#in 15 dialogues i dropped the date. the years. A POINT IN TIME. like a piece of a puzzle. 10 years! he says this during war phase | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nexusvcrti · 1 year ago

Text

TVDU TIMELINE IN MY CANON

This tends to be one of the most controversial topics out there, but since canon has confirmed that season 4 of Legacies takes place 3 years after season 5 of The Originals, I'm going to map out what that means in the timeline of what we see on the show with my personal canon. The timeline on the show (particularly Legacies) is just… super compacted, so if anyone hasn’t watched Legacies or actually cares about spoilers�� beware. (note: This is revised based off the original meta I posted here.)

If you pay attention to the words and the dialogue in the show, they actually drop a fair number of hints as to the passage of time during the episodes. In the past, I always assumed that it followed the same timeline as most shows, where each season is roughly equivalent to one year, and with episode air dates matching with what’s happening canonically on the show, but it’s actually not the case in Legacies. Between the pandemic and general wonky primetime airing schedules, the timeline is a little more difficult to follow and not spelled out so neatly.

Examples of the above include early S1 where the first few episodes are literally happening over the course of several days, maybe two weeks. There’s a few times the characters say things like “yesterday” or “a few days ago” or “last week” in their dialogue which I use to track the timeline.

Starting from the top, S5 tells us that Hope is 15 at the time that all of that plays out, and there’s an unknown time jump between the end of TO and the beginning of Legacies. In my canon, she is 15, almost 16 when the end of TO occurs and she loses her father and uncle. She takes the summer off from the school to grieve, while also learning to control her wolf side, and she is 16 when she rejoins the school, but she also spends half a year being a loner and watching Cutthroat Kitchen in her room. S1 begins while Hope is a few months shy of her 17th birthday on May 2.

Like I mentioned above, the first few episodes of S1 happen very quickly (going to find Raf and Landon, Landon stealing the knife, the dragon, the football game, the discovery of the monsters, the twins’ birthday). These all happen in a matter of days, maybe two weeks at the most. When the Honor Council stuff is happening, Lizzie asks Raf to the twins’ birthday “on Friday”, so we know it’s coming up quick. And the twins’ birthday is the first real date that we have confirmed on the show. So 1x06 is occurring on March 15. The next real “date” we have is in 1x12, where we know the school is on spring break. Now idk about y’all but in the States and when I was in school, the latest spring break ever seemed to be was like early/mid-April? So it sounds like the gap between 1x06 and 1x12 is a handful of weeks at most, which makes sense. During this time is the whole part where Hope goes and gets Landon back, the djinni episode, and the slug debacle. As far as the passage of time goes, there isn’t a lot of it during these plot points. S1 plays out over the course of like... three months, and Hope throws herself into Malivore right before her 17th birthday.

S2 picks back up at the beginning of the next school year and Hope crawls out of Malivore probably in August? Since it's after the Fourth of July but before the school year starts. Unfortunately, events like the Miss Mystic Falls Pageant and Founders Day don’t actually have set dates in canon so it’s difficult to tell what the passage of time is supposed to be like. However, we do know that 2x08 (the Santa episode) occurs in October. So the first half of S2 takes place over the course of a month or so? After that, the next hint of time that we get is the culmination of the season, where Dark Josie intends to push up the Merge timeline and do it on the twins’ birthday of that year. So we’re back to March 15 of the next year, and two seasons have passed in the span of one in-canon year.

Now this is where the timeline gets even MORE messed up because of the pandemic and the weird airing schedules. But 3x01-3x04 were always supposed to be part of S2, so that’s where I’m putting it. Given the reactions by Alyssa and the rest of the witches in 3x01, not that much time has passed since Dark Josie was banished, there is again urgency with Raf’s problem, the musical, and then the final confrontation with the Necromancer where she loses Landon.

There is likely another time jump after 3x04, because Kaleb references Sheriff Mac moving to Savannah with Maya, and Josie is working on her transfer over to MFHS. I’m guessing that most public schools aren’t going to handle transfer requests at the end of the school year, so it sounds like we’re back to the end of the summer again by the time 3x05 happens. This also makes sense in context of what’s happening in the A plot, where Hope is losing herself in her search for Landon, which probably would actually take months. However, once she finds the Monkey’s Paw and Cleo enters the picture, things begin to pick up again. Hope has also turned 18 during this period.

Now I’ll be perfectly frank, I only sat through S3 once and I still haven't fully watched the back half of S4 so I’m not as in tune with those episodes as much as I am with the others, but again, it does feel like time moves quickly in S3. With the monsters constantly coming and the appearance of golem Landon to push along the narrative, I can believe that this happens over the course of a few months, taking us to maybe November or December of that year, approximately a year and a half since S1 began. And of course, once Mali-Landon leaves, everything kicks up a notch. Like with S2, 4x01-4x04 were meant to be part of S3, and that’s where it makes sense narratively.

Hope makes the realization that she needs to become the tribrid in the Star Wars episode, and everything from that point on shoehorns her into that plot. Again, we don’t have direct dates or events to mark the passage of time, but just going off what happens in canon, from the time they wake up from the vision quest to the end of 4x04, I don’t think there are any days where the Squad is just taking a break and lounging around (with the exception of 4x03, but I wouldn’t call that lounging around).

Now we know that there is no timeskip between 4x04 and 4x05 because Lizzie directly alludes to the night before in her opener, so everything that’s happened since the beginning of the show has now occurred within something like two years (not the four I was assuming up until now). Again, with the urgency of the plot, Hope is not just sitting around and twiddling her fingers once the threat of Triad comes up, and the Squad is not waiting for Hope to come back. Hope’s actions include learning about Triad, having her misadventures with Clarke, Salvatore Idol at the school, her confrontation with actual Triad and Aurora, and her confrontations with Lizzie. Similarly, there is no time jump between 4x09 and 4x10, as the episode tells us. All of this is happening in a span of weeks, not months.

All that said, by the time she has gone through the events of Legacies and is struggling with her humanity, about three years have passed since Hayley, Klaus and Elijah died, and about two years have passed since S1 starts. Hope was 16 at the time S1 begins (having turned 16 a little while after the S5 finale of TO, and taking the summer off to grieve, and mostly spending the first half of the year in her room watching Cutthroat Kitchen by herself or recruiting with Alaric. She is just about to turn 17 by the time she jumps into Malivore, actually turns 17 while in Malivore, and a few months shy of her 19th, when she has her first death in 4x03.

This functionally doesn't change much of how I was playing Hope before. I've always played that she is 18 when she fully activates her tribrid side, permanently sealing her at that age. The only real difference is that she doesn't take a gap year between her parents' death / the new school year, just probably the last month of school and summer break. She returns that fall, but remains a recluse until February or March of the following year, which is when S1 of Legacies begins. It does mean she's only had her wolf for a handful of months, so her control is not nearly as stable as what we see in the pilot (aka easily shifting back and forth at will) and will likely play a role in her early characterization.

#[ lore. ]#does any of this ultimately matter? no #did my autistic brain demand that i walk through it anyways? yes #other than tweaking the year off she took post-TO #i think i did a pretty okay job of matching up with the timeline in my original meta #long post tw /#i have a meta coming later about hope's age being 18 and why that's actually important for her portrayal

4 notes · View notes

kitspindles · 3 years ago

Text

Okay

The whole “Ingo has a receding hairline” thing has been, like, beaten to death by this point so I’m not gonna address that fullly. I for one don’t mind. However. Understandably, as a result of the hair reveal, people want to know when he got eeby-deebied into Hisui (immediately after the events of BW and BW2? A few years later?), and how long he’s actually been there (a few months? A year? Over a decade?). Everyone has been talking about it ever since the art book page was shown, and a lot of people have brought up really good points-- aaaand some people are just off the fucking tracks about it. So I’m just putting together what I’ve heard and what I’ve noticed myself. Here we go. Speculation for why Ingo has NOT been in Hisui for 10+ years:

1). Based on their appearances alone, we’re lead to believe that the player character is Dawn/Lucas from DPPt, but a couple years down the line. They’re not 10 like they were in Diamond and Pearl: Cyllene says right away that they’re “around 15 or so.” So right away we can assume that the events of Legends Arceus occur shortly after BW2 (which is set roughly 3 years after DPPt and 2 years after BW).

2). When characters like Irida mention Ingo and his origins, they talk about it as if it’s a more recent occurrence. If it had been 10+ years the dialogue would most likely come across differently to imply that he appeared in Hisui some time ago. Heck, they might even bring it up if that were the case-- yet we don’t see anyone saying “long ago” or “some number of years ago” in reference to Ingo spawning in. But again, see point one: if we’re to believe that the player character is Dawn/Lucas, who is said to only be 15, then the 10+ years timeline just doesn’t line up.

3). This one might be a toss away, but it’s been said before elsewhere so I’ll just throw it in: the art book states “XX years” or something like that which is ultimately what led people to believe that it’s been 10+ years since Ingo dropped in Hisui. Fair assumption. However, Xs are almost always used to state a vague and unspecified year (obviously) because people don’t want to date their concept in real world measurements, or they simply just don’t have an exact time period set. And given that this is a Pokémon game where the years and flow of time for the whole series is outside our own, we can assume that they’ve done the same here. Also, XX is arguably more visibly pleasing than just putting X. I mean, it just looks weird imo. I wouldn’t put much stock in any years or dates that Pokémon throws out.

4). Ingo’s memories. Yeah, we’re the main character and everything so it’s our job as the player character to go around helping people and progressing the story blah blah. But if Ingo had been in Hisui for 10+ years one would think he would’ve recovered some memories by now, right? I mean, all it took was him walking through the cave with us and having a Pokémon battle to jog some things loose-- surely he’s done both of those things numerous times before our arrival? It makes more sense that he’s only been in Hisui for maybe a year, maybe a couple months, and he’s only just now beginning to think about his past more since his memories obviously aren’t returning smoothly on their own.

5). The receding hairline from the book. I’ll just say it here: it’s not a bad thing if it’s canon-- men lose their hair, lol. That’s life. Even video game life. And Ingo has to be at least in his early to mid 30s (like in BW the Subway Bosses never came across to me as, like, super young or anything. Late 20s, early 30s for sure there). However, as some people have pointed out before, some of the things pictured in the artbook don’t exactly line up with what’s in the game. For instance, the picture of Ingo face down on the ground by the clan member doesn’t line up with what he and Irida say in the game (correct me if I’m wrong on this, though. I’ve seen it said by a lot of other posts). So it’s entirely possible the hairline is false (if you care about this. I don’t really. It adds character. And anyway, he always has his hat on so we never see it to know. Some people on Tumblr are just thirsty for twink men with a full head of hair or something like that). Anyway, it’s concept art. It’s job is to pan things out and plan, but not necessarily everything is set in stone. I think people are seeing the receding hairline and assuming this means Ingo is, like, old now. But who knows? I don’t think we’ve never seen his or Emmett’s hair before this. And I believe it’s the first time we’ve gotten a more detailed art page about one of them? Maybe it’s always been this way.

6). Again I make mention of point one. Because if we’re really to assume that the player character is the same one from DPPt but older (and I mean c’mon, with their appearances they just have to be), then there’s really just no feasible way for Ingo to have been in Hisui for more than 10 years. BW takes place about a year after DPPt at most. BW2 takes place, canonically, stated in game, two years after BW. And Ingo was still in BW2 (ignoring the fact that this game came out like 10 years ago and they had no notion of Arceus then, okay). So it’s safe to assume that Ingo fell sometime after the events of BW2. Say about a year or so after that. Two at most. Because that would land Dawn/Lucas at roughly 15, their given age in Arceus when they fall through the rift.

7). Grimsley. Remember him? He looked pretty young in BW, BW2. But then cut to Sun and Moon-- he was there on the beach right before Po Town, and boy did he look rough. Yet only about 2-3 years had passed since the events of BW, as stated in the game. So if we follow this logic, a lot can apparently happen to a person in two years. Ingo looks so disgruntled compared to his former art from BW and BW2, but so would we all if we had gone from living in modern day Unova to suddenly being dropped into a late 1800s era Sinnoh without any of our usual modern care products (probably why he has a cool little goatee now. Not enough opportunities to shave regularly) and constant stress and threats from a hostile world. This being said, he doesn’t look that much different from his og art, just really tired. He’s the epitome of “I don’t look older, I just look worse.”

8). Volo. Okay, so I’m sure we’re all aware by now that it’s Volo’s fault that Ingo is even in Hisui to begin with, not Arceus’s. As a direct result of him meddling with space-time and trying to get Girantina, the rift opened (and ultimately led to all of those smaller rifts/distortions that open up across Hisui from time to time where modern Pokémon and items are found). And this is all a recent development in the last year or so, as stated in game. As Laventon tells us, Jubilife Village has only existed for two years, and the big rift wasn’t there when they settled-- would you settle so close to a big disaster just waiting to happen? Probably not. especially not Komado, either. Like we learn in-game, he wants no issues-- he tells us about all his hardships in another land. The whole reason why they moved to Hisui and built a new village to begin with. In short, the rifts have only been cropping up in the last few months to a year in game, and we know that’s how Ingo got here. So it couldn’t be that he’s been around for 10+ years if the rifts are a fairly new development.

9). There’s just no way that Gamefreak would separate Ingo and Emmett like that, for so long, with no clear reason or wrap-up.

10). His shoes and dress pants from Unova are still intact. They for sure wouldn’t be after 10 years, especially walking around in Hisui. His coat and hat are actually more beat up than anything else, but still wearable and identifiable as his old uniform. Probably from his spin through time-space and just Pokémon battles and the climate in general. But also, they had to make him look disgruntled somehow but still be Ingo— and Ingo isn’t Ingo without his jacket and cap.

Did any of this make sense? Probably not. Did anyone read this far? Also no. I just really don’t believe that he’s been in Hisui for longer than a year based on a lot of in-game stuff and just based on what the games have done in the past with characters. In reality we just don’t know yet. I could be totally wrong! But until we get more DLC for Arceus, or until another Pokémon game comes out that makes mention of it, we just won’t have any clear answers about Ingo’s time in Hisui.

#pokemon legends arceus #pokemon legends #pokemon #arceus #warden ingo #ingo pokemon #ingo #emmett pokemon #subway bosses #subway boss ingo #subway boss emmett #subway boss nobori #submas

67 notes · View notes

homoose · 4 years ago

Text

Teach Me Something I Don’t Know: Part VII

Summary: Spencer’s unresolved trauma catches up with him. Reader gets her heart broken.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader

Category: angst, I’m so sorry guys

Warnings/Includes: brief mention of violence and details of a case; brief mention of prison, past trauma; a lil self-loathing and self-sabotaging

Word count: 3.8k

a/n: I knew that this was where this story was going from the very beginning. The dialogue is one of the first parts I had written. It still hurts. Relevant to the story: I operate with the understanding that the Jeid arc does not exist, which also means that Spencer never went to therapy in season 15. Also, huge thanks to @reidscanehand for beta-ing and just generally being my hype person!!!!

Song Recs: Shrike by Hozier; Better As a Memory by Kenny Chesney (don’t come for me if Spencer made playlists this would ABSOLUTELY be on there)

Series Masterlist

———

Spencer made his way to Emily’s office, ignoring the team’s eyes on him— varying degrees of understanding, concern, and uncertainty plain on their faces. As he reached the threshold, he paused for a second before moving into her line of sight. When he moved into the doorway, she looked up and waved him in. He closed the door behind him.

She gestured to the chair in front of her desk. Spencer hesitated for only a split second, but it was long enough for her to notice. He lowered himself into the chair and met her eyes.

She folded her hands on top of the desk. “How are you feeling?”

He drummed his fingers across his kneecaps. “I’m fine.”

It was a lie, and they both knew it. She bit back a sigh and flipped open the folder in front of her. “I’m finished with the official report. I wanted to go over it with you before I submit it to the director.” She looked at him briefly before reading out the report. “On January 9th, our team pursued a lead at the residence of suspect Andrew Hurley. We divided into teams to cover the two entrances to the home, as well as the barn behind the house.”

Spencer fidgeted slightly in his chair and rubbed the tips of his fingers together. Emily continued, “During the raid, Supervisory Special Agent Spencer Reid became separated from the team and was ambushed and disarmed by the suspect in the barn.” She paused but didn’t look at him. “The team was unaware of the altercation for some time, during which Dr. Reid employed various approved restraint methods and was ultimately forced to utilize self-defense measures to preserve his own life. Consequently, Mr. Hurley sustained serious injuries.”

She did look at him then, a steady and unrelenting gaze that had him shrinking inside himself. “However, I have determined that Dr. Reid’s actions were justified in order to maintain his own safety.” She returned her eyes to the report. “Mr. Hurley was detained and treated for his injuries at Sebastian River Medical Center, and he is expected to make a full recovery. Based on the cognitive interviews and physical evidence, a grand jury hearing is scheduled for January 25th.” She brought her hands to rest on top of the report.

“I’ll sign off on it and deliver it to the director by the end of business today.” She let out the sigh she’d been holding back. “Reid.”

He pressed his mouth into a thin line, torn between shame and vindication. “Emily.”

“What happened in that barn was unacceptable. And I need you to recognize that.” Her eyes were back on him, a leader’s gaze boring into a weak link. “You went against a direct order. You put your life in danger unnecessarily, and in the process you endangered this entire team. Furthermore, you could have cost us the ability to close this case, to put Hurley away and bring justice to his victims.”

“It won’t happen again,” he assured her.

“No, it won’t.” Her tone told him that if it did, he’d have bigger problems than a meeting in her office. “My recommendation to the director is that you transition to your next mandatory leave cycle early.”

“I can handle—”

“It’s not a request. You’re on sabbatical starting tomorrow. That’s an order, and one you’d do well to follow.�� She closed the file in front of her. “We’ll see you back in the bullpen on March 7th.”

“I don’t need more time off, Emily,” Spencer snapped.

He could see her grind her teeth together at his tone, but he couldn’t seem to care enough to feel contrite. She took a deep breath in through her nose, leveling him with a pointed look. “If Simmons hadn’t broken it up, you’d have killed Hurley on the floor of that barn.”

His mind snapped back to the lifeless eyes of Hurley’s victims— eight year old boys in shallow graves. Boys who died afraid, and in pain, and crying out for their mothers. His thoughts raced to the feel of Hurley’s throat under his arm, the crack of the zygomatic under his fist. Emily was right of course. If Matt hadn’t found them in the barn and dragged him up and off of Hurley’s nearly lifeless body, Spencer would have killed him without compunction.

“Reid.” The stern edge was gone from her voice. Spencer refocused his eyes on her face, now showcasing an underlying concern that made his stomach turn. “I’m not recommending another cycle of mandatory counseling at this time, although I reserve the right to require it moving forward. But… I’m asking you to take care of yourself. You’ve been through a lot in the last two years. More than a lot.”

“I said I’m fine,” he insisted, but there was less fire behind it this time.

“And I’m not saying you aren’t,” she countered. “But I am saying that the person in that barn… that wasn’t you. That was not the Reid that I know.” Emily tilted her head and furrowed her brow. “The Reid I know uses his intellect and empathy to see angles that the rest of us miss. He depends on the strength of his mind and his unwavering compassion to diffuse conflicts without violence. He invites his friends to foreign film showings and puppet theater.”

When he didn’t budge, she let out a long breath. “I want you to take the next fifty days to find that Reid and bring him back to us.”

...

Y/N dropped into her desk chair with a huff. They’d been back from winter break for two weeks, and she already needed another vacation. But tomorrow was Friday, and then they had a long weekend. She could make it through one more day.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, tired in the way that only kindergarten teachers fresh off a long break can be. She heard the click of Anita’s shoes coming before she even entered the room, and Y/N couldn’t stop the twitch of her lips.

“Dude. How is it only Thursday?” Anita flopped down into the plush Calm Corner chair.

“This has been the longest week of my life,” Y/N agreed. “My kids were off the chain.”

“There is so much drama in middle school right now,” Anita groaned. “I can’t keep up with all the tea, and you know how I love to stay up to date on the freshest brews.” She shot Y/N a look. “Speaking of, where’s the good doctor?”

“I think they’ve had a lot going on at work,” Y/N surmised. “I haven’t seen Mrs. Jareau in over a month.”

“Well, I’m getting antsy,” Anita complained. “Thought for sure you’d be going steady by now.”

Y/N rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help but feel a little impatient herself. If she’d known it would be this long before she’d see him again, she might have made a move when he’d volunteered. Then again, probably not. She sighed.

Her phone chimed with an email message, and she automatically swiped the screen open to read it.

Spencer Reid Re:

Are you free today? If you are, I’ll be at Soho.

...

Spencer sat at the table in the corner of the coffee shop. He sipped absentmindedly at his tea, almost gone cold. He hadn’t waited for a reply before leaving Quantico. He drove straight to the city, figuring he’d wait at Soho until he felt some semblance of calm returning to his body.

He didn’t know why he’d emailed Y/N, and he wasn’t sure he really wanted her to show up. Usually he’d talk to Penelope or maybe JJ. But he’d wanted to get as far from the BAU as possible, and he didn’t want to drag Penelope away from the colorful, safe corner of the world she’d created for herself. He didn’t want to fill it with all the tragedy she’d tried so hard to leave behind.

If Y/N did show, he was certain he could keep the conversation vague, focus on her and the classroom, ask her about her holidays. She wasn’t a profiler, didn’t know his tells well enough. She’d be none the wiser, and he’d have her warmth and presence to focus his energy on, if only for a few hours.

Every time the bell chimed, his eyes flew to the door, searching for her. He knew it was ridiculous. He’d only known her for one hundred and eleven days. Pragmatically, he knew she shouldn’t be the one he wanted to talk to. Realistically, he wasn’t planning to burden her with all of the mess of the past week, the past year, his entire life.

But in the six hundred and forty seven minutes he’d spent with her since September, he’d felt more like himself than he ever had. He was never afraid to be himself with her— the silly story voices, the ridiculous costume, the magic trick, the vulnerability about his mom. All of these pieces of himself were things he usually waited years to show people. It had taken her a matter of weeks to draw them out.

He couldn’t help but believe that if he wanted to, he could tell her everything. She’d know exactly what to say. She’d listen for as long as he could keep talking. She’d cover his shaking hands and wrap him up in the warmth of her spirit. She’d give of herself to guide him back to the person he used to be. She’d be more than willing to use her radiance to illuminate the dark so that he might have a little light again.

The bell sounded, and his eyes focused, and there she was. She was wrapped up in a puffed jacket, a bright blue scarf tied around her neck. Her nose was adorably red from the cold, and she rubbed her hands together as the door closed behind her. Her eyes found him immediately. A small smile turned up the corners of her mouth, and she gave him an enthusiastic wave. And he knew that he was right about all of it.

She approached the table, unwinding her scarf. “Hi!”

“Hi.”

Her eyes flickered over his face, and then settled on his mostly empty mug. “I’ll get you a refill, and then we’ll catch up?”

He nodded, and she headed to the counter. There had been a part of him that thought she wouldn’t come, but of course she did. For some reason, unbeknownst to him, she liked talking to him. Even among his closest friends, he was often made to feel self-conscious about his tendency to ramble, but Y/N had literally asked him to. She sought him out, asked him questions, listened intently, and remembered things he’d told her. She was kind and thoughtful and genuine. Of course she came when he called.

She returned with two mugs, carefully setting them down on the tiny table. She unzipped and removed her jacket, hanging it on the back of her chair and revealing a crew neck sweater covered in tiny astronauts and rocket ships. When she sat across from him, her hands wrapped around the mug and her eyes met his.

“Hi.”

He couldn’t stop his lips from twitching, despite the events of the day. “You said that already.”

She laughed, and he felt the weight begin to lift. “Yeah, well, I haven’t seen you in forever, so— I’m just making up for lost time.”

“Sixty one days.”

“Hmm?”

“It’s been sixty one days, eighty eight minutes, and approximately,” he looked at his watch, “fourteen seconds since we saw each other last.”

She laughed again, and his mouth completed its curve. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I like that you’ve been counting.” She let her chin come to rest in her hand, eyes studying his face. “How are you?”

He wanted to lie, but she was looking at him so earnestly that he mumbled out, “I’m managing.”

She mirrored the way he’d looked at her across this same table nearly three months ago. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” That was a lie, too. But asking her to meet him was enough of a burden.

“Okay. Well, if you change your mind at any point, let me know.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Until then, I can just regale you with all the kindergarten stories you’ve missed while you were out saving lives.”

And regale him she did. For almost an hour, he listened to her tales of love (budding crushes were taking over recess time), loss (the class pet— a stuffed zebra— had accidentally taken a swim in the Atlantic on a vacation to Florida), and lessons learned…

“So, in case there was ever any doubt, we are now painfully aware that we shouldn’t attempt to flush our underwear.” Y/N let out an exasperated laugh.

She’d been talking to him for fifty three minutes, and his heart already felt one thousand times lighter. “I’m really glad I wasn’t there for that one.”

“I really wish that was the only poop story I had.” She shook her head. “There are a lot of things they don’t tell you in grad school. I think there’d be a global teacher shortage if they warned you about the amount of bodily fluid management involved in teaching kindergarten.”

She toyed with the edge of her empty mug. He watched the movement of her fingers.

“Do you—”

She laughed and gestured for him to speak first.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

…

They ended up in Mitchell Park. The trees were bare and the grass was brown, but he was with her, and so it was beautiful.

They’d been walking in comfortable silence, when she asked, “Did you change your mind? About talking about it.”

Spencer put his hands into his pockets. “It’s, um— it’s kind of a lot.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got time.”

“I don’t mean— I mean, it would take some time to get through it all. But it’s also— it’s a lot.”

“We don’t have to.” He could feel her eyes on him. “Do you talk to— someone about it?”

“I talked with my unit chief today,” he answered.

“Okay. But— I mean, have you ever— talked to someone. Like, a professional.”

Spencer bristled slightly. Although he knew she wasn’t passing judgement, her question exposed the reality that she thought he could use it. “I’ve had some mandated counseling over the years.”

“Obviously it’s your choice whether you talk to someone or not,” she mused. “I just— I know that I’ve benefited a lot from seeing my therapist.”

Spencer was unsure of what to do with that information. Here she was, confessing that she went to therapy— sweet, lovely Y/N. In comparison, he wasn’t sure if even daily meetings with a counselor would be enough to tame the darkness that had grown and festered inside him over the years. That sometimes threatened to swallow him whole.

For a long while, there was only the crunch of the frozen ground beneath their feet. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but there was an uncertainty about them that felt uncharacteristically heavy. He was hyper aware of her presence, and so he felt her pace slowing down before she came to a complete stop. He walked a few more paces before it became clear that she wasn’t planning to catch up.

He turned and saw that she’d taken a seat on one of the park benches. He carefully made his way to the bench, sitting beside her quietly. She didn’t look at him, but instead studied her fingernails intently. She cracked her knuckles once, twice, and then turned her body slightly toward him on the bench.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” she hedged carefully. “I didn’t mean to tell you what to do, or like, imply that there’s anything wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with you at all. I just—”

“It’s fine,” Spencer assured her. The way she looked at him then— like he was something fragile, delicate— made his eyes burn. He kept his voice even. “I know what you meant.”

She smiled, eyes crinkling and filled with something that felt familiar and far away all at once. “Good. I can’t have you out here thinking you’re anything less than wonderful.”

He couldn’t stop looking at her, attempting to solve the impossible cypher behind her irises. As he failed to decode it, his inability to read her blinded him to what came next. He missed the dilation of her pupils, the way her tongue darted out to wet her lips, the increase of the beats in her carotid. So when she leaned in and pressed her mouth to his, he was momentarily paralyzed.

Her lips were so soft against his slightly chapped ones, pressing with a perfectly gentle pressure. She brought her hand up to cradle his cheek, the pads of her fingers just barely ghosting the curls falling around his ear. She sighed into his mouth and pressed a little closer. He took one peaceful moment to bask in the realization of a desire he’d had for almost four months.

And then she swiped the very tentative tip of her tongue against the seam of his mouth, and his hands involuntarily wound into her hair, dragging her closer. He opened his mouth against hers to swallow her sweet little gasp. His grip on her hair tightened, and she let out the tiniest mewl, and like a switch had flipped— suddenly his mind was full of the darkness she’d spent the evening chasing away.

Y/N beneath him in the dark. Maeve in a pool of blood. His hands around Cat’s neck. His mother’s slap against his cheek. Max walking away from him. His fingers pressing the plunger on a dirty syringe. The slam of the door behind his father. Y/N calling out his name. A knife at his throat under a canopy of bones. Innumerable sets of lifeless eyes staring up at him. His life being snuffed out on the dirt floor of a shed. The clanging of metal bars and fingers ghosting over old bruises. Y/N looking at him with warm, loving eyes. The violent crack of bone underneath his fists. Y/N’s face, lovely and perfect— and then twisted in pain.

He broke away from her, releasing his hold on her hair and pushing her back into the bench. He took a second to gather himself before he dared to look at her. Her hair was tousled from his rough grip; her eyes were half-lidded and focused on him; her lips were red and kiss-bruised and turned up in a small, sweet smile.

And all at once he knew he had to hurt her, and it had to be now. Because what Cat had said about him was true. He might have escaped his mother’s illness, but he hadn’t been able to outrun the violence— and unlike her, he didn’t have the excuse of being sick. He had hurt people, and he had enjoyed it. He would have killed Hurley, and he would have slept soundly. He was no better than the men his team hunted.

Every time he thought he’d moved past it, that wickedness lurking just under the surface would grab him by the throat, choking everything else out. Emily’s directive rang in his ears. Find that Reid and bring him back to us. He knew who she was talking about. The problem was, he wasn’t sure that person still existed.

He was going to hurt Y/N eventually. Better to do it now, before things got too far.

“You’re Michael’s teacher,” he said, as evenly as possible.

Her smile faltered, and she pressed her lips together. He could still feel the phantom press of them against his own, and he was sure he’d never forget it. She cleared her throat. “You’re right, you’re totally right. I, um— I won’t be in a few months, and maybe then—”

“You don’t even know me,” he interrupted.

Now there was confusion in her eyes. That much he could read. She huffed out a small laugh. “I— I don’t think that’s entirely true.”

He looked directly at her. “Why? Because you read my bio on a university website? Because we got tea a couple times?” His voice sounded harsh, patronizing, and he hated it.

Her confusion shifted into shock, and he ignored the tug on his heart. “Are you serious?” she questioned, genuinely searching for a sign that he was joking.

“Dead serious.” He shrugged, and it felt like his bones were breaking. “You don’t really know anything about me, Y/N. If you did, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

“Where— where is this coming from?” Her voice was small, close to breaking. He lined up the last nail on the lid of the coffin.

“Maybe I gave you the wrong impression. I’ve appreciated talking to you. Volunteering in your classroom was entertaining. But I don’t— I don’t see you that way.” It was a lie, and if he didn’t have such a practiced poker face, she might have seen through it. As it was, his poker face had helped get him banned from every casino in Vegas, so he watched her as he hammered the final nail. “You’re just Michael’s kindergarten teacher.”

“Oh.” The hurt flashed across her features— the furrow of her brow, the tightening of her mouth, the storm clouds in her eyes. “Well, I— I really read this wrong, huh?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“Yeah.” He put his hands into his pockets to keep himself from reaching for her, the desire to comfort her a strange juxtaposition to the pain he was intentionally inflicting on her. “I guess so.”

She opened and closed her mouth twice before taking a deep breath and nearly whispering, “Okay. Well. I’m— I’m gonna go.”

She brushed some imaginary dust from her pants and then stood. She turned to him, and he waited for her to explode— to scream and curse at him. But it didn’t come. She didn’t look at him at all. “Um— yeah. I’m gonna go.”

He didn’t say anything, and he knew she’d take his silence as indifference. But he had to keep his mouth shut, because if he didn’t, he’d beg her to stay. He’d tell her every single random piece of information he had stored in his brain. He’d tell her that he loved her from the moment he watched her help a child pick a solution from a pencil box. He’d tell her that he only ever dreamt of two things these days— her or the lives he didn’t save. He’d tell her every single one of his deepest, darkest secrets. He’d tell her that sometimes he was so afraid of himself that he could barely breathe. And if he told her all of that, she’d walk away anyway.

So instead, he watched her turn and start back up the path, hugging her arms around herself and swiping her cheek against her scarf.

When she disappeared over the slope of the path, he scrubbed his hands over his own damp face and let himself break.

———

Permanent tags: @andiebeaword @averyhotchner @pinkdiamond1016 @shadyladyperfection @coffeeandendlesswords @justanothetfangirl @no-honey-no @ajeff855 @sapphic-prentiss @eevee0722 @rexorangecouny @rainsong01 @goldentournesol @blameitonthenight21 @moviequeen51 @90spumkin

Series tags: @spacedikut @uhuhuh @itsametaphorbriansblog @magenta145 @annesauriol @watermelongubler @ampal98 @meowiemari @mrsmyaweasley @mggsprettygirl @ceeellewrites @daybabyx @joalsglasses @chevyimpala00067 @misshale21 @ilzieah @froggybagels @gublersbooblers @matthcwgraygubler @takeyourleap-of-faith @mrs-dr-reid @flklrevrmre @andromedasstarship @joodeduarte

Broken tags: @saspencereid @this-is-gublerween

#spencer reid #spencer x reader #spencer x y/n #spencer x you #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds self insert #spencer reid imagine #homoose writes #tmsidk

694 notes · View notes

sortasirius · 4 years ago

Note

what makes you think the writers want deancas? not trying to be an asshole, i'm just genuinely curious as to why you think that. i know berens' episodes are pretty heavy with subtext so i can see why you'd say that he wants it, but i'm not so sure about the rest of the writers/dabb. it seems like meghan isn't a huge fan either, given her "they twisted it so fast" tweet :/ of course she's a very new writer (think she's only writing one ep this season?) but still

OKAY this is a great question, welcome to my dissertation.

I’m going to address the end of your question first. Meghan is actually DeanCas positive, she has been for quite a long time. She actually, a few years back, posted a picture of her reading a literal book about Destiel and captioned it “writing reading” or something like that.

This whole thing just comes out of a boiling over of tensions because of how nasty fandom twitter can be. Like I said here, I think this has just gotten blown out of proportion, they shouldn’t have posted all this randomly disparaging stuff, but also like...can you blame them? The fandom is a lot, we always have been, and they’re probably also under a gag order not to talk about the finale, and are annoyed that people keep asking.

So nah, Meg is not anti Destiel.

To the first part!! So let’s take a look at the show runners since Cas has been around.

Seasons 4 and 5: Kripke

Seasons 6 and 7: Gamble

Seasons 8-11ish: Carver

Seasons 11ish-15: Dabb

So starting with Kripke. Okay, yes, I will be the first to admit that we have some pretty incredible Destiel moments in these seasons, but it’s less directly written into the plot and much more from Misha and Jensen’s uhhhh ~chemistry~. The only times it was directly written into the script was when the episode was handled by someone like Edlund (“On The Head Of A Pin,” “The End,” “My Bloody Valentine”). And you have to remember, if in season 5, there are moments here and there where you’re like huh that’s suspiciously romantic dialogue, remember that Cas took Anna’s place. Anna was supposed to be endgame for Dean, but due to a myriad of issues and Misha’s general greatness, Anna was replaced with Cas.

Onto 6 and 7. Hmmm. Gamble. 6 and 7 are my two least favorite seasons and that’s no secret, and that’s not only due to the plain old weird shit in the overall storyline, but also that homegirl killed off Cas in s7 and then Bobby like four episodes later. (Also it ALWAYS rubbed me the wrong way they couldn’t have Baby in that season lol). We still had some great DeanCas moments, but again, it wasn’t really written into the overall arc (until they had to change the end of season 7 because of tanking ratings and bring Misha back lol, anyone remember the fact that Dean kept Cas’ jacket and would randomly dream of him? Yeah.). But we still had those moments, those distinctly romantic moments, probably the best example in these two seasons is from Edlund again, specifically “The Man Who Would be King,” I wrote a little about that here.

We move onto Carver, who gave us, at this point, the most overt DeanCas season with season 8 (season gr8 is a better name imo), and this is the first time Dean and Cas’ relationship is directly written as an arc of the season. I mean, you have everything in Purgatory, Dean “seeing” Cas everywhere, the fact that he felt so guilty that Cas stayed in Purgatory that he manipulated his own memories to think that he was the one that failed Cas, because he couldn’t comprehend that Cas would want to leave him, and let’s not forget Dean snapping Cas out of Naomi’s hold on him in “Goodbye Stranger.” It was a very obvious shift, not enough to alert the general audience, but more than enough for most of us in fandom.

It’s also important to note that this is when Andrew stopped co writing with Loflin and started writing his own episodes (”Hunter Heroici” anyone?) I like Loflin fine, but Dabb was able to stretch his legs a little bit more once he stopped co-writing, and we also began to see some DeanCas themes in his solo episodes.

In any case, them and their issues being a big part of the seasons continued with Carver, and Berens entered the scene, his first episode (”Heaven Can’t Wait”) is one of my favorites, with human Cas and the fanfiction gap and Dean and Cas just generally being awkward and funny and sweet. This is Bobo’s FIRST episode, remember that. He comes right out of the gate with it.

Also in Season 9, this is when Dean takes the Mark of Cain, and the Cas/Colette mirror is born, so obviously, Dean and Cas are the fabric of the season once again. This is also the season where Metatron says Cas is “in love with humanity,” and then immediately refers to Dean as Humanity so uhhhh yeah.

Onto season 10, Dabb and Berens continue with their greatness (I could write pages on the DeanCas date in “The Things We Left Behind” alone). And then we have one of the best scenes in the entire show in “The Prisoner” where the Cas/Colette mirror continues and Dean, driven by grief and pain and rage and the Mark, still doesn’t kill Cas. He still can’t kill Cas.

Season 11 is important because it takes choice away from both Cas and Dean, and shows us, as the audience, how much losing each other takes out of them. We saw in season 10 how much losing Dean takes from Cas, but what about Cas losing Dean? Dean loses his choice with his connection to Amara this season, and loses even more when Lucifer reveals he’s been possessing Cas, and plays on Dean’s connection to Cas like a mockery. It’s also worth noting that, similarly to season 8, Dean breaks out of the connection with Amara when he’s worried about Cas, and that’s something that even SHE is surprised by.

But then season 12, the beginning to the Renaissance. This is when we get the writer’s that become important for what Dean and Cas are today, and, truly, why I believe they want canon Destiel as much as we do.

This is the first season with Dabb’s writers: Davy Perez, Meredith Glynn, Steve Yockey, and of course Bobo all come in with their incredible talents and gave us episode after episode of good content. “Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets” is probably my favorite, probably the best example of what I’m saying. An episode where Dean is called out by an enemy directly, told to “roll the dice” on Cas’ life. And Dean won’t, it’s not even really a hesitation. And this comes from a character that has known Dean for ten seconds. I also wrote more in depth about this episode here. There are also some.....distinctly domestic details we get this season, specifically in “The Future” (written by Berens and Glynn) with the mixtape. The most tropey of tropes mixtape. Yeah, I’ll just leave that one here.

And then season 12 ends with Cas’ death, but also with the parallel between Sam and Dean with Jess and Cas. Sam literally has to drag Dean away from Cas, just like Dean had to drag Sam out of his burning apartment in the pilot. The episode drives it home in every way that it can: Dean is the one left kneeling by Cas’ body, while Sam goes to find out what is upstairs. Dean is the one who stares at the sky, finally broken. This isn’t a random thing, this is Dean’s whole arc, it’s the entirety of the beginning of 13. Dean’s pain, his anguish, his anger.

Season 13 starts with them burning Cas, with Dean, who has begged God to bring him back, who has split his knuckles punching a door, standing, staring at Cas’ pyre with brokenness on his face.

I mean.....

Anyway, season 13 is where it gets interesting (well, I think all of this is interesting but I’m a writer nerd so). So Cas comes back from the Empty in “Advanced Thanatology” written by Steve Yockey, and then a wombo combo of “Tombstone” by Davy Perez next (”Brokebacknatural” as the PR said at the time). Listen. This is the part that SPN crossed a line that they couldn’t come back from. With Cas being Dean’s “big win,” the fact that Dean and Cas watch movies together, “I told you, he’s an angry sleeper. Like a bear.” Talked about it here.

This is where, in my opinion, the network stepped in, but the damage was already done. They had already established that Cas was Dean’s big win, that Dean’s poor coping was not due to Mary’s disappearance, but solely due to Cas, and that Dean and Cas have more married energy than anyone else. The network had nixed blatant canon at this point, and they writing room had been pushing the boundaries of what the network would allow.

After these episodes, we see a marked drop off of DeanCas heavy scenes. They’re still there, still a part of the fabric of the season, but not as...obvious as it had been in early season 13.

And this continued through season 14, we’re back to scraps of Destiel scenes here and there, but to me it always felt like there was something bubbling under the surface, something distinctly unsaid in the themes of the season, even after the walk back of obvious “Dean and Cas are in love” scenes.

And then we get to season 15, which, y’all know I talk about all the time. What’s important here is that Bobo and Glynn are both executive producers, calling more of the shots than ever before. Additionally, it’s important to note that, though they only co write occasionally, Glynn and Berens refer to each other as “work husband” and “work wife.” Each episode has just turned up the volume, and, not for the first time, but certainly the most obvious, Dean and Cas ARE the season. Sure, they’re trying to beat God, they’re trying to finally find peace, defeat the final big bad, but really? This season has been about Dean, and Dean’s relationship to Cas.

And not only do we have obvious and clear Destiel in nearly every episode, but we have episodes like “Last Call” which canonize bi!Dean (wrote about that here).

And, maybe most importantly so far, we have “The Rupture,” the breakup, and “The Trap,” Dean’s confession (both written by Berens). And here’s the thing. These episodes feel connected, but also feel like they’re missing something. Beren’s last episode is 15x18, “The Truth.” We’ve all spec’ed about what could happen in this episode, and I think *I* know what it’s leading to. But for it to be leading to that, it means that the network has to have approved what we’ve all been waiting for years for.

Who got this change to happen? Who got the network to change their minds? It wasn’t us. It was them. I am fully convinced that Dabb and Berens quite literally put their careers on the line for Dean and Cas. They believe in them, they’ve shown that from the beginning, but the only thing standing in the way was the network, never allowing them to take the final step.

So, to answer your question: I think the writers want canon DeanCas because they’ve already shown us that they do. Take a look at their episodes, at Dabb’s, at Beren’s, at Glynn’s, at Perez’s, at Yockey’s. They’ve been telling us what’s going on with Dean and Cas for years.

Sure, I’m not in their heads, I guess I don’t know for *sure* that this has been their thought process, but if we put it all together, from the marked shift when Dabb fully took over in s12, to the change right after “Tombstone,” to the new shift, the blatantly romantic shift in season 15, what else is there?

I’ve said for a long time that we, the SPN fandom, are beyond lucky to have the writer’s that we do. They’re all going to go on to have prolific careers and we were lucky to get them at the end of our little show. I give them a lot of credit for what we have in the show today.

Just remember, they’ve been telling us in all of s15 who Chuck is. He says he’s the writer, right? But a writer who doesn’t have control of his characters? A writer who wants to do the same ending over and over because it “works”? That doesn’t sound like a writer, it sounds like a network exec.

They’ve been showing us what they want for years, and the way s15 is going? I think they may have convinced the network to let us have it.

#supernatural #destiel #spn #my writing #anyway yeah i love these writers #welcome to my essay lmao #spn writers #anonymous #lilly answers

1K notes · View notes

felassan · 4 years ago

Text

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 1

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler played DAO, specifically the mage Origin. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, or personal accessibility reasons). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into DA2 and DAI. Some of it is info which is known having been out there already, some of it is new, and all of it imo was really interesting! It leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

Note on how future streams in this series are going to work: The streams are going to be every Friday night. Most likely, every week, they’re going to play DAO. Every second week it will be Liam and DG and they’ll be doing more of this developer commentary style/way of doing things, talking about how the game was made as they play through, covering quirks and quibbles etc. Every other week, it will be Liam and a guest playing a different campaign in DAO, and Liam will be talking with them about how DA changed their lives or led them into game development, to get other peoples’ thoughts on the series (as it’s now been like 10 years). Some of these guests we may know, some we won’t. When other DA devs are brought on, it’ll be in the DG sessions. They hope to have PW and Karin Weekes on at some point. Sometime they hope to have an episode where they spend the whole time going through the lore.

(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

DAO’s development actually finished up around April 2009. They then put it on ice for around six months before release. Human Noble is DG’s favorite Origin. It’s one of the ones he wrote. He also wrote the Dalish Origin as well (Tamlen is his doing ;__;). DAO’s temp name during development was Chronicles. DG has never played any of the DA games after they were released. He played them pre-release loads of times, when they were half-broken or incomplete etc. This stream is his first time seeing everything played after completion.

NWN: Hordes of the Underdark was the first game where DG was a/the lead writer, in charge of other writers, as opposed to a senior writer. It was pretty well-received. In the fall of 2003, BW were just finishing up HotU when James Ohlen came to DG to talk. BW had been having issues during the development of NWN with the IP holder for D&D Wizards of the Coast, so they were interested in starting their own IPs that they would have ownership over (and also for financial reasons). JO said to DG that one of these new IPs would be fantasy and one would be sci-fi. He knew that DG was more fantasy-oriented, and so asked DG if he wanted to take this on. DG was down, and the first thing to figure out was what that fantasy IP was going to be.

JO gave DG an atlas of European history, which he still has, and said that he wanted him to make a fantasy world that is reminiscent of medieval Europe and reminiscent of D&D - “make it like D&D but not, file off the serial numbers really well”. This worked for DG because he was pretty familiar with D&D and there were also lots of things that he didn’t like about it and wanted to change. So DG went off and for the next six months worked on creating a setting, beginning with documentation and the map. This was kinda strange because they had no idea at that time what their story would be. JO was very interested in having a “genetically evil” enemy in the setting (like an equivalent to orcs). DG wasn’t a big fan of this and his initial go at the setting omitted this (i.e. darkspawn were not a thing) and was a lot more realistic. JO insisted on adding them later on.

This period of development wasn’t actually a good process. There were other people who were working on the project who were designing the combat side. Looking back, DG feels that they should have put their heads together a lot sooner. The combat designers had various ideas for various prestige classes and subclasses, and DG would be like “these are nowhere in the setting [lore]”. He tried his best to add a few of them after the fact, which is why we see things like DA’s version of the bard archetype. The combat designers and artists originally had a vision in mind of a game that was much more along the lines of the type of fantasy you’d find in the Conan the Barbarian world - bare-chested barbarians, sorceresses that show a lot of skin, a grimdark world with barbarian hordes. They were just assuming that’s what it was going to be. At this point in time DG had never thought, “Oh, maybe I’m responsible for communicating my ideas to them” - he’d never done this role before and was just told to go create the world. He created world-building documentation and would send out emails saying “I’m making this documentation, please go ahead and take a look”, not learning until later on that nobody outside of the writing team really likes reading such documentation. He learned tricks later on like making the docs more accessible, less dense and wordy, and overall easier to peruse.

There was no real ‘vision holder’ for DA. Mass Effect did a much better job of that. Casey Hudson was the project director and the vision holder for ME, and he had the power to enforce a set vision of what was and was not ME. ME therefore ended up having a bit more of a coherent vision. DG was in essence the vision holder for DA, but he didn’t really have the authority to enforce it on the artists. The DA teams ended up spending a good 3.5 - 4 years of the ~6 years of DAO dev time going in circles, not exactly sure what they were going to make, the various people working on it having different ideas of what ‘kind’ of fantasy they were going to make. The writing team were leaning towards LoTR; the artists were leaning towards Conan; at one point one of the project directors was leaning towards a point-and-click Diablo-style action adventure; and nobody was overriding anybody else.

The fans who hang out on the forums and in similar places have a very different idea about what kind of game they like and want to play versus the telemetry BW get from the public in general. As an example, fans on the forums tend towards playing non-humans and feeling that playing as a human is boring. Forum-polls reflected that, but BW’s general public-telemetry shows that around 75-80% of the playerbase played a human in DAO. Elves were at 15% and dwarves 5%. In contrast, in the core/forum-based fanbase, the human figure dropped down to 30%.

DG originally wanted Zevran to be a gay romance (he has talked about this before). He asked JO if he could do that pretty early on, thinking of Jade Empire which had same-gender romance options which were really popular. BW were surprised about that, and DG had no idea that the JE team were going to do this. For DAO, he had an idea for an assassin character. He had been reading about how the CIA and KGB would often recruit gay men to be their assassins, as they didn’t tend to have family ties. DG thought this was really interesting. JO was cool with the idea on a conceptual level, but thought that the work that would end up going into it would be better served if those characters could be romanced by both male and female PCs. Zevran and Leliana weren’t intended to be bi, they were “bi out of convenience”, but at the time these sorts of things (representation and such) didn’t enter into the equation as much as it does today. DG wrote Zevran in his head as being romanceable by men.

DG would ask the hair artists, “Why all the mullets?”, because he never understood that, and he’d get “a sort of shrug response”, and an indication that “it’s easier to model, I guess?” Having hair which is loose, in the face, in locks, coming over the shoulders etc wasn’t really supported at this point by the tech or the engine. Hence, they ended up with like five different versions of mullets. On the subject of the engine, for the first half of development they were using an upgraded version of the Aurora engine from NWN, and it was not good. Several years in they decided to switch. Trent Oster was in charge at the time of making a new proprietary BW engine. At the time it wasn’t ready yet, but the DA team decided to grab it, use it and hammer it into the DA engine. That engine had “so many little weird quirks”, like lighting on skin not working properly and looking bad, and one of the issues was hair. It was supposed to be BW’s proprietary engine but it really wasn’t optimized for RPGs and didn’t include a dialogue system. They had to custom-build the conversation system. (At the time Trent didn’t think BW should be doing RPGs anymore, which is a whole other story of its own). DG recalls programmers complaining about things in the engine that weren’t ready for ‘prime-time’. Even compared to games released concurrently, DAO’s graphics were a bit dated.

For the worldbuilding, they had an internal wiki and they kept everything on there. They ended up with a lot of legacy documentation on there very quickly. Eventually they solved this by hiring an editor whose sole job it was to wrangle the documentation. DG started work on the setting in the same manner in which he’d embark on starting a homebrew - ‘so like, first, here’s a map, oh, I like this name, vague ideas, a paragraph on each major nation, a rough timeline of the history, expanding, and it just growing from there’. After about six months, they brought on other writers, and by then he had around 50 pages of documentation. This 50 pages was a minute amount compared to the amount they had generated at the time of release. Originally, they weren’t sure where in the world specifically the story would take place, so DG made sure to seed potential and brewing conflicts throughout Thedas. They settled quite quickly on the new Blight starting in Ferelden. Once they established that, the writers went to town on taking Ferelden specifically and blowing it up detail-wise. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of the dwarves and Orzammar. Mary Kirby was on Fereldan customs and traditions.

The first version of the setting was more grounded in realism, almost like a post-fantasy. The dragons and griffons were extinct and a lot of the things that were thought to be fantastical were thought to be over with. During development, they started clawing these things back. They brought back dragons because the game was named Dragon Age (lol). DG was approached like, “Hey, we named the game DA, can you bring back dragons and weave them into the story more powerfully?” Wynne’s writer Sheryl Chee had a bit of an obsession with griffons and was often like ‘omg, griffons :D’, and this is the origin of Wynne’s dialogue with the Warden about griffons.

KotOR was the first time BW had tried to do a game that was fully voiced-over. For KotOR, BW sent the work of casting, direction and so on down to another studio in California called Technicolor. BW had little say in the process then and when they got it back, “it was what it was”. By the time they got to DA and the first ME, BW had a good system down for recording and VO had become an important thing in games at the time. BW are really one of the premieres for this, a lot of actors really like acting on BW games as they get a lot of space to act where they wouldn’t normally be able to do so otherwise. DG has learned a lot from Caroline Livingstone on how to encourage the best performance out of an actor. For DAO, DG worked together with the various lead designers and Caroline to decide on the auditions, casting etc. This was one of DG’s favorite things to do.

Gideon Emery as Fenris, GDL as Solas and Eve Myles as Merrill were times where DG had written the character and then went to Caroline and said “I have an actor in mind for them, can you check it out?” These were specific times where he was able to secure the actor he wanted. This didn’t always work out, for example there are times when actors aren’t interested or have no time due to scheduling conflicts or were too expensive etc. Eve and GDL were DG’s roommate Cori’s idea. Cori was a big fan of Torchwood/the actors from Torchwood, and worked as an editor at BW for a long time. Gideon was DG’s idea after playing FF12. For DAO, DG didn’t have any specific ideas in terms of actors. Casting Morrigan was the longest, most drawn out process.

The Circle went through a whooole process during worldbuilding. Initially, mages in the game weren’t supposed to have any “fighting magic”. The restrictions were originally such that in the lore, they didn’t teach mages that. Mages weren’t taught any magic that could kill people, only ‘indirect’ forms of magic that could support others. However, [during what sounds like] playtesting it was asked “Why can’t I cast a fireball? I just want to cast a fireball”, so the writers had to go back and rework how magic in the lore worked completely.

Flemeth was originally going to be voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, and she was totally on-board, but unfortunately because of DAO’s development delays, she was unable to attend the new recording time as she had a conflict in her schedule (she was filming House of Sand and Fog). Shoreh was quite disappointed about this and her family had been so excited that she was going to be in a video game. When the movie was finished, Shoreh came back to BW and let them know that she was still available, and this is how she ended up in ME2. For a while they were trying to find an actress with an accent that authentically mirrored Shoreh’s. Out of the blue around this time, Claudia Black’s agent sent BW an audition tape of her. At the time Claudia hadn’t done any games but wanted to get into it. The tape was of Claudia doing a beat poet rendition of Baby Got Back. DG still has this tape. DG was a big fan of Farscape and on listening to the tape, it clicked right away in his head that Claudia would be perfect for Morrigan.

The Fade ended up being a big irritation for the writers. They wanted the PC to be able to assume different forms and such while in there. A lot of this stuff proved too difficult for the combat designers to work out, and so it ended up getting changed a lot. They had a hard time coming up with gameplay that could work in the Fade. The mage Origin is DG’s least favorite of the Origin stories, as he’s really dubious about the Fade section in it. It didn’t work out like how they had pictured it in their heads. By the time they got to DAI, that’s when the Fade really looks like how the writers first described/envisioned it. By this point the artists were more keen to give it a more specific feel. DAO was made at a time when ‘brown is realistic’ was a prevailing thing in games dev.

The experience of a mage in the world isn’t represented or conveyed very well to the player when the player is a mage. The experience of the player when they’re playing a mage or have a mage in their party doesn’t really match up with how the world lore tells them how dangerous mages can be - for example, how they can lose control and so on, we never really have an example of a PC mage struggling with being taken over by a demon. This was originally supposed to be a subplot in DA2 for mage Hawkes, in one of the last cuts. In Act 2, mage Hawke was originally slowly being tricked by a demon in their head that they thought was real, only to realize at the last minute. Mouse the Pride demon in the mage Origin is the only time in the entire series that they really ever properly demonstrated how demons can fuck with [PC] mages. Also, PC templars were originally supposed to have a permanent lyrium addiction that they needed to ‘feed’, but this was scrapped as the system designers weren’t keen on it and felt that it was essentially handicapping the player.

Mages were originally also not supposed to be able to deal with pure lyrium (it would ‘overload’ them). There is a plot where mage PCs run around touching lyrium nodes to refill their mana bars. On this DG was like “Wtf is this?” The designers said that it works, and DG said “but it flies in the face of the lore”. This instance is an example of how the DA team was working where the various departments (writers, artists, designers etc) all had their own ideas about how the game and its world would work and never overrode each other (see above). DG feels that DAO is a little contradictory in that way. It’s only after the game came out that a lot of the people on the team really “bought into” what they’d put forward. This got easier as they went on, with people involved buying then into the things that make Dragon Age, Dragon Age. At one point, not everyone on the team was even aware of those things.

DG relates that originally, they would ask the artists, “Ok, can we get a village?” and said village once created would be quite generic and non-specific to DA. The writers would try to relate how things are in the DA world and list things that would be found in a village like this specific to the DA world, and the artists either didn’t read it or had their own ideas (DG isn’t sure which), and nobody was around to tell them not to do that and that they should do it differently. Everyone having their own ideas like this is why we ended up getting something that is this sort of “cobbled together half-Conan half-LotR mish-mash”, and after a while this sort of became DA’s “thing”.

Initially, BW had concepts drawn up for a lot more different creatures. After they went in circles for those years and consequently ran out of time to do all the models, they had to cut these concepts down more and more. Demons were among the ones that were the first to go (this is why we have situations like a bereskarn as the Sloth Demon in the mage Origin). The original concepts for things like spirits of Valor and Sloth demons were really good. Early on, JO made a list of D&D creatures that he liked. He picked the ones that they were thinking of doing, sent them to DG and said to make a “DA version of this”. For example, D&D succubi essentially became Desire Demons. Desire Demons were originally patterned off Sandman, neither male nor female yet really alluring, acting more like a genie and trying to ferret out mortals’ inner desires (which are not necessarily sexual in nature), without being overtly sexual. The artists’ version came back and that was basically the model seen in-game. The writers were like “What is this, this is nothing like the description?” and the artists responded that on the list from JO, it was included, in that you had to click on “succubus” to get to the Desire Demon description, so they had just read “succubus” and done their version of a succubus. The artists did loads of great work, but this was one of the instances were DG was like “???” By then, it was too late to change it. The writers were able to encourage them to make Desire Demons a little more fearsome, so that made it in at least.

The mage Origin was one of the more contentious Origin stories. It had like 4 different versions written of it over time. It was often the case that BW would hire someone, and writing an Origin story was their first test. Three different writers came in and wrote a version of the mage Origin and those versions just didn’t work. Finally they passed it to Sheryl Chee and she wrote it. The Origins were the parts of the game in general that were written/rewritten the most often. There were several others that got written that they discarded.

Duncan was slated for death from Day 1. When DG writes a story, the thing he does first is pick out the big emotional beats that he wants, such as deaths. He decides these ahead of time and the stuff in-between comes later and is more often changed. Oghren was also originally supposed to die, but this ended up getting cut. DG related a story of how Oghren came to be: At the time, there was a phase JO went through when he thought everything had a formula that it could be done by. One of these ‘creative forumulas’ was that all such IPs had a two-word name that they’re known by, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Dragonlance (being Dragon-Lance). This is how ‘DA’ and ‘ME’ came to be. One of the formulas he wanted to implement was how to distill the ‘comedy character’, like Minsc or HK-47. These characters were very popular with the fans and JO was certain that there was a way to figure this out to create one for DA. At the time, DG argued with him a lot about this. JO insisted it could be done. DG was originally supposed to write this character but ended up not doing so. JO came up with a list of comedic archetypes and had DG write a blurb about what kind of character each could be. These were then sent out to the team who voted on which was their favorite. This process eventually resulted in an archetype basically called ‘The Buffoon’ (think Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, the kind of guy people laugh at because he’s such an oaf).

At this point ‘The Buffoon’ wasn’t named or made a dwarf yet. JO came to DG to write him, but DG said there was a problem which is that he hates this archetype. Homer and Peter are characters that he despises. DG is a professional writer, but this was comedy (outside of his areas of strength), and he felt the best he would be able to do is write a character who makes fun of this archetype and lampshade that. Comedy is something that has to come from within the writer. Oghren was given to someone else, and he ended up getting rewritten again anyway. By the time they were working on Awakening, DAO had not yet come out, and the assumption prior to the game going out was that Oghren was still going to be the most popular character from among the followers. The comedic character that ended up being the most popular along these lines was Alistair, which was interesting as he wasn’t intended as a comedic character, “so shows what we know”. DG was dubious that Oghren was going to be popular, because “he was kind of pathetic, honestly”, but that was the thinking at the time. Thinking he would be well-loved is why he was in Awakening.

On Alistair, any character DG writes is going to be sarcastic. At the time DG had made it a sort of personal challenge to recreate Joss Whedon’s dialogue patterns in his characters. Alistair was a sort of mish-mash of Xander from Buffy and maybe Mal from Firefly. DG wanted to see if he could do it, so Alistair was kind of quippy and self-deprecating. DG never really considered this to be Alistair’s main personality feature, but when other writers wrote him, they often had him doing this, as they liked the trait so much, and so this is how Alistair ended up as he did.

On dwarves, the dwarves being cut off from the Fade is very much baked into who the dwarves are as a race. There’s a specific reason why. This has been hinted at so far and it’s likely to come up in the future. DG had various ideas for some things that he wanted to include with the races or the way the world works etc. Some of them ended up never happening or some are mentioned only as part of the lore (templar lyrium addiction never coming up in gameplay is an example of this). Dwarven history and the nature of the dwarves is one of the things that survived pretty well though. DG calls Jennifer Hepler “mistress of the dwarves” and says that she did a really detailed, amazing breakdown of their history. After Jennifer left it was Mary Kirby, and DG feels that they did a good job of maintaining how dwarves were, in terms of both how they’re often presented in fantasy and yet also quite different in DA. Orzammar is one of DG’s favorite plots all together. You can really tell that Jennifer Hepler really enjoyed the dwarves and brought a lot of love to that plot.

DG draws a distinction between DA fans and the unpleasant people who harassed Jennifer Hepler.

They managed to keep the Tranquil in. There was a while there where they were going to be cut. At the same time, DG regrets that they couldn’t solve the making of the player more aware of how mages are dangerous, thing. Players could make a cogent argument like “they’re not that dangerous, look at me [mage PC]” and the writers were like “well... yeah, that is fair”. It was a case of showing one thing and the player experience of it being another. DG feels that this made the templars come off worse than they are. DG feels that they are being massively unfair and too extreme in their approach to the problem, but the problem itself is a real thing. He feels that there’s some merit/truth in the argument that mages are oppressed, but he looks at it more like an issue like gun control rather than as treatment of oppressed people, saying that we don’t have an example in real life of oppressed people who can explode into demons and cast fireballs and so on.

There are some funny pronunciations that worked their way into DA, and the reason for a lot of them is as follows: the writers had to create a pronunciation guide for VO, because otherwise you end up with a lot of inconsistencies. (Some did still slip through). The guide was online, and if you clicked on a word, an audio file for it would play. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of this and did a great job, but has a really strong NY accent, and in some cases the ‘NY-ness’ of her pronunciation endearingly worked itself into things (the way Arlathan is sometimes said is an example of where this happened sometimes).

Sometimes the writers trying to communicate the “hotness” of a character to the artists didn’t go smoothly. The writers would sometimes say things like, ok, this character is a romance, they need to be hot, and the designs would come back looking “like Burt Reynolds”, and the writers would be like “???” And then a character that wasn’t particularly intended to be hot, as in that wasn’t mentioned at all in the descriptions of them, would come back “accidentally hot”, and the writers would be like “Why couldn’t you have done this when we were asking for a character that was meant to be hot”, and the artists would be like “What?? He’s not hot”. And this became a thing (lmao - this discussion was prompted by DG being asked “Was Duncan meant to be that hot?”, for context). Some of the artists were so paranoid about their [in]ability to judge actually-hot characters that when it was time to pick an appearance, like for Alistair, they gathered up all the women at BioWare, and DG (“resident gay”) into a room to show them an array of faces and bodies like “Is this hot? Is this hot?” DG and co would sit there like, “How can you not tell? Is this a straight man thing?!” Anyways, this is why oftentimes we ended up with characters who are accidentally hot.

Over time, the writers realized that the way they communicated to artists needed to be managed better. The words they would use would have different connotations to them the writers, than what they did to the artists. For example, for Anders’ design in DA2, he was supposed to be “a little haggard”. When DG thinks of haggard, he thinks ‘a little tired, mussed hair, looking like you’ve been through some shit’. But the artists based on that produced concepts with super sunken cheeks, looking like he’d been terribly starved. The writers needed to develop a specific vocabulary for communicating with the artists, as artists think in terms of how something looks, but writers are thinking in terms of what the character “is”. Anders’ description talked about his history a lot, and the one visual-type word that jumped out was “haggard” due to its visual connotations. “A lot it came down to the writers being up their/our own asses.”

When they got to DAI, they had figured out that the way to get best results on this front was /not/ to have the writer go off and develop a long description and pre-conceived notion of what the character looked like in their head. In such scenarios artists don’t feel that they have much to contribute to the process or an ability to put their own stamp on who this character is and make them interesting to them (the best, most interesting characters are when people at all stages of the pipeline properly get to feed into it). They learned that the better solution was to bring the artists in earlier, and to give them little blurbs, and not name the character but give them an ‘archetype’-sort of ‘name’. For example, Dorian was “the rockstar mage”, “cool”, “Freddie Mercury”. The writers wouldn’t be sure that a particular concept would ‘hit’, so at this stage they would offer an array of options and sit the artist down and walk them through the concepts. The artists would then provide a bunch of sketches and it would go back and forth, with both taking part in the character creation process together. For the first two games, the writers were “really hogging” this process to themselves. They got better at not doing this and better at communicating with the artists by DAI.

There were a lot of arguments about how mages in DAO had a lot of specific lore words like “Harrowing”, “phylactery”, “Rite of Tranquility” etc. There was concern that this would be too confusing for players to understand and that it was too complicated. DG says that thankfully he put his foot down and pushed for this stuff to be kept. A lot of fans assume that as lead writer DG had all this influence, way more influence than he could possibly exert on a team. He wasn’t even a lead, he was a sub-lead, under a lead designer. He only had so much say. If the lead designer or lead artist wanted to do something differently, often there was not much he could do. Hence he had to pick his battles carefully, choose the important ones to fight. The mage vocabulary thing was one of these.

Templar Greagoir’s name is pronounced “Gregor” and it comes from a place in Alberta near where DG lived.

Codex entries are usually one of the last things that get done in a project like this, and so all of that kind of textual lore comes in super late and is super punchy as by then the writers have written so much and are exhausted. They had to find a way to make this process cute or interesting or fun for themselves, which is why a lot of entries are quite fun to read. Sometimes a writer would make a joke for banter [irl], and it would end up making it into an entry.

Only Morrigan and Duncan got unique body models in DAO. The companions all have custom-morphed heads but not custom-morphed bodies (Morrigan not included here). This is why every model has a necklace or a collar right at the point where they had to be attached to be a body. These sometimes used assets that couldn’t be used by the PC but were not unique to that character. Duncan probably got a unique model because he was in a lot of marketing/promotional material. Qunari were originally conceived as having horns.

Most people didn’t even finish DAO once (public telemetry again here), only approximately 20-25% actually did. The devs try not to read too much into this kind of thing, but the telemetry does tell them where a lot of people stop playing the game permanently (they call these “drop-off points”). One of these points in DAO is the Fade during Broken Circle. Sometimes when people interpret this data they involve self-serving biases, but it was generally accepted that the Fade there was too long, too complex, not interesting enough, etc. [source]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

#dragon age #bioware #morrigan #solas #video games #queen of my heart #mass effect #lgbtq #jade empire #fenris #the Fenaissance #alistair theirin #lul #fav warden

979 notes · View notes

purplerose244 · 4 years ago

Text

My thoughts on Seabound!!! 🌊🌊🌊 (1/4)

SPOILERS ALERT!!!

Finally Nya's season! Our queen, our water goddess, our amazing girl gets what she deserves! 😍😍😍

What I know about the season beforehand is that Nya's powers apparently are getting problematic for some reasons? Which is a pretty common topic in other shows but it's a first in Ninjago, usually the elemental powers don't have focus and I LOVE that we now get to see stuff like that 💕💕💕

I know there should be Wojira involved, trusting The Island to deliver that little foreshadowing at the end of the episode 🤷‍♀️ Also Maya is back... MAYA IS FINALLY BACK AFTER SEVEN SEASONS YES!!! 😭😭😭

I have nothing else to say, I have no idea what this will bring, hopefully something as good as Master of the Mountain! 🖤

Alright, here we go!

GENERAL THOUGHTS

Warning reader, I might be fangirling to an extreme because I love mah girl Nya and I've been wanting Kai and Nya's parents to be back ever since Hands of Time ended. So yeah... screaming alert 😅

At this point I don't doubt that the intro is great, we reached such a level of animation and we got The Fold 😍😍 Love the marine vibe and how it's similar to The Island, because it's a great intro 👌

NOW I like the writing! Maybe they rushed the dialogue's quality for The Island to get here? It's just fun and in character, maybe it's just me but I'm enjoying it a lot for now

How many episodes are in this? Wiki says ten, then I checked again and it's sixteen like with Master of Mountain... eh, it looks good so far so it's fine whatever happens 🤷‍♀️

A BIG SPLASH

Oohhh, new villain! One that uses... flames... huh, does she know there's literally a master of fire in the ninja team? Eh whatever she looks cute, give it up for Miss Demeanor!! 👏👏

Wait... OMG IS THAT ERIN MATTHEWS??? WE GOT MACY!! ❤❤❤

Whoa, we're finding out where did the order of the vengestone from season 13 come from?? YAS! CONTINUITY!

Yep, there it is, Nya lost control... her attacks look so cool 😍

Lol that kid trying to be a nindroid and Zane being offended 😂😂 Sorry hun, you're that popular

Aaahhh, thank you Ninjago! You gave me back Nya the perfectionist 😂 I was worried her reaction to her powers wasn't going to be in character but it looks fair so far. Brings me back to Possession, my favorite season 💙💙💙

WE GOT BACK THE FACT THAT SHE CAN MAKE IT RAIN!!! YAS!!! I might be easy to please but I love these details 🤩

🤯🤯🤯 Okay they are definitely going somewhere this time and I LOVE IT, because wow. WOW. Are we actually addressing the forever questioned fact that wind and water weren't elements that Chen needed at the Tournament? Are we giving a reason for them to exist outside the main set of elements and the elemental masters?? Duuuude, season 15 don't let me stop you, keep going 😍

Mm, so water and wind are connected to Wojira (now I see the connection with the special). Are we setting the ground for a new master of wind? 😏😏 It's risky going for a Morro replacement but it's a super intriguing idea! Oooor Edgy Boy TM might come back? WHO KNOWS I'M CURIOUS ANYWAY 🤩

Love how it is universal knowledge that Nya is super indipendent 👌

YES YES FINALLY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT MAYA!!! 😍😍😍 Is it too much hoping into a Ray cameo as well?? Pleaaaase? Also addressing Krux after so many seasons, this feels exciting!! 😊

This is what I'm talking about, training, fighting scenes, show me everything that water goddess can do! 🌊🌊🌊

Aaahhh, Nya flexing her mightiness through anger, just to remind us that she is the descendant of a water master as much as of a fire master 😅

YES YES YES YES IT'S HAPPENING FINALLY AFTER SEVEN SEASON THE FIRE WATER PARENTS ARE FINALLY BACK!!! 🔥🌊🔥🌊🔥🌊 I'M SO HAPPY I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR SO LONG!!! 😭

RAY IS THERE TOO HECK YES!!!! 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍 I shouldn't get this excited at only the first episode... WHO CARES RAY IS BAAAAACK!!! ❤❤❤

Omg Maya is definitely different from what I expected, turns out Kai's enthusiasm came from her 😂

Oh look at my flame babe 😍

He's so happy his parents are here, he's a total family man ❤❤❤

Nya is maaaaad... 😅

THERE SHE IS

WELCOME BACK JILLIAN I MISSED YOU 💚💚💚 Would it be too much having a "Your voice sounds familiar" moment with Maya and Lloyd? 😂

I'm so stoked for this! I want all the interactions I've missed for all of this time, asap!! HECK yes!! 😍😍😍😍

Oh, are we looking over the Miss Demeanor, vengestone situation? Mm... for now at least... WHO CARES FIRE WATER PARENTS!! 🔥🌊🔥🌊🔥🌊

THE CALL OF THE DEEP

Imma just slow clap for The Fold because this is another amazing intro, one of those things in this show that stays awesome no matter what happens 👍👍

So Maya gave Nya her discipline and perfectionism, but not the passion behind it 😂 I like this, it's not your conventional master of water, although I'd say it's different from the impression she gave me back in HoT. Maybe this is how she is when she's not trapped for fifty years? 😅😅

Is it too much asking for Kai and Ray bonding while the water women get the work done? 😅😅

Is this the sequel of Green Eggs and Ham?

Green Pancakes and Ham? 😂

Oh it's seaweed nevermind... at breakfast? I'm all for sushi rolls but this is a little 😅 Although since Maya missed their childhood she probably never cooked meals for them... how did I get myself sad 😢

Whoa, Maya is a strict teacher! I got flashbacks from my first and only dance lesson, teachers nitpicking every single pose, uuurrrggg I feel ya waterlily 😡

Again, not a fan of Misako, but coming from her the whole speech about wanting to be there for her child makes a lot of sense

Yes. YES.

YEEEEESSSS KAI AND RAY FAMILY BONDING THIS IS EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WANTED I'M GETTING ALL OF MY WISHES GRANTED FOR THIS ONE ❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥❤

AND MY FLAME BABE IS SO GLAD HE GOT HIS PARENTS!!! 😭😭😭

Lol with Kai's new hair they look even more related 🤣

Ray also sounds so happy he gets to have his moment with his son 😢 I feel so blessed in this moment 👍

Also this scene makes a lot of sense. Nya grew up to be indipendent, one that succeed in most of stuff without problems, she built her life without any help and doesn't look for it. Kai grew up more insecure, he got some walls up but loves to take care of others and be taken care of. With a childhood lost he looks forward to a bit of softness ❤❤

Did Maya make real bacon for that sandwich? Do I smell some favoritism? 😅 Or maybe she really wants Nya to get onto the water mind setting idk 🤷‍♀️

Little tiny complain, why isn't Jay doing the fixing? Did he give up mechanics completely? It feels like we haven't seen him do tech stuff in so long, I miss techy boy in action 😞

And no, having to check on the bathroom doesn't count 😅

Aww robot date 💜🤍💜🤍

AAAHH ROBOT DISASTER 😱😱😱 ZANE DANG IT YOU WERE DOING SO GOOD NOT TRYING TO DIE IN THE LAST TWO SEASONS!!

Oh that was weird, weird magic purple wave thingie?

I DID NOT ASK FOR A SEASON WITH A BEST GIRL AT THE EXPENCE OF ANOTHER BEST GIRL PIX DON'T YOU DARE DO THIS TO ME 😱😱😱😱😱

"Well this is troubling." I love this samurai so freaking much 💜💜💜

GUYS THIS IS ONLY THE SECOND EPISODE, I'M A LITTLE SCARED NOW 😢

Okay Nya admitting that something's wrong looking so apologetic, girl you don't need to do that you already own my heart 😭

Alright, I'm guessing this is Wojira's power or something, and they will have to go down below and find out why... just throwing this in, maybe Maya did something? Because she wanted to finally be with her family and needed an excuse? JUST A THEORY WITH NO BASE I REALLY HOPE I'M WRONG!!!

Okay, two episodes and I'm BEYOND engaged, let's keep it up! 😍

UNSINKABLE

Getting an idea how this episode might end already 😂😂

Look, I love best girl Pixal, but I'm kinda sad that she seems to be the only one tinkering at this point. Like, I saw Nya fix little stuff, while Jay dropped engineering altogether, I miss my engineers team 😭

Aww, the guys didn't want to crush Pixal's dream of an unsinkable boat 💜 But honestly yeah, I agree with Cole, this might end badly 😅😅

Thank goodness

I was worried they forgot about Jaya ❤💙❤💙 Jay is such a cutie omg

Nya: Mm, going on a potentially dangerous mission with unstable powers in the heart of my element or... mom's tofu pancakes... *yeets herself over the ship*

I'm making too many screenshots of the Smith family... WHO CARES THEY ARE BACK AND THEY ALL LOOK SO GOOD!!! 😍😍😍😍

Aww Ray wants to play with his son and his friends so CUTE ❤❤❤ Still can't believe they play Prime Empire after everything that went down 😂😂

Whoa whoa whoa, Kai and Cole are sitting this one out? That's actually interesting, I'm pretty sure I saw Cole's scuba suit in the sets though so I didn't expect it... lol it's actually kinda fair that the two that used to be afraid of water aren't going 😂😂

Bet Kai is happy to stay behind because he gets to spend time with his dad 😭

Also studying the fire elementals?? Uhm, yes please?? TELL ME EVERYTHING ABOUT MY FLAME BABE!!! 😍😍😍😍

I'm sure this one scene...

... made so many lavashippers happy ❤🖤❤🖤 Cole you got Ray's blessing

Ninja team acting cool while Jay is being Jay, it's how it always goes, it's the entire show's description and I absolutely love it 😂 That wink though 💙

PIRATE ZANE IS BACK 😂😂😂 Haven't seen him since Possession, and this time he's not even malfunctioning 👌 Pixal is so done with his dorky boyfriend 😝

Of course Jay already has a ghost butler theory going on 😂

OF COURSE IT'S MAYA 😂😂

To be honest muffins would sold me too 😅 Not sure if she will make them out of tofu again though...

It's actually really interesting that we still haven't met the actual enemies, it does build up excitment! Very curious about these squid guys 👍

Well what do you know, the Unsinkable sank. Who would have thought?

... yeah same, sorry Pix 😅

FIVE THOUSANDS FATHOMS DOWN

Aaaahhh, Nya fixing stuff! That's more like it!! 😍😍

Oww, that one speech, I've been waiting for so long for that! Maya just wants to catch up with her daughter and it's not her fault she was separated from her children, but Nya did everything on her own with Kai. Only fair she isn't seeking for her help right now... still sad 😢

Pff, with this ninja team there's not a moment of privacy 😂😂

Maya cleaning his future son-in-law's laundry what the HECK 😂😂😂 To be fair Jay has a bit of a history of having to change underwears during sea travels 😝

Zane was attached to a battery? When?... are you talking about that one scene in Prime Empire? Cause that's not really a flashback I wanna ha- whoops never mind got the flashback 😱

Maya looks more calm now, I think she's trying to act more reasonable and she's got good points 👍 I know people were a little weirded out by how more cheerful she looks in comparison to Hands of Time, but I think she gets the most serious and rational when time needs. That's actually fascinating of her 🤔

CALLING OUT AN ATTEMPTED MURDER

THIS GIRL IS TOO GORGEOUS MY HEART CAN'T TAKE IT 🤩🤩🤩 Like my gosh that smirk, what the heck Pix 💜💜💜

Okay but Jay looking at Nya until the doors are completely closed?? CAN YOU FEEL MY JAYA HEART BEATING?? ❤💙❤💙

Whoa green gas I thought this was Nya's season 😂

MAYA WHY ARE YOU SAYING THIS STUFF YOU'RE SCARING ME 😱😱😱 I SWEAR LEGO IF YOU BROUGHT BACK WATER MOM JUST TO KILL HER OFF I'M GONNA SUE YOU 😭😭😭

I really REALLY like the atmosphere of the entrante of the temple! Super sealike and ancient! 🌊🌊🌊

Maya: off we go, into the spooky old temple! (Why does it feel like something Kai would say? 😂)

Oh gee, someone sleeping in the deep, who could that be? Coff Wojira coff

Whoa the jellyfishes look pretty lifelike!

HERE HE COMES

WELCOME BACK GILES!!! ONCE AGAIN ON A LEGO SHOW I MISSED YOU SO MUCH YOU AND YOUR GODLIKE VOICE!!! 😍😍😍😍 Gosh he's a villain but he's got Clay's voice, how can I even try to hate him?? 😅

Alright, knocking down my water girls, that is pretty hateful material... BUT CLAAAYYY 💙💙💙

So they need the two amulets to wake up Wojira? Isn't one on the island? Fire dad and son coming to the rescue? WHO KNOWS BUT I'M ENJOYING THIS A LOT SO FAR KEEP GOING SEABOUND 😍😍😍

111 notes · View notes

equestrianwritingsstuff · 3 years ago

Text

In recognition of 200 followers.....

I composed a list of 200 hero x villain dialogue prompts for you guys to ask me or reblog it and ask your own followers or if you take inspiration.

Thank you so much! It means a whole lot!

1. "I wish I had longer to love you."

2. "Sometimes being the greatest is being the worse."

3. "I will kill you if you die on me."

4. "Bury me... under a willow tree... with tulips and lilies to blossom in the spring and a small stream to keep me company."

5. "Villains aren't capable of love; yet, here I am crying over your grave."

6. "The kitten's name is Max."

7. "I'm going to get a beer."

8. "There is only one way to kill me, but you could never muster the strength to pull through."

9. "I'm dizzy with love for you."

10. "Hero, you are drunk not a toddler."

11. "I pledge to serve you willingly, butthead."

12. "Ride the waves with me." "You are a mermaid, no thanks."

13. "Stay awake for me; it's only a little farther."

14. "I can't carry you!"

15. "He isn't much, but we'll make do."

16. "I WANT TO SEE HER! LET ME SEE HER PLEASE. Please..."

17. "George Washington never told a fib, and I am greater than him, so trust me, Hero, when I say I am telling the truth."

18. "Eggs and butter make dough, knives and guns make death."

19. "You are insane."

20. "The bomb is going off in twenty seconds, Hero. Run now. I-I'm going to stop it."

21. "What is love?"

22. "I don't get the function of hugs."

23. "Mentally I'm good, but physically..."

24. "I only wished for happiness from that genie. I guess it was evil."

25. "Break him, shatter him, destroy him."

26. "Sing with me."

27. "Villain you are touch starved, not dying."

28. "What the heck did you do to your hair." "What? You don't like it?" "It looks like my cat's litterbox."

29. "Don't give me hope."

30. "I am not a disease or a parasite. I am a human. I am one of those millions you swore to protect."

31. "Kiss, marry, kill?" "Kill, kill, kill."

32. "You created me."

33. "Villain don't you dare pass out."

34. "I like the look of blood on you, compliments your eyes."

35. "I kinda dropped Hero through space."

36. "Power exhaustion sucks."

37. "Time to save the world. Yay!" *says in sarcasm*

38. "Let me feed you Hero."

39. "You do not have AC?!"

40. "Villain you have a fever."

41. "Am I drunk?"

42. "Movies. Nine o'clock. Don't be late."

43. "Lemme grab a beer and we are good to go."

44. "Don't. Look. At. Me."

45. "He just had his wisdom teeth out sooo." "How bad can it be? Villain has been shot with twenty tranq darts at one and didn't pass out... immediately anyway, took a good twenty minutes." "Well, you see-" "THE KITTEN IS TRYING TO KILL ME!!!!!"

46. "She needs surgery."

47. "It's a panic attack..." "KISS HIM!"

48. "Blood, gore, madness... this was made for me."

49. "Quit drooling on me and sit up."

50. "There's only one bed."

51. "He looks so cute when he sleeps."

52. "Of all the places to live, you had to choose a heavily fortified medieval castle two thousand years in the past?"

53. "You are a peacock Hero."

54. "Let's see who will drown first. You or me. One, two, three... let's go!"

55. "I wasn't always like this."

56. "Madness is for geniuses, not for me."

57. "It's just a sedative that's going to make you nice and docile."

58. "He's out." "Good, let him rest, villainy is hardwork."

59. "I love her, but she doesn't love me."

60. "If I had a choice to save you or me, I'd pick me."

61. "Gag her."

62. "They aren't made for this, give them mercy."

63. "Talk now or she dies."

64. "Broken ribs, broken jaw, broken arm... are you sure you want me to continue." "No." "Then tell me your name."

65. "Get me some thread and a needle. Just don't touch me."

66. "The police are coming."

67. "Tell me where she is. TELL ME WHERE IS SHE OR I WILL SLASH YOUR THROAT AND TOSS YOU IN THE SEWER!!!!!"

68. "I love you." "I don't."

69. "Hug me just one last time."

70. "Villain hey hey hey. Calm down. You've been in a pretty bad accident."

71. "They won't be able to walk again."

72. "Tell me... just tell if they made it."

73. "Can't you just poof me another arm?"

74. "If you saved all of them, you can save me."

75. "I'm really tired..."

76. "Sleep. I will stay with you."

77. "She is sixteen years old." "All musicians start young." "This isn't a concert, this is life. Stop ruining it."

78. "He"s been in an accident." "Where?" "Five minutes away from your place."

79. "I wish he wasn't unconscious, so I could talk to him. So I could thank him."

80. "It's been four months now. I have came everyday and, uh, I dunno what to say. Hero, I need you to wake up. I can't function knowing you are right here."

81. "I have a date." "Hmm with who?" "Supervillain." "When and where honey?"

82. "Shhhhhhh. Be quiet. We are still being hunted."

83. "Desert?" "What are you trying to do? Kill me?"

84. "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." "I know, I know dear and I so sorry, but I need you to help me. I need you to help them."

85. "Villain just sleep. Allow the drugs to take you under. Don't fight it, don't resist... just sleep. In the morning, we will be safe."

86. "Being lost in the woods isn't ideal."

87. "An injection of valium will do it."

88. "There's no anesthesia."

89. "Wouldn't it be great if we never met each other?"

90. "Bless you." "I didn't sneeze." "Yeah right. Now go sit down, you're sick."

91. "It's called insomnia you dim-wit."

92. "Join me and we can be great."

93. "You didn't bring me here for the cake." "No, dear, but you are so gullible. I brought you here for a sacrifice." "My life?" "Why yes."

94. "I don't know. I never had someone collapse on my doorstep before."

95. "I have nothing to lose. No family, no friends, just my meaningless life."

96. "That's my daughter, not the villain's... so give me her back before I rip your eyes out."

97. "How long was I out for?!" "Ten minutes, but you were drifting. I don't think you had that good of rest." "Oh, I thought I was asleep for hours."

98. "I know, I know you are going to hate me after this, but trust me when I say it's for the best."

99. "I know everything about you."

100. "I think narcissism is contagious because after watching you for a couple hours, I think I may have developed a little crush on the mirror..."

101. "What did you give me?"

102. "Is she screams, I'm going to scream, and then we are going to die."

103. "No fighting today, my cat just died."

104. "How hard did you punch me?"

105. "Not gonna lie, being delirious was epic."

106. "I am cooking for you. You aren't my servant, so stop thinking it."

107. "My old masters made me into a weapon and called me Villain, but if you desire a lapdog I am going to need to be refurnished to fit your needs."

108. "What is his deal?" "I think he's just crazy."

109. "Love is not what I had in mind when I agreed to go on a date with you."

110. "Hugs are overrated."

111. "Are you too hot or too cold?" "Both."

112. "I wish we could turn back time."

113. "I lost the game." "What do you mean? Hero is dead." "Precisely."

114. "Make a wish." "That you live."

115. "Villain has been acting exceptional! Today we granted them a break from the machine. Go ahead Hero and take him for some ice cream."

116. (Sleepy murmurs) "Don't go. I neeeed you." "Yeah yeah I know Villain."

117. "Villain was the one who hurt me, not Hero."

118. "Supervillain is in danger!"

119. "If everyone is scared of me, I might as well be alone."

120. "My head is killing me."

121. "Don't call an ambulance. Just... hold me."

122. "You don't have to do this. It's going to hurt you more than me." "Anything for you dearest, anything at all."

123. "Hero, go wash your hands before dinner."

124. "You have PTSD?" "I don't know?"

125. "I have soap in my eyes!' "Rinse it out." "Mm no I'm permanently mortally blinded." "Uh huh."

126. "We need to cuddle to keep warm."

127. "Take care of them for me, will you?"

128. "When I'm gone, promise to tell my mother, please."

129. "Drug him and then bring him to me."

130. "Superheroes are for children. In all honesty, we are all villains."

131. "Oh my gosh, Hero, what happened?" "Poisoned."

132. "Wouldn't it be nice?" "I don't fancy prosthetics."

133. "Just shut up and listen!"

134. "There is a memorial parade for Hero tomorrow. They asked you to lead it."

135. "She turned it around... at the end."

136. "I wish that he understood how much I care for him."

137. "Civilian! He fell asleep in my lap last night, like totally zooted. It was so cute, but also very tempting. I stuck a french fry up his nose." "Wow. Did he wake up then?" "Yeah, I am sorta kidnapped right now..."

138. "The book, the sword... all pieces of the puzzle huh." "No, darling, all pieces of my game."

139. "Their death is my fault! Not your's, but mine, so quit trying to make me feel better."

140. "Once upon a time-" "Oh please, not another fairytale."

141. "If only it was that easy."

142. "We are stuck in a maze, how can you be so joyful?"

143. "Celebrate Hero, eat your cake, party into the night... but just know, I will be back."

144. "Call 911!" "Why?" "I stubbed my toe."

145. "Your jawline looks like it was gauzed over in lard." "It looks better than your hay for hair."

146. "You're my best friend." "Villain? Are you on drugs?"

147. "Lay him there and leave him. Let the rats dine on him."

148. "The point of the cow suit?" "Oh, uh, I was at a Halloween parade. You know, for children."

149. "I-i never wanted to hurt you." "I know, I wanted you to, so I allowed it."

150. "Favorite movie?" "Your death." "Ooo never heard of it, let's watch it." "*groans* Oh my gosh, you are stupid."

151. "Being a flutist is my only superpower. And being modest apparently."

152. "Your head will join my collection if yoi don't watch out."

153. "Hey, hey! Wake up, buddy. It's just a nightmare."

154. "Meh head hurts." "Yeah, you hit it pretty hard."

155. "Let's go for a ride." "On that yellow miniature school bus?" "It's a ranger you idiot."

156. "No painkillers, no bandages, perfect environment for infection to settle... I'm just gonna leave you here Villain."

157. "I save you and this is how you repay me? A prison?"

158. "What are you doing?" "Climbing a tree? No Hero, I am breaking into your house to kidnap you."

159. "I formally apologize."

160. "Of all places, Hero, you had to teleport us to a desert. A DESERT."

161. "Supervillain won't stop unless we team up." "I don't think our alliance will stop them, I think it'll just make them angrier."

162. "Stop singing or I will blow this place until even the last atom is broken into itty-bitty molecules!" "That... that is scientifically impossible."

163. "I'm a genius! Yippee!"

164. "Life isn't perfect and nor is your morals."

165. "Control yourself before you kill everyone around you."

166. "Say your goodbyes."

167. "Of all the ways I've died, drowning was by far the nicest."

168. "Love the collar. Is it for fashion purposes?" "Uh, um, uh, er, no?"

169. "You look lonely. Want some hot coco?"

170. "It is negative million out there and you expect me to come in toasty warm after fixing your power?"

171. "Are you sick?" "Yeh." "Come on in then."

172. "Civilian, don't even bother trying to save him."

173. "We have a breach!"

174. "What makes a villain's life less important than your's?"

175. "Enjoy your soup." "You poisoned it." "And you're delusional, eat up."

176. "I hate 99% of the population." "According to a meme I found, you are therefore a cat."

177. "Don't overuse your powers."

178. "This is just an unfortunate event."

179. "You look so cute when you are sleepy and barely conscious."

180. "His fever is rising."

181. "Save her, leave me. I'll-i'll get out of this somehow."

182. "Sometimes self-sacrifice isn't noble, it's selfish."

183. "You are so funny that I need my inhaler to kill you with." "That sentence was so discombobulated that I am leaving."

184. "Just for your information, I hate oranges but love grapes."

185. "Walking down the stairs shouldn't be a momental effort." "You broke both your legs."

186. "You just destroyed my life's work, don't expect me to give you a huge bear hug."

187. "Is it true that you have telekinesis?" "Yes, why?" "Go steal me a donut."

188. "You are so incredibly touch starved, Villain." "Mmm." "Tired? Go ahead and sleep, I'm here."

189. "This is for your own good, I promise."

190. "I'm cold."

191. "I don't want to move and you can't make me."

192. "I AM RETIRED! YOU DON'T NEED TO CONTINUE TO SEND ME PAMPHLETS OF THE HOTTEST HERO OF THE YEAR!"

193. "He's unconscious." "That tired, huh." "No, he passed out from blood loss."

194. "I want a kitten."

195. "I'm no scared of you, so stop acting like I am."

196. "He isn't dangerous, just scared."

197. "They won't be going anywhere for a long, long time."

198. "Hero? Hero? Oh my goodness, please wake up."

199. "Life is too short for pleasures."

200. "I hope you are happy, in the end."

#heros and villains #ask game #200 followers #thank you so much

35 notes · View notes

jbbarnesnnoble · 4 years ago

Text

JBBarnesNNoble's 2nd Annual Mental Health Awareness Month Challenge 2021

Hello lovely people! And welcome to the 2nd Annual Mental Health Awareness Month Writing Challenge. The aim of this challenge is to shine a light on mental health, medical conditions, and the things that can have impacts on us. This started out initially being a PCOS Awareness challenge last year but through conversations with other writers over Discord, it evolved into a Mental Health Awareness Month Writing Challenge last year. I’m reusing some of the unused prompts from last year’s challenge and adding in some new ones!

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The goal of this challenge is to lift each other up, and show that it’s okay not to be okay. Spread some love and light during a challenging time in the world to those who struggle with chronic illness, depression, anxiety, self-esteem issues, grief, PCOS, acceptance from their families and communities for being LGBT+, and anyone struggling with insecurity.

This challenge will run through July 31st, 2021. It will run through Mental Health Awareness Month, Pride Month, and the month of July to give people time to write. You can submit it at any time. I probably have too many prompts, but I wanted to ensure that there was a wide array to choose from. Please don’t hesitate to message me if I haven’t interacted with your fic after a few days! Sometimes the tag system doesn’t work and I miss things!

The Rules:

1. Utilize resources available online if you’re dealing with subject matter you’re not that familiar with. I’m not going to go all “cite sources” on y’all, but please do make sure to do your research. Writing about some of these issues can be hard if you don’t have first hand knowledge of how it can affect you. The goal of this challenge is to write about topics that we tend to shy away from, that many of us struggle with, from mental health struggles to chronic illnesses to low-self esteem. A gentle reminder that if you think writing about a subject will be triggering for you, please look after yourself first.

2. Use #JBBNNMHAM21 to tag your fic

3. Dark!Fic- Due to the subject matter involved in this challenge, please don’t submit dark!fic. I enjoy dark fics, but this challenge isn’t the place for them.

4. Smut- Smut is welcome! Make sure you tag it appropriately.

5. No inc*st, dubcon/noncon, underage, etc

6. Ships- I prefer reader inserts, but show me what ya got.

7. NO JOHN WALKER FICS. Please. Please no. I beg of you.

8. Selecting Prompts: Just let me know which one you want to do! 2 people per prompt! The song prompts have a line from them under it. You DO NOT need to use the line in your submission! It’s mostly to help you decide if you’re interested in a song before you take a listen to it.

You also can alter the sentence and dialogue prompts as needed for grammar, be it altering the pronouns used or changing the pluralization of a word.

9. Trigger Warnings: Use warnings as needed. Fics dealing with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or other mental health issues should be tagged appropriately to ensure that readers that may be triggered by the subject matter can avoid the fic. Trigger warnings are non-negotiable

The prompts are under the cut!

Prompts:

Dialogue Prompts:

“I feel like if I let go, if I move on, I’ll only be proving them right.”

“I don’t know. Am I? Because from where I’m standing it’s pretty damn clear that’s how you see me.”

“You don’t believe that do you? Tell me you don’t. Please.”

“It’d probably be easier if you left”

“Please leave me alone”

“Everyone’s got broken pieces. Some have more, some have less. It doesn’t make you less of a person to have those broken pieces.” @nekoannie-chan

“If it’s okay with you, I’ll take that shake now.”

“What’s the point if I’m going to end up breaking that promise too?”

“You sure about that, moonman?”

“It made you smile though. And that will always be a win in my book.”

“That’s not true. And I will tell you that every day of your life until you believe me.”

Sentence Prompts:

Feel free to adjust the pronouns as needed

It was a day. It was the only way it could be described.

Summer had a smell that reminded her of innocence and a time long since past.

In that moment, the world stopped spinning on its axis as it all shattered down around her.

Some things, there would never be a way to understand. @justrunamok

Like shattered glass, in that moment the illusion was broken.

Forever was a lie, just like everything else.

If you had another condescending doctor tell you your problem wasn’t a problem you were going to scream.

They’d say it was easy, like riding a bike. Except, you never learned how to ride a bike in the first place.

Today was going to be good. It had to be.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was going south.

AU and Trope Prompts:

Soulmate @samsgoddess

College

Childhood Friends @tellmealovestory

Friends to Lovers

Enemies to Lovers

Musicians

Writer

Professional Athlete

Teacher

Coffee Shop

Fake Dating

Accidental Marriage

Royal

Librarian

Doctor

Song Prompts:

1. Nobody Ever Told You - Carrie Underwood

Lyric Snippet: “Wish you could see yourself the way I do. Nobody ever told you, nobody ever told you. Shine like a diamond, glitter like gold, and you need to know what nobody ever told you”

2. Missing You - All Time Low

Lyric Snippet: “And if you need a friend, I’ll help you stitch up your wounds. I heard that you’ve been, having some trouble finding your place in the world. I know how much that hurts. But if you need a friend, then please just say the word.”

3. Barefoot and Bruised - Jamestown Story

Lyric Snippet: “Maybe when your sky comes crashing down, I can be your angel on the ground. If you get tired and can’t go on, I will carry you along, when the rocks below your feet wear out your shoes, when you’re barefoot and bruised”

4. Hold On Till May- Pierce the Veil

Lyric Snippet: “If were you, I’d put that away. See you’re just wasted and thinking about the past again. Darling, you’ll be okay.”

5. If I Surrender - Citizen Soldier

Lyric Snippet: “If I surrender, surrender, to the monsters in me, will it set me free?”

6. Home - Machine Gun Kelly, X Ambassadors, Beba Rexha

Lyric Snippet: “All these miles, feet, inches, they can’t add up to the distance that I have been through just to get to a place where even if there’s no closure I’m still safe. I still ache from trying to keep pace. Somebody give me a sign, I’m starting to lose faith”

7. Broken Arrows - Daughtry

Lyric Snippet: “The best of intentions I lay at your feet. And I need you to see past the worst part of me.”

8. Used - Serious Matters

Lyric Snippet: “The wounds are gone and the pain still lingers. But this time I won’t stand by, I don’t need you in my life”

9. According to You - Orianthi

Lyric Snippet: “According to you, I’m stupid, I’m useless, I can’t do anything right”

10. Let It Land - Tonight Alive

Lyric Snippet: “And everything we hate is something we just bought along the line”

11. Cold As You - Taylor Swift

Lyric Snippet: “You put up walls and paint them all a shade of grey. And I stood there loving you and wished them all away. And you come away with a great little story, of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you”

12. Tied Together with a Smile - Taylor Swift

Lyric Snippet: “Hold on, baby you’re losing it. The water’s high, you’re jumping into it, and letting go, and no one knows. That you cry but you don’t tell anyone that you might not be the golden one. And you’re tied together with a smile, but you’re coming undone.”

13. Human Interaction - Tonight Alive

Lyric Snippet: “I don’t know love. I don’t know hate. I am numb. Wish I could find the words to say. Asking please, as colors fade. I need to breathe. Before I turn the world to grey.”

14. Therapy - All Time Low

Lyric Snippet: “Give me therapy, I’m a walking travesty, but I’m smiling at everything. Therapy you were never a friend to me, and you can keep all your misery”

15. Scars - Alison Iraheta

Lyric Snippet: “Do you know how hard I’ve tried to become what you want me to be. Take me, this is all that I’ve got, this is all that I’m not, all that I’ll ever be. I got flaws, I got faults, keep searching for your perfect heart. It doesn’t matter who you are, we’ve all got our scars”

16. Hurts to Know - 1551

Lyric Snippet: “I can’t remember what I did to earn you by my side. I can’t surrender. I’ll fight as long as you’re in my life”

17. Spinning Bottles - Carrie Underwood

Lyric Snippet: “He’s in a hotel room, with the tv on. Getting lost in the static with the curtains drawn, knowing this could be the time that gets her gone for good, he’d quit if he could. But one down, two down, three down, four, can’t even recognize the man in the mirror anymore”

18. Praying - Kesha

Lyric Snippet: “Well you were wrong and now the best is yet to come. ‘Cause I can make it on my own. And I don’t need you, I found a strength I’ve never known.”

19. Jersey On the Wall (I’m Just Asking) - Tenille Townes

Lyric Snippet: “If I ever get to heaven, you know I got a long list of questions. Like how do you make a snowflake, are you angry when the earth quakes? How does the sky change in a minutes, how do you keep this big rock spinning? Why can’t you stop a car from crashing? Forgive me, I’m just asking”

20. Five More Minutes - Scotty McCreery

Lyric Snippet: “Time rolls by, the clock don’t stop. I wish I had a few more drops of the good stuff, the good times. Oh, but they just keep on flying right on by like it ain’t nothing, wish I had me a, a pause button. Moments like those, Lord knows I’d hit it. Give myself five more minutes”

21. Dad’s Old Number - Cole Swindell

Lyric Snippet: “Sometimes I forget, these ten digits ain’t my lifeline anymore. Every now and then I dial them up when life gets tough or when the Braves score. Sorry about the one ring hang ups, early morning and late night wake ups. It was just me. In case you wondered, you’ve got dad’s old number.”

22. The Other Side - Lauren Alaina

Lyric Snippet: “There’s gonna be a lot of sadness on a lot of happy days, I’ll try to think of this moment, this place”

23. I Was Here - Beyonce

Lyric Snippet: “So they won’t forget I was here. I lived. I loved. I was here. I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted and it was more than I thought it would be. I will leave my mark so everyone will know I was here.”

24. Gone Too Soon - Simple Plan

Lyric Snippet: “Like a shooting star, flying across the room. So fast, so far, you were gone too soon. You’re a part of me. And I’ll never be the same here without you. You were gone too soon.”

25. Amelia - Tonight Alive

Lyric Snippet: “And you will always be perfect, you’ll always be beautiful, our hearts, will never forget you. You didn’t belong here, and it’s become so clear why heaven called your name.”

26. Heaven Right Now - Thomas Rhett

Lyric Snippet: “When the whole crew gets together, memory lane goes on forever. We twist a top and pour a little Jack D out.”

#JBBNNMHAM21 #writing challenge #marvel fanfic

34 notes · View notes

cursedbcrn · 3 years ago

Text

THE TVDU TIMELINE (AND HOPE’S AGE)

Okay, so I know this is like the most controversial topic of the TVD wiki, but during our rewatch of the show, I’m realizing that the timeline on the show (particularly Legacies) is just... super compacted, so here is my take on how the events of the show play out over time and how that might affect the ages of various roles. If anyone hasn’t watched Legacies or actually cares about spoilers... beware.

If you pay attention to the words and the dialogue in the show, they actually drop a fair number of hints as to the passage of time on the show. In the past, I always assumed that it followed the same timeline as most shows, where each season is equivalent to one year with episode air dates matching with what’s happening canonically on the show, but it’s actually not the case in Legacies, where, between the pandemic and general wonky primetime airing schedules, the timeline is a little more difficult to follow.

Starting from the top, S5 tells us that Hope is 15 at the time that all of that plays out, and there’s an unknown time jump between the end of TO and the beginning of Legacies. We’ll come back to this later.

Like I mentioned above, the first few episodes of S1 happen very quickly (going to find Raf and Landon, Landon stealing the knife, the dragon, the football game, the discovery of the monsters, the twins’ birthday). These all happen in a matter of days, maybe two weeks at the most. When the Honor Council stuff is happening, Lizzie asks Raf to the twins’ birthday “on Friday”, so we know it’s coming up quick. And the twins’ birthday is the first real date that we have confirmed on the show. So 1x06 is occurring on March 15. The next real “date” we have is in 1x12, where we know the school is on spring break. Now idk about y’all but in the states and when I was in school, the latest spring break ever seemed to be was like early/mid-April? So it sounds like the gap between 1x06 and 1x12 is a handful of weeks at most, which makes sense. During this time is the whole part where Hope goes and gets Landon back, the djinni episode, and the slug debacle. As far as the passage of time goes, there isn’t a lot of it during these plot points.

Then we hit the end of the season and summer break. So S1 has happened over the course of like... three months, and S2 picks back up at the beginning of the next school year. Unfortunately, events like the Miss Mystic Falls Pageant and Founders Day don’t actually have set dates in canon so it’s difficult to tell what the passage of time is supposed to be like. However, we do know that 2x08 (the Santa episode) occurs in October. So the first half of S2 takes place over the course of a month or so? After that, the next hint of time that we get is the culmination of the season, where Dark Josie intends to push up the Merge timeline and do it on the twins’ birthday of that year. So we’re back to March 15 of the next year, and two seasons have passed in the span of one in-canon year.

It feels like there is another time jump after 3x04, because Kaleb references Sheriff Mac moving to Savannah with Maya, and Josie is working on her transfer over to MFHS. I’m guessing that most public schools aren’t going to handle transfer requests at the end of the school year, so it sounds like we’re back to the end of the summer again by the time 3x05 happens. This also makes sense in context of what’s happening in the A plot, where Hope is losing herself in her search for Landon, which probably would actually take months. However, once she finds the Monkey’s Paw and Cleo enters the picture, things begin to pick up again.

Now I’ll be perfectly frank, I only sat through S3 once (and I’m not looking forward to doing it again) so I’m not as in tune with that season as much as I am with the others, but again, it does feel like time moves quickly. With the monsters constantly coming and the appearance of golem Landon to push along the narrative, I can believe that this happens over the course of a few months, taking us to maybe November or December of that year, approximately a year and a half since S1 began. And of course, once Mali-Landon leaves, everything kicks up a notch. Like with S2, 4x01-4x04 were meant to be part of S3, and that’s where it makes sense narratively.

Hope makes the realization that she needs to become the tribrid in the Star Wars episode, and everything from that point on shoehorns her into that point. Again, we don’t have direct dates or events to mark the passage of time, but just going off what happens in canon, from the time they wake up from the vision quest to the end of 4x04, I don’t think there are any days where the Squad is just taking a break and lounging around (with the exception of 4x03, but I wouldn’t call that lounging around).

All that said, it feels like about two years have passed since S1 began. Hope was 17 at the time (having just turned 15 when S5 of TO happens and taking a little over a year off to grieve, thus setting her back one school year and putting her in the same grade as the twins, and half a school year where she’s just in her room watching Cutthroat Kitchen by herself). She is just about to turn 18 by the time she jumps into Malivore (I’m keeping the May birthday even though I just wrote this entire meta on why air dates ain’t shit), and is a few months shy of her 19th when she has her first death in 4x03.

#[ meta. ]#[ lore. ]#this is why i shouldn't fall asleep at 7:30pm #also laying all of this out and seeing what these children go through #my god......#GIVE THE SQUAD A BREAK 2KFOREVER

4 notes · View notes

alwayschoppedtaco · 4 years ago

Text

60 Dialogue Prompts

If you want me to write something using these prompts, just send me the number and the character/person you want it to be written about!

1. "I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you!" "And I'm trying to subtly avoid it!"

2. "Did you get my note?" "Of course I got your note, you taped it to my forehead when i was sleeping."

3. "Do you believe in love at first sight?" "No but i do believe in hating people who do."

4. "Well someone thought it would be a good idea to throw our back up plan of the bridge." "It was on FIRE!"

5. "Can you hit me with your knife?" "I do believe the technical term is 'stab'!"

6. "I'm not a thief I'm just really good at acquiring things that aren't mine."

7. "Your not my favorite person today!" "I'm not your favorite person ever!"

8. "Security, schmecurity. I want to see what is behind that door!"

9. "I feel life I'm getting stabbed." "How do you even know what getting stabbed feels like?"

10. "If we die here, I'm going to follow you around in the afterlife, reminding you it's your fault we died."

11. "I assume I deserve this, but could you tell me why you want to kill me?"

12. "On a scale of 1-10 how bad do you think it would be if I-" "At least a twenty."

13. "None of you got date?!"

14. "You would be surprised at how much you can screw up in twenty-four hours, all it takes is a little motivation and a hammer."

15. "I regret a lot of things, but this conversation makes the top of the list."

16. "What happened to me last night?" "You thought you developed magic powers and could talk to squirrels." "Kind of glad I don't remember any of that." "Don't worry I got it all on video."

17. "Sorry, I spout out random facts when I'm nervous."

18. "Anger makes you stupid, and stupid gets you killed."

19. "If you don't apologize, I'm going to tell mom." "Please I'm an adult, i can do what I want." "Okay, MOM!" "No, wait! I'm sorry!"

20. "Are you clinically insane or just really annoying?" "I don't know, probably both."

21. "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not her!"

22. "Right now I don't know if I want to kiss you or push you of a bridge." "Can I pick?"

23. "I had an idea!" "Oh God..." "I swear it's a good one this time."

24."You say 'potato' I say 'damn it, put the gun down'!"

25. "You're a dragon tamer, and your scared of spiders?"

26. “I have something to tell you.” “Oooh~ Are you about to profess your undying love for me?” “Yes, I am.” “.....What?”

27. "It’s nice to be wanted, you know?" "Not by the law!"

28. “Can you stop making jokes for one fucking minute?” “The other option is I cry and face my feelings, so no.”

29. “I’m sorry, you dropped this!” “Dropped what?” “Your common sense, you moron, what the hell are you thinking?”

30. “...What the fuck is that?” “A cat.” “That is clearly a dragon wearing a cat ear headband.” “No it’s not, it’s a cat.” “That breathes fire?” “.....It’s a very rare breed.”

31. “Your concerns have been noted, but not entertained.”

32. “How are you not fucking terrified right now?” “Compared to the family get-togethers I’m forced to attend twice a year, this is actually rather tame.”

33. “What? No witty one-liners today?” “I haven’t slept in, like, thirty-six hours so words aren’t very good for me right now.”

34. “Well, there goes the fucking plan.” “Wait, we had a plan?”

35. “You love him!” “Yes, I know.” “Then why don’t you just confess already?!” “Because he’d brag about me being the first one to confess for the rest of our lives. That bitch is gonna confess to me first!”

36. “I can’t even begin to explain what I’d do for you. How far I’d go. How many lines I’d cross without a second thought, if you asked me to.”

37. “By the way, I’m sorry.” “Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything?” “It’s a preemptive apology. I can guarantee it’ll come in handy later.”

38. “....You think they’ll notice?” “I think they’d be fucking stupid not to.”

39. “Hey, um, quick question. When the hell were you going to tell me you have your archnemesis kidnapped and locked up in the bathroom?” “Oh, yeah. That’s right! They broke in right before I had to go to work, and things were so crazy there I nearly forgot. Sorry about that!”

40. "Yeah, I'll probably die alone." " I asked if you were dining alone." " Oh, that too."

41. “.....Well this is awkward.” “To be fair, you look like a completely different person when you’re wearing civilian clothes.” “I mean, that’s kinda the whole point of a secret identity.”

42. “Cocoa for your troubles?” “I was thinking a couple of shots would be more like it.” “Well, you see, I already made the cocoa, so...”

43. “Wait, are you crying? Oh no, oh, please don’t cry! I didn’t mean to...I’m sorry, I was trying to make you laugh...”

44. “Hey, do you know if potions expire?” “I think it depends on the potion. Why?” “Well, I was really hungover this morning and grabbed the wrong glass and I feel super weird right now.”

45. “That’s twice that you’ve killed me now. Shall we go for round three?”

46. “You don’t understand. I had to! I was -- ” “If you dare say you were just trying to protect me, I’m going to break your jaw.”

47. “The text said you brought in one stray cat! A singular cat!” “Did I? Must’ve been a typo. I found this whole box and I couldn’t just leave them there! Besides, what’s wrong with four little kittens anyway?”

48. “You know I wouldn’t do that to you, right?” “....” “Right...? W-Why won’t you answer me?”

49. “How good of a mood are you in right now?” “.....What did you do?”

50. " I wish you could block people in real life" " Restraining order" " Murder."

51. "You trust this man?" " I absolutely trust him." " He’s not some kind of mad man then?" "I absolutely trust him"

52. "What did you do?!" "I did my bestpacito..." "Get the fuck out of my car."

53. "One of these days i'm going to murder you!" "Well that's not very comforting."

54. “Yeah all I learned was how to say ‘sorry I broke that’ in twelve different languages.”

55. "I always wanted a pet!" "You realize we can't keep this, right?" "Why not? It's cute!" "It's a dragon!"

56. "I know your secret!" "Your going to have to be more specific, there bud. I have a lot of skeletons in my closet."

57. "Where is your shoe?" "The giant mud puddle down the road demanded a sacrifice."

58. "Be careful who you trust, salt and sugar look the same."

59. "Surprise! I'm back from the dead! Isn't that exciting?!"

60. "Go to hell!" "And leave you here all alone?"

53 notes · View notes