the Endgame's outcome. "Our goal was for them to be satisfied with this story; that maybe they could have some solution, I think, with the death of this character, in a way. It seemed like people wanted this." Shortland agrees. "We felt that we should honor his death," she says. And the Black Widow will surely honor him.