#how do you like this diary narrative?

[aurorangen]

Renee started writing in her diary and is very excited to share all her investigations 🔍

What he said is kind of true, right?

Go explore the cave near the waterfall in Sulani and find some kelp ✅ Eat it and become a mermaid NOPE NOT HAPPENING!

Transcript:

Dear Diary, so many things happened today! Mummy had a friend over and I got to meet her. Her name was Maliah and she had the prettiest purple eyes! I had never seen anything like them.

Robbie also asked me what kelp was and I had never heard of it before. We are going to investigate together, very soon actually! I can’t wait!!

Then Daddy took me and Robbie for a walk to look for treasures and we went exploring the beach. It was the best thing ever!

We came across a cave and Daddy asked us if we wanted to explore! I said yes! Robbie seemed a bit cared, so I held his hand all the way.

We found lots of treasure and shells and even some weird green plant.

...

Bryce: What’cha writing there Renee? Renee: Ahh you scared me! Just my diary.

Renee: Dad I have an important question. What is kelp? Bryce: [pats head] That’s a very interesting question! It’s what we found today, it’s like seaweed. I need it for umm work, to y’know feed the fish…

[coquelicoq]

you reread raksura after reading murderbot and you realize that the kethel in the last book is murderbot from an outside POV. like they don't have the same personality obviously, but if the murderbot books were told from the perspective of, say, eletra from the corporation rim, she'd be talking about secunits the way that all the protagonists of the raksura books talk about the fell. which i feel really conflicted about. you write a five-book series (plus two books of short stories) with a biologically evil race and in the later books start deconstructing it and being like "hey maybe our narrators aren't exactly reliable on this point" but by then it's kind of too late imo. idk. she's doing something interesting here but i don't know if it works.

[vegaseatsass]

Even though I have very strong feelings about who I support and who I find disappointing and/or unforgivable in the DFF ensemble, I get sooooo exhausted by arguments over who the narrative is "going" to punish or "should" punish. I'm really hoping this is going to be a story where the narrative chips fall where they may and the audience is allowed to decide for ourselves who we sympathize with, and for ourselves whether the ending is bleak or bittersweet or satisfying or hopeful. Kinnporsche did that so well and DFF shows every sign of heading in that direction.

[aroaceleovaldez]

I really dislike the inherent main plots of TSATS and Chalice of the Gods as they’re being explained to us currently, mostly just cause I feel like they take away from already established lore of the series and other plot points.

There is no way TSATS can go that doesn’t make either Tartarus feel cheap and/or the entire book just feel like Percabeth In Mark Of Athena: 2 Electric Boogaloo. Unless the twist is that they don’t go to Tartarus it is physically impossible. Because either they go to Tartarus and breeze through it, which makes Tartarus as a setting feel cheap and ruins all prior instances of it being used as a landscape of suffering, or they suffer Lots and Lots and it just feels like we’re rehashing the same exact plot over again purely for the sake of treating solangelo the same as percabeth, which doesn’t work because they’re vastly different character dynamics and putting them in the same situation has nowhere near the same emotional weights. Also it makes Nico’s original foray into Tartarus feel null because it makes it feel like his trauma doesn’t have any actual meaning, because why would he jump right back into it? Even with Nico’s character being extremely self-sacrificial, we’re at a point where we’re being told he’s improving on that and this is possibly the one circumstance he would think twice about. AND it makes Tartarus feel overused - Nico surviving Tartarus once? Okay, makes sense, he’s the son of Hades, and it’s cool that he’s the first mortal to ever survive it. Percabeth too? Getting iffy (especially since we see their trip in detail and that inherently means it’s lost a lot of potential oomph, because when you’re going for horrifying a lot of the time less is more) but okay, sure, Nico probably gave Percy some Tartarus Tips after being rescued and they had a literal dues ex machina or two helping them out, and they fell in accidentally so it’s not like how Nico waltzed in there. Third time? And it being Nico AGAIN and Will Solace (who as far as we know has little to no quest experience and most of his experience is being a battlefield medic) and then purposefully going there? Nope. It’s just a poor set-up. Plus “the major gay couple goes on vacation to superhell” is a... questionable plot set-up to begin with, especially when it’s been heavily implied it will be traumatizing for them, and we have already been told explicitly that references are being made to things like Call Me By Your Name so there is a self-awareness about the themes there (also that alone raises questions about how we’re going to be taking the tone of things - again, there’s two ways it can go and both would be extremely difficult to get right). If Mark Oshiro were not co-authoring this I’d be a little horrified. I’m very glad Mark Oshiro is co-authoring this. I don’t believe it can’t be done tastefully, and yeah it’s a situation ripe for symbolism, but it is definitely the kind of subject that would be difficult for a non-queer author to handle appropriately.

As for Chalice of the Gods, we know two things: A.) It takes place prior to TOA, and B.) The chalice Percy has to retrieve has the power to make anyone who drinks from it immortal. ..... so basically, without the book even being out, we are told “If Percy had waited like 20 minutes, all of TOA would be null.” Admittedly, this does give justification for Percy specifically to be doing this quest outside of “college” reasons, and in my opinion, “The gods asked Percy specifically because they have verified he adamantly does NOT want to be immortal” is hilarious. However, adding yet another universe mechanic to the repertoire that nullifies death is annoying as hell, because death as a consequence in the series has been completely ruined since HoO. The more avoiding death options there are, the more every death scene feels completely pointless and avoidable.

[fingertipsmp3]

Now that I think about it last night’s dream really hit a bingo of recurring themes tbh

[berenshand]

one of my favourite little things about the murderbot diaries is how present all secunit's friends are even if they're not actually physically present. it doesn't do the annoying thing where it jumps through hoops to bring back characters that aren't really relevant to the narrative but it also doesn't do the other annoying thing where it pretends they never existed either. like secunit talks about art and mensah all the time even when art or mensah aren't in the book. it's clear how bharadwaj has impacted its personal growth even when she's literally on another planet. it complains about gurathin and pin-lee when they're not there. it's still sad about miki and don abene and it mentions tapan and maro and rami even though it only knew them for a few days (because when you're new at being a person every interaction with other people is important even if it's short). iris reminds it of mensah. iris also reminds it of ratthi. its hair is fluffy bc it let amena play hairdresser off-screen and it messages her so she knows it's okay. it doesn't have to worry about protecting volescu anymore because volescu retired thank goodness. it's still using thiago's language module. etc etc etc

it's such good writing because it's such a little thing that gives the characterization and relationships greater depth and also reinforces the running theme of friendship in the series and then also subtly gives this sense of 'the people you love are a part of you/your story' and also reinforces secunit's role as a storyteller because it's constantly telling little stories about all its friends.

[lyriumheart]

OK sth I really, really love about fields of mistria is how accessible it is for an adhd hoarder that also forgets everything and what I was doing in like 5 minutes, like myself

the map has npc locations by default! so even if their schedule changes, you can always find them!

quests never expire! you can work on them at your own pace, and even hold onto one's that require a seasonal item that you didn't have enough of before the season was up, until the season rolls around again!

they don't take your damn money or items when you pass out or die because you lost track of time or are bad at combat!

there's free soup in the tavern that restores a little stamina, and a fountain behind a breakable boulder that does the same! the baths are also pretty cheap, and you even get a few free usages after a certain quest!

it starts with storage in your house, AND! anything you had in said storage can be used for crafting without having to go and retrieve it!

if you don't know where to get an item for a quest, talking to various npcs can tell you where it is!

if you need a certain item for the museum collection, you can check out hints on where to get those in the museum itself! and every item that can go in the museum has a tooltip when you over over it, to tell you if you have already donated it or not!

items don't despawn! you can just toss stuff on the floor and come back for it later when you have the inventory space!

if you forget to check your calendar, that's fine! the npcs will tell you about any upcoming events a few times before it arrives, and the start of a new day will tell you if it's someone's birthday!

they give you tutorials in a narrative way, gradually introducing new systems and mechanics as you progress! and these are done via quests that you can go and complete whenever you're ready!

the village progression gives you plenty of rewards and things to help you with your farm, which is very encouraging to keep at it!

the upgrade system just builds up along with doing normal tasks like farming! and you can spend these points however, whenever you like, with many being available right from the start! and you can have all of them if you want, so no need to worry about indecision!

you can go to your diary at home and save whenever you like, and even make another one so you can place them in other areas!

little heart notifications pop up over npc's heads when you progress the relationship, so you have a quick reference on how close you are!

every friday (and saturday after you fix the bridge), all the npcs are in the same place! this makes chatting to everyone and handing out gifts easier if you have trouble remembering to do so!

you have to hold down the button to eat an item! so you don't accidentally poison yourself!

other accessibility options ive really been appreciative of are: being able to turn off rain/snowfall, flashing, screenshake ect. for those with sensitivity, sight, or neurological issues that don't play well with those.

[csuitebitches]

Fearless Social Confidence: Strategies to Live Without Fear, Speak Without Insecurity, Beat Social Anxiety, and Stop Caring What Others Think - Patrick King book notes

Socially confident people:

expect to be accepted. When they meet strangers, they expect to make a good impression. They never approach situations thinking, “What if they don’t like me?” Instead they think, “I hope I like them.”

evaluate themselves positively. Socially confident people are encouraging, positive, and accepting of themselves. They give themselves leeway not to be perfect and don’t beat themselves up too harshly when they are not.

feel comfortable around superiors. Socially confident people feel comfortable because they don’t feel threatened, or that their flaws and vulnerabilities will be highlighted by the other person’s qualities.

With a lack of social confidence, you are usually choosing the thought that is cruelest to yourself.

when navy SEALs recognize that they are feeling overwhelmed, they regain control by focusing on their breath—breathing in for four seconds, holding for four seconds, and then out for four seconds, and repeating until you can feel your heart rate slow down and normalize.

Core beliefs: 

Steps in a thought diary entry can be arranged in the easy-to-remember A-C-B format—

Activating Event. Note down the event/ situation. This is simply the origin point of your emotional change. It’s whatever caused your emotional status to change from calm to agitation (a memory, a song, etc).

Consequences. In this step you identify the specific emotions and sensations that arose. These could be simple feeling words— “anxious,” “unhappy,” “sickened,” “panicky,” “melancholy,” “confused,” and so forth.

Beliefs. This is where the action begins. How do you link the activating event with the consequences? What unconscious narrative or story about yourself was told to achieve the consequence? (“What was I thinking?”  “What was going through my head when this happened?”  “What’s wrong with that?”“What does this all mean?”  “What does it reveal about me?”)

Now you’ve gotten to the bottom of your situation and figured out what your core beliefs are.

The first step is writing down one of the core beliefs you’ve just uncovered. Ask yourself what experiences you’ve had that prove your core belief wasn’t always true. Generate as many experiences as you can and be very specific about what happened.

Write down the core belief you’re examining.  Think of ways that you can put that belief to the test. These are actual tasks that you can perform.  Then, write down what you expect or predict will happen after conducting these tasks if your core belief was true.  Perform the tasks.  Write down what really happened after you completed your task.  Compare and contrast your predictions with what actually happened. Finally, document what you learned from the task and come up with a new, more reasonable core belief that goes in line with your discoveries.

Bushman’s results imply that sometimes the best course of action after being provoked to anger is to just sit quietly and let it pass.

There’s a direct link between social anxiety and negativity. A 2016 Australian research study showed that “elevated social anxiety vulnerability is characterized only by facilitated attentional engagement with socially negative information.” Obsessing over negative details—including by constantly talking about one’s problems—only reinforces one’s social fears and does nothing to inspire real confidence in a social setting.

Personalization is the mother of guilt. In the cognitive distortion of personalizing, you feel responsible for events that cannot conceivably be your fault. While it is admirable to take responsibility for your actions, there are things completely out of your control: the subway schedule, other people’s actions, and a million day-to-day factors.

Common cues of overgeneralization are “always” and “never.” When starting a sentence or a thought with “always” or “never,” consider whether you have the experience or evidence to back up the statement.

Other people aren't only what they are showing to the world. Most people put on a good show. But do you really know what might be going on in their private life? Take comfort from the fact that while there will be many people who are better at certain things than you are, there are also most certainly things that you will be better at.

If you are self-conscious and worried that people will judge you if you say something stupid or “off,” there's an easy workaround to that. The best approach is simple preparation. Create answers to predictable questions and conversations. Run that mental videotape in your mind about your past 10, 20, or 30 social conversations. I guarantee they are not all that different from each other.

Figure out the general questions that people will ask and the topics that will come up in normal conversation and be prepared with story-answers. For example, How was your weekend? What are you doing this weekend? How was your day? What do you do for work?

How can we ease ourselves into social confidence little by little? 

List the social situations you avoid. Ask yourself what kinds of gatherings or circumstances you steer clear of and write them all down in a list. Your list should include both physical situations—parties, family gatherings, work presentations, and so forth—and personal experiences that you don’t want to face.

Give each situation a SUDS level from 0 to 100.

Plan your goals.

Build your goal stepladder. You’ve planned a goal and have decided to start work. Remember, situational exposure is a bit-by-bit process.

[susiephone]

wtf is dracula daily?

i’ve seen a couple people ask this question on my posts about it, so i thought i’d go ahead and clear it up here!

ok so, the classic horror novel “dracula” is an epistolary novel - that means it’s told via letters, diary entries, ship logs, and news articles. (technically the term “epistolary novel” refers to works told solely through letters or emails, but many have expanded it to mean any work that is told via in-universe documents, hence why diaries and logs often get included as well. “frankenstein” is another classic example; the whole framing device is robert walton is recounting the story he heard from victor to his sister via letter. a modern example would be “several people are typing,” which is told via slack messages, or “the perks of being a wallflower,” which is told via letters from charlie to his anonymous pen pal, which is functionally more like you’re reading his diary.)

because of the nature of the narrative, we actually know the exact day nearly everything in dracula happens - the letters, news articles, diary entries, etc. are all dated.

“dracula daily” is a substack project where the novel is broken up into parts, with people who are subscribed to the project getting emails every day something in dracula happens - for example, the novel opens with jonathan harker’s journal entry on may 3, so on may 3, subscribers are emailed that entry. the action of dracula takes place from may 3 - november 6, plus an epilogue set some years later. the project started in 2021 (i think), but fucking BLEW UP in 2022, and they’re doing it again this year! lots of us are very excited - especially people like me who fell behind last time.

why not just read the book?

valid! due to some parts of dracula being told out of chronological order, dracula daily does reorder some things. for example, the first section of dracula is told entirely from jonathan harker’s pov, then the second section switches the pov to mina murray. their sections have some overlap in the timeline, so dracula daily jumps back and forth between their perspectives.

if you want to read the book as bram stoker intended, dracula daily may not be for you. but for a lot of people (myself included!), it breaks up a very long text into easily digestible chunks (....mostly. there is one entry that is 10k words), and the fact that it’s a big project means there are a lot of people reading along with you.

i think there’s also something valuable about experience the slow revelation of wtf is going on along with the characters. the book which you might otherwise get through in a few days is stretched out into months of suspense and agony as you wait for the other shoe to drop, and it’s great.

plus, the whiplash between “jonathan harker’s neverending horror” vs “lucy is basically on the bachelorette” that you get in dracula daily is very very funny.

how do i sign up?

right here! and if you sign up and fall behind in the emails, no worries - the dracula daily website posts past entries so you can catch up.

what if i prefer audiobooks?

have i got great news for you!

like i mentioned before, i couldn’t keep up with the emails last year. part of it is that it is much easier for me to focus on an audiobook or keep up with a podcast than it is for me to sit down and read, especially with longer entries.

this year, there is going to be a podcast titled “re: dracula” that was inspired by dracula daily. every episode will be a dracula daily entry, with a full voice cast! (seriously, if you listen to british podcasts, you will recognize some of these names. the magnus archives and wooden overcoats girlies are WINNING.) you can find that here.

there is also a podcast called “cryptic canticles” that has an already-completed audiodrama of dracula that i’m told is also extremely good, and was also broken up by date. you can find that here.

why do i keep hearing about paprika/the boyfriend squad/lizard fashion/cowboys?

you’ll see.

oh god am i gonna hear about this nerd shit for the rest of the year

yes. sorry.

[cure-icy-writes]

i think the reason i like the murderbot diaries so much is because the dystopia feels very real and relevant in a way that no other "oppressive government fearmongering" has, and because murderbot is such a compelling protagonist.

this is an autistic person who is struggling and angry and terrible at having emotions. it lives in a capitalist hellscape where people are disposable. it's traumatized as hell, but it's easier to consider itself disposable than confront the terrifying reality of personhood.

(it confronts the terrifying reality of personhood.)

it likes escaping into fiction. it has a fucked up relationship with pain and its own body. and it reads so strongly as disability coding to me, how it doesn't see the bullets or the chunks missing as horror but merely annoyance. it's fundamentally different from those around it, in ways that they struggle to understand. (they make a distinct effort to understand.)

this is an autistic person who is not like you, who suffered in ways that you cannot understand, in ways that would horrify you. this is just another tuesday.

this world is not kind. there is legal fine text that destroys lives and there is hereditary indenture and contract labor where you're forced to still pay for preventative medical care out of your paycheck and no one says slavery, but everyone knows what it means.

these people are kind. they will watch your favorite shows to help understand you, they will forge documents to give abandoned people their freedom, they will allow you to be near them because they like you. these people are proof that there's love in the world, and you can come out of your shell if you are ready to see yourself as a person.

science fiction is one of the genres that has the potential to be amazing, but is quite often just plain shitty to disabled people. and, to people in general? "oooooo look how scary it is, people have all their basic needs fulfilled by technology!" when technological advances are what gave housewives the time they needed to actually get jobs and put together the feminist movements, when this new technology that the narrative regards with such disdain could provide disabled people with newfound mobility and independence.

it speaks of a truly dismal view of humanity, the belief that without strict labor under capitalism to keep us all in line, we would just fall prey to our vices. and I think it also speaks to a loathing of one's self, to think that humans are not capable of self regulation, to think that pain and suffering and punishment are somehow moral and virtuous. that humans need to be punished constantly, that suffering will bring them closer to something like god, to something like goodness.

but murderbot doesn't do that. murderbot says, "i have seen humans do horrible awful stupid things. they can't be trusted with weapons or security and they shoot me all the time and it sucks. but they make stories and art. the people in the entertainment media gave me the tools to contextualize my own emotions. they are my coworkers. i don't care about them. i got shot in the back protecting them but i didn't care about them. okay fine maybe i care a little. they're annoying. i'll eviscerate anyone who hurts them. they're mine."

[david-talks-sw]

The OTHER type of Star Wars fan

We've already covered (through this longer post and this addendum) that research shows George wasn't that involved or interested in the derivative material of the Star Wars franchise, also known as the Expanded Universe (EU). Aside from approving a few points, he let Howard Roffman and Lucasfilm Licensing handle it.

He is the first to say that he ain't as knowledgeable about Star Wars lore as we fans are.

Thing is... he's also not as passionate as we are.

Recently, I was watching some Q&A videos of George R.R. Martin, the author of Game of Thrones... and it occurred to me:

Martin is what most Star Wars fans wish Lucas was.

Think about it.

He's a talented writer who likes to focus on morally "gray" characters and complex political plotlines,

who created a series of novels for a mature audience in which his narrative merely asks questions and lets the reader draw their own conclusions,

knows and engages in the lore behind his creation and will often respond to those lore-heavy questions, and has gone on record stating that canon is the glue that holds a story together and keeps it coherent.

Contrast that with George "continuity is for wimps" Lucas, who:

Wrote a movie franchise which is also, partially, political... but he makes it for kids, and he's explicit about how this is thematically a clear-cut story about how the conflict of "good vs evil" is really about "compassion vs greed",

with flat dialogue, boring cinematography,

and whose approach to lore and canon can be summed up in his answer to how Anakin got his scar:

"I don't know. Ask Howard [Roffman]. That’s one of those things that happens in the novels between the movies. I just put it there. He has to explain how it got there. I think Anakin got it slipping in the bathtub, but of course, he's not going to tell anybody that." - Pablo Hidalgo’s set diary, August 2003

And as a Star Wars fan, I will admit that some of his casual retcons felt disrespectful, growing up.

"Boba Fett is NOT Mandalorian?!"

I had the same reaction when I saw an interview of Kathleen Kennedy stating she was a fan of Star Wars... from a filmmaking perspective. That seemed like such a finagling cop-out for me, at the time.

"Just say you're not a real fan, God!"

And it's easy to divide it in two camps, like that. You have 1) the fans, who will delve into deep lore, and you have 2) the average moviegoer.

But looking back on it... holy shit, that is actually a completely valid way of being a Star Wars fan.

Yes, Star Wars is a transmedia franchise, it's books, it's video-games, it's deep lore, it's lightsabers and Jedi and Sith and bounty hunters and Ewoks and Jabba and High Republics and Tython and Revan etc.

But before it was that, Star Wars was a filmmaking revolution. A juggernaut of innovation for the silver screen that inspired most of today's filmmakers.

So, sure, George Lucas isn't an avid lore-loving Star Wars fan like you and me. But he is a movie fan.

"I'm not that passionate about this story. I like it, it's fun and I enjoy doing it. But it's definitely not my life. I'm a bigger movie fan than I am Star Wars fan. I like making movies. At the end of nine years of making Star Wars, I was not ready to continue it. I was completely burned out on it. I was more passionate about raising my kids than making movies and especially making Star Wars. So I made other kinds of movies and TV shows and advanced the technology I needed. It's not a matter of passion. My passion is for filmmaking. I'll go and do filmmaking that is easier to do, where you can realise your ideas better. And nine years is a big part of your life, and to commit to another nine years, I didn't wanna do that right away." - EMPIRE, 1999

And you can tell this, when you watch the Star Wars films.

There are honestly so many homages and interesting filmmaking techniques, peppered throughout the six films, which only a nerd for cinema history like George would know how to implement.

C3-PO being based on the droid from Metropolis (1927) is a perfect example of this.

And that's interesting.

Because there's essentially this entire other dimension to the films, where it's not just the story unfolding, but to filmmakers it's also a series of techniques that make them go "I wonder how they did that!" or homages that make them go "OH! I know where that's from!" like we do when an comics characters appears in live-action.

Here's other examples:

CINEMA HOMAGES

All of Star Wars is absolutely littered with homages to cinema history.

I mean, you may already know this, but Flash Gordon is what George originally wanted to shoot, but the copyright holders said they only wanted Fellini to direct it (ironically, George wasn't artsy-fart enough for them). So he decided to write Star Wars instead.

As such, the inspiration from Flash Gordon is also present visually and spiritually throughout the two trilogies.

"It was like a Republic serial, a 1930s-style matinee adventure. The idea was that you came in, saw Episode IV, had missed the first three episodes, and wouldn't get to see the rest of it." - Starlog Magazine #300, 2002

The dialogue that a lot of people refer to as "campy" and "flat" is actually a mix of George being an experimental filmmaker who doesn't give much of a fuck about dialogue (and is by his own admission, not the best at it)...

"I'd be the first person to say I can't write dialogue. My dialogue is very utilitarian and is designed to move things forward. I'm not Shakespeare. It's not designed to be poetic. It's not designed to have a clever turn of phrase. [...] I just wanted to get from point A to point B. This film doesn't lend itself to that sort of thing because it's not about snappy one-liners.  I think that Lethal Weapon-style dialogue is overused, it's a necessary aspect of high action films where you have to have the smart retort. You have to say "I'll be back baby" and stuff. It's not my style. It takes away from the integrity of the movie. [...] I'm aware that dialogue isn't my strength. I use it as a device. I don't particularly like dialogue which is part of the problem." - EMPIRE, 1999

... which is convenient, because it helped him simulate the dialogue of 1930s matinee serials, such as Flash Gordon.

"Let’s face it, their dialogue in that scene is pretty corny. It is presented very honestly, it isn’t tongue in cheek at all, and it’s played to the hilt. But it is consistent, not only with the rest of the movie, but with the overall Star Wars style. Most people don’t understand the style of Star Wars. They don’t get that there is an underlying motif that is very much like a 1930s Western or Saturday matinee serial. It’s in the more romantic period of making movies and adventure films. And this film is even more of a melodrama than the others." - Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of Attack of the Clones, 2002

But beyond that, literally it's everywhere.

The scene where Palpatine ascends to being Emperor as Anakin slaughters his political rivals parallels the final scene in The Godfather, where Michael becomes the Don while his goons do the same thing.

This video compiles all the tributes beautifully. Check it out.

Even The Clone Wars has whole episodes that are direct homages to cult classics. The Zillo Beast episode is a clear reference to Godzilla, the episode The Wrong Jedi is inspired by The Wrong Man, etc.

"CINEMA VÉRITÉ" CINEMATOGRAPHY

I've already written a whole post (one of my favourites) showing how his fascination with cinéma vérité documentaries is reflected in the cinematography of all six Star Wars films, and it's part of what makes the entire franchise feel so immersive.

You can check it out here:

KUROSAWA

We've gone over how he's a big fan of Akira Kurosawa, and how big an influence Hidden Fortress was on both the Star Wars trilogies...

... but so is the mise-en-scène and the way George approaches production design. The reason Star Wars feels so "lived in" is also a lesson George learned from Kurosawa, which is that by making everything just a bit off-kilter, a bit dirtied-up and imperfect...

... and yet keeping it all consistent, in a way, you manage to make the film feel grounded and immersive, no matter how alien it is.

"[It] may sound odd in a movie like this, but credibility and realism, even in the most unrealistic situation… to sorta create that sense of realism is very important to making the story work and making you feel like you’re actually in the environment that transports you and gives you the suspension of disbelief that you need in order to enjoy a movie. [...] Kurosawa used to call it “immaculate realism” which is to make it slightly off-kilter, slightly eccentric, like things are in real life. Even if it’s a very predictable situation, give it that little funny edge that takes it away from that and makes it realistic. And I had to struggle very hard, in the Star Wars films, to make them appear to be realistic, even though they’re totally fantasy." - The Phantom Menace, Commentary Track #2, 1999

POST-PRODUCTION & VFX

Another one of the more impressive aspects of the first Star Wars was the dogfights and the trench raid of the Death Star. The camera pans with the spaceship, the dynamism of the cuts. The space battles is what made George creat ILM in the first place.

He was determined to do the opposite of what 2001: A Space Odyssey had done with that opening scene where the space ship moves into frame slooooowly...

... so he gave the team a collection of WWII dogfight footage to give them ideas.

(note: this was the same approach he would take years later with Dave Filoni, when teaching the latter how to edit and craft dogfights in The Clone Wars)

The attempt to film the trench run eventually led to the creation of the first motion control camera dolly.

Best analogy I can think of, when describing George's approach to Star Wars, is the following:

An avant-garde esoteric contemporary artist - y'know, the type who puts a blue dot on a white canvas and calls it art - creates a comic.

Why? Because he wants to make this one art installment for a gallery exhibition. After that, he intends to move on to other things.

But the comic is really good! And like, its audience quickly expands beyond just gallery visitors, no, everyone likes it.

Suddenly, the comic develops a cult following, and the entirety of comic book geek culture has zeroed-in on the artist and they're all asking him to make more art! And he makes more! And more!

Then he stops for two decades, moves on to other art projects, raises his kids. Years later, he discovers new ways of drawing, and he's like "I'm making a Prequel to the comic, y'all wanna see it?"

Everyone cries out gleefully: "Oh God, yes! Finally! Show us!"

But this motherfucker makes a manga.

Why? Because he feels like it.

And of course he does, he's just creating art, right? He discovered the graphic tablet, so he's having fun with it, because he's always innovating and pushing the envelope with his art.

And the movies are fine, by manga standards. But by comic book standards, they obviously suck! The comic book audience is mad. They wanted another comic book, not a manga. Why is it in black and white? Why is read right-to-left? This comic sucks!

(And arguably, they have a point... as a savvy businessman, he's made a whole lot of money off this comic, he built a media empire out of it, and instead of giving them what they want, he made something else)

But again... this guy isn't a comic book illustrator, and has been very explicit about saying this.

He's an artist who - for a very specific project - drew a comic.

Many things can be true at once:

the fact that these creative decisions didn't always hit their mark for the average moviegoer, or fans of "Star Wars, the space fantasy movies and expanded universe" (usually the lore-loving geeks like myself)...

... and the fact that they were meticulously and carefully crafted in a way that fans of "Star Wars, the revolutionary film" (aka fans of cinema and filmmaking) can appreciate.

There's a spectrum of the fandom, and there is a spectrum in the way we can appreciate Star Wars. Which kinda reminds me of that scene in Chef (2014) where Carl goes on a rant explaining the intricacies of making his chocolate lava cake to a food critic.

It's not just undercooked chocolate.

It's molten.

Conversely, it's not just flat, campy dialogue. It's an homage to the 1930s matinee serials à la Flash Gordon.

It's not just boring cinematography. It's a reproduction of cinéma vérité documentary-style camera work which effectively grounds the film.

Having considered all this, when I hear that Tony Gilroy or Kathleen Kennedy were more in the latter camp, I go "fair enough".

First of all, because like it or not, so was George. He clearly didn't give a single crap about the comics and books, besides signing off on minor plot points. He's not a "sci-fi movie director", he's an experimental filmmaker who makes movies set in space.

But secondly, because - aside from children - it's clear the audience he was targeting was these cinema-savvy folks who'd get his references and would be inspired by the filmmaking techniques.

Not the fans or the critics.

[charlottecutepie]

° ❀⋆. Picnic date (William Afton x fem!reader)

tags: outdoor sex, corruption kink, daddy kink, innocence kink, soft to rough sex, unprotected sex, choking, lots of pet names, creampie, riding, missionary

Ah, those beautiful and hot summer days. Mid July.

Nature alive and thriving. The warm sun enlivened the surroundings; the trees shimmered with emerald green leaves as delicate colourful flowers were scattered around, blooming under a clear azure sky. The air was filled with the sweet scent of flowers mixed with freshly mown grass. A quiet and windless day, you can only hear the unobtrusive but beautiful singing of birds nearby.

There were no people around because only you knew this secret place. You loved spending free time here, often reading your favourite book, relaxing in the shade of large trees.

As it is now, nothing has changed, except that you aren't alone now. You were lying on your stomach, on a blanket, as always reading your favourite book in the genre of old novels. William was next to you, holding a small diary for notes in his hands, carefully reading something in there, all concentrated. He was lying on his back, squinting against the rays of the bright sun. Today was a particularly hot day, so he ditched his usual vests and jackets, replacing them with a light linen shirt and knee-length bermuda shorts.

William looked up from his diary for a moment, glancing at you beside him. What an angelic and innocent little creature you are. Truly beautiful, like one of the blooming flowers. Gentle as one of the weightless white clouds in the blue sky. Innocent as a little fawn. Tender baby, pure and adorable, like a little bunny. Daydreaming little beauty, his beauty.

Your hair shimmers beautifully in the summer sun, William wants to stroke it, to run his long fingers through your strands. Your lips, as always so soft, just begging to be kissed, bitten, eaten. Your ethereal eyes, which follow the words in your book, shine with naive curiosity about the plot. Your cheeks, so adorable as they turn slightly pink every time you come to the part where the characters in the novel do something more than just kissing. Your fingers, so small compared to his long ones, turn the page of the book, William wants to bring them to his lips and kiss each one, whispering how charming you are.

His precious girl, dressed in a white dress that accentuates your figure, his heart stops. It perfectly fits every curve of your body, emphasizing your every movement and the beauty hidden inside you, like long-awaited flowers after winter. You're lying here in the warm rays of the sun, reading your novels and waving your legs, so adorable. Your dress is a real dream, short enough to give William a wonderful view of your body.

Blood rushes to his cock. Oh, how he wants to destroy your innocence. How he'd like to corrupt and ruin his precious girl right here, under the sun, on this blanket, where the sweet smell of flowers surrounds you both. All sorts of vicious thoughts roam in his head: kissing your delicate neck, running his fingers along your spine as they finally reach your core. He wants to defame your purity. That angelic voice of yours must break down in sobs and moans as you whimper "daddy" while he roughly fucks you. Those eyes must be filled with tears, those lips parted in moans, those hands around his neck when he pounds you. William's fingers are clutching the blanket, he's frowning. No, he shouldn't do that, just not right now.

"Want me to read it for you?" a cute offer comes from him. Smiling warmly at your nod, he began to read your novel aloud. His voice rich and seductive, like dark velvet, captivating you. He was reading about an intense encounter between two characters that made your heart beat faster; it took your breath away from the passion-filled words unfolding in front of your imagination. Lost in his fascinating narrative, you snuggled closer to William, seeking solace in this newfound sensation pulsing through your veins — an inexplicably sweet mixture of shyness and pleasure intertwined in your feelings for him.

Suddenly, your eyes sparkled mischievously as you took a juicy ripe strawberry from a bowl.

"Want some?" you playfully teasing him. William doesn't even have time to react as you shut his mouth with strawberry. You laugh softly, seeing how he enjoys the taste, and coquettishly run your finger over your lower lip, a wide smile on your face. Such innocent teasing that thrilled him more than anything else.

"Mmm. . ." He murmured, swallowing fruit down as you giggled. Your fingers lightly brushed against his lower lip to remove any trace of strawberry residue. "Thank you, darling."

Oh, so his girl wants to play.

"Someone wants to play, hm?" he cooed, moving closer to you. He carefully put one of the strawberries between your parted lips, looking at you hungrily. William couldn't help but feel an irresistible desire to touch your soft lips, completely covered with the sweet essence of strawberries. "Guess I'll take my revenge sweetly," he murmured before leaning forward and capturing you in a soft, gentle kiss. His tongue teased at your lips, begging for entry, and when you parted them slightly, he slipped his tongue inside tasting the sweetness of the strawberry. William groaned softly, savouring the taste. His hand gently caressed your cheek.

As the kiss stopped being innocent and William put your book aside, you leaned on top of him, devouring his lips in a passionate kiss now. William barely restrained himself from cumming in his pants. His precious girl is so hot, so daring, brave even, not afraid of daddy at all. His innocent girl just doesn't know what he's capable of.

"Oh, daddy. . ." you moan into his mouth, fuck, such an angelic voice you have, your lips slightly swollen from a hungry kiss you both shared. "oh, daddy, daddy, daddy. . ." you nuzzle into his neck, pressing your whole body against him. William's hands stroke your hair, then go down to your back, caressing tenderly. His hardness pressing against you, a pleasant friction that makes your pussy clench around nothing. You grind on his bulge slightly, craving more. William gently thrusts up into you, his clothed erection pressing in your panties, causing you both to moan softly.

"My sweet girl," he whispers. You move your hips back and forth on his bulge, your needy pussy rubbing against his cock through the thin fabric of your panties. His cock twitches in response. "So wet for me, princess, oh my god," he groans in your ear. "I need to be inside you, darling, need to fuck my precious girl, fill you up real good. Right here."

You shuddered at his words, nearly crying from how needy you are. "Yes, yes, please! fuck me, want to feel you, daddy. . ."

His hands immediately and impatiently undid the zipper of his shorts as he lowered them along with his underwear. His hard cock was already leaking with pre-cum, demanding to be inside you. You lifted yourself up slightly, your dress pulled up. William's fingers pulled your panties aside, exposing your wet and leaking entrance. He bit his lip, nearly till blood. Fucking fuck. He can't believe his eyes, his little and innocent angel is so. . . So lustful, depraved, sinful, just begging him to fuck her, to cum inside her and claim her.

"Daddy will fuck you so good, baby," he says, thrusting his cock into your tight pussy. Summoning all his strength, he refrained from cumming in the first seconds. God, your cunt feels like heaven, so tight and warm, just made for him, William moves his hips up and slips into you fully. "Oh fuck, angel, oh fuck! such a good girl for me." he whispers.

Unable to keep your balance as you feel dizzy from his cock, you lay down on him again, clutching the blanket under you with one hand and holding on to him with the other. He groans in pleasure as he lazily fucks into your wet cunt at a slow, but steady pace.

"Mmm," you purr, nuzzling his neck. "Love it when you fuck me like this, daddy, ohh. . ."

He ran a hand through your hair softly. "You're beautiful," he murmured back to you, gripping one of your ass cheeks through dress possessively. "I could spend all day like this."

You gasp loudly at his touch as you dig nails lightly into his skin in response, your cheeks burning, but not from heat of the hot summer. Your pussy tightening around his shaft, feeling how his tip rubs against that sensitive sweet spot deep inside you.

You cling to him tightly, your body trembles as pleasure overwhelms you. He slammed into you harder, your bodies moving in way that took your breath away. "Yes, daddy, yes!" you cried out. "Fuck me harder, please!"

William doesn't need to be told twice. He pulled out of you, staring down at your glistening pussy with lust-filled eyes. You spread your legs wider for him, wanting to feel his big cock filling you up again.

"Lay down." he rasped huskily. You obeyed immediately, changing pose, lying back on the soft blanket as he climbed between your legs once more. He positioned the swollen red tip of his dick on your clit, rubbing, teasing you mercilessly. You bucked beneath him, trying to get more friction, but he abruptly grabbed your wrists above your head, pinning them to the grass and not letting you move. "Patience, angel," he breathed harshly. "Daddy's going to ruin that angelic pussy now."

Finally, he slipped inside you slowly but firmly, stretching you wider as he filled your pussy. You gasped in pleasure, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes, he entered deeper from that angle. He began to rut into you hard and fast, your cunt clenching around his cock as he slammed into you over and over again. You let out desperate moans, writhing beneath him as pleasure overwhelmed you. "Fuck, Daddy!" you cry out. "Im close!"

He gave a low growl in response, fucking you even rougher than before. Your pupils blown at his fast pace. Your head fell back on the blanket, your hair messy, eyes teary as you being fucked roughly but lovingly. Your pussy squeezed his cock, coating his base with your slick.

"Cum, angel, cum on your daddy's cock." he groaned, thrusting even deeper where it already hurt. Your pussy flutter around him as you cry out his name and he kisses you, roughly, biting your lips and nearly fucking your mouth with his tongue. God, you taste like strawberry, such a sweet, sugary girl. He's damn dizzy, his cock throbbing inside you as his balls slaps against your ass. "Fuck, fuck! Yes— Oh, fuck, yees, angel!" he moans loudly into your mouth, breathing heavily. You're close, so damn close to coming hard around his cock as you choke on your own moans and squirm under him.

"Daddy— Daddyyyy!" you felt a powerful orgasm building up inside you, your walls clenching down tightly on his cock as if trying to milk him dry. You screamed out in pleasure as it washed over you, your cunt spasming around him hard enough that he almost lost his footing. "Oh, oh! Noo, no, I'm sensitive, William!" he squeezed your wrists harder, leaving a red mark on your skin. Oh yeah. When you call him by his name, it means you're being serious, but he doesn't give a fuck. He knows his little angel can take another orgasm. Despite this, he kept pounding into you relentlessly as if trying to push even deeper inside, his tip brushing against your cervix.

"Take it, angel, fucking take it." you writhing beneath him, your sensitive pussy still spasming around his dick, tears in your eyes from overstimulation. "Again," William growls. "I want to feel you cum again." he slammed into you harder, faster; your body shivering. William let go of your wrists, instead his hand went to your neck and squeezed it. You immediately gasped, grabbing his hand, a little fear in your eyes brought him closer to the edge.

His grip tightened, making it harder for you to draw air. The lack of oxygen heightened your sensitivity, intensifying every thrust that he made into your wet pussy. It was almost too much to bear as his cock rubbed against your sensitive spot again and again. The squelching sounds your little cunt made had William completely lose his mind. His grip on your neck firm as you drooling over his hand, eyes rolling back from pleasure and lack of air.

"That's right, angel, let daddy fuck you stupid." you reply him with choked mewls and whines as your another orgasm grows nearer. He smirks, hand reach down to your clit as he rubs it with his calloused rough fingers, earning sobs from you.

Oh, his precious girl is so cock drunk, so dumb, drooling stupidly as your pussy being ruined. What a sight. William took a deep breath. You were completely at his mercy as he fucked you on the picnic blanked. He stared down at you, captivated by your angelic beauty. The way your breasts bounced with each thrust, nipples perky, fuck, even seen through the fabric of your innocent little dress.

His precious lovely girl. You lie under him and take his big cock, while beautiful flowers bloom and smell around you both, and sunlight falls on your pretty rear-stained face, illuminating the picture of sick yet lovely bliss on it. Everything around you is so alive and natural, tall trees, green meadow, blue sky. Your beautiful moans are mixed with the singing of birds, oh, his precious angel, cry as much as you can, William considers your moans a prayer. His prayer.

"You—… Fuck! Fuck!" his words are slurred as he fell into the abyss of lust and sin, fucking his innocent angel. Your pussy so warm, just too fucking good that he can't stop pounding you. His grip on your throat loosened and you finally inhaled a portion of air. "Oh, princess, gonna cum inside you, gonna fucking breed you."

At such a moment, you wanted warmth from him, despite how roughly and harshly he slammed into your pussy, you needed his hugs and kisses. So you wrapped your arms around William's neck, pulling him to you. He lay down on you with his whole body, continuing to thrust, he left a kiss on your shoulder, inhaling the sweet aroma of ripe strawberries next to you both.

"Ooh— Daddy, so good! Ugh, so good!" you melted under him like vanilla ice cream under the scorching sun. Another powerful orgasm snaps in your stomach. You screamed his name, clawing at the blanket beneath you as your cunt pulsated all over his shaft. William felt it too; your tight pussy milking his cock brought him close.

"Fuck, im cumming." he growled. His body tensed as he slammed into you one final time before releasing his warm seed deep inside your womb, filling you to the brim, coating your walls completely. William shudders against you as spurts of his cum shoots inside you, forcing soft sobs from you.

Sighing heavily, a soft smile appeared on his face, which he gives only to his angel, his precious girl. William pulls out slowly and you whimper at the loss of warmth and stretch as his cum starts leaking out of your little hole to the blanket.

"You did so well for me, darling," he leans down to your face, holding his weight on his hands now. "always such a good girl for me."

"Thank you, daddy." you look at him with innocent yet naive eyes, what nearly makes his already soften cock hard again. "can i have strawberry ice cream?"

William's eyes widen at your question. You've just been roughly fucked and choked and now you're asking for. . . some ice cream? William freezes for a second and then bursts into laughter.

"Oh, angel, of course, of course you can!" he chuckles softly, studying your face. Your fucked out expression, but cute smile. "I love you, princess." William leaves a kiss on your nose and embraces your body.

[vegaseatsass]

I'm so exhausted I don't really know where or how to begin my one-day weekend, have spent the day just kind of collapsed into executive dysfunctional confusion when what I WANT to do is post on tumblr about gay tv

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

pt XVI good omens season 2 (still not traumatic) episode 3 EDINBURGH

HELLO IT'S ME IT'S THE OFFICIAL GOOD OMENS MASCOT WHY DO I STILL KEEP INTRODUCING MYSELF IDK. If you don't know who I am, thank God and Satan for their mercy and flee. Also, the day after I post this, I'll be watching the last three episodes on livestream for the first time so. You know. I'm hyped on the energy of this being my last day not enveloped in tears. Take the summary:

Before the episode starts, someone asks why Crowley said in the last episode that Aziraphale couldn't fall because look at him, all angelic when Crowley looked the same as starmaker. I reply that "Crowley thinks he deserved it, he sees Azi as something beautiful and untouched while he probably sees himself as idk marked in some way so god kicked him down."

I am told that I am learning too fast to weaponise the narrative to induce angst. So then I say oh, I go too fast for you. Tears ensue.

The episode begins! Everyone shrieks about Edinburgh, David Tennant, how it is their favourite episode, and SCOTTISH CROWLEY.

We open with lesbians being gay, and then Muriel enters as Inspector Constable! They are very sweet and very determined to do their job right, and they are adopted by Crowley and Aziraphale just like Jim.

Crowley sits on Aziraphale's chair's arm. The maggots all swoon.

Fine, I also swooned.

Aziraphale gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss-mansplain-manipulate-manwhores his way into getting Crowley to give him the Bentley keys (BOUNDARIES. BOUNDARIES.).

WHAT PLENTY OF USE DO BOTH OF YOU GET OUT OF THE BOOKSHOP?

The really ineffable plan is whatever the fuck was happening in Aziraphale's brain when he somehow went from London to Edinburgh via Loch Ness (check the map) and then proceeded to disguise himself as a detective who pretends to be a journalist.

Crowley slays in sleeve garters and a cardigan keeping house in the bookshop meanwhile, does not sell books, instead cleans with Jimbriel and periodically yeets book stacks into corners when distracted.

Aziraphale reads his old diary entries about Crowley, a (6000+) 13 year old with a crush.

MINISODE MINISODE. They are in Edinburgh during the mid 1800s. Victorian outfits, check. Scottish Crowley, check. Capitalist Karen Aziraphale, che-wait what.

Huh. Well. There's a wee bit of body snatchin' going on, to sell to doctors for medical research because there aren't enough murderers, and to make enough money to survive.

Aziraphale channels his inner capitalist judgemental Karen and ruins that plan, come on Aziraphale you have religious trauma but you're better than this, and long story short, Wee Morag dies after Aziraphale realises his error, her friend Elspeth has to sell her corpse for pennies, and is about to commit suicide with laudanum. Azi, oh god. I'm glad you underwent character development at least.

NOW CROWLEY HERE SLAYS. I KNOW THIS IS AZIRAPHALE'S PERSPECTIVE AND IS BIASED. BUT WITH THIS POV, CROWLEY SLAYS.

He calmly educates Aziraphale about how his whole "the poor have more opportunities and you shouldn't give them money or they'll lose the virtue of poverty" is absolute bullshit, and he does this understanding Aziraphale's situation and not losing his temper.

The framing. The framing of the shot when they see Wee Morag and Elspeth sitting down on a step and explaining their situation. Aziraphale stands above, bustling with righteousness, and judges them. Crowley sits down. He sits down next to them, rather than taking the high ground. He meets them where they are and empathises. It is the fact that he is fallen and damned that makes him behave really divine and sorry I wrote a whole hymn on him have it I'll stop rambling just know I love him.

I think his amusement is a facade so hell won't think he's genuinely being good. I think he's morally grey and incredibly brave and kind.

When Elspeth is bouta kill herself with the laudanum, Crowley grabs it and drinks it himself, and grows tiny and then huge, absolutely high off his head. David Tennant takes the opportunity to travel Scotland from east to west in terms of accent variety.

He gives us the good message of NO DYIN'. NO MORE DYIN'. IT'S NOT ON. And then forces Aziraphale (who doesn't want to ruin her virtuous poverty) to give the girl all the guineas he has in his pocket, and tells her to go off and start a farm or something. BUT NOT JUST PRETENDY GOOD, BE PROPERLY GOOD.

He then gets pulled into hell. To be punished for this. Aziraphale is frightened and heartbroken for him, looking around desperately, and we find out that Crowley didn't meet him for a while after. And later he wanted holy water. To protect himself? He got punished by hell. For how long? The whole month in between the incident and the diary entry? There can't be anyone better at punishment and cruelty than hell.

Sorry I'm just screaming here.

Never mind fuck I started this summary really happy and bouncy and listening to a dance playlist. Dionysus by BTS and Italian pop is still playing and now I'm crying.

Is this the natural progression. Fuck I'm crying. Sorry guys something else happens with Aziraphale politely talking to a phone and Crowley smiling really beautifully while unsuccessfully trying to manipulate two lesbians into a relationship and something about a visit I don't care everyone's being morally dubious as usual and then lovely Scottish music outro I CAN'T FUCKING ELABORATE I'M SITTING HERE CRYING OVER CROWLEY.

right summary done, time to go sob, lmao i thought i wouldn't cry today over good omens HAHAHAHA still not traumatic eh HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[bitethedevil]

I know the contents of Raph’s diary have been discussed but have you touched on how it takes literally no skill to pickpocket his journals off of him? I mean it’s maybe the only 0 skill check I’ve seen in the game. He wants us to know everything I swear it. Also if you pickpocket him he doesn’t turn around and call it out like other vendors do.

The Devil You Know

I didn’t know that but that is super interesting and it’s going to prompt me to yap about something I’ve been thinking about a lot. This man is so damn upfront about everything. His line “What’s better than a devil you don’t know? A devil you do” is literally his whole character. He doesn’t make a fuss about us pickpocketing him and that doesn’t surprise me. The scrying orb in at the Devil’s Fee where the narrator comments if Raphael can see us? He can. He literally lets us see him by intentionally failing a wisdom check.

I’m convinced that Raphael knows exactly what he is up against from the very beginning: The Emperor. Raphael plans ahead. He plans so far ahead that I’ll argue he already knows that his competition will be the Emperor and what he offers. Raph knows about it before we even do and there are a couple of clues to it. One is in Last Light Inn where he says:

“And yet, I have this picture in my head of you tossing and turning in the middle of the night…thinking strange things, dreaming strange dreams…and there’s this little voice inside of you asking ‘Is this my will? Or is it the worm’s?’. But you have no answer and no way of knowing. The good thing is though, there’s only one little voice you really should be listening to: mine.”

He’s not talking about the Urge because I am 90% sure that Tav’s get this dialogue too. He is talking about the Emperor (which we are still unaware of at this point). He is also already grooming us to not trust that ‘little voice’, especially with the way he mentions if this is ‘your will or the worm’s’ and the way he says: ‘you have no answer and no way of knowing’. He’s basically saying that the voice is keeping us in the dark on purpose and alluding that it might be making us do things against our will.

Again, with the line: ‘What’s better than a devil you don’t know? A devil you do.’. Raphael knows he’s up against the Emperor, and he knows that since the Emperor is a mindflayer, there is no way in the Nine Hells that he will be upfront with us from the beginning. Raphael plays his cards completely opposite in response to this.

Raph does not fuck around in the least. It’s ‘Hi, welcome to my house in Avernus, oh yeah btw I’m a devil *poof*’. He is upfront from the very beginning. Does Raphael also manipulate us? Oh for sure, but it’s nothing that you can’t technically figure out if you are a bit perceptive and he’s even upfront about that.

I’ve talked about the lanceboard scene before. If you let Mol win, he says to us: ‘She won. She has a taste for it now. She’ll be the one who comes to me.’.  If she loses, he’ll point out that she is lost, and her desperation will lead her back to him anyway. He literally explains how his deals work. Raphael then does the exact same thing to us by giving us an easy deal (that he overhypes a lot) with killing Yurgir. By dealing with him successfully once, we’ve ‘won’ and we’ll be more inclined to go to him again. If we don’t fulfill his deal, he knows that desperation might make us return to him anyway.

That man does not fuck around. The cards are on the table. I know that some of these things, like the pick-pocketing thing might also be due to storytelling, but even from a narrative point of view, he's very much presented as 'the devil you know' and I find that super interesting.

(Thank you for the ask <3)

[specialagentartemis]

Inspired by @clonerightsagenda’s thoughts about the Ambiguously Brown Spacefuture trope, I kinda want to see more creativity with how Earth is treated in spacefuture sci-fi.

There are plenty of examples where Earth is the center of everything. Star Trek is the obvious one: it’s a bustling interstellar multispecies space society, and Earth is where Starfleet is headquartered and it’s often reflexively and unthinkingly treated by the narrative like it’s the most important planet in the Federation. (Most of our main viewpoint characters are Human, so it’s the most important planet to THEM because it’s their home, but even beyond that, Earth is treated as critically key to the Federation in a way that, say, Betazed is not.)

More recently, the common trope is that the centers of society and culture and economy and politics are elsewhere. Other planets are important, and Earth is either an unimportant backwater that no one really cares about, or galactic humanity has nearly forgotten about it entirely. This is explicit in Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers, strongly implied in The Murderbot Diaries, and one line in Ancillary Justice suggests that too. Ofc this isn’t entirely new—from what I understand it’s what’s going on in Dune too.

And they do this for obvious reasons: the authors are all interested in social and political worldbuilding that is not tethered to real Earth nations, politics, prejudices, and general baggage. Second-world fantasy authors are allowed to do this with no strings attached, but sci-fi authors who want to do social worldbuilding from the ground up have to justify why people don’t appear to identify as Chinese or Latino or Hopi or American anymore (and more often than not, not Jewish or Catholic or Muslim or Hindu or Baha’i or whatever either), why those identities don’t come into conflict with the new planetary identities and spacefuture religions the author wants to write about. It’s been so long that the origin of humanity is forgotten or irrelevant.

Star Wars is honestly underappreciated for the bold, creative, unique choice to have a bustling interstellar multispecies space society with lot of humans… and no Earth. At all. Where do humans come from? Irrelevant. Not Earth though.

And honestly I wish more sci-fi that wants to write in this space took more of a cue form Star Wars to just own it. (I actually thought the Imperial Radch HAD done the same thing—functionally a second-world fantasy, but in a spacefaring setting—until Kat pointed out the reference to arguing over which planet was the real origin of humanity.) If you posit your space future as our future, but Earth is no longer relevant and is generally forgotten… I guess it depends on how far out it is, but it strains my credulity that no one remembers or cares! The Jews in the spacefuture don’t know/remember/care where Jerusalem is? Muslims in the spacefuture decided that going to Mecca just kinda isn’t worth it? The spacefuture Papal seat is no longer in Rome and the future Catholics don’t know or care that it was ever anywhere else? All the Hopis left the Three Mesas and all the Navajos left Dinétah and all the Māori left Aotearoa and then just… forgot about it? Really? That isn’t true after hundreds and even thousands of years today; why would it be true hundreds or even thousands of years in The Spacefuture?

There are some works that do a little more complexity with spacefuture planetary societies and cultures vs. memory of Earth—the Vorkosigan Saga positions Old Earth as a culturally important memory even if it’s not a politically important planet, and The Locked Tomb makes Earth a holy center place that is mythicized more than it’s known or inhabited, for magic necromancy reasons.

I’d like to see more of that, Earth holding some sort of unique place in spacefuture humans’ culture in a historically informed way, even if you actually want to write about other things. Or go the Star Wars route and proudly proclaim that this takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, don’t worry about it.