#jokes on me i haven't played this game since last october

[eregar]

anyway, i only recently learned that gortash turning green and big and wearing the steelwatcher suit is actually something that happens during his fight now and not a piece of fanon that got inexplicably popular?

[starquestingfordrarry]

A very Drarry 2023

This year was my entry into fandom and fanfiction, and what a wonderful thing to have happened! I started reading drarry in March, never thinking I'd write it. Then, by July, I found myself signed up for two different fests and writing every day. I hadn't written like that since I was a kid. And I'm not sure I've ever experienced community like this. I've made dear friends and keep making more, and I'm making things again, and I'm so happy to have this little pocket of joy, and -- really, there aren't words for it. So, here are some stats and recs instead. Read: 5.4 mil words of Drarry Wrote: 150k new words Made: way more art than I have in a long time

My favorite thing I wrote this year is Half Sick of Shadows (E, 39k) (And something that hasn't been revealed yet)

The thing I had the most fun writing was Draco L Malfoy (the L stands for legs) (E, 1.8k)

The very first thing I wrote this year (and first fic I ever wrote, period), was Simulation Theory (E, 35k)

The last thing I wrote this year was Eyes All Aglow (G, 3.4k)

Here are 5 fics 10 fics I read and didn't stop thinking about:

Hugo Granger-Weasley, Junior Investigator by @porcelainheart3 | T | 1.5k

it's just so fucking cute

You're Horrible (and I love it) by @vukovich | E | 11k

Draco's voice is perfect. Also, corset

Wonderful Electric (cover me in you) by @lqtraintracks | E | 10k

This was one of those "idk if I like this thing but I trust this writer" and ho-boy, nothing you could have said to me would have convinced me I'd find watersports heartwarming before this

AITA for being "obsessed" with my childhood nemesis? by @rainstormradish | M | 4k

everything about this is brilliant, every formatting detail, every nod to reddit culture. BRILLIANT!

Playing for Keeps by @peachpety | G | 6k

I'm still not sure what makes me smile harder: Draco in his postman outfit, or Harry's obsession with his marbles. The whole thing is wholesome as fuck

Only for October by @dodgerkedavra | E | WIP

This is still a WIP, and I don't care, I'd be perfectly happy rereading what's already here forever. They're just, they're so in love, and so hot, and so troubled. climbs the walls

Would you still love me if I was a cloak? by @apricitydays-lazynights | E | 2k

It was a joke and then it wasn't and now it's a gorgeous piece of fic that I think only you could write, apri

Wake Up, Harry! by @arminaa8 | G | 200 words

it is so many things I love packed into 200 words

Rookie Moves by peu_a_peu | E | 75k

it is just so, so fucking funny. Unhinged Draco at his finest

Dating Draco by @itsphantasmagoria | M | visual novel

I still haven't gotten up off the floor from this. It's a whole fucking game. A WHOLE. FUCKING. GAME. AND, it's a whole fucking game with a fantastic story and gorgeous art. If you haven't played it yet, what are you evening doing?

Finally, artists who's work made me smile and drool this year:

@littlewinnow, @basiatlu, @itsphantasmagoria, @fictional, and @meemoop

Thank you, everyone, for creating and sharing your passion with this community. Happy New Year!!

[necromancer-nonbinary]

My mother called me last night.

She admitted she hadn't been sure if she should; she knew that I was already having a bad week,

even though it was only Monday night.

She was right, but I'm still glad she called. Like she thought, it was a long time since I'd visited any site where I might have found out.

She said she's seen a post from the Kelly Theatre and I thought, well, that's it. They've finally had to close.

(They nearly did a few years ago; when I read the news, I had to run to the bathroom and hide to keep from crying in the middle of the airport.)

Maybe it was inevitable; the military doesn't care about one piddling little community theater, and the way people rotate in and out, things were always going to fall apart eventually.

"Richard died today," Mom said, and my head filled with static.

"Oh," I said.

He had recently been diagnosed with ("Anything ending in -oma is bad," I joked, laughing when there is nothing else to do, like Mom, like Richard), and his friends and family had kept it quiet til the end at his request. Mom and I talked a while longer, about my pets and hers, about whether she was coming this way at the end of the month, and then we hung up. I looked at the game on my TV screen. I had settled in to play something familiar and comforting before Mom called, hoping to unwind, thinking she was calling about holiday travel. How strange to see it now. The last time I saw Richard, I hadn't known that game existed.

I lay down on the floor with the dog.

While he pawed at my head, asking to be pet, I read. Multiple myeloma is cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow, causing pain, kidney problems, anemia, leaving you vulnerable to secondary infections because your white blood cells are few and producing the wrong antibodies. It must have been very advanced when they found it. According to the post Alan left on the theatre facebook page, the diagnosis had only come on October 11th. I read the year twice to be sure. Barely a week ago. Some of the names in the comments, I know; some I don't. I know all the sentiments, though. I'd express the same ones if my brain weren't still full of static. Such an incredible man. Such a fantastic presence. I'm so grateful to him for giving me a chance.

How do I mourn a man I haven't seen since 2014?

I don't suppose I really knew him, any more than he really knew me. Director and actor. Encouraging, sardonic, begging a shy teenager to speak up, please, they want to hear you in the back of the house. When I picture that theater, I picture him. Such a small slice of a man's life, but so unspeakably founational to me. Mom still likes to laugh at the surprise on his face when I sang at the auditions for Carrie. I don't think he knew I could make so much noise. I don't think I did, either.

If I were a poet, maybe I could find the right words to express what this strange half-mourning feels like. Maybe it just hasn't sunk in yet. Maybe I haven't let it. Tears haven't come easily since I started testosterone, and part of me is afraid that if I can undam my eyes and get them out, they won't stop again. Have I got the time to mourn? That's a cruel question to have to ask. Crueler because I know the answer is "no." No time to mourn. I'm writing this post in moments snatched between tasks at work. If there's no time to properly write, there's definitely no time to understand he's gone, or to grapple with what he meant to me. In the short time our paths crossed, close to the world. I kept doing theatre all through college. I'd like to tell him. I want to tell him that in my capstone, while I tried to wrangle a cast of students and stumble through directing and acting and designing the same show, that he was the one who shaped how I worked, more than even my advisor. I only had to yell at them a few times, but I suppose we never got quite loud enough. Would you like to see?

[juicemitio]

Alright I went to Louisville Galaxycon and saw Travis and Clint twice, for their worldbuilding workshop and their Q&A. Here's some interesting stuff I learned (I didn't include stuff they talked about that's pretty common knowledge or they talked about on the last ttazz)

Graduation 

Fitzroy was originally going to be a jock that was weak bc he no longer had a team, Travis told Griffin that that didn't really work for the world so they reframed it as him training to be a hero, was great academically and behaviorally, but had a problem no one had seen before and no one felt like dealing with. It specifically wasn't "barbarian fails bc he can't keep his rage in check," it was that no one was willing to deal with his magic so they shipped him off

Someone asked Travis to explain fitzroy's magic, so from the DM's mouth- he's a barbarian subtype with elemental magic which has a random effect while raging, which we haven't seen yet (path of the wild soul if you want to look it up and see what he can do) and he took a feat which gives him the ability to cast 3 cantrips of his choosing. What I thought was interesting was that Travis described Fitz's magic using the word "elemental" twice, even though that isn't specifically stated in the path of the wild soul entry

Travis knows Argo's secret and is very excited about it 

Clint has a pirate fiction book he reads every night before they record to get into the headspace to play Argo, he told us the name but I forgot it 

There is one small little concept that made the whole of graduation make sense to Travis and is what the arc will be about, and he only figured it out a few days before recording. Obviously he didn't tell us what it was

Originally it was going to start with everyone starting at age 11 and slowly killing the other kids off, but Justin didn't feel comfortable playing a game surrounded by kids dying 

The accounting scene is already one of Travis' all time favorite taz scenes

The pegasus scene informed Travis on exactly how he was going to treat the firbolg

Also Travis referred to Justin's character exclusively as "the firbolg," which means "master firbolg" is solely a thing going on with the npcs in the game which I find hilarious. They just all decided to give him a dope title bc he deserves it, meanwhile no one will call Fitzroy "sir"

To Fitzroy, social threats are an extremely real and serious thing, like the Biggest thing to him (we were talking about what characters found threatening in the workshop, for context)  

There's some big concept/idea that comes up in the next episode that travis almost let spill and had to quickly stop himself from saying it

Someone mentioned eating breakfast in their question in the workshop and Travis goofed on it for a second, then said "cereal world" suddenly, and Clint had to pick up the question bc Travis had to take a second to make a note of it in his phone 

Travis started brainstorming graduation in March and they recorded the first episode in October, and his main job in that time was working on graduation 

Before Buckminster was adapted for graduation he could not fight at all, if he got into a fight he would die, he poured everything into charisma and could talk his way out of any fight (even the big bad of the game he crit 20d his check and the big bad walked away from the fight) 

Travis is really into psychology and how if you assign a label to someone they're going to act more like it (ie you tell a kid they're amazing and smart and talented and they become more like that, you tell a kid they're annoying and dumb and a problem they become more like that), and how that was a major contributor to play into hero/villain/sidekick/henchperson dynamics, you get assigned this arbitrary title of good/evil/subservient and you become like that to fit the role, and then the inevitable pushing against that mold

Travis is fully aware of his story being compared to harry potter and he doesn't care bc it's apt (people in a school arbitrarily divided into four groups and one of them is the Bad One), also he knows people describe it as "sky high meets Harry Potter meets my hero academia" and he actually finds that really flattering bc he thinks that sounds cool and like something he'd want to watch 

On that note, Travis is a self-identified Slytherin and he's always upheld that the reason Slytherin is depicted in a bad light is bc Rowling decided she didn't like them, and he's always sympathized with the idea of a first year Slytherin working their ass off following the rules and doing their work and getting points, and Dumbledore rewards three idiots for breaking like every rule and pulls the trophy away from you. This was a big inspiration for graduation, of one group getting a bad rep and being portrayed as evil for literally no reason 

Amnesty

Clint & Travis's favorite scene they've ever done together was Ned & Aubrey's final scene together 

Aubrey and Dani do move in with each other at the end of amnesty

Balance

Travis' main emotion around taz is pride and he's most proud of the scene in stolen century with the spirits in the robots, bc they had to record it a second time bc it got way too dark and ended in a really grim way and about 20 min after they finished they all decided that they weren't happy with it, that it didn't fit the tone, he's really proud they didn't just leave it be and they took the second pass at it to make it right

I'm pretty sure he's talked about wanting to kill Magnus off at the beginning before but he mentioned that it was only at the end of petals to the metal he actually realized he wanted Magnus to live, bc Hurley had to sacrifice herself to save Magnus bc Magnus had been so reckless, that hit Travis really hard. Travis realized that Magnus' recklessness was getting people hurt and so Magnus did too, so Magnus become a bit more cautious and took up rogue training to try not to get anyone killed again 

Dust

Dust wasn't designed to be anything more than a one off and the workload was completely unsustainable, the document of notes for dust was about 100 pages and only about 10% of it got used

The reason Travis loved it so much was bc it was a mystery and he found it really fun

Commitment

Clint would love to revisit commitment, but probably not in podcast form bc he didn't find himself really being in the moment as much bc of all the different things he had to keep track of, he'd like to see a comic adaptation/continuation if possible

It was based of a comic he wrote that never got published bc the company producing it failed (he still cashed his paycheck) so he reused it bc he still liked it a lot, it was about how America was founded as a monarchy instead of a democracy and what that changed in the usa's (united sovereignty of america's) history, and how people now were fighting to establish a democracy. Also there were cowboys and spaceships and other cool stuff he put in there bc he liked it

General adventure zone

The reason why they're are able to do romantic relationships w/o being weirded out by it (they joke about it but they don't actually care) is bc it's never done in an explicit or sexual way and since it's the decision the characters would make to pursue the relationship then that's the decision they make. He reframed it as it wouldn't be weird if a family were writing a script together and there was a romance and one person wrote lines for one character and the other wrote lines for the other. He did mention that two siblings playing characters in a relationship as actors on screen wouldn't be cool though

They sometimes get comments that some of the stuff they do is "fanservice," but they feel that they owe their success to their fans and they owe some to them 

They are both aware of and proud that Justin is the best at character creation, Clint specifically really was talking about how Justin's strong suit is definitely character creation and characterization

General mcelroy stuff

They walked pretty close to me when they entered the stage room for the q&a and like… they're short, like shorter than you think

Travis referred to his unborn child as "baby dod" (I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure) which I looked up and is a nickname for George, and given with their older kid being named Barbera and nicknamed BeBe and Travis talking before about how he and his wife like classic names with cool nicknames it makes sense

Travis had an earing in his right ear, I didn't get to see his left ear and I couldn't tell if it was an actual piercing or a fake, it looked really good though. Also his tinted glasses look a lot cooler irl than they do in pictures

Clint told the teenage mutant Ninja turtle story with the signatures that griffin told on mbmbam, but Clint remembered it as happening at King's Island, not Disney. This story was prompted by the question of the biggest lie he ever told his kids, and he only came clean about this a few months ago

Travis told a story about how he finished a videogame when he was younger and was so excited that he picked up a plastic knife, yelled "throwing knife!" threw it directly at Griffin who dodged it and it hit and shattered a window