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infinitelystrangemachinex · 6 months ago

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How to tell Arcane leaks apart from trailers and teasers

There are NO LEAKS in this post, so please read.

In summary: to identify leaks, look out for 1): watermarks, 2): unfinished animation rendering, and 3): poor image and video quality.

Tumblr isn't too bad right now, but Twitter is rife with clips and screenshots of the leaks, and YouTube has full uploaded leaked clips. These leaks show up on YouTube if you even search just "Arcane" or "Arcane season 2."

Here is a list of legitimate trailers and teasers posted by Netflix and Riot. These are not leaks and the clips and gifsets about them on Tumblr are from legitimate sources:

Season 2 first look

Season 2 teaser (short)

Ekko and Heimerdinger sneak peek

Season 2 teaser trailer

Jinx and Sevika sneak peek

There's some confusion in the tag about what constitutes a leak and what is simply a trailer or a teaser shared legitimately by Netflix and/or Riot. This is understandable because the first 5 episodes of season 2 leaked at the same time that Netflix and Riot were accelerating season 2's marketing.

Most people in the fandom do not want to be spoiled at all, and so are not excited about the leaks. Most people don't want clips, screengrabs, or even vague allusions to the leaks in the Arcane tag. They most certainly do not want spoilers sent to their inboxes, either. (DO NOT DO THIS. Don't be that person either on anon or off. Goodness gracious.)

Still, there is always going to be someone who posts the leaks in the fandom tags. However, there are many more people who make gifs and posts about the legitimate season 2 teasers and trailers. There are still almost 3 months until the first episodes drop, so we will be dealing with dodging these leaks for a long while.

Here's how to tell what's a leak and what isn't:

1): Watermarks

From what I've put together, someone at one of the dubbing studios leaked the first 5 episodes of Arcane season 2. In their entirety. However, these leaks were not production ready. The leaks are also completely watermarked and have a big running timestamp ticking throughout the run of all of the episodes.

This is difficult to visualize beyond what little Riot shared about the production of season 1 in Bridging the Rift. So I will post a NON-SPOILER screengrab of the title card of one of the leaks I took (just a few seconds before I realized I was looking at a leaked episode).

Below is a screenshot I took of nothing more than the Arcane title card from the season 2 title sequence. This is not a spoiler! Please use this example to help you tell a legitimate teaser from a leak:

Can you imagine watching 5 EPISODES of Arcane with these watermarks all over every single frame??? I'm begging you, do not subject yourself to watching Arcane in this manner, no matter how bad you want to know what happens in season 2.

These watermarks are practically impossible to remove, especially from every single frame. So any visuals you see that look clean, production-ready, and gorgeous from season 2 are definitely from trailers or teasers, not from leaks.

Here's a screengrab from the recent sneak peek posted by Netflix/Riot for comparison:

No watermarks, the animation is finished, the video quality is high. This is a legitimate teaser and not a leak.

2): Unfinished animation render

You don't need the full finished painterly animation from Fortiche to complete a dub. You just need basic character models and their movements, along with the finished script.

Much of the leaks are just this: the full complete scenes from every episode, character models are moving as they will in the final edit, the episodes' composition is complete, but the animation is unfinished and doesn't have the final painterly polish yet.

Below is a NON-SPOILER screengrab from Riot/Fortiche showing the animation process. This screenshot is from season 1 episode 5 during Vi and Sevika's first fight and shows the stage of completeness of the animation that most of the leaks show:

Notice that the scene is comprehensible, but the lighting effects and painting-like style of Fortiche is missing. It looks... okay, but unfinished-looking compared to what we know Arcane looks like. A big chunk of the 5 leaked season 2 episodes look like this.

Here's the final render of this scene for comparison:

However, I will say that I accidentally watched the first few seconds of the leaked season 2 episode 1 before it registered in my brain that I was watching a leak. There were watermarks like in my first point above, but for this particular scene, the animation was finished, and it seems like the sound mixing was finished too.

So it is possible that there are leaks floating around with gorgeous finished-looking animation. So look out for watermarks no matter what, and also -

3.): Poor image and video quality

When people say that the leaks are "potato quality," they mean it. On top of the watermarks and big timestamp across the runtime of all the 5 leaked episodes, the video quality is also pretty bad, certainly less than 360p.

The legitimate teasers and trailers and screenshots released by Netflix and Riot are all of very high video quality.

A note on early leaks

There are some leaks from earlier this year pertaining to Vi and Caitlyn's story that came from the Annecy Animation Festival Arcane panel. These leaks weren't treated as seriously because no full clips leaked, and they were mainly high-level summaries of season 2 plot points.

Those leaks are now difficult to tell apart from text posts about these new complete episode leaks. There are a lot of text posts out there about Vi and Caitlyn's story in particular as well as extremely spoilery text posts about certain characters who were in the Council tower at the end of season 1 episode 9.

There isn't much we can do about text posts

In the end, Tumblr has been pretty okay with keeping visuals from leaks out of the tag. I still see a potato-quality screenshot from the leaks every now and then. But most pervasive is people talking about spoilers from the leaks in text posts. These posts are tagged with the fandom tags and spoilers are only tagged sometimes.

Often, if the person is only vaguely alluding to the spoilers, they won't tag spoilers at all because they think being vague is enough. It usually isn't, because the post is still alluding to events outside of season 1 and the teasers/trailers.

The only thing we can do to completely avoid these posts is to not only block "spoiler" or "leak" related tags, but to avoid and block the Arcane fandom tags altogether, which is a shame.

Please, if you're someone who saw the leaks and wants to post about them, all I can ask is to at least tag your spoilers: "arcane spoilers", "arcane season 2 spoilers", "arcane s2 spoilers", "arcane leaks", or even just "spoiler", "spoilers", or "leaks" is better than nothing.

Even better would be to simply avoid using the word Arcane in the post and not tag the post with any fandom tags at all, keeping the post relegated to your blog with as little context as possible. This includes avoiding using the correctly-spelled character names in the post as well. Until the episodes drop in November, this is the most polite way I can think of to talk about the leaks and spoilers on your blog.

#arcane #arcane s2 #arcane season 2 #no spoilers #i was stunned at just how many leaked clips are on YOUTUBE and that they can't be taken down #it is truly the wild west out there right now for Arcane leaks so please be careful #again if you want to see the leaks or if you saw the leaks and want to post about them - be polite #tag your spoilers or remove all correctly-spelled character and place names from your post and keep the post out of the fandom tags

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acatthatmakeseclairs · 1 month ago

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Arcane Season 2 Necrit Interview Transcript + my ramblings

Hello! I thought I’d share the transcript for the Necrit & Christian Linke Interview on tumblr because it flopped on reddit lol (you can find the transcript at the very end of this post (ⓛ ω ⓛ*) )

Some notes to consider before going through the transcript and the rest of this post:

The transcript is of the YouTube video ver. of the interview, I’m crazy, but I’m not so crazy that I’m going to attempt to transcribe a 4 hour VOD.

The transcript is images for now, because I would not be able to fit a 2+ hour interview in a 40k character limit (the interview is like 60k+ characters, 50k+ without spaces)

I’ve added timestamps so you guys can easily reference a question or response from the video directly; I’ve also highlighted certain sections of the interview that I thought were interesting :)

For the discussion section, I’ll be referencing this post, because… let’s just say it was quite incorrect in some sections or there were points that I thought would be cool to talk about.

I’ve tried to be as objective and accurate as I could when getting into the details of this interview, hence why I’ve referenced other interviews and production materials, like concept art, but again, I am human, and I can get things incorrect or I can off as a bit biased– but alas o(*￣▽￣*)o

Anyways, onto the discussion!

Noxus, Ionia and Demacia are getting shows and are next steps into this cinematic universe; they pick each setting to explore [different] sides of [Runeterra].

They are not each getting shows… the team working on this new project, has only, casually, announced one new project.

They are one year into production for one show- the fact that Christian Linke mentioned Noxus, Ionia and Demacia, implies that this new series has a story that is centred around all three nations, not unlike how Arcane’s conflict centered around 3 different nation states: Piltover, Zaun and Noxus, with Noxus being positioned as an overall antagonistic force.

I’m not too familiar with the timeline of League of Legends, but I’ve heard here and there that Swain, a much-teased character in Arcane’s finale, had made his deal with Raum after the Invasion of Ionia, and seeing as he’s made his little cameo after Viktor’s failed ‘Glorious Evolution’, this could imply that we won’t see Ionia in any direct capacity.

Ok, this part is purely wishful thinking, but I think that our main setting for the next installment of this greater story is Demacia.

Noxus is positioned as an antagonist, it would be kind of underwhelming to go right into the motivations and deep mysteries of your central antagonist.

Linke stated that the team starts with ‘character stories’ (01:46:31) before anything else, as well as saying that they like ‘seeing Champions [meeting & interacting]’ (00:03:22) and my brain likes to make connections where there might not be any but what if Jinx was heading towards Demacia, and becomes friends with Lux? Again, total reach, but it’s a fan-favourite duo and it would be a good continuation of Jinx’s story (if they do continue her story that is).

They [considered] Blitzcrank for Season 2.

Christian Linke suggested Blitzcrank to be involved in the story in some way, but the rest of the team shot the idea down, with Linke describing it as ‘silly’ (00:05:31); it was probably a small joke or gag, considering how Linke described it.

[Heimerdinger] is not dead and other characters might [come] back to life.

Christian Linke did not outright confirm or deny Heimerdinger’s death nor the existence of Bandle City in the Arcane universe, all he said was “I’m not done with Heimerdinger.” (00:07:22) You also have to consider that this guy is a Heimerdinger main, and he’s only one person amongst many who is charge of the direction of Arcane, and it’s related properties. Can’t say I’m not hopeful of Heimerdinger coming back, I love that little guy so much.

As for the other characters? Again, no direct confirmation on Jinx (00:31:45), especially in the last Netflix Afterglow Interview, but Viktor and Jayce … I’ll get into it further.

Swain is teased to [be] looking into [the history of the Arcane] and [the origins of demons].

I can’t say I fully disagree with this point, but not because of Christian Linke’s comments in this interview (00:19:28). Throughout this second season, Ambessa continues to try to recreate Hex-tech, where, yes, she’s doing it for her own self-serving desires, but who told her to go to Piltover in the first place? In my opinion, it might have been Swain, seeing as his raven is seen poking around looking for the Hex-gem in Jayce’s, now destroyed, hammer.

I should also add that in relation to the overall timeline of Arcane, and it soon to be related properties, is that the current events within Arcane, so let’s say Arcane’s conclusion, the Invasion of Ionia has concluded, as if you can remember, the woman that Ambessa killed in Mel’s backstory is an Ionian princess, check out these bits of concept art from the Fortiche artists (Link 1) & (Link 2).

[Pianist] is teased to be Jhin.

Go to (00:23:10) in the video linked, he did not make a connection between this side character and Jhin, also are we just forgetting that Jhin is Ionian? And he would be much older than this side character??

Ziggs was not [inspiration] for Isha.

I thought I’d add to this point about the inspiration behind Isha: Isha is described as a child of Zaun, with Linke commenting that her hat is a miner hat, which is an allusion to Zaun’s early mining industry (00:24:47). We can see in Act 1, that although she is a child, Isha is very invested in the independence and freedom of Zaun, seeing as she poses as Jinx in what is possibly various rallies in the Undercity. I’d like to think she’s Zaun’s hope :) (let’s not think about what her death implies for Zaun…)

Renata will [replace the Chem-barons] in future.

Again, no confirmation. This discussion (00:27:19), was just that- a discussion of the future of Piltover and Zaun. Based on the production timelines, we may not actually see newer Champions like Renata, because they are released during production; I think we might get a mention of her in the next series, though.

Viktor will be explored on later shows confirmed- he is more than just human or Arcane user now; he is something special.

The status of Viktor and Jayce was confirmed to be dead (ಥ_ಥ) by Christian Linke in the recent Netflix Afterglow interview for Season 2 Act 3- HOWEVER, he described Viktor and Jayce to be “disintegrated” (1:33 – Netflix Interview) which is not what happened on screen. Instead, what is show to us in the show that Viktor and Jayce are sucked into the acceleration rune.

(“They’re alive- they’re stuck in time purgatory!” I say as they drag me into the asylum)

It should also be mentioned that the team, or at least Christian Linke, are interested in exploring what Viktor has become by the end of Arcane (01:20:05), and potentially the fates of Viktor and Jayce post-Arcane– again this does not imply that we will see either of them in the story in any direct capacity.

As for what Viktor is? Throughout this interview, he’s described as a symbiosis between the technological and organic– this does not mean he’s ‘cured’ of his disease and he’s not still disabled!

Throughout season 2 act 2, we see Viktor continue to use his staff to support himself, and Jinx also comments on his appearance, saying that he ‘looks like he’s got a couple [of conditions]’ (hahaha)- lets also not forget that in his Machine Herald form, his leg and back brace are fused into his body. (Interesting how something similar happened to Mel when she unlocked her empath powers, her golden accessories fused into her body- what’s up with that Fortiche?)

Personally, based on what Linke said “… what's different about Viktor is the Hexcore … [the runes] used [in] the Hexcore [are] a different thing, [they’re] much more powerful …” (00:31:01), and of course what we see in the show, I think that Viktor’s body is directly connected to the Hex-core, which creates transmutations within Viktor’s body, keeping him ‘alive’ but he also becomes a mage.

In the world of Arcane/LoL, you can become a mage by either being born as one, or praying to an Aspect or a God. However, Viktor (with the unintentional help of Jayce) became a mage due to the Hex-corisation of his body and soul- but his magic is different from other mages. A lot of the patterns that appear on Mel’s force-fields are very clean, neat, like the runes we see drawn on the various Hex-tech devices, but whenever post-Glorious Evolution Viktor casts a spell, we see this white-glowing webbed orb appear, similar to Ekko’s Z-drive. Not sure what this means, but I thought I’d share my ramblings :)

Other champions from Zaun and Piltover will be brought up to Arcane timeline.

This point was briefly mentioned (00:31:55 - 00:32:15), but even I wasn’t sure about how to interpret this. I think it might refer to the character re-works in League of Legends, but so far they’ve only reworked characters actually featured in Arcane; I’m guessing future reworks for more characters are being discussed amongst the creatives at RIOT, but we have to wait for the upcoming series to see what’ll happen.

Urgot is coming later.

… Again, no direct confirmation, Linke said “Not yet … he wasn't part of the story. I do think Urgot is really interesting …” (00:33:03). Urgot is a character based in the Zaun/Piltover story, so seeing him in the sequel series is unlikely.

Viktor and Jayce are confirmed to be bromance- like very good friends who die for each other any given time.

Look, I’m biased as fuck when it comes to these two, but Christian Linke did say “… I think it’s not romantic.” Again, like with many things in this interview, this is his opinion.

Whilst he may be the co-creator behind Arcane, his opinion was only relevant to his contributions regarding their narrative, just like how the voice actors (for both Arcane and LoL!), the many animators, and writers at RIOT had their own important contributions and interpretations on the relationship between Jayce and Viktor.

From the stuff we’ve seen this past month from the cast and crew, with Toks Olagundoye reposting Jayvik fanart, Harry Llyod reading Jayvik fanfics, and Kevin Alejandro signing not one, but 2 Jayvik fanarts, as well as of course the many Jayvik artworks from the team over at Fortiche; it seems that quite a lot of the team have quite a differing opinion from Christian Linke, almost as if he’s missing something lol.

I’ll finish up this section with a comment from Amanda Overton, because it the best response to how their relationship is interpreted and the description of their relationship:

"Fans are always justified in reading things the way they want to because that’s part of making art. When you do a thing for it based on you, it doesn’t actually have meaning until other people give it their own meaning. My backstory is very different from your backstory and my experiences are very different from yours so I can only speak from my experience. When I put a thing that I’ve written out in the world, then everyone brings their own different experiences to it."

"We were writing them as a loving, brotherly relationship that unambiguously [had] love between them. When it got to that final moment, it was so romantic and beautiful to me when I saw it for the first time—the way Fortiche put it together—I was like, “Oh, well maybe there is hope [for] these guys to have some future beyond what the show intended.” That was really cool for me to see. If people want to imagine that, I think they can, and that’s wonderful. Now that the show is over, if there’s the potential for that out there, then that’s potential that our fans can realize for themselves."

House of Medarda will play part in future of [Runeterra].

Yep! Christian Linke alludes to this in (01:11:37). Mel, or perhaps an older Mel, will appear alongside Noxian characters like Swain and Darius in the future series. It will be interesting to see the political dynamics between these characters as Mel is not only a Medarda and a Mage, but someone intimately connected with the Black Rose (◉_◉).

Glorious Evolution robots are inspired by biblical angels without wings.

Linke said this when it came to the design of Viktor’s Glorious Evolution robots (01:15:10):

“We actually talked … about how we want to have something that depicts, in quotation marks, ‘angels’; something angelic and pure, but then also [that] has … slightly lost some of the expression and … humanity, in a way that's a bit eerie. That's what Viktor's vision [was], but it will deteriorate [one day].”

The religious imagery regarding Viktor was unintentional, the intention behind Viktor was more centred around depicting him as a Messiah– “… We never wanted to have this direct link to any specific religion, it's just this idea of some Messiah or someone that people [wanted] to follow … [it] doesn't have to be religious but, of course, there is a certain connotation. The beauty of religious art … [it’s] just absolutely beautiful stuff and the supernatural depictions of it … [is] very inspiring.” (01:19:14)

There are selected few who [organize] and keep lore in check.

This is not true! Or at least this has not been outright confirmed in this interview; the question at (01:24:24) was not fully answered by Linke in this interview.

I also want to add a though of my own regarding this quote from Linke, “I would say it's 70% us and 30% Fortiche having ideas and then we talk about it, and I agree.” (00:15:12). This attitude that all these ideas came mostly from the writing team seems a bit ‘egotistical’ as Viktor would say- there was a significant gap in communication between the writing team and the team at Fortiche when it came to the world-building, lore, and plot that was shown on screen (you can see this is the attached screenshots of Amanda Overton’s tweets).

(Let’s also not forget that team at Fortiche indicated that the woman that Ambessa killed in Mel’s flashback is an Ionian princess, implying that the invasion of Ionia occurred prior to the events of Arcane; Fortiche animators were also the ones to propose the CaitVi sesbian lex scene; let’s not even get to Amanda Overton’s comments regarding how the Fortiche team implied the romantic relationship between Jayce and Viktor like, the Fortiche team is doing a lot of heavy lifting lol)

At the end of the day, the story we see as the audience is in filmic form, which is a primarily visual medium, so any bits of lore or story is based on what the storyboarding, voice over, animation, and post-production teams want us to see and take away from it.

(Edit: sorry! I completely forgot to actually put the images of the transcript!)

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pagerunner-j · 3 months ago

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tfw you finally fucking put it together that the guy who plays Viktor in Arcane also happened to deliver one of the most famous monologues in all of Doctor Who. (If the timestamp doesn't work, it properly kicks in at about 1:51.)

That...took me longer than it should have.

youtube

#arcane #doctor who #harry lloyd #every fandom i've ever been in overlaps somewhere #and he's developing a bit of a habit of getting frozen upright in weird places isn't he

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rowanyx · 1 year ago

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There is something so deep about Laerryn's choice in the finale, and Brennan's phrasing of the decision to be made.

To clarify, this scene (copied and pasted from the CR wiki transcripts):

BRENNAN: On a 16, you must make a tough decision. Do you want to further limit the release of energy and make the release of energy safer for the physical environs of Avalir and Cathmoíra, or do you want to ensure that Rau'shan and Ka'Mort will be permanently banished from Exandria?

TRAVIS: Impossible.

AABRIA: Laerryn's little joke to herself was always that the Heart of Avalir was the thing she inherited, but it was too small. She made it bigger, she improved it. She improved the Etheric Net and built this and that she was the Heart of Avalir, and she gave everything to this city. But I know what people are fighting to protect and I remember what Quay said about going down with the ship. So we will ensure it. This will work. Avalir be damned.

or this timestamp of the episode (in case the link doesn't work for the timestamp, the first comment's list has it labelled Laerryn's Tough Decision):

youtube

As we were first introduced to her, Laerryn Coramar-Seelie is the Architect Arcane. As Aabria herself even put, her whole life, all her work, is about taking the city and making it better. Building more. Expansion is the name of the game. So when Brennan specifies that the limiting of energy output will save the physical environs rather than the people, that holds weight.

Just, in a mechanics aspect, there is the fact she is an Abjurer. The whole point of her magic is exactly this choice. To stop things from being destroyed. Her wards that take the damage so that she or others will not. She is not built to bring destruction, leave the fight to others. She will be there to soften the blows that come her allies' ways. She is the one one deciding this, and it feels right, because she's spent her studies dedicated to figuring out how she will prevent the destruction that comes her way.

But that isn't all.

Because any other hero, any other party member, every other soul faced with this question could so easily think that it is a useless decision. A city can be rebuilt, but only if the Betrayer Gods are stopped before they kill all the people that can do so.

But Laerryn, who has dedicated her years to this, the position of Architect Arcane, knows this city and her structures far more intimately. She has been there, step by step, as she forged them. Designed them. Watched over their construction. It is by her hand it was built.

Asking her, specifically, is asking her to choose between everything she's done, or let it all burn. Asking her to make this decision is asking her to decide her legacy. Will she live on as the maker of the land that survived such devastation, but not the people, or will she go down as the one who helped stop the Calamity?

Her choice boiled down to this: Limiting the energy, their work, the libraries and churches, the colleges, grand towers and hallowed halls, stone and mortar, it all can go on unshattered. Or, stopping the Betrayers, the people may continue on.

Was her work more important than the lives she was surrounded by?

Aabria mentions Laerryn was given the Heart of Avalir, jokes how she improved it. But the Heart of Avalir, while magical, is only an engine. It was made, and can be again. So in this moment, I think Laerryn maybe realizes that the true heart of a city comes from the people. Always thinking, thoughts speed by her, whether or not she ever had time to really process the revelations before her demise.

Evandrin is already gone due her hubris. Who else would she lose? Would it have felt like home, without Loqautious there by her side? Would it truly feel like her city, without Patia keeping up with her? What would she cause, without Nydas to hold her back? What is Avalir, without her Brass Ring?

Her assistant, probably still waiting for her, in their offices, and the choice of which will see tomorrow?

How many will feel the heat of Rau'shan's flames as they die? How many will fall to Ka'Mort's earth?

None, she decides. Her friends and neighbors, the kinsmen of her home, will not feel these pains.

I think it is also a moment that beautifully showcases her accepting her death. She will not be here to heal her city. She's going down with the ship. Maybe her blueprints will be found and used, and Avalir will be as it once was. Maybe they won't, and they'll construct it all anew. But she won't see it, so it is their turn to take what was given and build on.

Of course, Rau'shan and Ka'Mort were not the only assets of the Calamity, and damage and destruction was still wrought across Exandria. But there are enough hands to clear the ruins and make their own stories. And that is because of the greatest Architect of them all.

She gave them a chance indeed.

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skunkes · 2 months ago

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i need the fixation to leave me before i end up stitching together an arcane silco-only cut so that i dont have to remember timestamps to scrawl through each episode to see him with.

#talkys #IM DISEASED.#i wanna just play the silco show in the bg while i work i need to hear him and have it take up 90% of my canvas #oh well im crawling back to the silco sounds compilation in the meantime

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ronjunnie · 10 months ago

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HAECHAN FIC RECOMMENDATIONS

SERIES

arcane @neonacity

case oasis @neonc1tylights

ONESHOTS

hits different (m) (44.8k) @neowinestainedress

young god (m) (35k) @jaeminvore

i become attracted to seaweed (18k) @choerrypuffs

sunset (15k) @markswoman

lee haechan's pride (11.9k) @misfitneo

getting even (m) (11.6k) @ofjunemoment

reckless heroism (10.3k) @gimmehyuck

mythomaniac (10.5k) @byunbaekby

the only exception (m) (10k) @jaylaxies

achromatopsia (8.7k) @neoneversleeps

silent yearning (8.1k) @gaiyofanfiction

TIMESTAMPS

12:45 am @ghostofhyuck

11:18 pm @aesthyuckic

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nevros-fr · 2 years ago

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Big question: Who or when was the first use of the term UMA?

Cross posted to FR's forums but I thought fr tumblr meta readers would like this too! Introduction What is a UMA? It stands for User Made Accents, where the companion term is User Made Skins, but UMAs caught on as the catch-all term instead of UMS. I was in the Arcane discord server where foxaquinn made a joke about UMAs and wondered who was the first to use it. If you are on GASP (general accent and skin pinglist), UMAs pop up regularly where I got pinged 60+ times for threads with UMA in the title. I research by day and play pet sims by night so here I am, combining research and pet sims to unravel how language changed throughout the years in the skins and accents community! I included in text citations for my sources because I like those and I don’t like making works cited lists. :) First, what language does the staff use for skins? Maybe UMAs came from them? The Kickstarter uses the word “customs” in regards to the skins (Kickstarter, 2013) The first skin submission competition for the festival, Undel used the word “customs” to refer to the skins users made (Undel, 2013). Note that the current competitions and even the tooltip for blueprints use the word “customs” as well. The blueprint page even uses “user-created” and not “user-made” so "user made" must have stemmed from the community as a more casual way to say user-created.

Results Let’s rule out some approaches that may give an easy answer. I tried to use the FR search tool to see if I could find the first use of UMA, however it only indexes up to one year of results or 100 pages, whichever you hit first when you sort by age so I wasn’t able to glean anything from that. Note that I tried to stick with UMA as the search term because use of UMS just overlaps too largely with the sound “um” when I use the search bar, which also means that plurals are captured by FR’s search. I can also tell you that FR’s search lets you type in user-made or user made and it will pull up the same results.

Then I tried google where I used the key terms site:https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/ "UMA" with a time range from 2013 to 2014. It looked promising at first because it looked like there was an instance as early as 2013. When I actually checked it though, it pulled up the most recent use of UMA in the forums in the first two hits as seen by the timestamps of May 2023 next to it. Google indexed when the forum board was established instead of the individual threads for this search. I dropped the time range and just checked what results it would pull up.

There was an individual thread called the FR Abbreviations Guide that got pulled up. It was made in 2014 and includes both UMA and UMS in the definition list. However, UMA was added to the page in 2020 (FR Abbreviations, 2020).

I decided to just look back at some of the early Skins and Accents posts to see what language they use. It was pretty interesting, where many people just used skins and accents. There is no distinction yet, likely because there weren’t any festival or coliseum skins that users could submit yet! There were still categories though, since blueprints were so expensive, some artists offered “premades” which were skins people could buy for a certain cost on top of providing a blueprint. There were also options for “ghost artists” where the artist could design a custom skin but pass the psd files to the patron for them to distribute instead of the artist selling them instead. “Customs” was also another common term, where it works the same as it does today. People commission an artist to design a unique skin for them. The majority of skins on the market right now would be considered premades back then, which makes sense as it lets the artist have their creative liberties and will allow like minded users to support them.

I was clearly a fool to think UMAs were old because with the skins and accent threads research, I decided to comb through my forum posts to see what I ended up using. I first used UM accents in 2016 since that is when I first started collecting them, then the last time I used it was in early 2018 because I started using UMA by early 2019. I have no posts between 2018 and 2019, but clearly there was a language shift for me that preceded the FR abbreviations update just a year later (FR Abbreviations, 2020). I’m usually slow in the uptake so I decided to try and track down other forum boards besides the skin specific threads to see what terms were used.

As I was thumbing through the pages, I think I may have overestimated the age of UMA use popularity because I thought it started back in 2013-2014 since that is when the site first got started and I felt like UMA was such an old acronym. The General Skins and Accents Pinglist (GASP) started in 2016. I raked the first version for mentions of “UMA” and there was nothing ! The use of “UM skins” and “UM accents” was the norm (GASP, 2016; GASP V2.0, 2016; GASP v2.0, 2018). One of the first instances of UMAs being used in this thread was in 2018 (GASP, 2018). Can I do any better than 2018? It surely is an older term!

The accent trading hub was established in 2014, so chances are, there are some time points there! The results for “user made” predates “UM accents” by one year, and “UMA” by two years which were 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively (Accents Trading Thread, 2023a; Accents Trading Thread 2023b; Accents Trading Thread 2023c). There were 14 pages of results for “user made”, 64 pages for “UM accents”, and 96 pages for “UMAs” from the accent trading hub thread. “UMA” was used by two people in 2016, then 5 pages worth of posts in 2017, then another 6 pages worth of posts in 2018, and it took off with 25 pages worth of posts in 2019. Clearly the language was developing around 2016 but exploded in popularity in 2018. This trend was similar in the UMA mentions in the skins and accents forum board. I used ctrl + f with UMA to see when it started regularly showing up in titles, and that was in 2018.

Discussion

According to the UMA searches in the discussion boards, do you know what cultural icon got a revival in the minds of mainstream media? Uma Thurman specifically because of Fall Out Boys who released a song with her name. And you know what Uma is like? UMA, User Made Accents. I’m not saying that Fall Out Boys planted the idea in our heads, but it’s quite the coincidence the song came out in 2015 and UMA as an acronym use started in 2016. In fact, when I searched the FR threads for UMA across the site, the early ones were Uma as a name and Uma referring to the song. The earliest mention of UMA that was actually relevant and broke containment from the skins and accents board was in 2017 in the tiny little questions thread asking what does UMA stand for. (tiny little questions, 2017).

I would like to say that while this user wasn’t the first to use it, they repeatedly popped up when I tried to see who used UMA the earliest. And that user is chocomonster, they showed up and consistently used UMAs in the forums since 2016. I’m saying they showed up in the bug reports, suggestions, dragon trading posts using “UMA”. They are definitely an early trendsetter for UMAs and repped it across the forums.

Popularity of UMA rose in 2018, you know what else got popular in 2018? Reselling UMAs to the secondary market. Typing in UMA in a title means you have more characters for other things. You know which artist got really popular in 2018? Ravenhearst. She has since changed her username but I will keep Ravenhearst for the search results legacy.

I know correlation doesn’t equal causation, but her skins were massively popular when she was regularly releasing skins for the highly rendered wings and sky scenes where there were skins sold in the 100s range. I looked at the game database for Ravenhearst’s earliest skin which was #24078 and compared it to my hoard of festival skins as a year benchmark. The Flameforger’s event in 2017 has a skin with #23992 while the Crystalline Gala in 2018 had a skin #25608. She started her night sky niche around skin #25001 so it lines up with the 2017 - 2018 timeline.

A stronger communal identity was also created with groups like accent addicts anonymous in 2017 or aaa for short, which is a group of collectors and artists who came together to make collaborative skins. An early "big hit" for them were the wildclaw male line where the participating artists made flower/halo/wings skins that were super popular at the time but also being hated on by the vocal minority. If you weren't around for the bustle, one example that came out would be Invidious by fenmori or Bewitched by Churyu. Some examples of the aaa's recent work would be like aaa. Amanita Ambrosia where three artists take turns, one sketches the concept, one lines the skin and one renders it .The increase of more people interested in buying skins and artists flexing their creativity allowed for a great burst of interest that has carried on to this day.

Conclusions Can I pinpoint who first used user made accents, UM accents, UMAs? No, but, I can guess that it was sometime between 2015-2016. It is clear that language has evolved in small ways right under our noses and that human memories are terrible as I thought we were using UMAs since the very beginning. The customization and uniqueness of the UMA system on FR is such a joy and I can't wait to see how the community changes in the future!

If someone wants to try to tackle who first said UMA, be my guest and let me know! My earliest mention of UMA was October 2016 in the Accent Trading Hub Accents Trading Thread 2023c.

In conclusion, I love umas and will probably look at their sales and trends more.

#flight rising #flightrising #flight rising meta #flight rising uma #umas #nevros writing

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lucky-clover-gazette · 2 months ago

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i’m trying to watch arcane but i have severe needle phobia. any fans of the show able to give me timestamps to avoid? i know theres like an entire episode ill probably have to skip :/

#arcane #sam watches arcane

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verosvault · 9 months ago

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🚨SPOILERS FOR FANTASY HIGH JUNIOR YEAR EPISODE 8🚨

Dimension20 "Fantasy High Junior Year"

Episode 8 "Fracas at the Frostyfaire Folk Festival"

Timestamp: 39:40

Video Length: 4min. & 23sec.

Research into Cassandra and Ruvina + Learning about Oblivati Mori (Pt.1 | Pt.2 | ‣Pt.3)

Brennan: "But that would mean that if someone was able to write it, they would know it, but they would have to have a way of writing it without breaking Obliviati Mori. There's two pieces of information you guys can glean from that right away, the first of which is that belief and worship and the weird, tenuous alliances between gods where some of them are from the same region but have conflicting domains, and some gods have the same domain as other gods but are still ascendent in different areas or for different kinds of cultures or anything like that, all the gods have this agreement that is basically like, for lack of a better word, we're all playing the game, and if your fucking buddy or your pal or someone you love loses fair and square, you're not allowed to go to your mortal worshipers and say, "Hey, can we peel off a few followers to my buddy who's having a hard time right now?" It's basically like a law of, you are not allowed to root for each other. You are not allowed to pull for each other. You're not allowed to put a thumb on the scale in that way. If your flocks choose to have you work together, you can work together, but when a god dies, that's it. You're not allowed to cheat by reminding mortals that there was this other deity."

Siobhan: "But if we went and asked another deity about this god, would they then be able to tell us? Or would we have to specifically say their name?"

Brennan: "According to Obliviati Mori, they would not be able to tell you. But the law is a law, which immediately to you, Adaine, would tell you, well, any rule has ways of working around it."

Siobhan: "Ok, Great. So it's a law, but laws can be broken."

Brennan: "Yeah. And there might be enormous arcane penalties for so doing, but effectively, you know that there are dead gods. There are rules concerning how the other gods can refer to those dead gods to mortals, if they are even allowed to. And to a certain degree... But again, the second, biggest thing is, of course, this wouldn't be a thing unless gods could always remember dead gods."

Siobhan: "Mhmm."

Zac: "So do we have a sense of, when Lydia and her crew were on this mission, they never knew the name of this god, right? Or did they at one point know it?"

Brennan: "Lydia can confirm for you, she's like,"

Lydia: "We never knew the name of the god. We knew Bakur, the fiend, but-"

Fig: "Even though gods can't say the name, the name could still exist out there in texts."

Lydia: "Exactly, which is why a lot of, you know, if a god is trying to be crushed or scoured, you try to break their idols, erase their texts, burn the holy texts, all that kind of thing. But theoretically, if we had found the name written somewhere on text, that would have done it.

Fabian: "Then it makes sense why Cassandra said that thing about being like, I thought you were dead."

Fig: "I thought you were dead."

*multiple "yeah's" at the table* 😂🤣💀

Fabian: "Mm~."

Riz: "So if you had to get around it, maybe a way to do it would be to possess someone or something. Is it possible that Lucy..."

Fig: "Was possessed?"

Riz: "...was possessed?"

Fig: "All the Rat Grinders are suspiciously qui-. No one's grieving Lucy or anything like that."

Adaine: "Yeah, it's weird, right?"

Fig: "So the Rat Grinders are in on this, in some capacity. And I even think it's possible that, the way that Ivy reacted to me, either she saw through my disguise and so she was being cheeky, or Lucy's around somehow and they've just found another way to proselytize-"

Fabian: "Oh-! Maybe- Yes! 'Cause she did beckon to you, right? To be like-"

Fig: "Yeah, she was like, 'Oh- Okay, we're meeting up.'"

Fabian: "Ooo~ Yes, like a possession thing, where somebody's, the god is Lucy and- and-"

Murph: "What happened to that armor after Gilear had it?"

Emily: "What happened with the armor?"

Brennan: "He'd stolen it from Hell, and he just returned it to you when you guys got back from spring break."

Emily: "Where is it?"

Murph: "So, it just should be in Hell?"

Brennan: "Yeah, the Armor of Pride is back in the Hall of the Armors of Sin."

Murph: "Okay."

Brennan: "So the Armor of Pride is just down in Hell."

Emily: "And all the demons are archfey are fallen deities?"

Brennan: "Unclear. Some great celestials and fiends are created by gods in their status as celestials or fiends. Bakur was created by a god that he could no longer name, right, and so there's certain- But it looks like some divinities, some archfey or some celestials or some things like that, are gods who, their worship is waning and waning and waning or their divinity is waning and waning and waning, and they just make a decision to, rather than face death, become something that relies a little bit less on faith."

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