#i would kill for some official fives facts and lore | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

aquilacalvitium · 1 year ago

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Hey, I really liked learning about Nate from you. I also would like to hear about FNAF if you're up for it? I like the art I see around for it, especially the Sun and Moon boy, but have never really engaged passed that. I know it's based on a horror game which is Not something I've got the guts to play 😅 but I'd love to hear about the story of it and about the characters if you'd like to talk about them?

OH HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE

Gif from FNAF The Musical

Now I'm letting you know right off the bat that this post is very long. Much longer than my infodump about Nate. If it's too much I don't expect you to go out of your way to read it all.

I've explained the first three games and will explain the rest in a reblog :)

That means if you wanna know about the Sun and Moon boy, that'll be in a reblog too since they're very recent characters.

So if you rely know nothing about FNAF then I'm going to start with the fact that it does involve child murder. We never see anything on screen, but it's pretty obvious that it's happening/has happened. And of the very few gruesome events they actually show, they're all in 8-bit so it's just like a few red pixels.

I hope you're buckled in because I'm about to walk you through ALL OF THE GAMES FROM BEGINNING TO END. Also I'm not the best with lore, I'm not very smart, but I'm going to explain it to the best of my knowledge which considering how complex this franchise is, that's all anyone can really do.

FNAF 1

A small indie game called Five Nights at Freddy's drops suddenly on the 8th of August in 2014 and immediately blows up. This game was a last-ditch attempt by developer Scott Cawthon to create a successful game after several previous failed attempts. His previous game had recieved some negative feedback with reviewers saying his characters moved like "creepy aniamtronics", so he ran with the idea and made a game centred around creepy animatronics.

You play as a night guard keeping an eye on the four animatronics in this Chuck E. Cheese style pizzeria: Foxy the pirate fox, Chica the chicken, Bonnie the bunny and Freddy Fazbear. You're informed that the characters wander at night to stop their servos from locking up and that if they see you, they'll think you're an animatronic endoskeleton with no suit and will try to stuff you inside one. Now considering those suits are full of metal and electronics that would crush you to death, that's not really something you want to happen. So you must ration your limited battery power to keep an eye on where the animatronics are in the building and closing the doors to your office to keep them out. As the week goes on, the animatronics get more and more aggressive with only Bonny and Chica active at first, then Foxy joining in and eventually Freddy himself.

Now on it's surface this is already pretty scary, but then you realise weird newspaper clippings starting to appear on the walls in the cameras. A close-up look at these clippings tell the news story of five children going missing at Freddy Fazbear's. A suspect was caught but discharged due to no evidence being found. Papers dated a little later talk about complaints from restaurant patrons that the animatronics are starting to stink and weird fluids are oozing out of them.

While it's never officially stated, it's made pretty obvious to the player that the five children who went missing were killed and stuffed inside the animatronics. But wait, there are only four animatronics, right? Wrong! While Foxy, Bonnie, Chica and Freddy are indeed the only four on show, there is a secret fifth animatronic referred to as Golden Freddy.

Golden Freddy appears on rare occasions in the camera. Upon doing so, he will then force the camera to close, revealing that he's somehow appeared inside your office. Staring at him for too long will cause the game to crash and shut down, and the only way to survive him is to flip the camera back up as quickly as possible.

And for a few months, that was where the story stayed. Five murdered children and five murderous animstronics. Up until November of the same year.

FNAF 2

(Got sick of looking through the gif gallery, it's like 98% stim boards ugh)

FNAF 2 was like FNAF 1 but bigger! Instead of just five animatronics, FNAF 2 upgraded to eleven! You had the brand new "toy" animatronics with brighter colours, smoother textures and an overall much cuter appearance, and the old "withered" animatronics rotting away in the back room. On top of them, you also had two brand new animatronics referred to as Balloon Boy (BB) and The Puppet/Marionette.

This game's mechanics were pretty different where instead of having an office with two doors, you had two air vents either side of you, one massive hallway right in front of you and zero doors. Different animatronics would approach you from the vents or hallway and you and to remember which ones could be stopped with the torch and which ones would leave if you had a Freddy Fazbear mask on. The Puppet and BB were unique in their own mechanics. BB wouldn't kill you if he got in, but he would steal the batteries to your torch making you defenseless against certain characters and constantly laughing his extremely annoying laugh. And the Puppet remained inside his gift box in Prize Corner as long as you kept his music box wound up. Let the music box run out and you'll start to hear Pop Goes the Weasel which unfortunately means that you're now dead. 100%. The Puppet is on his way and once he's out of the box there's nothing you can do to stop him. At all.

Now the immediate impression everyone had was that this game was a sequel, until you looked closer at the evidence. For one, the withered animatronics - aside from being withered and broken - look very different to their FNAF 1 counterparts. The guy on the phone who talks to you every night (dubbed Phone Guy) is still alive even though he died on night four of FNAF 1. And the Phone Guy also states that once you've completed your week, you're free to move to a day position and Phone Guy himself will probably take up the role of night guard - the position we replace in FNAF 1 after his death.

FNAF 2 takes place before FNAF 1! But why do the animatronics want to kill you if the FNAF 1 killings haven't happened yet?

Now it has been a while so my knowledge about the earlier games is a tad rusty, but between every night there is an 8-bit mini game such as Foxy Go! Go! Go!, and Give Gifts/Give Life. In Foxy Go! Go! Go! You play as Foxy leaving his stage to entertain children. You do this once, then twice, and then three times. But on the third time, there's a strange purple man standing to the side of your stage. Once you leave the stage, you find not five children but five ghosts. The children are dead, and the purple man is to blame. We can prove this in the mini game Take Cake to the Children in which you control Freddy doing as the name suggests and taking cake to children who get progressively more upset the longer you take. But you notice that at the top of the screen, outside the pizzeria, is a single, lonely crying child. That child stays where they are until finally, a purple car pulls up and the purple man from earlier gets out. The player can do nothing but watch as the child's tears grow and grow until they become a ghost. Then the purple guy gets in his car and drives away. That child is dead.

Finally, in Give Gifts/Give Life, you play as the Puppet. There's no beating around the Bush here, you're in a room with four dead children. The Pupept goes to each four and gives them each a present, but that doesn't work. They're still dead. He then goes around again, doing as the title says and giving life. He places an animatronic head on each child. Once the fourth head is on, you get jumpscared by Golden Freddy and the nights continue. But if you're incredibly perceptive, you may notice that there is a single frame right before the jumpscare in which a fifth ghost child appears in the middle of the room.

These are previous murders, ones that all took place before the FNAF 1 location opened and ghosts that possessed the original now withered animatronics. But what about the toy animatronics? Well they're easy to explain.

Phone Guy explains how these new high-tech robots are built with face recognition software and have been programmed with a list of criminals in order to keep the children attending the restaurant safe. Whoever you are, whoever you're playing as, you are one of those people. Or at least you look like one. More on that later.

So then there came FNAF 3

This game is set thirty years after the closure of the last Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria - the FNAF 1 location and it doesn't actually take place in a pizzeria, but rather a low-budget horror attraction based on the rumours and myths surrounding the pizzeria franchise.

You work as a security guard keeping an eye on the attraction the week before it opens. You're accompanied by Phone Dude, similar to Phone Guy in that he speaks to you over the phone and gives you information, but a different person altogether.

Night one is entirely uneventful as you listen to Phone Dude drop a whole bunch of information on you and when he finally hangs up you realise it's 5am and nothing has happened. Yup, night one is actually completely harmless. But then night two starts and Phone Dude tells you that "we found one. A real one." He quickly has to go and leaves you with bunch of recordings that he mentioned in night one which all turn out to be training tapes from old Fazbear locations voiced by none other than our friend the Phone Guy! Quickly, you'll notice something moving in the cameras and sometimes even hallucinations. These are the Phantom animatronics and they're not actually there. They appear suddenly in various places and unless you manage to flip up/down the camera in time, they will jumpscare you. The good news is, they can't kill you since they're not real. Instead, they cause all of your systems to crash which you then need to reboot. Yeah, this game has various systems that break down randomly throughout the night that you need to keep active in order to survive.

But there is one animatronics that's both real and a real threat. Springtrap.

Springtrap is... disturbing. He's worse than all the other animstronics we've met so far. I mean, his jumpscare is a little tame compared to them, but when you realise just what he is? Yikes.

Focusing on his mechanics first, you need to keep him away from you by blocking air vents and luring him with voice recordings. He's actually not that difficult as long as you keep a close eye on him.

Now, just like FNAF 2, this game has mini games between each night. You can play them all normally and complete them all as intended, but that will lead you to receiving the bad ending. Getting the good ending requires finding clues within those minigames, performing certain actions in the real game and then playing bonus mini games which are now accessible. BUT, you then need to glitch out those mini games in order to find crying children and give them cake. It's weird.

Doing all of these will eventually lead you to the minigame Happiest Day. Technically you can access and beat this mini game on any night, but you must complete all the hidden mini games and then this one to get the good ending. In it, you control a child in a puppet mask walking through a Fazbear restaurant. You walk past the four children you met on previous nights now wearing character masks and give them one a big cake. A fifth child standing on the other side of the table and crying will then put on a Golden Freddy mask. Finally, all six children will disappear, leaving their masks behind.

Beating the game after this will give you to the good ending. The children's spirits have been set free and are no longer possessing the animatronics.

So, what is Springtrap, anyway? Well... gore warning.

The normal minigames throughout the week have you playing as animatronics following a mysterious "Shadow Freddy" through an abandoned and broken Fazbear Restaurant until Purple Guy from FNAF 2 shows up and dismantles you. On the final night, you then play as a ghost child. Going to the room where Purple Guy dismantled the aniamtronics will trigger an interesting situation. Four other ghosts will block the exit while you chase Purple Guy. He will be thoroughly freaking out and will keep running away until finally he runs inside a limp golden rabbit costume in the corner to hide. He seems victorious, laughing at you. Until you hear a sudden crunch and he starts shivering. Slowly, he collapses to the ground as red pixels spray out of the suit. So what happened?

Well in the tapes left by Phone Guy, you will learn about suits called Springlock Suits. These function as normal animatronics but include springlock mechanisms. These mechanisms hold back all the animatronic parts, allowing a person to get inside and wear it as a costume. But there's a huge problem here. That's a lot of animatronic parts being held back by tiny springs. So... what would happen if a spring failed while a person was inside?

You also learn from the tapes that after a certain sprinlock failure, the safe rooms in the pizzerias where the suits are kept are being bricked up permanently.

Springtrap is the Purple Guy. He's the child murderer. And he was crushed to death inside a golden rabbit springlock suit. He was then bricked up in a wall for around thirty years, rotting and decaying, until the room was finally reopened and the suit collected for Fabear Frights, the horror attraction.

That's pretty messed up, huh?

WHEW! Okay this post is getting pretty long and I don't want to overwhelm you. I'm going to leave it here, but I will reblog and it and explain the next three games when I can.

#fnaf #fnaf 1 #fnaf 2 #fnaf 3 #five nights at freddy's #aquila answers #aquila infodumps

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the-invisible-queer · 7 months ago

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HELLO I'VE DISCOVERED THAT YOU CAN SUBMIT ANONYMOUSLY BY LOGGING OUT OF TUMBLR so now we're finally back, with another wholly unnecessary and novel-length timeline of a Jonas Brother’s hoe ass antics. I almost didn’t do a Nick timeline after the Joe one, for reasons I’ll explain when I get there, but like I said I needed something to distract me/kill some time and writing out an extensive history of this man’s Nonsense turned out to be great for that, so here we are. I’m sorry so much of this focuses on the Disney love triangle (my preteen ass was HOOKED on that soap opera and apparently a lot of it has just been dormant in my brain ever since) and even more sorry it’s INSANELY long. Though at the end of the day it’s not my fault that this man’s teenage years alone were such a goddamn mess that they require extensive lore to fully explain so. Blame Nick for all of this is what I’m saying.

Same disclaimer as with Joe’s, this is all just stuff I remember with no research or anything, so I’m sure some of it is probably wrong and very sure some things were left out. Also I had to kind of weirdly switch up my formatting here since Nick’s first two relationships were extremely…entangled...for a while and couldn’t really be cleanly divided into “every girl gets her own bullet point” the way Joe’s timeline could, so bear with me:

Nick and Miley started dating in 2006, when they were both 13 years old. They were allegedly introduced by Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens (which is ICONIC honestly, like the passing of the Official Disney Power Couple torch) and apparently became attached at the hip right away. Here are some random bits of Niley 1.0 lore that I remember:

Nick once claimed that Franklin (who was like five at the time) also had a crush on Miley before they met and “tried to beat him up” when he found out they’d started dating. This is genuinely one of my favorite bits of Jonas lore ever lol like please that’s so funny and cute

At some point in like 2007 Miley was papped holding her phone in such a way that the background was clearly visible, and it was a pic of her and Nick kissing, which was hilariously major news on the tween gossip sites back in the day since they were still playing the “we’re just best friends!” game at the time; the same thing happened again when she was heavily photographed at an event with “I <3 Nick” written on her hand. At some point one has to assume she was doing this on purpose.

In literally like the mid-2010s Nick finally admitted that Miley was his first kiss (which, no shit??? Incredibly funny that he played coy about that info for years when like bro, you were 12 and homeschooled before her, literally who else would you have been kissing), and said he was embarrassed to realize later that he kissed her right after eating something with a bunch of onions on it and his breath probably smelled terrible.

According to a 2007 interview that I still vividly remember to this day, Miley and a certain “friend” (there’s Disney’s favorite word again) dressed up as Sonny and Cher for Halloween 2006. The fact that not a single photo of this has ever surfaced nearly two decades later remains one of the greatest disappointments of my life.

Niley 1.0 lasted roughly a year and a half: according to Miley’s autobiography, they started dating in June 2006 and broke up in December 2007, with one short ‘break’ at some unspecified point in between. During said break Miley wrote the song G.N.O. and a few others, and Nick wrote S.O.S., Still In Love With You and possibly some other songs I’m forgetting. They also worked together a lot during their relationship, filming the boys’ iconic Hannah Montana episode and then going on tour together with the boys opening for her on the Best of Both Worlds tour, which awkwardly was still going on when they broke up. Miley claimed they ended things mutually because they were just too busy to manage a relationship at the time, never getting to spend much time together because they were both so busy with work, and had started fighting a lot from all the stress they were under. Speculation abounded about whether or not that was truly the reason, especially once Selena hit the scene so quickly and the “you love me you like her” of it all, but it was the official story regardless.

Immediately post-breakup Miley dyed her hair black as a rebellion against Nick, who apparently liked her to have blonde highlights when they were together, and Nick seemingly coped with the breakup in a different way because rumors about him and Selena started cropping up as early as January 2008. One such rumor I remember involved them allegedly flirting at the Best of Both Worlds movie premiere, which is so hilariously shameless that I could easily believe it of Baby Fuckboy Nick despite there being, as far as I’m aware, zero actual evidence supporting it. Regardless of when it actually started though, by I want to say spring of 2008 Nick and Selena were definitely a thing and Miley was definitely mad about it. It was at this point that this entire mess truly started derailing into the endlessly chaotic trainwreck that captivated tweens all over the world for the next two years.

Very rough timeline of Nelena 1.0/general 2008 triangle lore, listed in the probably incorrect order that I vaguely remember things happening in when I was like 12:

Miley and her friend Mandy uploaded an episode of their “The Miley and Mandy Show” Youtube series pretty obviously making fun of Selena and Demi, who at the time were very close besties which just made Demi also guilty by association I guess. This video was the official start of The Feud between Miley and Selena (and their respective sidekicks for a while). Shortly after this they uploaded another video ‘apologizing’ for causing drama, saying it was all in good fun and the girls were all friends; this apology was blatantly insincere and nobody believed it.

Private photos Miley’d sent to Nick during their relationship, clearly intended for his eyes only, were leaked online after her computer was hacked. We don’t need to discuss this in any further detail as it was really gross and invasive, especially considering Miley was very much a minor at the time, but it was a notable event within the love triangle lore so I couldn’t not mention it.

The Burnin’ Up music video dropped, featuring Selena as Nick’s love interest. Fans everywhere were SHOOK by this, both because it seemed like much more of an official relationship confirmation than Disney “We’re Just Friends” Channel stars were normally allowed to give AND because fans quickly started putting together that Burnin’ Up was likely written about Miley, who’d worn the famous high heels/red dress combo commonly thought to have inspired it to an event with Nick long before Selena was even in the picture at all. The drama! The mess! To this day I would love to know if this casting choice was Nick’s decision or if it was Disney’s – it was heavily speculated that Disney sometimes escalated the love triangle drama on purpose, either to capitalize on it for publicity or to distance Nick’s image from Miley’s after the photo scandal by associating him with Good Girl™ Selena instead – but it was very entertaining either way. All of this was truly great television tbh.

The 7 Things music video also dropped, featuring a lot of very blatant references to Nick and completely gagging all of us again before we’d even finished gagging over Burnin’ Up. (I genuinely don’t remember now if these two songs/videos actually premiered like a week apart or not, but that’s definitely what it felt like at the time lol. Just new bits of wild drama dropping every other day like these damn kids thought they were Kendrick and Drake. It was insane to live through as part of the target demographic and tbh this whole experience probably rewired my brain permanently and is why I’m like this.) Dissecting this song and video kept fans busy for a good while; I still remember how super smart my friends and I felt when we realized the melody of 7 Things was just the melody of Hello Beautiful sped up.

Kevin, of all people, popped up somewhere wearing a “Team Demi and Selena” shirt in reference to the ongoing feud between them and Miley + Mandy. He of course denied that it was referencing this and IIRC tried to claim it had something to do with like a bowling team that Demi and Selena were supposedly starting??? Okay, Kevin. Again, I’d love to know if Disney orchestrated that or what bc otherwise what was his grown ass doing jumping into beef between a bunch of like 15-year-old girls to begin with lmao

At some point Nick was directly asked if 7 Things was about him and said it couldn’t be because his friends aren’t jerks, which is somehow the funniest possible answer he could have given so props to him for that one honestly

Miley performed 7 Things live at some event that all the other Disney kids were at, and during the song she walked into the audience to where Selena was and they sang a line or two together. Around this time (I can’t remember if it was also at this event or a different one) the three Disney girls took pictures together and Demi and Selena took pictures with the boys, but Miley avoided them. I remember there being speculation around this time that Nick and Selena might have been on a break or at least having issues, bc of how very suddenly the two girls appeared to start getting along and bc of Selena lowkey shading her own boyfriend? But I have no idea if that was true or not. Nick was probably rattled either way though lmao

Miley’s album Breakout dropped, obviously featuring a lot of songs about Nick but, infinitely more unexpected than that, also featuring a message at the very end of the dedication page thanking ‘Prince Charming’ for inspiring the album and saying “I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you always.” Fans reached levels of gagged so unprecedented that one girl I personally knew jumped the Team Nelena ship and converted over this.

JB’s album A Little Bit Longer dropped (again, what felt like very very shortly after but may not have actually been idk, I’m not about to look up release dates for this) also obviously featuring a lot of songs about Miley – and ones spanning their entire relationship, at that. I don’t think I truly realized until years later how funny it actually was that Lovebug and Can’t Have You were literally released at the exact same time lol.

At some point in the midst of all this 15-year-old Miley started dating a 20-year-old underwear model, which always creeped me out even as a literal child. Not long into their relationship said pedo boyfriend took the tween gossip world by storm by dressing up as Nick for Halloween, which at the time I found somewhat funny despite my reservations with him, but looking back on that as an adult it’s sooooo…that kid is barely sixteen. Why are you dating this teenager and mocking her also teenage ex over their messy teenage beef that does not concern your grown adult ass literally at all AND ALSO WHY THE FUCK AREN’T YOU IN PRISON. Anyway. 12-year-old me always lowkey tried to avoid learning anything about this pedo since he creeped me out, so I really don’t know when exited the picture, but he must not have lasted super long because…

In roughly early 2009, Nick and Selena broke up. Just like last time it did NOT take Nick long to bounce straight back to his other option and in no time at all he and Miley were fueling rumors, publicly flirting and suddenly hanging out again – the iconic lunch date where they were seen alone together for the first time since their breakup and where Nick embarrassed himself by getting into a fender bender while driving his ex around lmao happened during this time period. I remember that Selena spent a lot of time publicly angsting and vagueposting about all of this on Twitter, but can’t really recall the specifics of that anymore. It was clear she was going through it though.

Niley 2.0/general mid-2009 lore highlights, again probably out of order somewhere (also for the full effect imagine all of these things happening literally back-to-back within the span of like two months):

Miley’s book released, suddenly revealing a ton of Niley 1.0 lore all at once. A lot of fans who met Nick around this time got him to sign the ‘Prince Charming’ chapter page of their copy, which admittedly was very funny and something I’m still surprised he actually did.

Before the Storm was written and recorded somewhere in all of this.

Miley, Selena, Demi and the boys all filmed the Send It On music video and its accompanying Disney Channel ads, including several clips the three girls had to do together in which it was painfully obvious that Miley and Selena couldn’t stand each other and poor Demi looked like she’d rather be eating glass than sitting there between them. Candids from the set dropped showing Nick appearing playful and flirty with both girls during filming, despite Niley being pretty obviously back on by this point and him and Selena still seeming to be on bad terms otherwise?

Joe opened his big mouth on Larry King and accidentally confirmed Niley 2.0 despite Nick trying desperately to avoid this, surprising no one but greatly amusing everyone (except Nick).

Nick flew out to visit Miley while she was filming The Last Song in Georgia, where paps caught potato-quality yet still iconic pics of them making out on a jet ski.

Miley made a surprise appearance to sing Before the Storm with Nick for opening night of the boys’ tour, which remains to this day the only time they’ve ever performed it live as a duet.

Selena Gomez & The Scene dropped a song called I Won’t Apologize which (on top of just dragging Nick for filth in general) pretty obviously referenced the love triangle, basically saying he’d tried to turn her into Miley or at least that she’d felt like she needed to turn into Miley to make him happy, and also seemed to imply there was overlap between Nelena 1.0 and Niley 2.0. At the time this last bit was very scandalous lore for young fans to digest, even though in hindsight that was really like. The least surprising revelation ever lmao. ALSO this song was meant to be like an empowered I Don’t Need No Man anthem, with her being all “you don’t deserve me” and “I won’t go back again” which is just…genuinely so fucking funny in context. Spoiler alert: she sure as fuck will go back again.

Then at some point that summer Miley got into her own insane love triangle which somehow seemed even messier than the first one, and after a few weeks of general chaos and confusion (apparently so confusing that even Miley herself walked away unsure of some of the exact dates involved) things eventually culminated with her and Nick apparently breaking up again and her stepping out with co-star Liam Hemsworth not long after. Mess upon mess. I very vaguely remember that in the months following Niley 2.0.’s death Nick was spotted two or three times with…some girl who had like a bit part in one of the Camp Rock movies, I think? I want to say Courtney or Chloe something but again I’m not looking shit up for this. To this day I’m not really clear on if there was anything to that or if it was just a rumor bc he was seen near a girl during his first time ever being single for more than like a month, but if he and Random Third Girl actually did have anything it must have been very brief because…

Did Nick learn from the experience of seemingly being on the other end of a love triangle, as one of the two people being played with at once by the third, that this feels like shit and maybe he shouldn’t do it to girls anymore? NOPE! By late 2009 he’d already run straight back to Selena, who happily took him right back as if she hadn’t just spent the last year publicly whacking him all over Twitter and in her music. God every single one of these kids was a fucking disaster GIRL WHERE’S THE SELF-RESPECT WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT ENTIRE DISS TRACK YOU WROTE

Anyway. Nelena 2.0 and general 2010 lore highlights, once again probably out of order but oh well:

Miley was very blatantly pissed when Nelena reunited and publicly shaded both of them several times, despite the facts that 1) she actively had a boyfriend at the time and 2) by all appearances she was the one who’d dumped Nick for someone else anyway, because apparently her not wanting Nick did not mean Selena could have him. Okay girl. One of these occasions that I remember being HUGE gossip was when she changed the lyrics in 7 Things to say Nick’s brothers were jerks, rather than his friends; it remains unclear to this day what, if anything, the brothers did around this time to suddenly warrant their own specific lashing.

Nick Jonas & The Administration’s album Who I Am dropped, featuring several songs commonly thought to be about each of the girls, but I don’t think Nick ever explicitly confirmed any of them.

For some occasion (maybe Valentine’s Day?) Nick, nothing if not dramatic, built some sort of elaborate rose garden at Selena’s house as a surprise – likely a reference to the NJ&TA song Rose Garden which was allegedly about her. Roughly a year later after they’d broken up again Selena would do her own on-stage lyric change in reference to this, bitterly saying something like “the roses you built me were only made of plastic.”

Justin Bieber made his first appearance in Selena’s life while she was still with Nick. While there’s no evidence that anything beyond some mild public flirting happened between them until after Nelena 2.0 ended, him showing up in this timeline at all is still just…incredibly fucking funny to me. A THIRD love triangle has somehow hit the fucking towers.

Nick performed the song Stay for the first time, setting off a fandom debate over its muse that still persists to this day. Some think it was about Selena because they were together at the time and because she was present and seen crying in the audience when he performed it; others think it was about Miley because she also had a song called Stay that Nick’s seemed to directly respond to in a lot of ways, and because Selena’s tears as he sang it didn’t really look like particularly happy ones. Many OG fans still have passionate opinions about this today, and we will almost certainly never find out which group is right.

Nelena 2.0 was ultimately rather brief, not lasting more than 3 or 4 months into 2010 I’m pretty sure, and with its death the official Disney love triangle era finally concluded as Selena jumped out of the frying pan into the fire left Nick behind to enter her Bieber era, which by all appearances was also a giant chaotic mess because apparently none of these kids ever did anything that wasn’t. It was at this point that Nick finally started to have confirmed relationships with people who weren’t the same two girls over and over, so we can finally try out the relationship bullet points now.

At some point that couldn’t have been more than a couple months at most post-Nelena, in like mid-2010, Nick started dating Samantha Barks whom he met while they were preparing to star in the Les Mis 25th Anniversary Concert together. They were pretty quiet about it, and I was also hyperfixating on something non-JB at the moment and not super interested in general, so I’ve never known too much about this and am honestly not sure if there was even any more public info to know. As far as I remember this relationship was also not particularly long-lived, lasting like 5-6 months maybe, but also didn’t seem to involve any public drama which was a new and refreshing change for Nick.

I’m really fuzzy on the order here but somewhere in 2010, right around the time Jonas L.A. started airing and their characters were will-they-or-won’t-they-ing and then dating, it was rumored that Nick and Nicole Anderson were together. Most fans never believed this (I personally still don’t) as with the timing it seemed like a very obvious ploy for show publicity, but to this day there are some truthers out there who insist something happened between them. If it did then it must have either been very short-lived or overlapped with either Selena or Samantha, if not both – but by this point it was clear Baby Fuckboy Nick was no stranger to his relationships lowkey overlapping so honestly who fucking knows.

GUESS WHO’S BACK, BACK AGAIN. MILEY’S BACK, TELL A FRIEND. Niley 3.0, which happened in I want to say very early 2011, was Nick and Miley’s briefest and last obvious attempt at…something. It was never clear if they were really back together during this period or just hooking up or what, but they were definitely doing something notable enough to include here. (Bonus: Miley was definitely also still being messy with Liam, who by this point she’d also already been on-again off-again with like twice, at the exact same time as this all this was happening because of course she was. Why would any of these damn kids ever have had one unhealthy situationship going at a time when they could have two?) They were pretty quiet about things this time and I also still wasn’t paying super close attention, so I don’t remember much aside from a few spottings of them together and a lot of vague Twitter flirting, and it didn’t seem to last longer than a few months. ALSO there was a really weird incident during this time where the day after an event they both attended, where they were rumored to have been very flirty and left in the same car, several articles came out alleging that Nick and/or his car had been spotted outside Miley’s house that night or the next morning…and then all of these articles just disappeared all at once. Like they were literally scrubbed from the internet, leaving only some gossip site comments from the young fans who’d happened to see them (including me which is how I vividly remember this) as the only recorded evidence that they ever existed at all. The most accepted theory for this bizarre occurrence is that it was true, there were pictures that someone was threatening to publish, and Disney, not wanting to clean up a “purity ring-touting teenage star spends the night with girl he’s not even officially dating” scandal and beyond rich enough to take the hit, just paid everyone off to make the entire situation go away by gaslighting everyone who had seen the original articles. So. That was a thing that happened once.

In like spring 2011 Nick started dating Delta Goodrem, who at the time was 26 or 27 and very fresh out of a broken engagement with another grown ass adult while he was barely 18 with no relationship experience outside of at most a small handful of teenage girls around his age. This relationship always made me uncomfortable at the time and if anything makes me much more uncomfortable now that I’m an adult, so I intentionally did not follow it at all then and am not about to seek out any information about it now either. All I really know is that it did seem to be relatively short-lived, which I can only imagine was probably a good thing.

At some point in like 2012 or early 2013, Nick and Rita Ora were seen talking at a couple of events. They looked kind of flirty but I don’t recall anyone thinking there was anything to it beyond them maybe hooking up once until he namedropped her in the song What Do I Mean, seemingly implying she’d burned him in some way…but when Rita was asked about it, she said she was super confused by the song because they were always just friends and she had no idea he liked her. Apparently she confronted him about it and he admitted he must not have done a good job expressing his feelings, and I guess it was all some kind of weird misunderstanding between them that he...made no attempts to clarify with her before publicly calling her out in an angry song. Alright then?

Olivia Culpo showed up in I want to say mid-2013. For full disclosure I was already not super into Nick when their relationship started, and after he broke up the band and then picked up his solo frat boy Jealous persona that I was just very very not into – it reminded me of my controlling over-possessive ex and grossed me out – I pretty much completely lost interest in him and just stopped following him at all for a few years, so I honestly missed most of their relationship entirely. Mostly all I remember of Olivia is that she wasn’t well-liked in the fandom (at least not in the beginning when I was still paying attention) because she and her family and friends were…incredibly blatant about very much enjoying the attention that her dating Nick brought them, we’ll say, and also quickly developed a reputation for being rude to fans both in person and online. Nick largely seemed happy with her though and they lasted…around two years? I think? She presumably inspired much of his early solo discography and I’m pretty sure appeared in at least one music video. Again, creepy possessive solo Nick gave me the ick, so I wasn’t consuming any of this and only know what I picked up through osmosis while keeping up with the fandom just enough to somewhat keep tabs on Joe and Kevin. (I do vaguely remember seeing a lot of discussion among fans about Nick’s then-bestie Demi not seeming to like Olivia/being subtly snarky about her on multiple occasions, which…hoo boy we’ll get to all THAT in a minute.) I want to say they broke up at some point in 2015. I feel like there should be more things to note in this section considering I’m pretty sure this was his longest continuous relationship until his marriage, but if there are I simply am not the person to note them because I just truly don’t know crap about this era of Nick’s life.

Continuing on from that, there was still at least a good few years post-Nolivia where I wasn’t keeping up with Nick at all, so other than the next few bullet points (that I learned about mostly via keeping up with the other person involved and not him) I really have no clue what he was doing. At some point he was connected to Kendall Jenner, and then I think Kate Hudson??? I have zero idea when these relationships happened, how long either of them lasted, or if they were even relationships at all or just rumors I saw on my infrequent trips through Jonas Twitter. This is why I almost didn’t write a Nick timeline to begin with, because there’s this whole big chunk of time that I’m just blank on so there’s definitely stuff missing. Sorry.

GUESS WHO ELSE IS BACK! BACK AGAIN!!! In I want to say 2015 there was a super weird little moment where Nick and Selena hung out together at some event, looking a little flirty, and then like a few days later he dropped the horny song Area Code out of nowhere and liked a bunch of tweets implying it was about Selena. Clearly this led to nothing, so I can’t count whatever this was as Nelena 3.0, but it was still notable and also very funny so I’m including it anyway. Jury’s still out on if they hooked up that one night and the song was written in response or if they didn’t hook up but he wanted to and put the song out as a request to be booty called; I’m equally amused by it either way. Maybe a tiny bit of subtlety next time, Nicholas.

This is kinda out of order but while we’re talking about the Disney days rising from the dead, Miley also popped back up a few times in surprisingly recent years, especially every time she and Liam broke up because Nick was apparently still perfectly eager to be her back-up plan. I feel like roughly 2015 and early 2018 both had periods where those two were suddenly interacting much more than usual, mostly via social media flirting that made observant fans wonder if something else was going on in private. Obviously we have no way to really know if anything was actually happening or if Nick commenting heart emojis all over every pic she posted was an attempt to make something happen that went nowhere, but either way it’s still enough to include here. (Also I didn’t mention it when we were on 2012 but obligatory shoutout to Nick performing Wedding Bells for the first time after Miley got engaged, which was genuinely ballsy as hell and a lowkey insane thing to do. Gagged the absolute hell out of literally everyone.)

Okay, now we have to talk about Demi. No one truly knows what exactly happened between these two, and unless Demi one of them decides to spill the tea in a memoir or something someday we probably never will, but whatever happened was definitely notable enough to be listed here. Basically they were very close friends for a long time and over that time other feelings definitely developed on at least Demi’s part, which was long suspected but finally confirmed in I think late 2017 when she dropped the songs Ruin the Friendship and Only Forever – both of which were clearly and unsubtly about Nick (No I Can’t Keep Denying Every Minute I think of you!), despite her refusing to outright confirm this no matter how many interviewers bluntly brought it up. She also claimed that the person they were written about had written songs about her too; many theories exist about this to this day but, as far as I’m aware, no one knows for sure which of Nick’s songs are about Demi or if these alleged songs were ever even publicly released in the first place. I can’t remember if Nick ever publicly responded to this whole ‘my best friend just told the whole world she’s both in love with and horny for me’ scandal or not (I kind of want to say he just ignored all of it and acted like nothing ever happened lol which…valid way to deal with that situation, I guess) but they did seem to spend a bit less time together right after that and it’s often speculated to have been the beginning of the end for their friendship. I’m not sure when exactly things exploded but I remember she publicly complained about not being invited to his wedding in late 2018, after unfollowing him on social media I think weeks or months before; there was seemingly a bit of drama between her and the boys when she left their formerly-shared team/manager and they stayed; and by 2020 she said in an interview that she no longer kept in contact with any of the boys. Two unreleased Demi songs have leaked in the years since that seemed to add more context to their falling out: Ain’t No Friend, which basically said he betrayed or abandoned her when she needed him most, and Big Little Lies, which seemed to confirm that there was something romantic between them at some point, or at the very least that Nick had made empty promises of something romantic happening in the future, and also implied he didn’t tell her about his engagement before the public found out and…kind of confirmed that the news was hard for her (I don’t really want to touch this too much but a lot of speculation exists that Nick getting engaged and Demi almost fatally overdosing like a few days later were directly related events). As far as I can tell they still don’t seem to be on speaking terms today, or at least they never interact publicly despite Demi having positive public interactions with Joe and Kevin since then, but apparently she did go to the boys’ Remember This tour in 2021? So. There’s that I guess.

In what must have been like April 2018, there was a series of pap pics of Nick kissing some totally random girl in Australia or somewhere after he like helped her when she fell off her bike or something???? Idk. The whole thing was very strange and I remember a lot of people speculating that it must be staged bc both the pictures and the whole situation were just so bizarre. As far as I know the girl was never identified and never popped back up with Nick again. Also this was very literally the last thing I heard that Nick was up to until literally like two months later when I heard he was suddenly engaged to a completely different person, which was a fucking insane thing to experience. This man’s life is such an enigma.

Anyway in like summer 2018 he got engaged to Priyanka, who I guess he’d met at some previous time when I wasn’t looking, and then a few months later they got married and now they have a kid. There’s…not much else for me to say about that really lol. The fun of these things is truly in recounting the past messiness, not the current longterm relationship everyone already knows.

SO WE’RE FINALLY DONE! That was absolutely ridiculous and I should be ashamed to have spent so much time on it but here it is. This actually was a really good distraction when I needed it but please feel free to judge me for possessing all this useless knowledge regardless lmao

#thank you for this deep dive into Nick's dating drama because HOLY SHIT

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katyspersonal · 1 year ago

Note

KATY!!!!

You muppet

Gimme your top 5 non-boss Bloodborne enemies 🔪🔪

Hahaha! This is a hard question, because, like... Do I judge the design? The concept? The (presumed) pleasure of fighting them? xD Or, maybe, how good they are from raw gameplay standpoint, without any of our Tumblr sentimental values added? ...so, in the end, I decided to judge on raw personal enjoyment. Here goes!

Five - Edgar, Choir Intelligencer!

Yeah, yeah, NPCs are a weird grey area since they're no regular enemies, blablabla. But, first, I wanted to include at least one Hunter NPC. Two - if I am choosing, it is DEFINITELY Edgar. I enjoyed fighting him on that moonlit bridge..... But, more importantly, I enjoy what this character entails. A player that was only yet to be educated would, soon enough, learn that Micolash has a friend. And then, some time later, the fandom would learn from official materials the character's name and get confirmation for his affiliation with the Choir! I just think that he is THE coolest NPC. Whereas others (looking at the no-dialogue ones in this) would be self-explanatory, with Edgar, there is a mystery that only people with imagination could solve! What else you could've asked for!

Also, I am totally weak for the fact that he does the 'Joy' gesture when he kills us. Way to kill the potential drama of "sparing us from the worse fate" and confirm that you are a simp insane, you lil shit! :pensive: Yet, despite saying less, it is saying more..... Anyways, onto the REAL enemies!

Four - Old Hunter enemy!

They are fuckin' SOMETHING ELSE in terms of aesthetic and behaviour, you know? The bastards have far too much of a healthbar, I will admit, but it is more about the lore... And the vibe. When they are attacking in unhinged, terrifying rage - the beasts (Beast Patient type) cover in fear, that leaves the whole "who is the REAL beast here?" message! They have various weapons and fighting styles. And they have yellow or red eyes variants, that helped me to resolve the mystery of what is under Chester's mask, since he is heavily implied to be from Yharnam and teleported by an Amygdala!

Three - Fishman Mage!

LOVE these guys! ...yes, despite the fact that they keep spamming me with DARN bolt spells and DARN purple homing skulls. But... At the same time, this is so BADASS. I can only speculate and bounce off ideas on why their magic has "wrong" colors; with this type of skulls normally being red and the bolt in Bloodborne normally being blue. But, I love the aesthetic and the cool magic nonetheless. Not to mention the Mystery TM of what is up with their "elongated" heads.

I thought of something akin Lumenweed but more coral-like instead of plant-like, since they seem to pray for other Great Ones to avenge Kos that they "failed" to protect (and since one of Fishmen variants has something similar anyways), but we just don't know! Could be a polyp, could be a fin, could be a Cool Hat...

Two - Clocktower Patient!

The amount of lore per pixel kills me! They have interesting VARIANTS - the regular, the naked, the completely tied-up one, the just-head one, the one behaving like a beast, the fuckin headless walking bodies... The HUGE one, that I fucking bet would be Pthumerians pushed into experiments too, all that.

And, although sometimes they can be frustrating to fight, ESPECIALLY when they come in a crowd, I just love how... "informative" they are? I have not learned more from any other enemy than from these people. They demand a keen eye to decipher no matter what. Like how it is easy to miss that their heads are covered so we can't know what is UNDER the fabric, or the tentacles... But yes, at the same time, the designs and the variations alone are pretty interesting AND scary!

One - Loran Cleric!

Fuckin'. BEST. Display of the fact that what Yharnam is going through already plagued Loran once. Fuckin' AWESOME design. Fuckin' EXTREMELY on-the-nose way to show the "history repeats itself" sentiment. They have ROBES, and they have horns. And they have PYROMANCY... Like other Pthumerians, some Vilebloods (Maria) and, interestingly, Laurence in his beast form, have.

I always found it hard to kill them, because I just could not have enough of their moveset and appearances. They are the enemies I tried to NOT kill for as long as I could afford. Their pyromancy staff gave me idea that Laurence would be using one as soon as he'd get his hands on it, probably in Byrgenwerth + early Church era. I also remember having killed one and spending good 20 minutes just taking pictures, including their cool twisted smiles! I also think that Blood-Possessed Soul is their final transformation form!

_________________

Honorable mention: Church Servants. Of course.

Thank you for the 'some things can only harm you if you are smart enough to PERCEIVE them' delivery, guys.

Thank you for the ask! It was insightful for me too! x)

#bloodborne #clocktower patient #loran cleric #edgar choir intelligencer #fishman mage #old hunter #ask replies #ask meme

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raeloganthesonic06fangirl · 9 months ago

Text

Honestly, this was always one of a handful of observation posts that have scared me more than anything, pertaining to my understanding of the Sonic Lore

The idea that we readily accepted Shadow's memories when it's also been proven since the very beginning that they're flawed and constantly changing minor details ((compare Shadow's recollection of the ARK incident in SA2 and his recollection of the event in ShTH, and you'll notice a change in setting, position, and dialogue that can't be chalked up to translation error)).

The fact that Black Doom's intrusion on his memories in the Lost Impact/The Doom levels have the projection of Maria spouting out strange tidbits of information such as "You used to run so quickly down these halls." and "We used to hide in here all the time!", which really sounds like implanted memories specifically tailored to sound like simple childhood antics.

... Wasn't Maria supposed to be sick with N.I.D.S? What's she doing running around the space station in the middle of the day and crawling into dusty air vents when her immune and nervous system was actively killing her?

I'd argue that Commander Tower's childhood memory of seeing Shadow would debunk that, but that was him recalling a memory from five decades prior from when he was a child younger than Maria

Who was also witness to the ARK Incident, and probably has some damage to the memory itself as he thought it was a great idea to hold Shadow at gunpoint to trauma dump on him before Shadow says that he really doesn't remember any of that and is willing to take responsibility for it once he restores his memories.

youtube

The existence of Commander Tower is the only thing stopping this theory from being totally plausible, and it's flimsy at that. As far as I know, Tower is the only known survivor of the G.U.N. Raid, save for Shadow. His family was wiped out in the crossfire, and he's probably the youngest victim of the Incident. He spent fifty years stewing on that pain. Ain't no way Tower's memory is any more pristine than Shadow's of the ARK.

Also, pretty messed up that Tower is a high ranking official in G.U.N. now, considering what they did to his childhood. The fact that Shadow is also a G.U.N. agent as of Sonic 06 has me wondering if there's just some trauma pipeline for recruits, or they both got accepted as a means to hush them up, since Rouge is contractually obligated to be a treasure hunter for them unless she wants to spend time behind bars for some of the gems she's pocketed before they found her.

Like, these moments are literally one game after another, and I need to know how Shadow was able to land a job after wiping out the battalion:

WHAT SORT OF THERAPY DOES G.U.N. OFFER, AND DO THEY GET DENTAL?

sonic stadium post that has haunted me for years

#Youtube

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flightless-rising · 3 years ago

Text

Made a new Flight Rising iceberg and also wrote an explanation.. man, this took way longer than it should have.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy :D

Iceberg explanation

( If there are any mistakes please let me know and I’ll edit this asap. Also, English isn't my first language so please forgive me for any grammatical errors)

EDIT 28/06: Added some new info! Thanks to everyone who tagged and responded with new stuff to add, I really appreciate it!

The Sky

Naomi

Back in the day, whenever you bought or sold something on the auction house a message would show up in your inbox confirming the transaction. These messages were sent by one of the dragon couriers: Pearl, Spitfire or Edgar.

On January 2016, a strange glitch occurred that replaced the images and names of couriers with the ones of a female fae named “Naomi”.

It goes deeper than that, though: if you looked up her name in the user search menu, a clan would pop up with over 15 million dragons.

It was quickly discovered that all exalted dragons had somehow become part of her clan. Naomi herself apparently didn’t exist, and clicking on her page redirected to an error page. This was later fixed and the original Naomi page can be now visited.

What exactly caused this glitch is still a mystery and today Naomi is still a well-known piece of Flight Rising history.

Missing Tidelord

In the official lore, the deity of the water flight disappeared in early 2018, as described in the short story “Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow”.

In the follow up story (Mixed Elements) posted in April of the next year it is confirmed that the Tidelord is still missing, but alive. This coincides with the fact that the Tidelord account hasn’t made any forum posts aside from festival announcements.

Emperors

Emperors are a type of unobtainable dragon that are formed when several Imperial corpses are left in close proximity to each other, which then fuse forming a multi-headed chimera.

Emperors are described in the lore as having an animal-like behavior and destroying everything in sight. They are extremely difficult to kill, which is the reason why in-universe Imperials have such strange burial rites.

An emperor named Luminax is first described in the Raising a Family short story, and their sprite can be seen walking around on the world map.

The Surface

Old color wheel

Originally, there were only 67 available colors for dragons. On June 8th 2016, 110 more colors were added, meaning that currently there are a total of 177 colors available.

When making a custom progenitor dragon, it is only possible to choose among the 67 original colors because it would be otherwise unfair for those who made their account before the new colors were added.

Imperial breed scrolls

Imperial breed change scrolls are one of, if not the most, rare type of item on the site. They were given only to those who pledged 30 dollars or more on the original Flight Rising kickstarter.

At the time, this was the only way of obtaining an Imperial dragon, which meant that the breed as a whole was pretty valuable. Now that Imperials are abundant this is no longer the case, but First generation Imperials are still extremely sought and probably the most expensive type of dragon on the site.

There were also other items that were only given to Kickstarted backers, namely Skycats, Bonefiend, Golden Idol and Cogfrog familiars, and those are also pretty much impossible to obtain.

Baldwin breed change

When Baldwin was introduced in 2015 he was originally a Pearlcatcher. On September 14th of 2016 however his site art started to gradually change, until his transformation was completed five days later.

In-universe, Baldwin started to change after a lightning strike hit his cauldron during an experiment, which made him slowly mutate into the breed we now know as Bogsneaks.

Trans Fiona

When Fiona was added as a trading post dragon people speculated that she was trans, because the female pose for Skydancers only displays two antennae, while the male one has four.

Since Fiona has four antennae in her site art, many wondered whether it was an oversight or actually intended. Aequorin later confirmed in a forum thread that Fiona is indeed trans.

Boolean

Speaking of rare items, the Boolean familiar was only given to a handful of Flight rising beta testers and as such is extremely rare and valuable.

Plaguebringer coli team

On the Plaguebringer’s page she is listed as being part of a coliseum team.

As of now we have no clue as to why this is, and even more strangely she is the only deity that does this.

Boston & Hope

This story is a bit complicated. I’ve scoured the forums in search of info but it seems like there are still some pieces missing. I’ll try my best to explain anyway.

So, for a long while the Lightweaver was the only deity that had other dragons aside from herself in her lair: these dragons were a Spiral named Boston and a Tundra named Hope. Strangely, they were both Earth dragons and apparently have been there since the beginning (?). When asked why (this happened back when deities would interact on the forums) the Lightweaver responded that they were having a dinner party together.

In August 2014 during a pretty heated dominance battle between Shadow and Light Boston and Hope disappeared from the Lightweaver’s lair.

The Shadowbinder now had them, and both their elements were alsochanged to Shadow. The two deities acknowledged this and changed their broadcast messages accordingly.

If I had to guess this was some kind of inside joke that the admins had, although some people got angry that the Shadowbinder now had both Hope and Boston. Some time later(?) Boston was returned to the Lightweaver and for some reason his element was changed to wind.

I don’t have any more info on the matter but if some of you do I would appreciate it if you tell me.

Shallow Waters

Eyepocalypse

On June 8th 2018 eye type variants were introduced. This update was pretty controversial for a bunch of reasons, and the topic is still discussed today. The majority of people(?) seemed to be upset by the fact the “best” eye types (primarily goat, primal and multi-gaze) could only be displayed on dragons that were born with them, and the fact that every dragon born prior to the update couldn’t have these eye types at all displeased a lot of users.

Another problem was the fact that most of the non-special eye types (i.e the only ones that could be applied to already existing dragons using a vial of Scattersight) were not clearly visible on the grand majority of adult dragons.

A smaller(?) complaint was that two of the primal eye types, Shadow and Plague, were seen as kind of disturbing by some people.

Three years later staff attempted to fix this issue by adding Eye type vials for every available eye type. This resulted in a market crash for special eye typed dragons, as now these eye types could be applied to any dragon. The value of Scattersights also tanked, and the people bought them and hadn’t used them yet lost money as now they were infinitely less useful.

EDIT 28/06: Goat isn’t actually obtainable via breeding, faceted is. Bad mistake on my part.

Also, Scattersights were given away freely by Galore on Flight Rising’s fifth anniversary in 2018 and could not be bought afterwards. I admit that I thought people could be able to buy Scattersights due to how upset people were that the value went down, but whatever.

Courier Breed

The courier dragons (Edgar, Spitfire, and Pearl) are part of an exclusive dragon breed that is currently unobtainable. Even though their eye color still reflects the flight they were born in, in-universe they are considered to be “neutral” and they are granted free access to all domains. This raises the question as to which deity created them, as every other dragon breed (Bogsneaks being the only exception) has been created by one of The Eleven.

Multiaccounting

According to the site’s terms of service, no one is allowed to have more than one account. This is pretty standard for pet sites, as having multiple accounts grants unfair advantages and can mess up the site economy. This doesn’t completely stop people for having more than one account, and the practice as a whole is called “Multiaccounting” or “having multis”.

Some people only do this to have multiple clans or reboot their account without deleting their old one. They mostly do no harm but it is reasonable that the site wouldn’t allow this because of how easy it is exploit.

The real harm of multis comes from a practice called “funneling” which is when someone creates multiple accounts only for the purpose of giving items to their main account. This practice violates the game’s rules and can result in a ban. Funneling is not limited to multiaccounting though, and having an account only to feed another is against the site’s rules whether or not the account in question belongs to another person or not.

Some people fear of being banned for multiaccounting even if they haven’t done so, especially if they share a computer with other people.

Purble

“he purble” is probably among the most famous Flight Rising memes.

In 2016(?) a rant was submitted to the original Dramarising blog by a very angry user that wanted to buy an XXX Purple Ridgeback back when triples were pretty expensive, but got beat by someone else.

I’m not going to copy paste it here because in my opinion it’s one of the funniest Flight Rising related posts ever and I don’t want to spoil the experience of reading it for the first time. You can find it pretty easily by searching it up.

Tert Picking

This is something that refaced recently, even though I’ve seen people talking about this for a while. Some people vividly remember being able to pick their custom progenitor’s tertiary color, even though the developers have made it clear that such thing would be impossible. This is without a doubt just one of those weird situations where a lot of people somehow remember the same thing wrong.

Still, it’s fascinating just how many people claim to remember doing picking their tert.

Swiftwings

Swiftwings were a dragon breed that was scrapped in development. The design was rejected because it didn’t fit the 2 arms 2 legs 2 wings format that every dragon design had to follow before the introduction of ancient breeds.

The reason for this rule is that otherwise it would mess up apparel placement. Although the concept was scrapped, echoes of the design were scattered throughout the site: for example, the empty dragon slots that were present prior to 2019 had the silhouette of a Swiftwings dragon. They are also mentioned in the April Fool’s update of 2018.

“Real” Lore dragons

Most people don’t know that some of the dragons featured on the lore stories are actually real, and you can visit their pages. This is the case for Tetra, Cracklinne, Velya, Liefa, Garote and Mirth, which are currently chilling in Aequorin’s lair.

All of the other dragons in the developers’ lairs are not canon and are used to test bugs and features on the site.

The Middle ground

True deity names

When the site first started the deities used to have actual names instead of titles. Some of these names were based off of the site founders’s usernames on other sites.

The names are the following:

Amogayvhi - Gladekeeper Xhaztol - Arcanist Rhenik - Tidelord Akiri - Flamecaller Thrage - Stormcatcher Undel - Shadowbinder Jhortanas - Plaguebringer Ghurab - Windsinger Artaios - Earthshaker Rhiow – Lightweaver

As you can tell, Xhaztol, Akiri, Thrage and Undel are the usernames of some of the admins of the site, and the flight they are a part of corresponds with the previous name of their deity.

No leg coatls

On January 16, 2015 an iconic thread was posted in the flight rising discussion forum, which displayed a photoshopped image of a coatl with its legs removed. Quickly the thread devolved into a general photoshop thread were people took official site art of dragons and modified it.

The thread was eventually locked due to spam and quote pyramids, but spiritual successors of the original “phoatlshop” thread still exist today.

Dress slot unlocking

A thing that a surprising amount of people don’t know is the fact that when buy an additional apparel slot, the slot opens for every dragon in your lair and not just the one you bought it on.

This is something I also discovered very recently and it’s kind of funny that so many people that have been on the site for very long don’t know this.

Clanbound scatterscrolls

I think the wiki explains it best, so I’ll just copy paste this here:

“Tri-Color Scatterscrolls suffered from an issue where they would only scatter a random range from colors 1-47 (white through sunshine) rather than 1-67 (white through rose). They have been fixed and are now functioning correctly with a random range within the 67 color set. The affected timeframe was from August 15th, 2013 until September 22nd, 2013. The admins allowed users who were unsatisfied with their bugged Tri-Color Scatterscrolls to receive the same amount of them back in the form of Clanbound Scatterscrolls to try scattering their own dragons again with the full color range.”

Beta Mirrors

Ever wondered why they’re called Mirrors?

According to Undel, the main artist of Flight Rising, mirrors originally were supposed to have every part of their body “mirrored”, meaning they had two sets of eyes, two pairs of wings, two tails, and so on.

This design ended up being too cluttered and looked weird shrunken down. The name was kept the same, even though the only mirrored part of the design are the eyes.

Dragons are evil

If you read the “Beastclans on the rise” lore bit, the dragons come across as… very evil, stealing territory from the beastclans when they have been living on Sornieth way longer than the dragons have and killing them for loot.

Furthermore, in the Bounty of the Elements lore bit the Beastclan rebellion guided by Talona is seen by the dragons as unreasonable and wrong even when in canon Beastclans are framed as the innocent party.

The Depths

Scroll of Divorce

In the alpha stage dragons were supposed to be monogamous and could only breed with the dragon they were “paired” with. To break their bond you had to use an item called “Scroll of Divorce” which even featured broken marriage rings in the art.

If I had to guess, this item and the concept as a whole were scrapped because the idea of dragons having “weddings” and needing to divorce before breeding with another dragon felt kind of weird, especially in a game targeted towards teens.

First Festival

The first Holiday festival in Flight rising history was the 2013 Brightshine Jubilee. The items that were available for this festival only are incredibly rare, particularily the Light Sprite which is one of the most valuable items on the site. Apart from that and the fact that the skincent contest only had 6 winners, not much is notable about it.

Offsite drama

Flight Rising has had its fair share of drama both on and off site, but due to the fact that it’s against the site’s rule to discuss user drama on the forums most of the notable drama happened off site (mainly tumblr).

Egg rot

Egg rot was a very early mechanic that was pretty quickly removed from the site. If you forgot to incubate your eggs, they would “rot” and no longer hatch.

It’s the reason why in the nesting grounds the text reads “Eggs healthy” and also the reason why on the stats section of the Account settings it says “Eggs discarded”. The mechanic was removed because it heavily punished casual players and the frequent downtimes of the site meant that even if someone logged in every day they could still have their eggs die.

Also, the images of egg rot look extremely cursed.

Pablo

From what I could gather, Pablo is a dragon which became somewhat popular after user “Desmondtiny” wrote a very long and detailed backstory of them being the Arcanist’s lost boyfriend.

I’m pretty sure it gues deeper than that but I couldn’t find any further information. As usual, if you know something more let me know.

Latest News

On November 12, 2014, a glitch(?) occurred that let anyone post in the Announcements thread. Anything that was posted went directly to the front page, which resulted in quite a bit of chaos.

This was fixed only half an hour later, but the screenshots people have from that time are extremely funny.

Lameforger

On the 2014 Flameforger’s festival announcement Undel accidentally misspelled “Flameforger” as “Lameforger”, which prompted the official account of the Flamecaller to respond aggressively. Lameforger is still jokingly used by users, even after the typo was fixed.

Festival of one (1)

On the first day of the 2014 Greenskeeper Gathering a glitch occurred which switched the site banner for the Starfall celebration banner instead of the Greenskeeper one.

It didn’t end there, in the coliseum Magical shards dropped instead of Bladed Flatleaves, even though skin chests dropped as normal(?).

The weirdest thing about it all was Joxar’s Space inventory, which didn’t display any items at all and had glitched dialogue.

The event was nicknamed by the fanbase “Festival of 1” and even the deity’s official accounts acknowledged the incident.

Vape Juice

As far as I know the original forum thread as been lost, but the vape juice fiasco will always remain cemented in Flight Rising History.

A company called Vape Daugz was making vape juice with Flight Rising dragons plastered on their packaging, completely violating the site’s policy.

The company’s site still exists, and browsing through their products I found that the products that previously had Flight Rising dragons on them still exist, but now feature completely different packaging.

I have no idea whether they changed the packaging spontaneously or staff did something about it.

I think there’s a potentially interesting story buried down there, but we’ll likely never the truth behind the Flight Rising vape juice.

The Abyss

Humans

There’s been some speculation over the years as to whether or not humans are canon in the Flight Rising universe. Some people believe that the “Mages” of the second age in the official lore are actually humans, but we can’t be sure because they are depicted with long robes that cover their whole bodies.

The idea of humans existing in canon has spawned a couple of memes, most infamously Thomas.

Plague healers

Again, I think the wiki explains this one better:

“According to Aequorin, Plague healers are an interesting bunch because rather than administer treatments that counter illness, they use a mixture of magic and contagion that stress the affected dragon further, allowing them to reach a stronger, healed, and resistant state faster than other elements. Plague healers will treat physical injuries with sutures, bandages, and braces, but they won't clean the wounds or apply ointments."

Akitla

As described in the original thread, Akitla was a dragon that user “qunii” saw on the front page, but noticed that she wasn’t accompanied by the username of the person owning them.

After clicking on her, an error page loaded. It was discovered that putting her color combination or ID in the search bar would result in an error page. This was later fixed, and both Akitla and her mate were now displayed as being exalted to the Arcanist. T

here are some theories as to what happened to the Akitla’s user, some think that she belonged to a deleted account, others that it was the result of an incomplete account creation.

As with a lot of things on this iceberg, it will likely remain a mystery forever.

Arcane sprite book

“what is the arcane sprite reading??” is probably one of the oldest still active threads on the forums.

On September 25, 2013 user “Kaadashi” started a joke thread were they wondered what exactly is the arcane sprite reading, and playfully suggested that it could be erotic fanfiction. People went crazy of course, and started to wonder what kind of juicy secrets were hidden within the pages of that book.

I don’t want to say too much because I really don’t want to spoil the experience of reading through this very cursed tread.

Sunshine

Sunshine is one of the most… interesting lairs on the site, and certainly one of the most well-known.

They(?) have a lair (almost) completely full of triple basic sunshine dragons, most of which are Tundras. So far they have collected about 320 triple hundred Sunshine dragons, almost all of which are also named “Sunshine”. They’re not all the same, some of them have apparel, some of them are gened and some have unique art and descriptions.

They’re dedicated and I respect that.

EDIT 28/06: Apparently some people seem to think that the sunshine-dedicated lair is based on a meme concerning the announcement of the color wheel expansion, which became so discussed that the itself site broke. The two things are unrelated however, as the Sunshine lair has been around for much longer.

The announcement of the color wheel expansion was cryptic, with only a few post showing off differently colored coatls and then 3 pages of reserved posts, with no explanation whatsoever.

Simple Farmer

Another very famous thread is the “I am but a simple farmer” thread started by user “someKindOfGenius”. It’s not really about anything specific, it’s just a rather silly thread were people photoshop flight rising dragons onto various crops.

Still, this thread is iconic so I had to include it.

Dragon Deaths

Way back in 2014 former flight rising programmer Thrage revealed on a forum thread that way back before the beta, dragons could actually starve to death if left unfed.

Yep.

Obviously they had to remove this mechanic because it would have been extremely harsh to casual players and make people frustrated with the game.

Zalvador

User “manojalpa” became fairly well-known for the extremely dark lore they(?) had written for their Clan, it was so dark in fact that every single one of their dragon’s bios had to moved to their tumblr where they couldn’t be easily seen by the site’s mainly underage usebase.

Their lore centered around their progen dragon, a tundra named Zalvador, which behaved and had the same powers as a flight rising user: buying dragons off of the action house, having “breeding projects”, exalting dragons, etc.

These things seem pretty normal when done by a player, but when taking them as actual real things that happen in universe… yeah, it was way too morbid for the site.

The Pit

Black linen neck wraps

For some weird reason, the apparel piece “Black linen neck wrap” when put on a male pose Coatl wraps around the dragon’s throat instead of it’s neck. It’s kind of subtle and hard to see, but if you compare it with the female pose the difference is clear. This is probably just an art error, although it’s weird that it hasn’t been fixed yet, since linen wraps are a very old piece of apparel.

Another weird thing about linen wraps in general is that the wing wraps just sort of… go through the membrane? This is not possible. These dragons are in pain.

Icewarden ears

Another very remarkably popular thread is the Icewarden ears thread.

In 2014 user “Llanai” simply makes note of the fact that the Icewarden has teeny tiny ears.

As we have come to expect from these threads, it quickly devolved into nonsense.

Forbidden Snapper lore

Snappers used to have a way different lore section that was changed because it deemed too similar to the lore of another petsite.

This is what the original section read:

"Snapper dragons do not sleep, but exist in a constant state of reverie. They receive and catalogue all experiences and stories told within their dreams. This persistent state of awakened dreaming awards them the longest memory of any dragon species. They are living encyclopedias, and any dragon who is seeking difficult-to-obtain information will have the most luck unearthing it from a Snapper clan - provided they have the patience for it. If you want two dozen quick answers, talk to a spiral. If you want a fully developed answer, camp out around a Snapper. These dreamers move at their own pace, which varies from dragon to dragon. For some, the awakened dream can prove to be more interesting than their surroundings. This leads to a focus upon the dream, and the waking world as filtered background noise. Interacting with these sleepwalkers can be a trying and repetitive task. Other Snappers may be fairly lucid, with a focus upon their surroundings and the constant hum of the dream pushed aside."

Bee movie script

I’ve seen this story around the forums a few times but I’ve never been able to learn the details.

From what I’ve heard someone copy pasted the entire bee movie script into their clan bio in a drop down text format, which completely broke the page for anyone who visited it. This was fixed, apparently, although I have no clue as to who this user is.

EDIT 28/06: Zeus

Zeus is an XXX gold g1 permababy imperial that used to belong to user "happywing".

Their account is now locked because Zeus was created with the use of a duplication glitch on an imperial breed change scroll, which is obviously not allowed (although I've heard some people say that the dragon was hacked in altogether). Before the account was locked, people speculated that Zeus was the most valuable dragon on the site, because an XXX g1 imperial is impossibly rare.

Wegg shaming

On July 2017 user “Dreamnorn” made a thread were they(?) claimed to have a dream where everything was the same except people used the term “wegged” when two dragons would lay only one egg in a nest.

Ex. Aw man! I’ve been wegged again! = Aw man! I bred two dragons and they only had one egg!

The dream ended up being prophetic, as the term catched on and people started to use it unironically.

The practice of “Wegg shaming” I think refers to the trend of people posting pictures of the dragons that “wegged” them in order to “shame” them.

Plague nest skull

The site art of the plague nest features an unique dragon skull that doesn’t match with any currently existing dragon breed or creature: It appears to have two sets of eyes, like a mirror, but also long and curled horns.

It’s probably just for decoration and it likely doesn’t have any significance whatsoever, but personally I believe it would be pretty cool if when they eventually release plague ancient it at least somewhat resembled this skull.

EDIT 28/06: On second thought, the skull doesn’t seem to have two pairs of eyes, It just has the generic shape of a carnivore.

Rock bottom

CAPTAINPLANET

…this is CAPTAINPLANET. Somehow, user “Decres”' managed to overlay a Fae skin on top of a Tundra, creating this horrifyingly fascinating abomination.

I have no idea how she did this, and she seems pretty adamant to tell.

EDIT 28/06: People have pointed out that this skin overlay glitch was actually somewhat common (although I still haven't found another dragon like CAPTAINPLANET). What you had to do was breed change a dragon while attaching a skin to them in another tab.

This glitch has been patched and such thing is no longer possible.

Lair 46264

A cursed lair.

Dreams

I’ve seen a lot of people, both on forums and on Tumblr, sharing dreams they had about Flight Rising.

A lot of people dream of just being on the site, while occasionally weird things happen.

I’ve read of people who dreamed the distribution of a new breed, buying an exclusive item, a new Fiona feat or Swipp trade, or just browsing the forums.

The most common type of Flight rising-associated dream I’ve seen however is being caught multiaccounting and having their account banned.

I’m no psychoanalyst, but I think it’s pretty clear that these nightmares stem from the paranoia of being banned from their beloved petsite instead of showing any actual intention of doing the “crime” in question.

Anyways, I think it’s fascinating how so many people dream about this site, and it reminds me of the dreams people claimed to have about Mario 64 where completely new levels were added or a scary monster appeared.

Dragon Slime

Dragon Slime was an infamous thread which was supposed to be start off point for an ARG.

It was deleted because it was considered too “spammy” and also because ARGs are banned from the forums. The thread has been lost, unfortunately.

EDIT 28/06: Thanks to @randompurple-fr for providing screenshots of the dragon slime tutorial! You can find them here

Cucumber

Cucumber is the only dragon ever to have been exalted with a skin, which is something that should not be possible. This raises some questions as to what exactly did the person that exalted them do to achieve this, but we have no way of knowing who Cucumber belonged to.

EDIT 28/06: Actually, we do know who used to Cucumber belonged to! Its owner was Osiem: an official flight rising artist. I couldn’t find the thread where they(?) acknowledged the glitch though, if someone has it please let me know!

#flight rising #fr #flight rising meme #iceberg meme

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alastanor · 4 years ago

Text

In less than a week my feed has been plagued by the "hot takes" of entitled fans of the Hazbin and Helluva universe.

As a result, I know I promised some analytical information regarding what we know of Hazbin's version of hell thus far, which will be included in this post. But there will be some other things added as well to address some of the more frequently expressed "concerns" I have seen being (rather rudely) expressed in posts.

Some of the things I will be talking about in these posts, so while I will be utilizing quotes or things said in @total-mal 's very well articulated response post, I recommend going to read that response post in it's entirety. Like... now.

The complaints I tend to see typically fall along these lines.

So in this post I will be addressing these things and other things I typically see.

Story

As was very well put in the aforementioned post, the series of Hazbin barely has an hour of content. Yet for some reason people complain that it's a mess. How?

The Pilot itself is meant to establish the setting, who the characters are, what their relationships to each other are, establishing dynamic, and establish the premise of future story that is meant to follow. All of these things the pilot did exceedingly well. A pilot is NOT meant to drop dozens of hours worth of world lore and future plot points in one half hour segment. It is supposed to hook people into being interested in and watching the follow up episodes. Which, considering the rather quick cult following that preceded the pilot debut, I would say it did that and more even without the world lore dump people are demanding.

No story is going to give you every facet of the characters and the world they inhabit in the first episode or the first novel. No story worth it's weight in salt, that is. Any good story teller will tell you that content needs to be put on an IV drip as the story progresses, or else you will lose the majority of your audience's interest.

Helluva Boss is it's own standalone project set in the same universe as Hazbin, but it's job is not to provide lore for Hazbin. The kernel of lore we got from episode two was great. But that is very likely not going to be the norm every episode. Nor should anyone expect otherwise.

The comics were also their own projects, meant to strengthen an already existing narrative with Hazbin and establish both Angel and Alastor's motives for joining the Hotel. They are not meant to expand on the lore. Their existence could also very likely be overlooked by fans who only pay attention to what is popping up on Youtube or on their Twitter feed.

As for Addict, that began as a fan-created song Vivzie liked enough to animate into a music video which expanded on Angel and Cherri's relationship. It was not meant to be an entry to any Vivziepop Hell lore.

Hazbin is a story driven by its characters. This is why the characters are the focus and take up the majority of any screen time given to any entry of Hazbin. Mal puts it very well:

World

So this is where we will be getting into what we know so far about the world of Vivzie's hell.

So Vivzie's hell is, from what we understand, loosely based on Dante's inferno with other inspirations and deviations mixed in. For example, there are only seven circles of hell as opposed to 9.

In Dante's inferno only circle two through five are after the Seven Deadly Sins. Whereas in Vivziepop's version of hell, every circle is for one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

From what we understand so far, Pride is the top circle, or Ring. Sinners, AKA those who were alive prior to becoming demons, are only allowed to exist in Pride.

We do not know what "can only exist" means. As this doesn't imply that sinners can't leave Pride. Simply that they cannot exist anywhere else.

And also from what we understand, the big marker that differentiates each of the circles is the colors of the sky.

Pride, from what we have seen thus far, has a red sky.

While Greed has a green sky.

This is further confirmed on Twitter, however whether it was confirmed by Vivzie or one of the other official Twitters, I cannot recall.

Now, I know there are quite a few who keep asking this question.

And there are many who seem to think that this little detail means that the fact dump from official Twitters means the story and lore are ruined. This is actually false. Especially when you consider that Sinners are not a finite population. Nor is their influx a small trickle. So expanding Sinners into other parts of hell is only a temporary solution to a more overarching problem. It may slow down the necessity for purges, but it would also increase the number needed to be purged each time a purge was necessary. Further, it is doubtful that Lucifer would be keen on the idea of angels traveling deeper into Hell just as it is doubtful that he sees a reason to be exceedingly merciful to sinners- the creation he detests and is more or less what brought him to Hell to begin with. It also would erase any place to escape for Hell-born demons.

So in this regard, no. Nothing is ruined. People just aren't paying attention. The devil is in the details, after all.

As for what the difference is between circles and rings, perhaps this will shed some light.

Rings seem to be segments of a circle that separate sinners by the subcategory of their sin in each circle. Whether or not Vivziepop's version of hell follows this, I personally doubt it. Ring and Circle, from observation, seem to be used interchangeably. So the two could very well be the same thing.

The other bits we know are lore facts Vivzie has given previously that may no longer be true as the world exists now. For example, previously Alastor was scared of dogs. But more recently, Vivzie said that is no longer true and Alastor simply just does not like them. So any older facts should be taken with a grain of salt until they are reconfirmed.

Switching gears on the world, there have been complaints popping up that Vivziepop's hell is not "hell-y" enough because there is not enough fire and brimstone.

To take a phrase from total-mal once more, there are countless alternate depictions of hell as hell being other people instead of the place itself. The phrase exists from Sartre's No Exit, but has been revisited numerous times in other media depictions of hell to display that the definition of "punishment" can be broadened to a much larger spectrum than originally imagined.

In the Hazbin universe of Hell, punishment is the constant threat of physical and emotional harm from those around you, not unlike being in prison or living in a ghetto. You have the increased potential to be abused or taken advantage of if you show a moment's weakness.

And while some in the demon hierarchy might have it better than others, there is still the constant threat of being killed or overthrown by someone stronger or someone just wanting to prove themselves.

In the Hazbin universe of hell, you wear clues to your life, your sins, and your death on the outside for all to see (and in some cases, manipulate). You are thrust into a demon hierarchy one wrung up from the lowest class, unless you are lucky and strong enough to become an overlord. In which case, then you are two wrungs up from the lowest class. And your punishment is living every day with the constant threat of those around you. Of always needing to have your guard up because someone will take advantage of you or worse. That isn't even mentioning the annual threat of the purge.

Livestreams

This is another one that I see get mentioned and awful fucking lot in the complaint/concern/hot take posts.

There are always complaints about how the livestreams are useless, serve no purpose, or are just "jerkoff sessions." Mind, these same complaints almost always seem to come from the same people complaining about having no information about the show or having no lore surrounding the universe or the story.

Nevermind that Vivzie and the cast are all under NDA and cannot disclose much that isn't already known about the show and, where VAs are concerned, cannot do any voice lines that go beyond what has already been said in the pilot lines.

The Livestreams serve SEVERAL purposes, however. One of those purposes is to drum up interest surrounding Hazbin and Helluva, as well as to advertise and to disclose any lore that they have permission to disclose to the audience. Something to whet their appetites as they wait for the small Indie studio A24 to finish production of Hazbin's first season in the middle of a pandemic. Because that last bit people seem to forget is still ongoing.

Without those livestreams done by Viv and the cast, many of the impatient fans in this fandom would be practically breaking down the door on Vivzie's DMs demanding to know where Hazbin is or why she seems to have given up on it. Or at least, more than what is currently going on now anyway.

People need to calm down, let the Devs do their job, and pay more attention to the details given in what we have thus far. Vivzie has done a GREAT job at eluding to the bigger picture in her details. Particularly where her characters are concerned. And I for one am here for it.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel fandom #hazbin hotel info dump #hazbin hotel discourse #hazvin hotel discussion #helluva boss fandom #helluva boss discussion #helluca boss discourse #vivziepop fandom #vivziepop #hazbunnies #entitled fans #impatient fans #toxic fans

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felassan · 4 years ago

Photo

The rest of this post (quotes from the article) is under a cut due to length. [source]

(There are discussions of colonialism under the cut / in the article.)

After speaking to various devs who worked on MEA I’ve learned quite a bit about what happened here. First of all, there were several more species designed for this galaxy. One writer lists having proposed “five or six” new alien types, while another states that the ones BioWare opted for in the end were specifically chosen for being in “cosplay-safe” territory. Another dev mentions that an entire system was constructed just to facilitate communication between species who were indigenous to Andromeda and those who had arrived from the Milky Way. The “species who were indigenous to Andromeda” part is important, given that there were also different ideas for how to handle first contact - making the Pathfinder a violent colonist who shoots first and asks questions later wasn’t something that was set in stone from the get-go.

“I think it was a project that couldn't have possibly lived up to expectations,” Neil Pollner tells me. Pollner was a senior writer on Mass Effect 3 before going on to write parts of Andromeda. “Not just the high bar of the original trilogy, but the logical expectations anyone would have of Mass Effect going to a whole new galaxy. Because the scope of [the first] Mass Effect was so incredibly massive, there was an inherent promise that you'd be getting a massive new experience with a ton of new things in [what was supposed to be the first] Mass Effect Andromeda - new species, new lore, an entire new galaxy at your fingertips, etc.

“But we were only given the budget for two new species, plus the Remnant. Not to mention that we couldn't even include all the Milky Way species. And we weren't going to be able to let you travel throughout the galaxy. This meant that we had to develop the story around some pretty glaring inorganic limitations. So, not only did you get something that felt (and was) much smaller than what you got before, almost everyone playing the game probably had something that they really liked about Mass Effect that just wasn't there.”

Pollner goes on to explain something I mentioned above - that there’s an inherent disconnect between making your character an explorer in a game where the vast majority of gameplay involves killing. “Ryder the explorer should have a challenging and dynamic first contact experience,” he explains. “Instead, you're almost immediately killing kett. So, some very basic pillars just weren't lining up.”

When I ask about the fact that several species had apparently been cut from the game - something I had already learned in previous interviews - Pollner assures me that I had “no idea” of what was dropped in the early days of Andromeda. He also lamented the iconic narrative and branching complexity of earlier BioWare games, stating that he wishes the team had been able to maintain the same level of variation, options, and consequences as the revered RPGs the studio was known for.

“The other BioWare Montreal writers and I were dreaming up and developing things for Andromeda months ahead of Edmonton officially starting the project - i.e. before the budget and scope had been decided/communicated,” Pollner says. “We just knew that we were going to Andromeda, with almost nothing else established, including even when in the timeline it would happen. And we set out to brainstorm and grow ideas that could organically serve that general premise. “That first contact expectation I mentioned? We'd developed ideas for how the player would navigate that. We were working on a process for the Milky Way species to learn how to even communicate with the new alien species. We were developing several additional species for the new galaxy, as well as several different storylines for why the expedition had been undertaken. Most of that pre-development work ended up not being used.”

“I proposed five or six new alien species when Andromeda was in its infancy, and I still think they had a ton of potential,” Hepler says. “[Ex-BioWare writer] Jo Berry came up with a few, too, they were awesome.

“However, I'm pretty sure those ideas are still property of BioWare, so even though I'm 100% certain they won't be used, I can't talk about them without getting some kind of permission.”

Given that Pollner had his own ideas for new species, and that Hepler had “five or six” on top of a “few” more from Berry, it’s reasonable to conclude that concepting was done for up to ten additional species that never made it into Andromeda.

“I remember some early concepts that were pretty out there,” Dorian Kieken tells me. Kieken was a design director at BioWare Montreal for Mass Effect 2 and 3 before being promoted to franchise design director at the beginning of Andromeda’s development. “One of the strengths of the original Mass Effect trilogy is that you can actually cosplay most of the alien characters - except the Hanar, although I wouldn't underestimate the creativity of some cosplayers. The intention in Mass Effect Andromeda was to introduce new races that would still be in the realm of cosplay, which is probably why more crazy concepts were abandoned.”

I was surprised that this was even a consideration, so I followed up. Kieken assures me that after Andromeda’s two new races had been decided on, their evolution of their design gradually went into more “cosplay-safe territory,” with the team consciously steering away from “jellyfish” types of aliens. “In the early development of the game, we explored a lot of new species. I'm not sure why we settled on the specific number that were in the final game, but my guess would be a mix of production reasons and having a reasonable amount of races to deal with knowing we were already bringing quite a few from the Milky Way as well.”

As Pollner mentioned earlier, the team only had the budget for two new species plus the Remnant. On top of that, they weren’t able to bring all of the Milky Way species, which corroborates Kieken’s recollection of why so many species were cut.

Given the context of these conversations - species being cut from Andromeda, first contact being muddled with militance, and even cosplay potential governing alien design - I also ask why, in the devs’ eyes, Andromeda was poorly received in relation to the original trilogy.

“I think it’s more story-related than setting-related,” Kieken says. “Andromeda has strong core gameplay that improved a lot over the trilogy, but the story didn't feel as strong. I didn't connect with the new character cast as much as I did with the original trilogy.

“It's also not a fair comparison as the trilogy is three games, so you have a lot more exposition and time to bond with the characters. That being said, I seem to recall a stronger rollercoaster of emotions in the original trilogy, which I think led to more memorable moments. From the tension of almost blowing up Wrex with your shotgun or gathering everyone on a suicide run, to the lightness of listening to Mordin sing ‘I'm the very model of a scientist Salarian’ or shooting cans with Garrus in the Presidium.”

Pollner also explains why Andromeda was perceived so differently from the original trilogy, citing differences in the amount of time the team were given to make the game, but also noting that the core issue was more systemic in nature.

“I think the thesis statement for why is that the Mass Effect trilogy was an incredibly demanding endeavor,” Pollner says. “The checks that were written for it, the complexity of the experience was insanely massive. The team worked their asses off non-stop for so many years, on back-to-back-to-back games. The prospect of doing the same thing again was not only exhausting to imagine, but totally impractical. Some of the ‘lessons’ learned from the original trilogy are ones that are important for game development but result in the player experience being less. When you're talking about triple-A development, the original trilogy is actually the anomaly, not Andromeda.

“Because I moved on from BioWare after my work on Andromeda was complete, I have no idea what, if any, future plans there might be. At the time of my departure, there were none.”

It’s worth noting that Pollner is clear about Andromeda being better than a lot of people give it credit for. While some of the concerns people had have now been verified by people who worked on the project - that there could have been more species and that the core premise of Ryder the explorer becoming Ryder the killer is inherently flawed - the team still worked hard on delivering an ambitious game within the constraints of what they were given.

“I find the game to actually be pretty darn fun, and once the technical flaws were ironed out, and the initial reactive disappointment faded, the game does stand on its own,” Pollner says. “There's some really good stuff in there.”

[source]

#bioware #mass effect #mass effect: andromeda #video games #colonialism cw #next mass effect #long post #longpost

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trickstarbrave · 1 month ago

Text

tbh if we're gonna discredit sources as inherently biased we have 0 sources for nerevar at all.

the source of nerevar being called the son of boethiah is apart of the five songs of wulfharth that is not widespread. the typical version of it is that voryn dagoth lied about the location of the heart of lorkhan and everyone left really pissed off at having been played. the song about the actual battle of red mountain does have a lot of credibility and gets very esoteric discussing dragon breaks and lorkhan even alludes to things covered in shor son of shor. i dont even have time to get into all of it because its about as dense as the 36 sermons of vivec

the battle of red mountain was an absolute clusterfuck no one can agree on likely because using the heart of lorkhan created a dragon break. linear time was established specifically to keep lorkhan dead and fucking around with him or akatosh too much breaks linear time. it broke when the numidum, originally designed to be powered by lorkhan's heart was activated and it also broke when a bunch of assholes tried to purge the elven influences from akatosh by a weird monotheistic cult. it is not unreasonable to conclude it likely broke then too, and given lorkhan/shor is pretty in line with other deep lore texts, it has some merit. it is not "nords just being biased against the chimer" when most nords do not know that song nor would they believe it.

sotha sil's memories are cut off and disjointed, and someone's mortal memories might not be entirely without bias. they are also, by and large, colored by sotha sil's sense of guilt and inadequacy. he has ruined his relationships by being too distant and cold and its likely a speech nerevar gave to try and hype him up was given immense importance because he betrayed nerevar on some level. either by literally murdering him or breaking the oath he made to nerevar and azura to never use the tools

the ashlander story was told to them by alandro sul who was literally blinded by wulfharth and might not have actually seen what happened and the "official" source was told to a dissent priest supposedly by vivec. and it starts with "Who can clearly recall the events of the distant past" But you have asked me to tell you, in my own words, the events surrounding the Battle of Red Mountain, the birth of the Tribunal, and the prophecies of a Nerevar reborn. Here is what I can tell you." and it also does not even really mention how nerevar died outright, but it is implied voryn killed him and then escaped given nerevar never comes up again

theres also the khajiiti account of the battle of red mountain but i have been struggling to make sense of it if im being honest. they also showed up. because why not

""Statistically the chimer were assholes" nerevar is the exception, and that's why he was killed." i dont think so. there are a lot of other reasons nerevar would be killed. for one thing he didnt want people to use the tools. for another he was the one who proposed allying with the dwemer and the dwemer proceeded to build a giant world ending robot 200 years later. im sure that wouldnt have gone over well with the chimer people, and the tribunal could have seen it as a mercy kill to end his life and make him a martyr rather than have his reputation go in disgrace. or the accounts that he died in the battle of red mountain could very well be true.

but we do still have the player character's experience becoming hortator and i don't think you can become hortator and be an objectively good person or particularly nice. the only source that is 100% objective truth in TES lore is what we see the player character do. and the player character lies, cheats, and steals in their mission to prove themself to be nerevar reborn. which was an intentional choice

im not gonna say the chimer/dunmer are not unfairly categorized as bloodthirsty savages but that is less that they arent and imperials/nords are unfairly biased but more so the fact that the dunmer are very obviously based on north african and middle eastern peoples and the game came out right after 9/11 and was written by americans. almost everyone in explicit canon we the players can see who opposes imperial occupation is either powerless or is portrayed as insane and bloodthirsty because there is an implicit expectation in the writing that the empire is, despite its horrific faults, "good". which means yeah the writers' intentions was def that nerevar is a blood thirsty warlord and kind of an asshole

i always imagine the heart of lorkhan had a sort of irresistible pull to everyone around it. once you find it and see it, you want to use it. you need to find some way of using it. you will stop at nothing to discover its secrets. it is a pull no mortal can resist. its the literal heart of the world. it wants to be used.

which is why its fun to imagine why the fuck nerevar seemed immune to it. he is the most power hungry dude around at that time. he went from a caravan guard to king. you dont just do that by accident. even if it didnt have an irresistible pull its weird to go "huh. why is that"

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demons-fanatic · 4 years ago

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Rosaria: Our Lady, Holy Mother

So, I've been replaying Dark Souls 3 and during so, I've honestly been realizing way more about some characters and really indulging in them. One of them is Rosaria, Mother of Rebirth.

Warning: Spoilers for Dark Souls 3 for the ENTIRE post below!

In Dark Souls 3, there's a particularly interesting character named Rosaria. She leads a covenant called "Rosaria's Fingers" which are directly opposed to the Way of Blue and Blades of the Darkmoon. Which leads us to our first major point; Who is Rosaria and why does she hate the Gods?

At first glance at her character, Rosaria is really dark. As in literally dark, her black clothes, black hair... etc. Opposed to the Gods who are usually represented by White or Divine Colors(See Gwyn's Family) and I'm not sure if it's really intentional but it is something that is obvious. Next, what exactly does Rosaria represent or what is her place in the Dark Souls world? For this, we must look at a Japanese Myth.

The Story of Izanami(伊弉冉尊) and Izanagi(イザナギ) is the basic creation Myth for Japan. They were both the first Man and Woman, they created the first land. They did so with a Spear that was gifted to them and then created the Great Sea. They birthed two children, Hiruko(蛭子) and Awashima(粟島), Hiruko in particular meaning "Leech Child". After giving birth to Kaga-tsuchi(火之迦具土, Literally "Shrine of Flame"), Izanami dies and is sent to the Underworld, becoming the Goddess of Death. Izanagi comes to look for her and while going there, Izanami tells Izanagi not to look at her. However, he does anyways revealing the Underworld has permanently obstructed her form. This terrified Izanagi and he left her in the Underworld. After this, Izanami proclaimed she would kill one thousand people a day but Izanagi said he would father a thousand and five hundred more a day. They were officially divorced in this event.

As we can tell, there are a lot of interesting things we can gather once we connect Izanami to Rosaria. And you might be asking... can we even do that? Well, yes. Rosaria is connected to divinity in some way. Only large people are seen to be deific and once we get Rosaria's Soul(I'll get to that later) we can acquire Gwynevere's Miracles meaning even if she wasn't a god, she was heavily connected to the Gods in such a way she knew and or used these Miracles. It is also worth mentioning that Leonhard calls her a Goddess, but that could be due to his adoration. The other connection is that in some way, Rosaria was betrayed by the Gods so badly she now garners followers in the hopes they will kill members of Royal Covenants and steal something taken from her, tongues. Another connection is Hiruko and the Slug in Rosaria's lap, Hiruko was considered inadequate as a Child and deformed, as you can tell the creature that lays on Rosaria is definitely a deformed creature, similar to the Man Grubs, possibly her Child as it is the biggest(this has no evidence what-so-ever). The last connection is also something pretty interesting; The Deep and the concept of "Kegare(穢れ)".

This leads into a lot, so be wary of this part if you want to read it. So, in Shintoism, water is a very important part of the entire thing. Along with this is the concept of purity through flowing water or "Harae(祓)". Flowing things, especially water, is clear and clean unlike still water which collects grime and impurities. Of course, you want to be clean, right? Well, this is the concept. Flow is good, stagnation is bad. While we are stagnant, whether spiritually or physically, we collect impurities and do not really do anything. You may ask... How does this relate to Rosaria, specifically the connection of her and Izanami? Well, let's look at the place she's at. I don't even mean her room but the entire location. The Cathedral of the Deep is full of Kegare, absolutely full of it. All of the water is disgusting and muddy and mucky, poison comes out of the faucets and the foundation of the Cathedral is sinking. The entirety of the Deep is also just Kegare, but I plan on making a post just on that. So, yes, Rosaria is surrounded by Kegare and so was Izanami. The Underworld filled her with impurities and deformed her entire body. Rosaria seems to be very dirty herself, in her hair is slime and she lacks a tongue, which was stolen from her. Both Women are considered deformed and dirty and are surrounded by stagnation. Rosaria herself does not move and only sits in her Chamber, same with Izanami only staying in the Underworld, stagnating, in a way. Now, this is not extremely high evidence but it is an interesting connection that could explain Rosaria's role and some of her inspiration.

Next is another connection but this time it's in the Universe. This one is quite obvious if you've played Dark Souls 1 and this is Rosaria and Anastacia. Both scenarios play out very similarly. Their Souls are stolen by Men who bring their Souls to Anor Londo but for different reasons. Lautrec's is actually never stated and thusly is unrelated. But Leonhard's is because he wishes for no one else to have her. Claiming that you and most likely everyone else will just steal it too. Why they have similar plotlines, I have no idea and it doesn't really make sense. Though, it is possible that Rosaria is a Firekeeper of some sort as she can Respec(reset skill points) the Player Character and the only other Character's in the series who can do that are Firekeepers. However, her Soul doesn't look like a Firekeeper's(reference below)

(Rosariaiis's Soul)

(Fire Keeper Soul)

Admittedly, it does look like a bit of Humanity is swirling in her Soul, compared to others but, who knows. She probably is a Firekeeper but we'll probably never get an answer on that. And by the end, Anastasia does have her tongue back but for some reason Rosaria does not and it is absolutely not clear why this is the case.

Next, let's talk about the bit of lore she does have. It's said that her tongue was stolen from her First Born and that could be a lot of people. First off, it does imply more Children and that does fit with something later. So, who is this first Child? Well, most signs point to Aldrich, whose Bodily slime is actually near the doors of Rosaria's Chamber, this proves not a lot but given the fact Aldrich is a cannibal, he definitely did something to her whether or not it be he stole her tongue. But of course, why wouldn't he eat all of her? It's kind of confusing and this part of the lore is extremely lackluster and even if you think about it you can't get anywhere.

Next, let's talk about her Covenant, but before we do that let's ask another question. Is Rosaria someone we have seen before? Well, if you're telling yourself "Hm, she sounds like she could definitely be Gwynevere" you'd be right. Not that she is Gwynevere confirmed but more signs point to yes than no... Let's go over the evidence:

Is a Goddess

Connections to Miracles about Gwynevere

Connections to the Old Gods in some form

Has Children(Amazing point, I know)

Have Magical Abilities

GNow, I know this isn't much but all together it is pretty telling evidence that something is afoot with the connections. Your first thought of it being against is "Oh, well yes it's possible but isn't Gwynevere like 40 feet tall" and well, no, not really. Even in DS1 this can be debunked in the same room(sorta). We all know Gwynevere is an illusion, so how do we know her real size? Well, in the Ornstein and Smough Boss Room we see these statues .

As we can see, Gwynevere is almost as tall as the Gwyn statue which is basically built to scale. Presumably, anyways. And as we can see, Gwynevere is not as big but she is pretty tall. Now, let's compare it to Rosaria(with Player scale too):

(Source)

As we can see, this height is actually plausible. Rosaria isn't actually that much taller or bigger. Her legs are long and torso about the same size. The next point against it though is the names... Rosaria is obviously not the same as Gwynevere. But, assuming that if you're running away from your family, you'd change your name too. And the Miracle she gives with her Soul, Bountiful Sunlight, which mentions Gwynevere's occupation as a Mother and Wife. This obviously fits in with Rosaria's mentioned child and children, assumedly. But, it's never said that she was married. But, Gwynevere is married, to the God, Flann. They could be hinting at the fact that either Rosaria is Gwynevere's daughter or her, herself.

Another suspect of who she could be is the Queen of Lothric. We know the Queen left after her Husband became mad with the power of the Dragon. There is also evidence for this. Gertrude, the Heavenly Daughter, is said to be the Daughter of the Queen, Rosaria is surrounded by Man-Grubs that are reborn via her and there is actually a Man-Grub near Gertrude's cage. The Queen is said to have several Heavenly Children and the Queen is also compared to a Goddess of Fertility and Bounty(Gwynevere). Rosaria is considered a Goddess and the Queen was worshipped as a Goddess for sure. Another Child of the Queen is the Dancer of the Boreal Valley, how do we know this? Well, the Dancer's Soul gives another of Gwynevere's Miracles, Soothing Sunlight which explicitly states the Dancer is a member of the Old Royal Family, at least for the most part as in it's in her tree. So, how does this connect back the the Queen and Rosaria? Well, it's very much told this way with Miracles the Queen is the Daughter of Gwynevere, who was also her Maiden and carried on the stories of her Mother to her Children. This does make the most sense in comparison to her actually being Gwynevere, but, options. Rosaria's tongue though is still a mystery, I have no idea if her firstborn(presumably Lorian or Aldrich but... that has no evidence) stole her tongue and if that's the case, why. It could just be apart of the hellscape that is Dark Souls 3's lore.

So let's talk about the covenant, Rosaria's Fingers. As to why they are called as such, I am actually not sure and it honestly seems to hold no important to what I see. The member's of this Covenant have a prefix regarding names of specific finger's, somewhat. Yellowfinger is not really a finger. There's also the symbol for the covenant which is actually the Papal Cross of the Christian Religion and is the Emblem of the Pope, there is actually a Pope in Dark Souls 3 in the form of Sulyvahn but there seems to be no connection other than Aldrich being connected to Sulyvahn and that's really it. Rosaria's Fingers collect the tongues of their foes, which are the Way of Blue and Blades of the Darkmoon, two covenants that are explicitly connected to the Old Gods. Obviously, this tells us that Rosaria not only hates the Old Gods but it's possibly they are the ones that stole her tongue from her. Meaning her firstborn is most likely connected to the Old Gods, but as given before, that was obvious. It is either that or the Old Gods have disrupted her in some other way. In other aspects of the Covenant, Rosaria gives the option of Rebirth(or Respec'ing) which basically lets someone reallocate their skills, what implications this has in the universe is completely unknown and is probably just a way to make yourself stronger. You can rebirth yourself in-universe until you become a Man-Grub, and it's basically literally what the name implies. But the descriptions imply it might not be that simple. Some of them wield staffs that cast holy spear spells to protect Rosaria. Why she can do this is not clear, nor why it happens is not clear either. It doesn't seem that she hates her subjects or anything of the sort, so it could just be a curse she has given her abilities.

Rosaria doesn't really have a lot to her character, along with that she barely has lore, unfortunately and all that can be gathered aside from the only clearly stated things is guesswork and it's not that much fun. The only cut things that have come from her is a cut Boss Track related to her(interesting to note this track IS similar to the Dancer's who is interestingly not a Boss at first), whether she was the boss or not, is not clear.

Unfortunately, this seems to be all that Rosaria has to her but if you know anything else or want to correct some information for me please do so! I'll gladly edit something things and I might add more. My next post is hopefully going to be the Angelic Faith of Lothric and the Primordial Serpents.

#Dark Souls 3 #Dark Souls III #DS3 #Dark Souls Lore #Dark Souls Theory #Soulsborne Lore #Soulsborne #rosaria mother of rebirth

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sanstropfremir · 3 years ago

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by request, the first post-kingdom stage roundup! this one is a best to worst by group!

some introductory notes:

i’m not going to be ranking the 100sec stages in here because they are too different of a scale. but i will be talking about them as a part of the process. i’m not going to be including the team stages here either, since i talked about them in my episode seven and eight reviews and i do think they stand separately from the individual group stages, because we don’t know who the creative teams were behind them. this is not meant to be an overall best of all the performances, i’m intending this more to be a look each of the groups’ stages overall; seeing how they adapted and improved and how effective the trajectory of their journey as a whole was. also, a very important definition to make right at the start so i don't have to explain it every time: by ‘worst’ i do not mean the stage was actually bad. by ‘worst’ i literally mean ‘not the best.’ if i break it down, i’m ranking these by ‘most amount of successful components’ to ‘least amount of successful components.’ there were no stages that were actually bad or unwatchable; they were all successful in one way or another, but some of them more so. i’m ordering these in my own personal ranking of reverse who did the best overall, which obviously is not how the actual show rankings went down, but we all know my thoughts on the official rankings.

in case you want to catch up and read my more in depth thoughts, here’s all of my episode reviews: one, two (with added tbz costume breakdown), three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, ten! oh and also here’s my very first review of the dance solo performance film, since i’m also going to be referencing this a bit.

tbz

monster - the least involved with their overarching story concept and it’s stylistically the most interesting because it’s a departure from the glittery royalty concept we have primarily seen them in. it also helps that it’s a great song that they did a relatively good cover of.

kingdom come - the solidity of the choreo is the thing that puts this stage up here, because it’s some of their best. and it’s not as explicitly reliant on the game of thrones theme as their other stages.

o sole mio - this has real potential as a good small concept vaudeville themed stage; it starts off really strong and then they blow it by shoehorning in the unnecessary lore.

no air - they tried to start off with a big conceptual bang in the first round with a semi-explicit narrative, but it relies entirely too much on the viewers knowing the references for it to make any sense.

to be honest, i’m not that surprised about how tbz constructed their stages and how they turned out. i know a lot of people have been disappointed with how lackluster their stages have felt in comparison to their rtk ones, and i think that’s fair because i agree, i don’t think they ever captured the same energy they did for danger or for shangri-la. if you’ve been following along (or have just read all my reviews now) than you know most of my complaints about how tbz have been working with their lore and concepts, so i won’t rehash them here. but i do think it’s warranted to point out that theoretically, being first in rtk would logistically put you at the bottom of the initial ranking for kingdom. i know they’re not technically the youngest group, but in the execution of their stages in comparison, it does make sense to me that they come out looking as the most inexperienced group. even though they were intending to have a similar overarching story like they did on rtk, it was not at all very fleshed out and there wasn’t a strong enough connection between that story, the themes of their stages, and the narrative shapes of those stages. which is a shame because they are not unskilled performers, and they have the most members of all of the groups on the show, so they had a lot of opportunity to be doing interesting choreo and blocking work that never seemed to materialize. i also think they never truly got used to the size of the stage in comparison to the rtk stage, and they were always struggling to fill it in an intentional way. they tried valiantly to recoup their ground and bring everything together in a full circle for their last stage, and even though they somehow came in second, i think by the finale they had been worn down and lost a lot of their steam. it also doesn’t help that they lost a member to injury right near the end, which can be very demotivating, especially for a young group.

skz

god’s ddu du ddu du - the most stylistically different and interesting of the bunch, with a lot of interesting elements and well designed movement, even if the overall arc was half baked and lackluster

i’ll be your man - this was an actual attempt at a departure from their normal bluster and even though it never makes it all the way there and they don’t do that great of a cover, it’s different enough.

wolfgang - although watchable for hilarity and/or cringe value, nothing about this stage demonstrates a significant amount of growth from the first one. it fact it just feels like they injected a load more money and time into the premise of their 100sec stage, without any of the reflection that this kind of circular final stage concept should have. it’s exactly the stage of a group that’s been propelled to first in every round through an artificially inflated system.

god’s menu/side effects - the most scattered of all their stages. there’s not quite enough material to tie everything together and it feels underformed.

we all knew what the outcome of the show was going to be the moment that very first round of fan voting came in. now i don’t actually care about final outcome of the show, because the most valuable experience of a show like this is learning from what your competitors around you are doing and how to improve your work for further rounds. if the ranking system had been solely expert + judges based, all of the weekly rankings would have looked a lot different and skz would have actually had a chance to grow from this experience. but because they have the biggest and most aggressive fandom, their stages constantly ended up in first place and they never actually had the opportunity to sit back and reflect on their performances to figure out how they can do better. because the truth of the matter is that they did not have the best performances on the show. they consistently made stylistically stagnant stages and never managed to correct any of the issues that have been plaguing them since the 100sec round. the closest they got was god’s ddu du ddu du, which was aesthetically the most different and had the most interesting subversions of the stage format, even if it ultimately fell flat because they still missed the mark on managing the shape of the narrative. if you watch all their stages back to back you’ll see that there’s an overreliance on the same types of stylistic decisions and thematic elements, including in the sound and feel of the work. this is a bit hard to explain, but even though the stages all look different, they don’t convey any nuanced emotion or intention other than ‘stray kids world domination.’ now nuanced intention is not necessary for a kpop song performance, but skz took it upon themselves to try and tackle some fairly complex thematic ideas, which is commendable, but they fall flat because the members themselves don’t know how to act. and acting is supremely important when you are doing themed stages. i talked about this same principle in this response about orange caramel and wjsn chocome, but most newer idols don’t approach performing as a character, they approach performing as themselves, and skz are big victims of this. that’s why even i’ll be your man, where they do actually attempt to be a bit more nuanced in their delivery, still comes off like all their other stages. they don’t ever push themselves beyond their performance boundaries (physically yes, obviously. i mean mentally) and so every stage has a little checklist of skz-specific personality traits that round out in the bigger picture to the same general feel. this kind of strategy works great for music shows and for general promotion because it’s super marketable, but in this particular setting, where we spend an extended amount of time with all the groups, it doesn’t facilitate the same amount of growth that letting those of personas go would.

ikon

at ease - really clear cumulation of their performance, group colour, and design elements over the entire show.

classy savage - well designed and decorated with an interesting concept, but has a few flaws that keep it from being their best work.

inception - again, very well designed; the set is so inventive and features a lot of carefully blocked movement, plus the colour palette is tight and used effectively, it just doesn’t reach the same scale as the latter two stages.

love scenario/killing me - it’s the first stage and it clearly suffers from a bit of underd evelopment as they were getting used to the format of the show. it’s still an interesting and well performed stage with the start of elements that we can see them develop further in the next rounds.

ikon had the most lackadaisical attitude toward the whole show, which i think was the best way to approach it, but also they didn’t really push much beyond their boundaries as performers. i’m not faulting them for not wanting to, they’re a very well established group and honestly don’t really need improve on anything. they did however, do a really great job of improving on their design quality and intergration after the first round, which is the one thing that this program definitely facilitates for. they’re also the only group where their finale stage was demonstrably their best stage, so they really did nail that slow improvement progression. they got what they wanted out of the show, which was new friends and a chance to make some fun stages that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to. like i think i’ve said in every other review, there’s not that much to say about them as a whole because they just put their noses to the grindstone and did the work while maintaining a chill and fun demeanour, and those efforts paid off even if they didn’t end up ranking very high.

sf9

the stealer - great integration of theme into narrative and design, small scale concept with big impact.

believer - smart use of camera work and choreography in conjunction with the design elements. although not very narrative focused, it’s a clear and thoughtful elaboration on their intro stage that’s very well executed.

move - a risky choice that pays off fairly well for them, even if it doesn’t capture all the depth that it could have.

jealous - it’s their first stage of the competition and the first time they had worked on something of this scale before, so it only makes sense that it’s the weakest of their run. despite that, it shows a strong understanding of an unusual concept and it still holds up.

sf9 were the clear underdogs of everyone and the rankings pretty clearly reflected that. but as a group they really put in the work to improve their skills and i think they showed the most dramatic improvement of everyone, especially between the first and second rounds. they repeatedly made comments about how they were focused on creating good stages and it paid off. their stages were all conceptually and visually interesting without relying on much external lore or overly dense themes, even if some of them were more effective than others. they had a lot of strong emphasis on costume in particular and they were very well styled. their finale stage was a very clear synthesis of all of the experience and knowledge they gained over the course of the show and it wraps a neat aesthetic and thematic bow on their journey. they absolutely did not deserve last place; they were the ones hardest hit by the fan voting system and i hope that the group doesn’t internalize the official outcome too much, because they did a lot of good work that they should be proud of and deserves a higher due than it was given.

ateez

rhythm ta - simple concept with a clear narrative that uses a lot of visual referencing as exposition without being cluttered and too reliant on the source material. impeccable use of limited design elements to create atmosphere and it’s a strong reinvention of the song.

wonderland - an absolute banger of a first stage that does all the same things as rhythm ta just to a slightly less polished scale.

ode to joy - both stylistically and tonally a departure, this stage relies a lot on group lore but also has a very clear message that was surprising for its maturity and temerity.

the real - purposefully pulled back in scale and ambition as a pointed critique of the competition as a whole. looser in design aesthetic synthesis but has more freedom for the members to show more dynamism in the group’s abilities and colour.

the youngest of the six groups, i don’t think anyone was expecting ateez to come out swinging in the way that they did. oh, we were all expecting them to put up a fight, but i know that i wasn’t expecting much beyond the capabilities of what we’d seen from skz and tbz, since they all share the dubious honour of being similar aesthetic performance based fourth gen groups. but oh baby did they prove us all wrong. the fact that they have incredible performance abilities and stage presence is what carried them half of the way, but they also proved to have a top notch creative team working behind them that knew how to visually craft a great performance. wonderland and rhythm ta are two of the smartest designed stages, and i’d put rhythm ta as the best designed stage, because it does so much in such a small amount of time. this ranking was tough because all of their stages intentionally prove a point and i dont think there are any that are demonstrably weaker. wonderland and rhythm ta served to prove that they had the capacity to keep up with their seniors, and that they were ambitious and hungry and had a solid team foundation. both stages ranked them first in non-fan judging and once they saw how the fan judging skews the final results, they smartly and ambitiously made a choice in the round BEFORE the finale to make a stage that rebuffs the laurels of the competition show they were at the pinnacle of, specifically for their fans. there is so much care and thought put into the ode to joy stage that it feels wrong to rank it as their third best, especially when it also contains one of the greatest 40 seconds of acting i’ve ever seen on a kpop stage. just the dichotomy of the stage’s melancholy feel with the choice of song is so compelling, and in its context as a part of the whole now the show is over.... i’m out of words. the brain on the person who came up with this, i would LOVE to talk to them. and having the real as a followup stage? where they have the freedom to have fun and be stylistically themselves while thumbing their noses at the show? a perfect follow up and rounding out of the expression of their abilities.

btob

back door - perfect. simple concept and simple narrative extremely well executed. excellent attention to detail and atmosphere.

show and prove - perfect reflection of their journey on the show as a whole.

blue moon - same as back door, just with a slightly larger scale.

missing you - only last because it doesn’t have the same strength of narrative and design concept as the other three stages. it’s still a better stage than 80% of the stages on the show.

we all know this, but btob are the real kings. all of their stages were phenomenal and they all hit my personal top ten, so this ranking is more of a ‘which stage was the best of the best.’ they did an incredible job of playing to their strengths and they knew exactly what they needed to do in order to craft the best performance. this was actually very difficult for me to decide because they never fucking missed. watching missing you for the first time in like two months smacked me right upside the head because that stage is beautiful. the intro in the forest with changsub and eunkwang is fucking gorgeous; the lighting and atmospherics are so effective and the trees do an incredible job of obscuring the stage architecture. and their costumes. this stage screams elegance in a way that no other stage managed to capture and this was the first round. and i’m putting last on this list, which should be telling about the quality of their work. and honestly it only goes up from here. they took that one maybe valid expert critique that they got of utilizing more narrative and they RAN with it. i put back door as first because it juuuuust inches out blue moon and show and prove for smart camera work, but honestly all three of these stages could take top spot, they’re of equal rank.

btob came into this show at a pretty distinct disadvantage: they’re old, and there’s only four of them. and as we know, thanks to rtk and the fourth gen groups, this show has a reputation for big acrobatic blowout spectacles, which is just not something they can do. but they also had a distinct advantage: they’re old and there’s only four of them. they very smartly foresaw that they wouldn’t be able to compete with the fourth gen groups in athletic ability, so they specifically chose to highlight the areas they were the strongest in, which you can see right from the start. their intro stage specifically highlights their vocals, and even in minhyuk’s dance solo the design is music show themed, as a gentle reminder that they know how to work a stage. and as the show progressed they started to solidify that assumption. they used narrative extremely well to give their stages an element of emotional investment that kept the audience engaged without banking on individual idols’ popularity to keep them afloat, and spent their time on the show being gracious and generous competitors, intent on being as watchable offstage as they were on. and it worked. by the time the finale rolled around, we knew who these men were and we had seen them be individuals, so they were able to cast off the need to play to narrative and to character and instead they were able to loop back around to that very first stage; simple, clean, emphasis on vocals, with a very important addition of uniformity. the current trend in kpop costuming is to have group members dressed similarly, but not exactly the same, partially in order to be able to everyone apart, but also because the ‘sameness’ of the boy band model has fallen by the wayside. btob took all their previous stages where they had clearly been individuals and as the culmination of their journey they chose to look exactly the same, to clearly send a message that they are a singular unit and they are proud of that. and they absolutely stuck the landing. this was a perfect run for btob, they should be really fucking proud of the work they did.

#kingdom #kingdom review #btob #ateez #sf9 #ikon #the boyz #stray kids #why yes i am peddling the alexander moment again thank you for asking #ranking the btob stages was SO HARD #actually ranking a lot of these was really difficult because most of them are really good #this was a really interesting exercise and i would actually recommend going and watching all the stages back to back if you have time #because you can really see the development in some of the groups #this is only 3.5k so its on the shorter side #tomorrow is the my personal favourites roundup!#kpop analysis #text #very happy to keep talking about things if people have their own post-show thoughts they want to share!

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dingoes8myrp · 4 years ago

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An Examination of Joss Whedon

On February 11th, Charisma Carpenter made a post on her Instagram account detailing mistreatment she experienced on the sets of Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Carpenter worked on both shows from 1996 to 2004 and attributes this mistreatment to show creator Joss Whedon.

On the same day, I made a post on my Tumblr and my WordPress accounts regarding my stance on this topic. I felt it was important for me to post something quickly due to the large number of Buffyverse followers and mutuals on my Tumblr.

I was overwhelmed by the likes, reblogs, and comments this post received in less than twenty-four hours. I’m so glad so many people support Charisma Carpenter and others who are speaking out about their experiences.

Workplace mistreatment is insidious, and too often the systems in place to mediate these situations are designed to protect the employer rather than the person experiencing mistreatment. This happens everywhere in every industry. When people in the public eye draw attention to these issues it helps bring awareness to everyone and encourages societal change.

In today’s climate, social media moves faster than legal or internal HR systems. This means, more often than not, accusations spread, opinions form, and action is taken long before any investigation can occur. Because of this, it’s important for people to seek out the facts themselves in order to stay informed or make decisions about who in fandom they choose to support or not.

I’m going to go through various tid-bits I’ve seen over the past twenty-five years regarding Joss Whedon’s behavior, which prompted my quick response to Charisma Carpenter’s post. I feel it’s important to share this with those who may be new to the fandom, or those who doubt Charisma Carpenter’s claims and those of others.

The Bronze

Before there was Twitter, there was The Bronze.

The Bronze was the official online gathering place of Buffyverse fans. Joss Whedon and others involved with the shows occasionally popped in and posted, interacting with the fans. There was speculation about the trajectory of the show, discussion about lore, fan theories, and behind the scenes rumors.

I didn’t learn about these forums until I was in high school (from 2002 to 2006) and I never posted. I just read up on the fun factoids I could find. I wasn’t a heavy Internet user back then. We had one computer in my house and it was shared with my parents. I was only allowed on for so much time per day, yada yada.

I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the first shows – if not the first – to utilize this kind of creator/fan interaction. It wasn’t a regular thing back then.

The vibe of these forums was very laidback. When someone directly involved with Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel posted (known as a V.I.P.) it was with a very casual, unmoderated tone. There was no screenshotting every word to be saved for later. Someone from the media couldn’t grab a comment made and spread it across the Internet in real time. There were mailing lists – collections of email addresses for people who wanted updates on show spoilers or particular non-show activities of various actors. Fan letters were still a thing – actual snail mail letters you could send to actors and writers of the shows. Things moved slowly, and there wasn’t as much transparency as there is on the Internet today with sites like Instagram and Twitter.

In a series of posts made on November 6th, 2001, Joss Whedon reacted to the airing of the musical episode, “Once More with Feeling.” He called it “the biggest undertaking of my life,” but expressed his appreciation toward the UPN network, the cast, and crew – particularly Anthony Head, Amber Benson, and James Marsters. He calls Anthony Head “the golden throat” and writes of James Marsters, “And James, who always tells me to do everything I dream of, then brings that intense voice and those cheekbones along for the ride.”

All he writes about Amber Benson is, “Amber… just, you know… Amber….”

Alarmingly absent from his praise is star Sarah Michelle Gellar, who “went back and forth” over whether or not to sing in the episode. “I’m not a singer,” she told EW. She didn’t feel prepared enough and “didn’t feel confident.” As someone who broke out of her comfort zone and pulled off a wonderful leading performance, Gellar was certainly deserving of some acknowledgment.

Seemingly realizing he neglected to mention Marti Noxon, Whedon tacked on, “Do you know anyone that hot who can run a show? Do you? I don’t think so. What a voice.” At the time, alongside comments about James Marsters’ cheekbones and being “a little gay” for Anthony Head, this seemed to be an attempt at an edgy complement (though a little cringey). Marti Noxon was a new showrunner for Buffy, taking over for Joss. Referring to her as hot rather than praising her work is a little demeaning, in my opinion, particularly when it was up to him to make sure she was respected and taken seriously in filling his shoes.

On May 22nd, 2002, Whedon posted about “the gay thing” – probably not for the first time. Regarding some fan reactions to the death of Tara Maclay, Joss wrote, “I knew some people would be angry with me for destroying the only gay couple on the show, but the idea that I COULDN’T kill Tara because she was gay is as offensive to me as the idea that I DID kill her because she was gay. Willow’s story was not about being gay. It was about weakness, addiction, loss… the way life hits you in the gut right when you think you’re back on your feet.”

Keep in mind, at the time, Willow was one of the first gay main characters – if not THE first – on a major primetime show in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. Having a gay couple on a major show like this was not a regular thing, which made the shocking death of Tara and the dark turn of Willow particularly hard-hitting. While Whedon isn’t saying anything particularly inflammatory here, it does show a sort of crass attitude toward the removal of this representation from the show, which had become so important to so many fans – and still is now.

There’s not a lot of meaty information to be found that I could dig up, but I wanted to give people an idea of this landscape back in the day. I picked out those particular Joss Whedon posts because they show a very casual disregard for the women involved in the shows – an insidious and subtle thing, but it’s there.

Fighting with Buffy

Jeff Pruitt was a stunt coordinator on Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 1997 to 2000. He also happened to be romantically involved with Sarah Michelle Gellar’s stunt double, Sophia Crawford. Both would exit the show by its fifth season. According to Pruitt, it was not an amicable exit.

Pruitt claims he and Crawford were treated badly on the set, that Crawford was “one never ending injury” and she had “reached the end of her rope.” He said that they were threatened and blackballed when they made attempts to leave before the 100th episode. They got an opportunity to work on Dark Angel, but the people at Dark Angel supposedly received a phone call from “someone high up at their studio” and were told not to hire Pruitt and Crawford. He suspects this was to keep Sophia Crawford from leaving Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Their firing was unceremonious, according to Pruitt. “Sophia was told point blank that she was being fired because she knew too much about things,” he claimed. He said Joss Whedon and Jane Espenson threatened Crawford, saying if she spoke about what happened on set she’d “never work in this town again.”

Jeff Pruitt spoke about “sneaky politics” behind the scenes, saying “there was something weird going on” in the months leading up to his and Crawford’s exit. Pruitt claims Sarah Michelle Gellar was a “spoiled starlett” and that she was “out to get” him and Crawford. He attributes statements he made in private emails that were later read by Joss Whedon to his firing.

It’s worth noting that many people have stated that Sarah Michelle Gellar is undeserving of a “diva” label. When asked in 2004 what it was like working with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Julie Benz said, “She’s extremely talented and generous. Her reputation is just completely untrue. Unfortunately in Hollywood if you’re young and female and you have an opinion you get labeled a diva or something…else. Sarah’s an amazing talent, but she got labeled.”

In a 2013 interview on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, Alyson Hannigan answered a series of rapid-fire questions about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When asked who was the most “annoyed” by the end of the show, she said, “Sarah,” referring to Sarah Michelle Gellar. When the audience booed, Hannigan clarified, “Well, she had a big career going, and it was a lot of work.” When asked when Gellar started to “hate” the show, Hannigan quickly said season three. In a later interview for Huffpost Live, Hannigan clarified her comments further. “[Sarah Michelle Gellar] worked her butt off,” she stated. “She worked eighteen-hour days for years.” Hannigan said she wouldn’t have classified Gellar as “annoyed,” saying, “she was super professional.”

Honestly, I’m Team Sarah on this one. I couldn’t find corroborating sources for Jeff Pruitt’s claims of her “diva” behavior, but I found several sources stating otherwise. Gellar did confirm during a cast reunion that she may have oversold her stunt experience, which ultimately would have meant more work for her stunt double and the stunt coordinator. It seems to me like this set everything on a bad foot with that team. But, the reasons Jeff Pruitt and Sophia Crawford gave for their exit had little-to-nothing to do with Gellar.

Vincent Kartheiser

Vincent Kartheiser played Connor on Angel, and he did a number of interviews talking about his experience on the show. I picked his interviews because I’ve always found him to be very candid and he doesn’t seem to shy away from uncomfortable answers to questions. A few of his answers provide a little insight into the mood on the set at times, and Charisma Carpenter’s attitude.

When Charisma Carpenter was pregnant on the show, she had a storyline that heavily involved Connor, so the two spent a lot of time working together on set. He was asked about her pregnancy and how it affected filming. In a 2003 interview for BBC Cult, Kartheiser said of Carpenter, “she was a great sport and would suck up the pain even though you could see that she was in it.”

In another interview for Angel Magazine from the same year, he said Carpenter had “an abundance of energy for a working, pregnant lady who, right in the heart of her pregnancy, they put her in so much.”

It’s worth noting Vincent Kartheiser had his own issues with the show. “What really made me interested in Angel was the idea that as a show, it changed so much and all the characters could change so much,” he told Angel Magazine. “It wasn’t that clichéd kind of ‘show up, do your thing, go home’ all the time.” Unfortunately, the potential that interested him never came to fruition for his character. “As the season went on, we never really got to deal with the relationship problems between me and David,” Kartheiser said, referring to David Boreanaz as Angel. “I never really got the opportunity to bond with any other characters.” He expressed a feeling that there was nowhere for his character to go and that Connor’s motivations seemed to change from week to week. “There were parts of the season I didn’t have the opportunity to stretch,” he explained, “that it felt like I was doing the same scene over and over.”

Vincent Kartheiser did a later interview with Giantmag.com where he reiterated some of these frustrations. For him, the character of Connor started to get stale early on. “Every week I’d show up and have a scene with Cordelia,” he said, “then Angel would show up and I’d have some sort of conflict with him. There’d be a couple of fight scenes where I’d fight with them even though I didn’t want to and then I would sulk and leave. That to me was every episode.” He felt the writers had written Connor “into a corner” and that fans responded poorly to him.

When comparing his experience on Angel to his experience playing Pete Campbell on Mad Men, Kartheiser expressed a lackluster feeling on the set of Angel. “There was a real sense on Angel that people were just doing a job,” Kartheiser said of the set. “The grips, the DP, even the directors would kind of just show up, do their job and go home.” This atmosphere is a direct contrast to what had attracted Vincent Kartheiser to the show in the first place. “On Mad Men we also have Matthew Weiner on set all the time whereas Joss [Whedon] was hardly ever on Angel,” Kartheiser explained. “I think Joss was doing Firefly at that point and was in love with his next project. I had a friend who filmed a few episodes in the first season of Angel and said everyone was invested and there was crazy energy, so maybe I just came into it late.”

Kartheiser also delved deeper into his frustrations over the direction (or lack thereof) of his character. “I let them know right off the bat that some of the choices they were making [about Conner] were wrong,” he said. “I showed up to play that character and I had a lot of ideas. And they didn’t like any of those ideas.” As a result, Kartheiser said he got “jaded” and “angry” at the show. “I felt like it wasn’t a collaboration, that the people I was working with didn’t care to take risks.”

In hindsight, he went on to say, “I was never a fan of Buffy, I’ll say it straight out. I was never a fan of Angel. I always found it hard to say Joss’ words.”

From all these comments, both from the beginning of Vincent Kartheiser’s journey as Connor, and from a few years after the show ended, it seems like he was excited for the opportunity, but ultimately disappointed with the overall experience. He also revealed how uncomfortable Charisma Carpenter had to be during filming while she was pregnant, but noted her energy and attitude were never a problem.

Farewell Cordelia

Prior to Charisma Carpenter’s official exit from Angel, her character arc had taken a very strange turn and Cordelia had been ominously left in a coma. Concern grew when Charisma Carpenter was not included in the cast of season 5. In a 2003 interview with TV Guide Online, Joss Whedon stated, “The Angel/Cordelia [love story] had gone pretty much as far as we wanted to take it” and that it wasn’t popular with the fans. “It just seemed like a good time for certain people to move on,” he continued. “Not completely, obviously. I’m hoping that we’ll get Charisma to do some episodes as Cordelia sometime during the year.”

TV Guide asked, “Isn’t that a disservice to fans who invested all those years in the character and her redemption? It seems an odd thing to do to the show’s leading lady.” Whedon responded, “That’s a fluctuating concept, the leading lady thing. And it is a little odd. Some choices are ultimately kind of controversial about who stays and who goes and who we focus on. But obviously, we had to have her out of a bunch of episodes toward the end of the year because she was having a baby… so what we had [leading] up to it wasn’t a dynamic I wanted to play out that much.” When asked if things were left on good terms with Charisma Carpenter, Joss Whedon stated he wouldn’t discuss that in an interview.

From Charisma Carpenter’s perspective, she was uncomfortable with Cordelia’s storyline prior to her coma and her death. “It was creepy,” she said of Cordelia’s relationship with Connor. “Connor was Angel’s son and half my age.” Carpenter stated it was important for her to return to wrap up the character’s storyline. “We didn’t want to just leave Cordelia in a coma,” she stated. “Whatever happens after this, I’m open. But it’s just best this story be [resolved] now. Otherwise, it’s a disservice to the fans of our show.” When pressed regarding whether or not she’d return to the show, Carpenter replied, “I don’t think it’ll be necessary. You never say never. However, at this point in time, I don’t see a future for her.” She continued with, “I feel like Joss feels – the Cordelia stories have been told. There were no other directions to go with her.”

Carpenter’s final appearance as Cordelia was an emotional experience. “We’ve been crying for the last two days,” she said in a behind-the-scenes interview. “I’m so physically drained.” She wasn’t the only one affected, either. “The director was crying, the crew was crying, we were crying,” she said. She called it a sad goodbye personally, professionally, and story-wise.

Working with Joss Whedon

Over the years, Joss Whedon gained a reputation for being unconventional to work with. Many actors from the Buffyverse have said they were unhappy with their characters’ creative paths. Sarah Michelle Gellar felt season six “betrayed” who Buffy was, saying she had to be “talked off a ledge” a number of times during filming.

Nicholas Brendon felt the character of Xander was “underrated,” particularly during season seven. “Joss did have a talk with Sarah and I because he was kind of contemplating the idea of Xander and Buffy ending up together at the end of season seven,” Brendon told AV Club. “We were both for it, but then that never came to fruition and I lost my eye.”

On an episode of Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, James Marsters said he was “terrified” of Joss Whedon. “I wasn’t designed to be a romantic character,” he explained. “The audience reacted that way to it. And I remember [Joss Whedon] backed me up against a wall one day, and he was just like, ‘I don’t care how popular you are, kid. You’re dead! You hear me? You’re dead! Dead!” Rosenbaum asked, “Was he kidding around?” and Marsters replied, “No. Hell, no.” Marsters also said he had “open wounds” on his scalp from over-using bleach on his roots every eight days to keep the roots from growing out.

Multiple actors from Angel have talked about Whedon’s habit of making actors squirm. David Boreanaz spoke about how he learned about the Angel spinoff during a twentieth anniversary cast reunion. “I got a phone call that Joss wanted to talk to me,” Boreanaz recalled. “The only thing he said was, ‘I want you to come into my office tomorrow,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m fired.’” He described having a night of “angst” and spent the following day working on some flashback scenes. When he finally met with Whedon at lunch it took some time for Whedon to tell him his character was getting a spin-off. Alexis Denisof expressed a similar knee-jerk feeling of “uh-oh,” but had an idea the spin-off was filming. However, Amy Acker had a similar story to what Boreanaz experienced when she was told about her character Fred’s transformation into Illyria. “It seems to be an echo of, like, ‘Hey, can you meet me for coffee tomorrow?’ and I’m like, ‘Ohh, they’re firing me!’ And we sat down to coffee and he said, ‘I just wanted you to know I’m killing Fred.’ And he waited, like, really a long time.” Charisma Carpenter chimed in, “He likes to do that!” Acker was then informed she would still be on the show as Illyria.

Charisma Carpenter and Marti Noxon have shared their own stories about Joss’s “You’re fired, just kidding” stories. Seth Green quipped “He did that to me too, but it took.”

Whedon’s View of Women

While Joss Whedon considers his writing to be feminist, his portrayal of women as well as other statements he’s made contradict this. In 2013, he gave a speech for Equality Now about his dislike of the word “feminist.” While this speech earned him some acclaim, it also earned him some backlash from the feminist community. This was mainly because he claimed it’s natural for people to be equal, and to add “-ist” to the end of the word “feminist” implies that people’s natural state is to be unequal. This stance was seen as disrespectful to Feminism as a movement, for some.

Joss Whedon received wide criticism for his portrayal of women in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One critic, Scott Mendelson, talked about Whedon’s portrayal of Scarlet Witch and Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron. “Scarlet Witch eventually has to be coaxed into bravery by one of the male heroes,” Mendelson writes of Elizabeth’s Olson’s character. Mendelson was even less thrilled with Scarlet Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff. “Maybe I shouldn’t be annoyed that the only major female character’s primary arc is a theoretically unrequited pining for a nice guy with major anger issues,” he writes, “or that said character briefly gets captured by the villain in the second act and tossed in a cage for no reason other than to be rescued by her male compatriots.” Backlash over this film caused Whedon to quit Twitter. In an article for Gizmodo, writers Meredith Woerner and Katharine Trendacosta point out that Joss Whedon teased a “killer” backstory for Natasha Romanoff. “Instead of an assassin constantly struggling with finding moral lines she didn’t know existed, we got a woman who feels incomplete because she cannot have babies,” Woerner and Trendacosta concluded.

In 2017, Whedon’s ex-wife Kai Cole wrote a blog for The Wrap stating, “he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”

Cole alleges Whedon wrote her a letter in which he said, “When I was running ‘Buffy,’ I was surrounded by beautiful, needy, aggressive young women… As a guilty man I knew the only way to hide was to act as though I were righteous… In many ways I was the HEIGHT of normal, in this culture. We’re taught to be providers and companions and at the same time, to conquer and acquire — specifically sexually — and I was pulling off both!” At the end of her essay, Cole wrote, “I want the people who worship him to know he is human, and the organizations giving him awards for his feminist work, to think twice in the future about honoring a man who does not practice what he preaches.”

In response to Kai Cole’s letter, Laura M. Browning wrote in an AV Club article, “I was sad, but not shocked—maybe a little embarrassed I hadn’t looked more closely at some very clear problems in his work… His work has plenty of male gaze and women in refrigerators and some narratively pointless rape scenes—it’s all right there, in hundreds of hours of television and film—but boy, it sure is a lot more comfortable to listen to a guy tell you he’s a feminist than listen to a lot of women telling you he’s not.”

Whedon’s veneer of feminism has been cracking for several years.

Recent Allegations

Actor Ray Fisher claimed Joss Whedon behaved inappropriately on the set of Justice League, tweeting, “Joss Wheadon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.” Fisher also accused Geoff Johns and Jon Berg of enabling Whedon’s behavior. An investigation was done by Warner Brothers and co-stars Jason Mamoa and Kiersey Clemons publicly supported Fisher. Ultimately, the investigation concluded and “remedial action” was taken. The action taken has not been specified.

Shortly after, Joss Whedon exited the HBO series The Nevers, which Fisher attributes to his own claims.

Team Charisma

Those who have shown support to Charisma Carpenter include: Sarah Michelle Gellar Ray Fisher J. August Richards Michelle Trachtenberg Amber Benson Eliza Dushku Jose Molina Marti Noxon Emma Caulfield James Marsters Anthony Head Clare Kramer James C. Leary Sophia Crawford David Boreanaz Amy Acker Julie Benz Danny Strong Adam Busch Tom Lenk Nicholas Brendon Jeff Mariotte

Others who have written about Joss Whedon or come out to support those coming forward:

Courtney Enlow Nell Scovell Glen Mazzara

My Conclusion

As I stated in my previous post on this topic, I stand with Team Charisma. It is not okay for a person in a position of power over others in the workplace to misuse that power in an inappropriate or abusive manner. No matter how talented that person may be and how beloved the work may be.

#buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #angel the series #joss whedon #charisma carpenter

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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years ago

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What I Thought About Loki (Season One)

(Sorry this is later than it should have been. I may or may not be experiencing burnout from reviewing every episode of the gayest show Disney has ever produced)

Salutations, random people on the internet. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Do you want to know what's fun about the Marvel Cinematic Universe? It is now officially at the point where the writers can do whatever the hell they want.

A TV series about two Avengers getting stuck in a series of sitcoms as one of them explores their personal grief? Sure.

Another series as a guy with metal bird wings fights the inner racism of his nation to take the mantel of representing the idea of what that nation should be? Why not?

A forgettable movie about a superspy and her much more mildly entertaining pretend family working together to kill the Godfather? F**king go for it (Let that be a taste for my Black Widow review in October)!

There is no limit to what you can get with these movies and shows anymore, and I personally consider that a good thing. It allows this franchise to lean further into creative insanity, thus embracing its comic roots in the process. Take Loki, for example. It is a series about an alternate version of one of Marvel's best villains bouncing around the timeline with Owen Wilson to prevent the end of the universe. It sounds like just the right amount of wackiness that it should be too good to fail.

But that's today's question: Did it fail? To find out my own answer to that, we're gonna have to dive deep into spoilers. So be wary as you continue reading.

With that said, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

Loki Himself: Let's get this out of the way: This isn't the same Loki we've seen grow within five movies. The Loki in this series, while similar in many ways, is still his very own character. He goes through his own redemption and developments that fleshes out Loki, all through ways that, if I'm being honest with you, is done much better in six-hour-long episodes than in past films. Loki's story was already entertaining, but he didn't really grow that much aside from being this chaotic neutral character instead of this wickedly evil supervillain. Through his series, we get to see a gradual change in his personality, witnessing him understand his true nature and "glorious purpose," to the point where he's already this completely different person after one season. Large in part because of the position he's forced into.

Some fans might say that the series is less about Loki and more about the TVA. And while I can unquestionably see their point, I still believe that the TVA is the perfect way for Loki to grow. He's a character all about causing chaos and controlling others, so forcing him to work for an organization that takes that away allows Loki time to really do some introspection. Because if his tricks don't work, and his deceptions can't fool others, then who is he? Well, through this series, we see who he truly is: A character who is alone and is intended to be nothing more than a villain whose only truly selfless act got him killed in the end. Even if he wants to better himself, he can't because that "goes against the sacred timeline." Loki is a person who is destined to fail, and he gets to see it all with his own eyes by looking at what his life was meant to be and by observing what it could have been. It's all tragic and yet another example of these shows proving how they allow underdeveloped characters in the MCU a better chance to shine. Because if Loki can give even more depth to a character who's already compelling as is, then that is a feat worth admiration.

The Score: Let's give our gratitude toward Natalie Holt, who f**king killed it with this series score. Every piece she made is nothing short of glorious. Sylvie's and the TVA's themes particularly stand out, as they perfectly capture who/what they're representing. Such as how Sylvie's is big and boisterous where the TVA's sound eerie and almost unnatural. Holt also finds genius ways to implement other scores into the series, from using familiar tracks from the Thor movies to even rescoring "Ride of the Valkyries" in a way that makes a scene even more epic than it already could have been. The MCU isn't best known for its musical scores, partly because they aim to be suitable rather than memorable. But every now and again, something as spectacular as the Loki soundtrack sprinkles through the cracks of mediocrity. Making fans all the more grateful because of it.

There’s a lot of Talking: To some, this will be considered a complaint. Most fans of the MCU come for the action, comedy, and insanely lovable characters. Not so much for the dialogue and exposition. That being said, I consider all of the talking to be one of Loki's best features. All the background information about the TVA added with the character's backstories fascinates me, making me enthusiastic about learning more. Not everyone else will be as interested in lore and world-building as others, but just because something doesn't grab you, in particular, doesn't mean it isn't appealing at all. Case in point: There's a reason why the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise has lasted as long as it has, and it's not entirely because of how "scary" it is.

There's also the fact that most of the dialogue in Loki is highly engaging. I'll admit, some scenes do drag a bit. However, every line is delivered so well that I'm more likely to hang on to every word when characters simply have honest conversations with each other. And if I can be entertained by Loki talking with Morbius about jetskis, then I know a show is doing at least something right.

It’s Funny: This shouldn't be a surprise. The MCU is well-known for its quippy humor in the direct acknowledgment that it doesn't take itself too seriously. With that said, it is clear which movies and shows are intended to be taken seriously, while others are meant to be comedies. Loki tries to be a bit of both. There are some heavy scenes that impact the characters, and probably even some fans, due to how well-acted and professionally written they can be. However, this is also a series about a Norse god traveling through time to deal with alternate versions of himself, with one of them being an alligator. I'd personally consider it a crime against storytelling to not make it funny. Thankfully, the writers aren't idiots and know to make the series fun with a few flawlessly timed and delivered jokes that never really take away from the few good grim moments that actually work.

It Kept Me Surprised: About everything I appreciate about Loki, the fact that I could never really tell what direction it was going is what I consider its absolute best feature. Every time I think I knew what was going to happen, there was always this one big twist that heavily subverted any and every one of my expectations. Such as how each time I thought I knew who the big bad was in this series, it turns out that there was an even worse threat built up in the background. The best part is that these twists aren't meant for shock value. It's always supposed to drive the story forward, and on a rewatch, you can always tell how the seeds have been planted for making each surprise work. It's good that it kept fans guessing, as being predictable and expected would probably be the worst path to take when making a series about Loki, a character who's all about trickery and deception. So bonus points for being in line with the character.

The TVA: You can complain all you want about how the show is more about the TVA than it is Loki, but you can't deny how the organization in question is a solid addition to the MCU. Initially, it was entertaining to see Loki of all characters be taken aback by how the whole process works. And it was worth a chuckle seeing Infinity Stones, the most powerful objects in the universe, get treated as paperweights. However, as the season continues and we learn about the TVA, the writers show that their intention is to try and write a message about freedom vs. control. We've seen this before in movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Captain America: Civil War, but with those films, it always felt like the writers were leaning more towards one answer instead of making it obscure over which decision is correct. This is why I enjoy the fact that Loki went on saying that there really is no right answer for this scenario. If the TVA doesn't prune variants, it could result in utter chaos and destruction that no one from any timeline can prepare themselves for. But when they do prune variants along with their timelines, it takes away all free will, forcing people to be someone they probably don't even want to be. It's a situation where there really is no middle ground. Even if you bring up how people could erase timelines more destructive than others, that still takes away free will on top of how there's no unbiased way of deciding which timelines are better or worse. And the series found a brilliant way to explain this moral: The season starts by showing how the TVA is necessary, to later point out how there are flaws and evil secrets within it, and ends things with the revelation that there are consequences without the TVA keeping the timeline in check. It's an epic showcase of fantastic ideas met with exquisite execution that I can't help but give my seal of approval to.

Miss Minutes: Not much to say. This was just a cute character, and I love that Tara Strong, one of the most popular voice actors, basically plays a role in the MCU now.

Justifying Avengers: Endgame: Smartest. Decision. This series. Made. Bar none.

Because when you establish that the main plot is about a character getting arrested for f**king over the timeline, you're immediately going to get people questioning, "Why do the Avengers get off scot-free?" So by quickly explaining how their time-traveling antics were supposed to happen, it negates every one of those complaints...or most of them. There are probably still a-holes who are poking holes in that logic, but they're not the ones writing this review, so f**k them.

Mobius: I didn't really expect Owen Wilson to do that good of a job in Loki. Primarily due to how the Cars franchise discredits him as a professional actor for...forever. With that said, Owen Wilson's Mobius might just be one of the most entertaining characters in the series. Yes, even more so than Loki himself. Mobius acts as the perfect straight man to Loki's antics, what with being so familiar with the supposed god of mischief through past variations of him. Because of that, it's always a blast seeing these two bounce off one another through Loki trying to trick a Loki expert, and said expert even deceiving Loki at times. Also, on his own, Mobius is still pretty fun. He has this sort of witty energy that's often present in Phil Coulson (Love that character too, BTW), but thanks to Owen Wilson's quirks in his acting, there's a lot more energy to Mobius than one would find in Coulson. As well as a tad bit of tragedy because of Mobius being a variant and having no clue what his life used to be. It's a lot to unpack and is impressively written, added to how it's Owen Wilson who helps make the character work as well as he did. Cars may not have done much for his career, but Loki sure as hell showed his strengths.

Ravonna Renslayer: Probably the least entertaining character, but definitely one of the most intriguing. At least to me.

Ravonna is a character who is so steadfast in her believes that she refuses to accept that she may be wrong. Without the proper writing, someone like Ravonna could tick off (ha) certain people. Personally, I believe that Ravonna is written well enough where even though I disagree with her belief, I can understand where she's coming from. She's done so much for the TVA, bringing an end to so many variants and timelines that she can't accept that it was all for nothing. In short, Ravonna represents the control side of the freedom vs. control theme that the writers are pushing. Her presence is necessary while still being an appealing character instead of a plot device. Again, at least to me.

Hunter B-15: I have no strong feelings one way or another towards B-15's personality, but I will admit that I love the expectation-subversion done with her. She has this air of someone who's like, "I'm this by-the-books badass cop, and I will only warm up to this cocky rookie after several instances of them proving themselves." That's...technically not B-15. She's the first to see Loki isn't that bad, but only because B-15 is the first in the main cast to learn the hidden vile present in the TVA. It makes her change in point of view more believable than how writers usually work a character like hers, on top of adding a new type of engaging motivation for why she fights. I may not particularly enjoy her personality, but I do love her contributions.

Loki Watching What His Life Could Have Been: This was a brilliant decision by the writers. It's basically having Loki speedrun his own character development through witnessing what he could have gone through and seeing the person he's meant to be, providing a decent explanation for why he decides to work for the TVA. And on the plus side, Tom Hiddleston did a fantastic job at portraying the right emotions the character would have through a moment like this. Such as grief, tearful mirth, and borderline shock and horror. It's a scene that no other character could go through, as no one but Loki needed a wake-up call for who he truly is. This series might heavily focus on the TVA, but scenes like this prove just who's the star of the show.

Loki Causing Mischief in Pompeii: I just really love this scene. It's so chaotic and hilarious, all heavily carried by the fact that you can tell that Tom Hiddleston is having the time of his damn life being this character. What more can I say about it.

Sylvie: The first of many surprises this season offered, and boy was she a great one.

Despite being an alternate version of Loki, I do appreciate that Sylvie's her own character and not just "Loki, but with boobs." She still has the charm and charisma, but she also comes across as more hardened and intelligent when compared to the mischievous prick we've grown to love. A large part of that is due to her backstory, which might just be the most tragic one these movies and shows have ever made. Sylvie got taken away when she was a little girl, losing everything she knew and loved, and it was all for something that the people who arrested her don't even remember. How sad is that? The fact that her life got permanently screwed over, leaving zero impact on the people responsible for it. As badass as it is to hear her say she grew up at the ends of a thousand worlds (that's an album title if I ever heard one), it really is depressing to know what she went through. It also makes her the perfect candidate to represent the freedom side of the freedom vs. control argument. Because she's absolutely going to want to fight to put an end to the people who decide how the lives of trillions should be. Those same people took everything from Sylvie, and if I were in her position, I'd probably do the same thing. Of course, we all know the consequences that come from this, and people might criticize Sylvie the same way they complain about Thor and Star Lord for screwing over the universe in Avengers: Infinity War. But here's the thing: Sylvie's goals are driven by vengeance, which can blind people from any other alternatives. Meaning her killing He Who Remains is less of a story flaw and more of a character flaw. It may be a bad decision, but that's for Season Two Sylvie to figure out. For now, I'll just appreciate the well-written and highly compelling character we got this season and eagerly wait as we see what happens next with her.

The Oneshot in Episode Three: Not as epic as the hallway scene in Daredevil, but I do find it impressive that it tries to combine real effects, fighting, and CGI in a way where it's all convincing enough.

Lady Sif Kicking Loki in the D**k: This is a scene that makes me realize why I love this series. At first, I laugh at Loki being stuck in a time loop where Lady Sif kicks him in the d**k over and over again. But a few scenes later, this setup actually works as a character moment that explains why Loki does the things he does.

This series crafted phenomenal character development through Loki getting kicked in the d**k by the most underrated badass of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's a perfect balance of comedy and drama that not every story can nail, yet Loki seemed like it did with very little effort.

Classic Loki: This variant shows the true tragedy of being Loki. The only way to survive is to live in isolation, far away from everything and everyone he loves, only to end up having his one good deed result in his death anyways. Classic Loki is definitive proof that no matter what face they have, Lokis never gets happy endings. They're destined to lose, but at least this version knows that if you're going out, you're going out big. And at least he got to go out with a mischievous laugh.

(Plus, the fact that he's wearing Loki's first costume from the comics is a pretty cute callback).

Alligator Loki: Alligator Loki is surprisingly adorable, and if you know me, you know that I can't resist cute s**t. It's not in my nature.

Loki on Loki Violence: If you thought Loki going ham in Pompeii was chaotic, that was nothing to this scene. Because watching these Lokis backstab one another, to full-on murdering each other, is a moment that is best described as pure, unadulterated chaos. And I. Loved. Every. Second of it.

The Opening Logo for the Season Finale: I'm still not that big of a fan of the opening fanfare playing for each episode, but I will admit that it was a cool feature to play vocal clips of famous quotes when the corresponding character appears. It's a great way of showing the chaos of how the "sacred timeline" works without having it to be explained further.

The Citadel: I adore the set design of the Citadel. So much history and backstory shine through the state of every room the characters walk into. You get a perfect picture of what exactly happened, but seeing how ninety percent of the place is in shambles, it's pretty evident that not everything turned out peachy keen. And as a personal note, my favorite aspect of the Citadel is the yellow cracks in the walls. It looks as though reality itself is cracking apart, which is pretty fitting when considering where the Citadel actually is.

He Who Remains: This man. I. Love. This man.

I love this man for two reasons.

A. He's a ton of fun. Credit to that goes to the performance delivered by Jonathon Majors. Not only is it apparent that Majors is having a blast, but he does a great job at conveying how He Who Remains is a strategic individual but is still very much off his rocker. These villains are always my favorite due to how much of a blast it is seeing someone with high intelligence just embracing their own insanity. If you ask me, personalities are always essential for villains. Because even when they have the generic plot to rule everything around them, you're at least going to remember who they are for how entertaining they were. Thankfully He Who Remains has that entertainment value, as it makes me really excited for his eventual return, whether it'd be strictly through Loki Season Two or perhaps future movies.

And B. He Who Remains is a fantastic foil for Loki. He Who Remains is everything Loki wishes he could have been, causing so much death, destruction, and chaos to the multiverse. The important factor is that he does it all through order and control. The one thing Loki despises, and He Who Remains uses it to his advantage. I feel like that's what makes him the perfect antagonist to Loki, thanks to him winning the game by not playing it. I would love it if He Who Remains makes further appearances in future movies and shows, especially given how he's hinted to be Kane the Conqueror, but if he's only the main antagonist in Loki, I'm still all for it. He was a great character in his short time on screen, and I can't wait to see what happens next with him.

WHAT I DISLIKED

Revealing that Loki was D.B. Cooper: A cute scene, but it's really unnecessary. It adds nothing to the plot, and I feel like if it was cut out entirely, it wouldn't have been the end of the world...Yeah. That's it.

That's my one and only complaint about this season.

Maybe some scenes drag a bit, and I guess Episode Three is kind of the weakest, but there's not really anything that this series does poorly that warrants an in-depth complaint.

Nope.

Nothing at all...

…

...

...I'm not touching that "controversy" of Loki falling for Sylvie instead of Mobius. That's a situation where there are no winners.

Only losers.

Exclusively losers.

Other than that, this season was amazing!

IN CONCLUSION

I'd give the first season of Loki a well-earned A, with a 9.5 through my usual MCU ranking system. It turns out, it really is the best type of wackiness that was just too good to fail. The characters are fun and likable, the comedy and drama worked excellently, and the expansive world-building made me really intrigued with the more we learned. It's hard to say if Season Two will keep this momentum, but that's for the future to figure out. For now, let's just sit back and enjoy the chaos.

(Now, if you don't excuse me, I have to figure out how to review Marvel's What If...)

#marvel cinematic universe #mcu reviews #loki tv series #loki #sylvie #mobius #ravonna renslayer #hunter b 15 #classic loki #alligator loki #he who remains #kang the conqueror #what i thought about

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leverage-ot3 · 4 years ago

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to all the leverage fans out there, I thought I’d throw out some recommendations of other shows that y’all might like

this is completely centered around the lgbt aspects of leverage (how none of the characters are straight, how there is a canon ot3, etc), because I know other people have recommended white collar and stuff but I haven’t personally seen that and I’m just a humble lgbt wanting to share more gay shows with y’all

1. wynonna earp (my sideblog is @angelicearps)

just renewed for a fourth season after two years (this feeling is very familiar to leverage fans)

the first episode of season four aired last night and IM SCREAMING the writers served us a five course meal

the main love story includes waverly earp, a CANON (officially as of 4.01) bisexual girl falling in love with nicole haught, a lesbian cop-turned-sheriff (that’s a slight spoiler, so sorry about that) and both of them are main characters

wynonna earp, another main character, has a complicated relationship with two different men and is not slut shamed for it and is never put down about it

I’m serious- the healthiest and most stable relationship in the show is between waverly and nicole, so wlw nation rise

wynonna and waverly are descendants of the great gunslinger (and demon killer) wyatt earp, who ended up getting a curse on his future generations. the story of the show is centered around wynonna being the chosen heir having to fight demons and try to break the curse for good

doc holiday is another main character- yes, that doc holiday. he’s one of wynonna’s love interests and he has such a pure and loving relationship with waverly. he’d literally die for her and move heaven and hell to make sure she’s safe (that’s literally canon)

jeremy comes in around season two if I remember correctly. canon gay. gets in a relationship with another canon gay character whose name I am blanking on. they are very loving and very pure

literally, in 4.01, when armed military men are breaking into the earp homestead and he doesn’t know what to do, he literally says: “gays only?” lol they didn’t respect that answer

the show has so many good quips and one-liners. so many hilarious lines. it can be an angsty show at times but they definitely balance it out with humor and wlw softness between waverly and nicole

wynonna has a baby in season two and literally calls herself a milf

it also made fans faint because they have been calling nicole “daddy” for like six years and nicole was referred to as daddy three (3) times in 4.01

this show is NOT AFRAID to say things like gay, lesbian, etc. at one point someone tweeted at emily andreas (the writer) asking her to amp up the gay energy and she responded that she would

literally, emily andreas is on the same level as john rogers with trustability and dedication to fans

emily andreas heard of the bury your gays trope and did us one better: unkillible gays trope. the gays are unkillable.

2. motherland: fort salem (my sideblog is @fortsalem)

(HELL YEAH I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST IN THE FANDOM AND I GOT THE HANDS DOWN B E S T URL)

au where during the salem witch trials a witches named sarah alder made an agreement with the government that witches would serve for the us army in exchange for not being systematically hunted down and killed

THIS IS NOT MILITARY PROPAGANDA. sorry, I just had to make this point early on because it’s not even though it might seem like it in the beginning. literally by the end of the season you see it’s very corrupt

since this is an alternate history of the united states, in this universe there are no heteronorms. literally, there’s literally no words for lesbian and bisexual that they use because it’s so normalized and common and accepted that there’s no need for terms like that

the main love story is of star-crossed raelle and scylla. raelle comes from a poor family and is a talented healer, and (this isn’t technically a spoiler because you find out in episode one) scylla is a member of the spree

the spree is a terrorist organization of witches that protests the compliance witches are forced into by having to join the military or die/be imprisoned

scylla is supposed to turn raelle to the “dark side” but falls so deeply in love with her that she can’t do it (THATS TRUE LOVE FOLKS)

the students at fort salem (the military school) are divided into groups of three: the main group being focused on is composed of raelle, tally, and abigail

tally craven is a pure-hearted baby and I’d die for her. she is very idealistic about fighting in the military (but don’t worry that’s fixed by the end of the season)

abigail bell weather comes from a high military family and is kinda really stuck up about it, but she’s humbled a lot by the end of the season. this girl has LAYERS (they all do, but abigail goes through a lot and goes from very stuck up and stuck up the military’s ass to questioning everything she knows)

the trio starts off rocky, especially between raelle and abigail, because raelle blames abigail’s mother for her mother’s death (her mother’s unit was led by abigail’s mother)

the beltane episode literally hits you in the face with how there are literally no heteronorms whatsoever. they do this sacred dance where by the end they will end up with the people they are destined to spend the celebration with (“trust the dance”). raelle makes friends with a gay guy and they spend the celebration making fun of the sex noises around them and become gay friends for life. abigail has sex with two (2) guys who kiss each other. a group of four girls went off together. a group of two girls and a guy went off together. and sex isn’t shamed. at all. in fact, it’s respected as a part of life. and y’all, literally this representation was OFF THE CHARTS

the witch’s most powerful tool is their voice,,, think about that for a minute

it’s an all girls school so there are like no guys whatsoever minus the beltane episode and a couple others

EMPOWERED WOMEN (of all ages and ethnicities too)

3. siren (my sideblog is @polymarinelove)

imma start off by saying that season three doesn’t exist. don’t watch season three. don’t do it. the disappointment is real

ANYWAYS

the central love story is between an interracial couple (a white guy and his black girlfriend that has a native american stepfather) that turns into a loving polyamorous relationship

maddie, the girlfriend, is amazing and incredibly smart and the first two seasons (and the beginning of the third) accentuate that and they never downplay her because she’s a black woman like many shows and movies do. she’s a smart stem woman and we stan her so hard. she’s also bisexual.

ben, the guy, comes from a rich family that are basically the hotshots of the town and own the fishing company that the community works for. his dad is hella untrustable. ben doesn’t trust him and neither should you. he is kindhearted and smart and respectful, and at one point teaches a merman about consent after being kissed by him (and he didn’t even #nohomo it which was AMAZING)

now to the mermaids

mermaids are apex predators. they are very dangerous. they are very strong. they’re also wickedly smart, canon smarter than humans

the story begins when donna, ryn’s sister, is captured by a fishing boat and carted off to a military facility. ryn comes to land to try to find and save her. (she literally choses her name because she sees a character on a kid’s tv show saying “I am ryn” which is also the first thing in english that she can say)

she ends up being helped by ben and maddie and legit is like these humans are hot imma learn english for them

there’s a lot of really cool and thought out lore as well as TONS of thoughtful marine biology science that makes sense

oh and transforming from mermaid to human? painful as FUCK. realistic depictions of having your body literally transform into something else

humans are wrecking the oceans and that’s a heavy theme of the show

oil rigs are poisoning the water (making them infertile) and killing mermaids with their sonic drilling

so ben and maddie lowkey commit an act of ecoterrorism but it’s chill

“ben and maddie are love” they’re poly, bitches

they come together in a natural, organic way

very healthy and communicative

ben’s alright but ryn and maddie are amazing

don’t watch season three if you don’t want to be majorly disappointed. the writers listened to the homophobic trolls on instagram and broke up the polyamorous relationship and I’ll NEVER forgive them for that. seasons one and two are amazing though. just don’t watch the third one.

#leverage ot3 #leverage #reccommendations #my recs #siren #siren freeform #motherland fort salem #fort salem #wynonna earp #mine

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danger-xylophones · 4 years ago

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A Chance Encounter Part 3

{masterlist}

Words: 1635

Warnings: A cauterizer, badly explained medical attention, a made-up planet, mentions of angst, bit of an age gap, the reader is being a bit rude, unedited

Notes: Mazarem is a made-up planet because I didn’t feel like trying to shoe-horn the reader into the lore of an already existing one.

Taglist: @aberionart // @shaak-ti-s

<- Previous

……………………………………

Cato Neimoidia was a bust as well.

Savage had told you that he’d stay out of sight. He’d told you that if he did get spotted, he’d take measures to not be recognized. He told you he’d try to avoid picking a fight for both your sakes. And it had all gone to skrag while you were out gathering supplies. You came back to three squadrons of battle droids surrounding your ship and firing on your travel companion and you had seen red. That ship was a gift (albeit a gift you’d stolen)-if any of them scratched it…

You carefully tucked your latest haul away somewhere easy for you to find while you reached into your coat for your blaster. It looked like Savage was handling his situation but you could at least lend a hand-the battledroids most likely didn’t know you were there which gave you the advantage. You were suddenly grateful for the copious amounts of crates surrounding the shipyard you had landed in as they provided excellent cover for you while you poked your head out to shoot at the droids. Most of your shots, while not always 100% accurate, were at least effective as they provided a distraction for Savage as the tinnies’ focus was pulled in two different directions, giving him the opening he needed to cut the droids down. A few droids, however, got wise to your location and opened fire on you. A few stray blasts whizzed by your face, superheating the air as they passed till it felt like you had stuck the side of your face in the oven. But you were quick to duck away and return the blast in kind.

Only when the last droid had fallen with a shriek as it was sliced in half did you step out of your hiding spot. “I thought I asked you to stay out of trouble.” You commented to the yellow zabrak as he regained his breath. He chose to ignore it as he put the lightsaber back on its hook. With the all-clear signal from him, you approached and quickly scanned him for injuries. For the most part, he was in better shape compared to the last time the two of you stopped on a planet, the most noticeable thing being Savage’s labored breaths-odd to you considering he was incredibly athletic but you elected to chock that up to the warm temperature and high elevation. After all, he was a zabrak with two hearts; he would probably have a harder time getting the oxygen he needed while you both remained in one of the suspended bridge cities.

Savage suddenly raised his right hand to his mouth and began to cough into his fist and that was when your brain kicked back into action. With a shake of your head, you turned and strode over to where you had hidden away your last batch of supplies before returning to Savage to open the ship up. With a sweep of your hand, you beckoned for Savage to board first and he did so willingly making it easy to tell that he was quite fed up with the Neimoidian inhabited planet. As you fell in behind him, though, you noticed a trickle of a bright red running down Savage’s arm. “Uh, Savage?”

“Hmm?” The zabrak grumbled as he turned to face you but you were already in motion, grabbing his hand to bring his arm up to examine it. There was a dark stain running along the length of his forearm that was more than a little worrisome. “Oh, that. I cut myself on a broken droid. Not...it’s not an issue.” Savage grumbled lowly as you carefully peeled the sleeve away only to stifle a gasp. The gash, while not deep was long and ugly, sadly not a clean cut.

“Not...Not an issue? Savage,...” you sighed and carefully pulled on his arm to lead him to the med bay where you had better lighting. “Savage, you’re lucky I went shopping today-it’s going to have to be cauterized.” The male zabrak put up no resistance as you whisked him away and forced him to take a seat so you could clean out the wound. When you finished sterilizing it, you turned to rifle through the bag of newly purchased medical supplies, searching for the cauterizer you had spent nearly an hour bartering for. You were hyper-aware of Savage’s gaze fixated on your every move. When you had found it, you carefully took a seat beside him and laid his arm over your lap. “This is gonna hurt like hell. Tell me to stop if it gets to be too much.” You raised your gaze to his vibrant yellow eyes which had dulled considerably from exhaustion, you found that you missed their normal brightness. “Ready?” You kept your voice soft as you spoke and Savage gave a firm nod. You started the cauterizer up.

Savage, who had been relaxed for the most part, immediately tensed up as the knife met the torn flesh and he let out a low, pained grunt that made your stomach twist uncomfortably. But you had to keep going for his sake. To his credit, Savage did his best to keep his arm lax though it was inevitable that his hand would curl into a fist which forced you to stop for a few moments till he relaxed. After the third barely pause, you removed the cauterizer to speak, the wound barely half-way closed. “I’m sorry, Savage. I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you but I have to seal the wound” You articulated softly, letting your unoccupied hand to brush over his clenched fist, “it’ll be fine.” Stillness settled over the two of you while you allowed Savage the chance to regain his breath through quiet, uncomfortable grunts. Barely raising your voice to be heard, you ventured to ask him, “Do you want to hold onto something?” Your intention was to seek out a shirt or blanket or something for the zabrak to worry between his fingers when he found the urge to tear away from you as you sutured him up. You did not intend for him to nod unsteadily as he took your free hand and wrapped his own around it, dwarfing it completely. ...Aight… You swallowed the lump that jumped into your throat at the firm grasp he had on your hand and attempted to go about closing his wound. But, it was rather difficult considering that every time the tip of the medical tool met his tattooed skin, he would tense his fist which threatened to break the bones in your hand. You were beginning to regret offering.

After what felt like hours (though, in actuality, it was only about a minute and a half), you were finally able to extricate your hand from Savage’s vice-like grip to flex the now aching muscles. Whilst struggling not to comment on the state of your appendage, you turned away from the large male to seek out some bandages and bacta. Though, as you refused to look at him, you were all too aware of the golden fury of his eyes remaining trained on you as you meticulously wrapped his arm. “Y/n,...” He finally rumbled as the bandage was being tied off, “where did you learn all of this?”

“...all of what?” You hummed, mind already working to escape this road of questioning from your male counterpart.

“Everything: how to pilot, shoot, navigate,...heal. Where did you learn all of it?” Savage pressed, using his unrestrained hand to make a roundabout gesture as he spoke.

You pressed your lips into a firm line as you debated how much information to reveal. You trusted Savage (at least enough to not kill you in your sleep) but you weren’t sure you trusted him enough to divulge that precious scrap of information regarding your journey before you crossed paths with him. Besides, there seemed to be this unspoken agreement between you that dictated that neither of you would stick your noses where they didn’t belong. This silent covenant had worked beautifully for the last three and a half weeks so why was he trying to break it right now?

“I...I learned it back...home.” You settled on that. Your voice was a little unsteady as your mind inevitably dwelled on the flashes of light, prolonged screams, and the horrid stench of charred skin and dried blood you now associated your home with. “Mazarem.” Could it even be considered your home any more? You’d left...forced to or not, that fact did not change.

“Mazarem?” Savage probed, you nodded to confirm that that was the name you had uttered. “Where is that? I’m afraid I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s on the edge of the unknown regions,...it’s still pretty undeveloped. The Mazaremi weren’t space-faring till some thirty-years ago.” You explained delicately whilst wishing the yellow zabrak would just let you drop the conversation. “We weren’t recognized as an official government until I was five, I think.” But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon if you were going by the curious tilt of his head.

Savage blinked at while he processed the information. “Five?” It was rhetorical but you still nodded. “How old are you now?”

You groaned internally. Why was he so curious about you all of a sudden? “Twenty-six.” But, in spite of your annoyance at his inordinate nosiness, you found yourself answering. Abruptly getting to your feet, you began to whisk yourself away from him. “Well, seeing as you’re all patched up, I’ll go about getting us off this skughole. Where are we going, Savage?”

From behind you, Savage sighed heavily and you could hear the cot squeak as his weight was removed. “Tattooine.” Oh, great, the hunters’ homestead.

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