#i train the new developers

[outrosword]

when you talk back at a superior at work : am i gonna get fired

[kizzer55555]

The Vampire Aesthetic

Ok so Danny knows two billionaires personally and they really couldn’t be more different. Yet they had one thing in common. A vampire aesthetic. Sam is fully into goth. Spiderwebs, bats, the color black. She enjoys fangs and fake blood and the darkness of her soul. Meanwhile, Vlad is Vlad. If his name wasn’t enough, the dark clothing, pale skin, and flying around with a cape and fangs with coffins in his mansion really sells it.

Danny doesn’t know many rich people so he thinks this might be some kind of trend. (If Paulina is rich, her family likes the chupacabra) So he just thinks that all rich people have some kind of vampire thing going on.

Cue Danny somehow ending in the Wayne household. Maybe he was brought over as a friend of one of the bats, maybe rescued from a field trip/vacation gone wrong, maybe some other situation. But he is there in civilian form with civilian Waynes and Danny just takes a good long look around the inside of the mansion.

“So where’s the vampire aesthetic?

Everyone freezes.

Danny just starts looking around, checking behind paintings and feeling the walls for secret levers. Used to secret passages with Vlad and possibly Sam. The Fentons definitely had them when they were temporarily rich.

“Come on, I know you guys are hiding it.”

Cue the entire batfamily thinking that this is another Tim and that he is fully aware that these people are the batfamily. Danny hangs around the mansion more and the bats just start dropping their disguises and not even bothering to hide stuff around Danny because they assume he already knows. (Possibly even trying to recruit him to be a new bat) Meanwhile, Danny, who does not know these people are batman and his birds, just does not pick up on any of it.

He grew up in a health violation with a giant ballon observatory lab above his head and a portal to the afterlife in his basement. He is a half dead teenager who has tea with the god of time and his godfather is the other parent to his clone child. He’s used to death lazers being scattered across his home and mysterious stains on clothing.

People are weird! He doesn’t judge!

[gaywineauntsstuff]

I just saw someone say that Tim was the only member of the batfamily who didn’t suck at math.

With the exception of Dick (acrobatics) and Cass (body language) none of the Batkids are THAT much better than the others at a certain skill

Yes Jason is a better shot

Yes Tim is a better detective

And on a technical level they’re much better

Sure

But that means that if they have a 0.001% chance of cracking a case or making a shot. There will be a noticeable difference between Tim being the character or say Damian.

Otherwise

Not particularly.

Think of each skill like a normally distributed curve okay with the mean being your average hero/olympian/hacker/genius

Right

The Batkids will be at the 96th percentile in the skill

With the exception of 1 of them being at the 99th percentile range

Unless you are writing something you can comfortably say is complex/difficult enough to warrant drawing attention to the 3% difference. It’s annoying to bring it up

I exclude Dick and Cass

Because Dicks introduction is the fact he can do something the rest of the kids can’t to the point where it’s an identifier within his own story. It’s how Tim found him, a signature only he can do.

And Cass because she is genuinely cartoonishly cracked in her own storyline and in batfamily stuff she’s borderline a mind reader

(Could also argue Jason for supernatural stuff and the all blades)

These are exceptions because yeah

If you told me Jason, Dick or Steph cracked a difficult case in a run I wouldn’t treat it as shocking information

If you told me Tim, Dick or Damian managed a tricky shot with a firearm in a dire situation (like what happens in the Grayson run) it would be interesting, surprising but like not? Shocking?

If you told me that Jason did a quadruple summersault off a building and landed on his feet I’d be confused as shit

And even WITH Dick and Cass the other kids are still FREAKISHLY good at D&Cs special skills but they both have unignorable signatures

This is a very long winded way of saying when an author simplifies a character down to

“Oh look nice flippy one”

“Smart one”

“Angry gun one”

“Pet collector”

It’s annoying because you basically ignore all the interesting overlap

Like guess what Dick literally has a habit of collecting strays (see the rabbit and 3 legged dog he lives with in his apartment in the new run)

Tim is fucking badass and is very good at dealing with explosives

Damian is canonically currently thinking of leaving the family business and no longer being a hero to maybe focus on helping people in other ways

Jason occasionally works with magic and demon bullshit

And every single one of them is a genius okay literally every single one of them could get a masters in physics, chem, bio and history in like 2 weeks flat.

Their stats are stacked

All of them know enough info to be able to do 99% of a task and yeah someone might call Tim or Dick in for detective help or Jason for muscle and restraining backup but in 99% of cases THE OTHER CHARACTERS SHOULD BE EQUALLY competent

[mariocki]

Jacqueline Pearce guest stars as fashion model Leonie Peters, but it could be she's mixed up in bank robbery and murder in New Scotland Yard: The Banker (1.10, LWT, 1972)

[spotaus]

Hey i am back with a thought.

I know we already mentioned like. The future future plans concerning kids in the New Age storyline.

I was thinking. Who would carry/get the kid in the couples? (Yes this implies mpreg. If this aint your thing no worries you can just ignore everything else :3 )

As you mentioned before. Nightmare and error would most likely adopt.

Between dream and blue i think blue would end up carrying the kid. Dream would feel too locked up and locked down if he had to take it easy. Also. Let this man pamper Blue. He deserves that.

Ccino and Killer. Ccino wouldnt want kids for a LONG time and even just the idea would be slow going. But killer has his soul situation (is that also a situation in this story?) And he is a knight being out and about. Ccino is safely at home and would be the safer option. But they would need a long time before ccino would feel comfortable with the idea.

Horror and Crop. Crop. Hands down. Horror with his work and Crop has help on the farm. But i doubt thwy would get a kid because they have along distance relationship.

Cross and Lust it depends on who wants it more. I can see both being the one who does it mostly because i can see pros and cons for both sides.

Reaper, Geno and Dust. Only one option. Reaper. Dust doesnt have a healthy enough soul and that with his spell around it? No way he can carry a kid. Geno meanwhile only has a soulshard so he isnt healthy enough to carry a kid either. Leaving only Reaper as an option.

Okay that was it. :D

Haha! Omg I keep forgetting this is smth I can think about! Usually it's not my scene so it might not cone up much in-stiry but it IS how I picture the cast having kids in this one, so!!! We're diving in!!

Like u said, those boys are adopting hehe-

With Dream and Blue it's a bit hard, because I think that Dream would be really really worried about Blue the entire time. Like, terrified his magic would accidentally trigger the whole Twin thing. But, ultimately, yeah, probably Blue! Dream *would* get too restless, and Blue rlly does deserve to be pampered hehe- (I just think Blue would have to really really talk Dream into it. Dream does NOT want to be like his mother anymore.)

Killer and Ccino... let's go with a yes on Killer's soul situation, so Ccino would be their only option. But, like you said, it would be ages before they even thought about discussing the idea, let alone actually having a kid.

Ohhh yeah. I see Horror and Crop as the ones least likely to have kids (as u said, long Distance relationship, but also they just have to much on their plates? They're practical guys and focus on their work and existing families first. Plus, someone has to be the cool uncles to their nieces and nephews!) But definitely Crop. Especially because Horror is pretty low on natural magic as-is and even though his soul is healthy, his body might not even be able to form a firm ecto, let alone anything safe to harbor a forming soul. (Unlike Ccino, Horror was born that way, and the injury didn't help lmao-)

Cross and Lust? I think they'd both regularly get baby fever, but neither of then would be ready to settle down for a *while* in that way, so I think they'd push off the question until years later. Then when it comes up, they 'fight' over it. Insisting that they should carry- I think they'd end up choosing Cross though! As much as Lust seems like the more convenient option, as he's not a knight, Cross is just built different and insists that if anything goes wrong he wants to be the one it happens to. Which, ofc, leads to him doing training whilst in the early stages until someone (probably Killer or Dust) notices he's a little off and then Cross admits he's got a soulling. He did not expect to immediately get horrified looks (because they were fighting someone with a lil guy inside them, not because he has a lil guy) or to immediately get ushered out of training and to his room because??? Idiot??? What were you thinking??? Cross is the worst at staying off his duties, but his brother's have him covered, thank god-

And yep, put perfectly! Reaper is so genuinely the only option! It leads to some odd interactions, since Reaper can't exactly stop being King, but he manages shockingly well and has Geno there to help him (and probably later on Dust, since Night isn't about to leave Dust out of that due to work-) And. I like to think these three in particular have multiple kids perhaps, Kane and then another, and it's kinda a running joke that Reaper's the one hauling them around lmao- (Also very convenient! Because Reaper is the one with death magic in his soul, the kids are effectively immune to it! They were made from that stuff basically, so ofc they're fine!)

[loregoddess]

2am Temenos thoughts I'm now typing out in the morning: I like Temenos' English voice acting but it has a very particular tone. Do you think that has any influence on his (mis)characterization?

Oh hmm, y'know I hadn't considered that but you might be on to something, because voice line delivery does affect how people perceive a character, although I think part of it may be localization choices and direction of the voice acting as well. (I had way more thoughts on this question than I was expecting to, hence the cut bc of length).

Like, I've seen discussions about writing quality vs. quality of voice acting ("whether the character writing is good, or whether the voice acting carries the character" is a debate I've seen several times), and also I've seen people talk about how differences in the voice acting performances across different localizations affect how the character comes across differently (i.e. there's a series of videos that were popular after BotW came out where every cutscene was compared in all the languages the game had been dubbed in, with a lot of people talking about how Zelda's breakdown in the "Memory 16: Despair" cutscene seemed way more emotional in some languages than others). So like, the vocal performance does factor into audience perception, no argument there.

I went ahead and looked up compilations of Temenos's voice lines in both English and Japanese, and while I'm very much not fluent in Japanese at all, and therefore can't pick up too much on tonal shifts, I will note that a lot of the anger Temenos spends so much time masking seems to come through a bit more clearly in his JP voice lines (his JP unique battle line against Kaldena is sounds especially furious, and while the ENG delivery of the same line is definitely angrier sounding than most of his other ENG battle lines, there's something that feels a bit rawer about the JP delivery, at least to my ears).

This is no shade at his ENG VA, since I think the voice acting was pretty strong overall (although the recording quality of some of the lines is another matter, but again not the VA's fault), and I don't think the JP is better or worse than the ENG voice performance, since (recording quality aside) they're both solid performances, but they do have slightly different feels to them.

I personally felt the ENG delivery of the story dialogue lines often gave Temenos a sort of slightly playful but aloof tone, but either by choice of the voice direction or simply due to how the VA's voice naturally is, the anger (while it's definitely there) doesn't come across as noticeably angry or aggressively as I've seen with some other VA performances. Which isn't a bad thing per se, bc even in real life no two people show anger or even sound angry in the same way, and I think Temenos's ENG voice still works for his characterization.

And that's of course just looking at one emotion. I'd have to do a lot more digging (or replay the game w/ the JP voices turned on) to see how the voice line delivery sounds for scenes like Jorg's death or the ruins of the Kal.

Unfortunately, since I can't translate like, 90% of what's being said in the JP lines by ear, I can't compare them against the ENG localization to see if the word choice of the localization shifts the tone or implied meaning any (although for what I can translate by ear, the localization seems to be a fairly close 1:1 for the battle lines at least, and typically I don't have a lot of beef w/ localization when I can get my hands on fan translations of original JP text to compare/contrast). I do think the word choice for localizations affects how a character is interpreted, even with good localizations--except, again how said word choice is interpreted usually reveals maybe more about the audience than the author.

For example, I know a lot of people read Temenos calling Crick "Little Lamb" as flirtatious, and I guess I kinda get why that interpretation exists, but to me the nickname always seemed...not condescending per se, and not intentionally mean, but almost as if Temenos is teasing Crick for his unquestioning faith and calling him childish for it. As a result, my reading "Little Lamb" as "your unquestioning faith is childish, I'm going to tease you a bit about that until you've matured" makes it seem like Temenos is putting a lot more distance between himself and Crick than reading "Little Lamb" as a cute, flirtatious nickname does. Now, I rarely read romantic undertones to a lot of dialogue, and shipping is the least important thing to me when I'm engaging with a story, so my interpretation of that line probably says more about me than it does about the intention of the writers.

However! The vocal delivery of the voice line doesn't really give us any insight either, bc while I didn't hear it as sounding flirtatious, lots of other people apparently did. Now, it's not like I know what goes on with the direction during the recording sections, how much information about the characters and scene and story the VAs are given, and how that information, or lack thereof, affects how they voice act, so again no shade on the VA or even the voice direction as a whole, but as you noted, choices were made in the direction that made it so Temenos has a very particular tone.

Now again, it's hard to say how much this does or doesn't affect a person's interpretation bc, well, vocal and tonal interpretation isn't like, a science or anything. Depending on regional dialects/cultures, two people from different areas can interpret the same voice delivery in two entirely different ways (i.e. the "are city people, esp. people from NY, really rude or are they just from the city" discussions I've seen floating around about whether it's rude or not to walk into a deli and order your food w/out any small talk, and how it's more about where a person grew up that will usually inform their initial reaction to that question).

If I had to guess, I think the mischaracterization I come across for Temenos seems to stem from the fact that he puts of a façade 99% of the time, and rarely lets it slip. Unlike say, Therion, who goes through an entire arc and speech about how he's actually okay with wanting to care about and trust other people, Temenos rarely shows any vulnerability because his character arc wasn't about accepting vulnerability like Therion's was. Instead Temenos's façade plays into aspects of how he interacts with other characters, but isn't treated as an obstacle to overcome per se, which also means that the audience may miss that it's even there in the first place, mistaking the façade for the actual core characterization.

We get some indication of the "slipping façade" in the vocal deliveries, i.e. the angry "Kaldena!" battle line, or (if I'm remembering correctly) the voice lines leading up to the Arcanette boss fight, but the thing about Octopath is that it's only partly voice acted. Some of the parts where I read Temenos as letting his mask slip a bit, or otherwise him showing more emotion or vulnerability than usual, were in travel banters, which are entirely silent so we don't get to hear how the VA would have tried to navigate those scenes. Would the banters being voiced have changed interpretations and prevented popular fanon mischaracterization? Maybe, maybe not.

Possibly more importantly, Temenos's façade is notably friendly, or at least nicer than the "edgy loner who uses snark and sass to keep people at bay" façade that's on the opposite end of the "characters with trust and intimacy issues" spectrum, and most characters I've come across who seem to try to keep people from getting too close to them by being friendly tend to get mischaracterized by fans bc the "friendly mask" is so convincing and not as noticeably phony as like, being an edgy loner who's actively pushing people away despite craving friendship/love/etc. is. So this could just be a fandom thing in general, and not unique to Temenos or directly affected by vocal performances (i.e. Klavier Gavin from Ace Attorney is another character I read as masking a lot of trust issues and using friendliness as a means of keeping people away, and that is not a common reading of his characterization, at least not when I used to haunt the fandom, and AA has almost 0 voice acting so this isn't due to voice performance).

There is, of course, also the school of thought that "correct" interpretations don't exist bc everyone has their own experiences that are true to them and their interpretation of media is reflective of that, so I'll be the first to say that it's not that my interpretations of Temenos's characterization are more or less correct as compared to someone else's. And honestly like, it's a piece of fiction, so I'm not going to get upset about what the popular fanon characterization is, even if I personally think it's mischaracterization, bc I can also just ignore it.

Although, there is also a sort of fanonization that's become more frequent in fandom spaces where even characters with less complex writing get mischaracterized (simplified, smoothed over, etc.) in favor of popular fandom trends. Again, not the devil per se, but it definitely an unusual trend that I've seen an uptick in. It's almost like a commercialization of fandom, except maybe not as malicious...yet.

Anyhow, I've gotten a bit off topic, and this will be an endless set of tangents soon if I'm not careful.

So uh, yeah! The shortest answer to your questions is, yes I do believe the vocal delivery of a character's lines will affect how that character's characterization is perceived and interpreted, although there's other things that affect interpretation as well (word choice for the writing, audience's personal tastes/experiences, trends in fandom, etc.), and that a mix of these things will weave into whatever the popular interpretation and fanon characterization for that character becomes. But also everyone will still come up with their own unique interpretations of characterizations, so non-fanon interpretations will always exist as well.

[whistlingstarlight]

Yet another reason New Starlight is way better than people give it credit for, Ashley's line of "I'm a smoker, the last one in the land" gives her character so much inferred depth.

Ashley's a victim of modernization, like Rusty, Poppa, even Greaseball. She's the only dedicated smoking car in active service in the country (usually implied to be America, but the rolling stock have a lot of British inspiration), how terrifying must that be for her? All other smoking cars have been converted, preserved, or scrapped. It's only a matter of time before the same happens to her.

[wuffgang-ameowdeus-moozart]

broke: Will hates being a healer because it makes him feel weak when compared to the fighters

woke: Will loves being a healer because his entire sense of self-worth depends on helping other people

bespoke: Will loves being a healer because it allows him to skip camp activities and just be a little shit in general.

Does he have to monitor Nyssa in the infirmary for two hours because of a minor burn? Not necessarily. But is it preferable to cleaning out the stables?? Absolutely.

Is there technically a less painful way to set a broken bone? His father is literally the deity of healing, so of course. Does the owner of said broken bone (who has been particularly annoying this week) know that?? Well, why would they need to when good old Will is here to heal all wounds?

Was Will an accomplice in the prank against the Ares cabin? Yeah. Is Clarisse aware of that? Probably. Will she do anything about it? To the head medic?? Will hopes for her sake that the answer is no (see point 2)

(also the self-worth things but like. whatever)

[velvetjune]

i played the remastered alan wake a while back and am replaying the original on steam, and, honestly, they’re so similar, I couldn’t tell which is which if you held up comparisons. ive come across reviews about the game looking outdated and bad (mostly compared to other releases in that time), but the original looks great and I like the hazy dark lighting for both this and awan

[xxstarl1ghtxx]

why is night hunter's blink cycle so ^-^

kicking screaming aaaa <3

[pynkhues]

I'm so glad your friends are both okay. That's so horrible.

Thanks, anon. It was about a decade ago (although the incidents happened in different years), so time's marched on. They're both doing well now.

[whentherewerebicycles]

question: when you're starting a new job, what do you most want out of your first week of onboarding? what's most helpful for you to know/understand upfront? also... what's not helpful? tell me your onboarding nightmare stories too lol

[gizkalord]

my friend once said j/j/k was the most overhyped mid manga/anime she's seen and she's so right tbh

[kelpiemomma]

Ingo held Khan's scaled wrist gently as he examined the claws his friend now sported. Five fingers had been turned into four deadly talons, new to Ingo but already put to gruesome work by the hybrid.

"I'm sorry about your hands..." he said softly. Khan shrugged as he examined his other claws.

"Eh, don't sweat it. It's hardly the worst thing they've done to me." He responded mildly. As though his body being changed against his will to a weapon was the norm. Ingo glanced at his eyes, his fangs, the remnants of his horns- and remembered this wasn't the first time his friend had been altered against his will. His grip on Khan's hand tightened.

"Still," he insisted, "if we'd found you guys sooner..."

If they'd found Khan and Nana sooner, Khan would still have his hands and Nana would still have both eyes. If they'd been just a little faster to realize the hybrids were missing, to remember where they had come from, if they had pushed their pokemon a little harder to fly and fight-

"I'm glad you found us at all, honestly." Khan said it off the cuff, without thinking, but must have felt how Ingo's grip tightened again. He turned his head to look at his friend and Ingo felt mild dread at the look in his eyes. As Khan leaned forward he cringed back just slightly.

"Hey, look on the bright side!" Khan accentuated his words with a point from his claws. He must have seen Ingo's confused upset because he smiled wider.

"The bright side?" Ingo repeated. There was a bright side to this?

Khan shut his eyes as if he was a teacher explaining something incredibly simple.

"Oh, my sweet summer train man, of course there is!"

He stuck out his claws like Elesa and Skylar did when they were showing off freshly done nails. The scales gleamed in the light, dimly iridescent.

"I match your color scheme now!"

Ingo's gaze remained on the claws for a moment. Was this really a good thing? Khan had lost another important part of himself because he and Emmet had been too slow. Was the simple black nature of his scales that important? Could it make up for everything else?

He looked up with tired eyes, meeting Khan's gaze again, and realized that Khan was not as unaffected as he thought. He was giving Ingo the softest smile he'd ever witnessed on the other man's scarred face, his eyes half shut and gentle. Khan had been there when it happened, had suffered the consequences, just as he had the last time he'd been abducted. He would figure out how to deal with his new appendages just as he always had before. It was not quite old hat, but it was also nothing new, and something would have been changed no matter how quickly he and Emmet had arrived.

For the first time in the years he'd known Khan, the hybrid was being sympathetic and offering Ingo a comfort over something he had no control of. Yes, he now had claws and scales, but they were the color that Ingo most frequently found himself in. The color of one of his closest family members. Ingo wondered if Khan had used that as a way to comfort himself after it happened, but didn't dare ask. Instead he tried smiling. Surely it was weak, but the worried look in Khan's eyes lessened.

"Yes, you're quite right." Ingo grasped Khan's claws as if they were still his hands, holding them tightly. He would get used to them, just as Khan had. It would be alright. "Another color would have been quite unfortunate."

[spotaus]

Late Night quick thing (New Age Sillies)

Bad news: That joke post about including Reset + Orchid is definitely not canon. (I legit got sad thinking about Reset being in a universe where Orchid isn't- because their stories are so so intertwined- but Nightmare 100% would NOT risk the whole twins exploding Error's soul thing.)

Good news: This means I COULD include Kane (Reset's older brother who usually dies in timelines where Reset is born) and use it to develope his character a bit more! Also! Perhaps a Blue × Dream kiddo is finally in the stars for me to design?

[indynerdgirl]

Hello, my lovely followers! I hope you're all having a good Monday so far. 😊

I just wanted to let you all know that starting tomorrow, I won't be as active on here during the day as I currently am because I'm starting a new job tomorrow that has much stricter internet use policies on work computers than my current job. Because of that, I expect my active Tumblr hours will shift to the last afternoon/evening (I'm in EST if that helps!).

While I'm super excited for this new chapter in my life to start, I am kinda disappointed that I won't be able to use Tumblr as my daily brain breaks like I currently do and I'll also miss being able to chat via messages.

Anyways, wish me luck and say some prayers for me because I still feel like an imposter. 🙃😆