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tanadrin · 2 years ago

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okay, final thoughts on beating inquisition. good stuff first:

the game is of course very beautiful. it is realistic without being drab, full of color, and very good at atmospheric environments and dungeons. the incidental art--the character tarot cards in particular--also have a very distinct and delightful style.

the sound design is also terrific, and that's something i usually never notice. the music is great, too.

the characters are all great. special mentions to Ms.-Killing-For-Jesus-Or-Possibly-Just-For-Fun, Captain-Buzzkill-The-Lady-Cop, The Ancient Furry Who Is Also an Elven Fascist, Mr.-Gets-An-Erection-Every-Time-We-Fight-a-Dragon, and the Necromancer with Daddy Issues. all of them would be exhausting as hell in real life.

many of the mechanics, like recruiting agents, the war table, and the way skyhold changes over time do make you feel like you’re building up a big organization, and that’s quite fun. it’s a pity it mostly goes to waste when it comes to the actual plot.

the game develops the backstory to the setting in tantalizing ways. the plot in some ways feels like it’s obviously setting up a sequel, but it manages to do so without feeling incomplete. the bioware method of storytelling and incorporating player choice is fraught in a lot of ways, just because of the limits of what video game designers can reasonably do with those choices, but overall i think dragon age as a franchise and DA:I handle those limitations well.

the meh stuff:

not wholly bioware's fault, but the fact that the only mod manager for DA:I is extremely hit-or-miss seems to be down to the fact that an awkward rube goldberg machine of software must kick into gear for da:i to start. if you are going to force me to use your storefront rather than selling me a standalone piece of software, *it had better run flawlessly.* as it is, i cannot recommend buying any game that isn't available solely through steam. (DA:I wasn't available on Steam when I originally bought it; it seems to be again, but if it's like DA2, you still have to install EA Desktop and run it every time you play). unfortunately, mods are a must for reasons i covered elsewhere. they help sidestep some of the boring padding, like idle mechanics and bad map design. otherwise, though, i think moddability in an RPG like this is a strength: one reason Skyrim has had such a long afterlife is that Bethesda has made modding relatively easy, allowing people to customize and embellish their gameplay experience in countless ways (only some of which involve giving the Dragonborn a monster hog).

shallower ability trees and thus less interesting combat. give me more tools, not less!

took away attribute customization for no good reason. let me minmax, dammit!

in general, despite the crafting system (thbbbbt), the armor and weapon customization still feels pretty shallow. you just don’t have that many options for stats, and since i can’t minmax my underlying stat scores, the benefits are limited.

the stuff that i think really fails:

all those zones are a fuckin' slog, lemme tell u. it would be one thing if the zones' quests fed in an interesting way back into the main quest, or if the zones had unified and compelling stories, but it's honestly mostly fetch quests and random collectibles. DA:O was *really* good about having narratively unified side/sub-quests as part of the main quest; there were other small tasks you could accomplish while doing those, but they didn't require taking a break from the main action. They were woven into it.

doesn't help that the zones aren't differentiated enough, and there's too many of them. why do we need three desert zones, all next to each other? why not have fewer, larger zones?

and on top of all that, the main quest is actually kinda sort! it's 1) join up, 2) recruit the mages or templars, 3) close the breach, 4) go to a party in Orlais, 5) visit the Temple of Mythal for a surprise macguffin not foreshadowed at all elsewhere, 5) kill the final boss. The only reason the game is as long as it is is that next steps are usually gated behind large amounts of inquisition power, so rather than the story carrying you along as it did in DA:O and DA2, it's "do a ton of filler quests and then have a major story beat as a treat." That structure sucks ass! and the recruitment/inquisition-building work you do only shows up in the background of quest 5. it doesn't take you to open-world locations much, mostly to one-off specialized zones like halamshiral, the temple of mythal, or the breach.

despite gating main quests behind inquisition power, i did a ton of sidequests and was swimming in it by the end. i had like 200+ power. i couldn’t tell you what those side quests were about, really; they certainly weren’t memorable, and didn’t affect the main plot at all. i wish all the time poured into those side quests had gone into developing the main story.

even da:o had a way for the armies you recruited to matter in the final battle; your forces are explicitly absent in DA:I (but it’s ok because the villain shows up to the final confrontation alone anyway??), which means that, narratively, it feels like all the side stuff you do to build the inquisition is mostly pointless. the final showdown is a 4-on-1 slugfest, and not even an especially interesting fight. and this is related to the next point:

last quest is kinda random and makes no sense. we made a huge stink about closing the breach earlier; but surprise! it's open again! and suddenly we transition to a boss battle, with very little intro. it feels *very* rushed, like they had to cut out a bunch of stuff in the middle. (also why dos a guy who can lift mountains into the air need an army to conquer Orlais?? he could just turn Val Royeaux upsid-down if he wanted) visually, it looks like a lot of the assets meant it was gonna take place in the Fade or something, but they changed it up at the last minute. Where do those towers in the distance come from? There isn't anything like that around Haven or the Breach.

there are no decision points, no interesting mechanics, and no stakes other than “lol the breach is open again i guess kill this guy or the world ends.” compare the battle of denerim in DA:O, where you’re defending a whole city, or the last quest in DA2, which (though it starts with little buildup), has immediate fallout with your companions, and forces you to pick a side, with repercussions for the game’s ending.

also this feels like kind of a minor writing quibble in comparison, but corypheus seems to go from "self-aware and very much in control mustache-twirling villain" to "gibbering megalomaniac" in the last mission, and it's pretty jarring

we got a moment with each companion before the climax in da:o and da2, and we don't get that in da:i for some reason. i guess it's in part bc the game doesn't actually end like in previous installments--you can finish up side quests after if you want--but it really contributes to the rushed feeling.

all the language in the post-battle scene about "just getting started" feels very strange knowing they shut it all down in the trespasser DLC just two years later. i still think that's a terrible ending--they should let a dragon age protagonist rest on their laurels a bit for once!

seriously, why the FUCK do i not get a mabari in this one?!

despite all the things i like about inquisition, it’s just not as good a game as da2! or even da1! i don’t know if the team was bigger and the franchise so popular by 2014 that it was harder for a single creative vision to cohere, what development was like and what executive mandates were handed down from above, or what constraints the frostbite engine imposed. i worry that with the departure of david gaider and the game’s financial success, those problems might only get worse with dreadwolf as commercial demands trade off against creative consistency. as it stands though i’m hoping dreadwolf is much more structurally linear--the three act structure in da2 was actually kind of a godsend from a narrative perspective, since each act had to have its own contained arc, and you had room for time to pass between them, and i would very much welcome something like that showing up again in dreadwolf.

#dragon age #da:i

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writingwithcolor · 4 years ago

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Tragedy Exploitation and Characters of Colour

hi! i've browsed your blog for a while now and it's been really helpful to me, so first off, thank you. i was wondering about something tho, i recently saw your response to a person explaining their story idea that revolved around two lovers, where one was cursed to kill the other and the other was always resurrected only for it to repeat, and i believe the characters were POC. in your response you seemed quite upset that such a plot was happening to POC characters specifically and it confused me because it sort of read as if you were mad that a bad thing was happening to a POC character in a story, which i genuinely didn't understand (i really don't want to sound rude, i'm being sincere), because it came off as advocating for only good and happy and nice things to be reserved for POC characters and if an author dared write something bad or traumatic happening to a POC character it's immediately 'poor narrative', and i personally don't agree with that take, because i feel like that reduces a POC character to just being POC instead of a person, which I feel like hurts POC rep in fiction, because being upset someone wrote something bad happening to a POC character makes it all about just that character being POC instead of just a regular person something bad has happened to in the story that just happens to be a person of color at the same time. my god this has gotten long, i got very interested in hearing more about this because i personally didn't quite understand and it sounded wrong to me, your original response. if you do reply to this, thank you, i hope i didn't sound rude, i do genuinely want to learn, because even tho i typed all this out i still feel like i'm wrong about this & missed the point somewhere

Disclaimer: please do not pile onto the ask about a Black woman murdered by her lover, as the asker has realized the issues with the ask. We are presently addressing the attitude of “why can’t bad things happen to PoC?” in this comment, with the name retracted, because it’s an attitude that crops up every once and awhile.

You have missed our extensive backlog of posts about double standards re: PoC and white characters, wherein we describe, at length, how we are uncomfortable that PoC characters get extra bad stuff that’s treated as “organic” because our history is full of suffering, when white characters often don’t get that same thing.

like White Authors and Topics to Avoid/Tread Carefully

and Writing About PoC Trials and Tribulations

We ask that people question why they decide to automatically make someone suffering a violent constant-death-loop be a person of colour, especially multiply marginalized (Black, woman, LGBTQ+). Because there are already too many stories of characters of colour (especially multiply marginalized) suffering needlessly and oftentimes worse than the white characters for the sake of a plot.

You completely misread the heart of the reply, which was “why are you forcing Black women to suffer the worst fate imaginable (murder) in one of the most emotionally heartbreaking way imaginable (at the hands of your lover) multiple times in order to “earn her happy ending”? this is tragedy exploitation and is making a mockery of trauma”

PoC already have enough stories about us traumatized by circumstance. And while we can suffer, narratively, part of systemic racism is only telling stories of PoC when we are suffering as the sole marker of the plot. Especially when characters of colour are suffering disproportionately to lighter skinned characters.

You also missed the part where Marika said that even if it were white characters, they would be uncomfortable because constantly pulling out murder as a curse is lazy writing.

All we ask is: why did the asker decide that a woman of colour must suffer to the point of repeated murder before she can be happy? Why does she have to forgive the person who did it to her? Because that is a logic born of passive racism that tells people: women of colour, especially darker skinned/Black women, can “handle anything”. And that is a lie.

~Mod Lesya

Echoing Lesya, I’m puzzled as to how you came to the conclusion that “If an author dared to write something bad or traumatic happening to a POC character, it’s immediately a poor narrative” when I explicitly said I thought this was cheap theatrics and tragedy exploitation even if both characters were white, particularly as the ask had given me no conception of the author’s motivation in using the curse as a dramatic device. In Japanese, we jokingly use the word 中二病 (Chuunibyo) or “8th grade disease” to describe edgelord phases for teens. This is a 中二病 plot device. It’s perfectly fine for niche angst addicts on ao3, but not something I would be able to take seriously in a more substantive work aimed at a larger audience. I think it is also telling that even the original asker has commented that they independent of our answer concluded this was a poor plot choice.

Finally, with respect to your question of the usage of negative tropes like the ones mentioned in this ask (Misogynoir and Bury Your Gays), I am concerned that you do not understand the motive for this blog. Our purpose is to provide instruction to those who wish to use diversity in their writing in an inclusive manner in ways that resonate with marginalized populations. We are not proposing a ban on tropes. They are tools, but like all tools, they have appropriate forms of use. Do you honestly think that many BIPOC individuals would be happy to read a story with this kind of tragedy exploitation? And how would you, as an author, factor in their impressions when writing your own works?

No one can stop a writer from pursuing the narratives they wish to pursue, but the opinions a writer is primarily concerned with says a lot about who a writer believes their work is for. Let us say I were to write a story with a gratuitous depiction of sexual assault purely for the shock value, despite never having experienced sexual assault myself? How might survivors of sexual assault regard both me and my work? Now imagine BIPOC individuals whose main experience with representation in media is seeing characters look like them die from the kinds of violence that are common for them to experience, and it should become clear that an author who adopts these approaches, at a bare minimum, is being exceptionally tactless. A writer who finds no issue with tragedy exploitation involving BIPOC characters is likely not a writer who cares about what the BIPOC members of their audience think, or, even worse, does not even factor BIPOC perspectives into their writing.

- Marika

#can I write about x #tragedy exploitation #misogynoir #creator responsibility #double standards #plot #characters #characters of color #racism

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max1461 · 3 years ago

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I've mentioned this before, but I'm highly skeptical of the concept of "little c" culture, at least as it's typically invoked.

The term Culture, with a capital C, is sometimes used in the social sciences to denote what has also been called "the human capacity for culture" or "the human propensity for culture"; that is, the tendency of humans to gather together in groups, build institutions and systems of social norms, pass down knowledge generationally, etc. It's our wont to do social stuff larger than the family unit, basically. And, to be clear, this notion of Culture is something I very much believe in (I mean, how could you not?).

But then there's culture, with a lower-case c, which is a count noun rather than a mass noun. That is, one talks about "a culture": French culture, Japanese culture, American culture, etc. And this notion, I'm extremely skeptical of.

For one thing, it's not clear at all how one is meant to coherently draw the boundaries between different cultures. Culture often tends to vary (roughly) continuously, both over time and across geography. It's not clear, for example, if one should consider the American culture of today to be "the same one" as the American culture of 200 years ago, and/or consider the American culture of 200 years ago to be "the same one" as that of 17th century Britain, etc. This is true geographically as well: in precisely what provençal village does "French culture" transition to "Spanish culture"? You might try to use language as a proxy for this question, but even that won't work! The Romance languages (the family including French, Spanish, etc.) are a dialect continuum. There is no village where they suddenly stop speaking French and start speaking Spanish! The "French" on one side of the border and "Spanish" on the other may well be more similar to one another than either is to the Paris or Madrid standards.

In much of the world, deliberate nation building over the last few hundred years has obscured the difficulty of defining cultural boundaries. In France, for example, before the introduction of standardized education only a minority of the country spoke a Romance dialect that we would today recognize as "French". The ancestor of contemporary standard French was the dialect specifically of Paris and the surrounding region, while the rest of the country spoke... other stuff. Now, due to the policy of teaching standard French in schools and using it in most media, it is spoken by an overwhelming majority of the country.

[Sadly, it's the middle of the night and I can't dig up the source with exact numbers and years at the moment; I'll try to add it in a reblog tomorrow. IIRC the estimates were: < 30% speaking French before 1700, greater than 90% today. However, I don't feel comfortable making those specific claims without a source in hand, so take that with a grain of salt.]

This fact is a microcosm of a broader trend —that points of national and cultural unity, often interpreted as arguments for political nationalism, are more often in fact products of it.

But, prior to such nation building projects, the cultural and linguistic map of Europe looked much more like the cultural and linguistic map of Africa or the pre-colonial Americas, an intricate hodgepodge of different language varieties, institutions, customs, and political units, often with no clear line where one ends and another begins. This is not an aberration, this is the norm for human societies.

This brings me to my second point of concern over the notion of culture: there are various sorts of human activity that comprise big C Culture, and they don't always correlate with one another. Language isn't always correlated with government which isn't always correlated with tradition, etc. There are practices, concepts, institutions, and so forth that are shared by multiple "cultures", and within each "culture" there are practices, concepts, and institutions that are not shared by everyone. Thus, rather than a collection of discrete units (or even of a field of pure continuous variation between different extrema), the cultural landscape has a character more akin to a tapestry: different elements of Culture interwoven in complex and unpredictable ways, overlapping in different combinations across the map.

The consequence of all this —that cultural variation is continuous, that internal variation within "a culture" is often comparable to or greater than external variation between "cultures", and that different elements of culture often vary on axes totally orthogonal to one another— is that drawing coherent cultural boundaries can be a very hard thing to do indeed!

Finally, compounding all this difficulty, there's the issue that different people have different opinions on where we should draw these cultural lines, and those opinions are often politically motivated. Taking culture as a fundamental element in your understanding of the world requires taking a position on a thousand political debates large and small just in order to have a coherent picture of the ontology of human society. This is a very bad position to put oneself in, clarity-of-thinking wise!

Of course, the notion of "a culture" is just an abstraction, and in some cases it will be an abstraction that models reality better than in others. But in general, I tend to find that people treat culture in this sense not as an abstraction, but as a fundamental part of reality. And I think this is an extremely dangerous thing to do, both in terms of its political consequences and in terms of its impact on one's ability to think clearly about the world.

#society #for posterity

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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Taxes are for the little people

If you wanna do crimes, make them incredibly complicated and technical. Like the hustlers that came into the bookstore I worked at and spun these long-ass stories about why they needed money for a Greyhound ticket home.

Those guys shoulda studied the private equity sector.

Private equity's playbook is to borrow giant sums by putting up other peoples' companies as collateral (yes, really). Then they use that money to buy the company they mortgaged, and pay themselves a huge dividend.

Then they sell off the company's assets and pay themselves even more money. That leaves the company in a state of precarity - assets they once owned, like their buildings, they now rent. If the rent goes up, they have to find the money to cover it.

All of this forms a pretense for mass layoffs, defaulting on pension obligations, lowering product quality, stiffing suppliers and borrowing more money. If the company doesn't go bust, the PE looters can flip it to *another* PE company, that does it again.

Whenever you see something really terrible happening to a business that once offered useful products and services and paid decent wages, it's a safe bet that PE is behind it. Toys R Us, Sears, your local hospital - and that memestock favorite, AMC.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/12/mammon-worshippers/#silver-lake-partners

Private equity goons make their money in two ways: the first is by pocketing 20% of these special dividends and other extractive policies that hollow out business.

This is money at PE managers get paid for spending their investors' money. It's a wage, in other words.

But thanks to the "carried interest" loophole (a hangover from 16th-century sea captains that has nothing to do with "interest" on loans), they get to treat these wages as "capital gains" and pay far less tax on them.

The fact that we give preferential tax treatment to capital gains (money derived from gambling), while taxing wages (money derived from doing useful work) at higher rates really tells you everything you need to know about our economic priorities.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

The carried interest loophole lets PE crooks treat their salaries as capital gains, are taxed at a much lower rate than the wages of the workers whose lives they're destroying.

On top of the 20% profit-share that PE bosses get every year, they also pocket a 2% "management fee" for all the "value" they add to the companies they've taken over.

This is *definitely* a wage. The 20% profit-share at least has an element of risk, but that 2% is guaranteed.

But PE bosses have spent more than a decade booking that 2% wage as a capital gain, using a tax-fraud tactic called "fee waivers." The details of how a fee waiver don't matter because it's all bullshit, like the tale of the needful Greyhound ticket.

All that matters is that a legal fiction allows people earning *eight- or nine-figure salaries* to treat *all* of those wages as capital gains and pay lower rates of tax on them than the janitors who clean their toilets or the workers whose jobs they will annihilate.

Now, the IRS knows all about this. Whistleblowers came forward in 2011 to warn them about it. The Treasury even struck a committee to come up with new rules to fix it.

But Obama failed to make those rules stick, and then Trump put a former tax-cheat enabler in charge of redrafting them. The cheater-friendly rules became law on Jan 5, and handed PE bosses hundreds of millions in savings every year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/12/business/private-equity-taxes.html

The New York Times report on "fee waivers" goes through the rulemaking history, the technical details of the scam, and the gutting of the IRS, which can no longer afford to audit rich people and now makes its quotas by preferentially auditing low earners who can't afford lawyers.

But former securities lawyer Jerri-Lynn Scofield's breakdown of the Times piece on Naked Capitalism really connects the dots:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/06/private-inequity-nyt-examines-how-the-private-equity-industry-avoids-taxes.html

As Scofield and Yves Smith point out, if Biden wanted to do one thing for tax justice, he could abolish preferential treatment for capital gains. If we want a society of makers and doers instead of owners and gamblers, we shouldn't penalize wages and reward rents.

There's an especial urgency to this right now. As the PE bosses themselves admit, they went on a buying spree during the pandemic (they call it "saving American businesses"). Larger and larger swathes of the productive economy are going into the PE meat-grinder.

Worse still, the PE industry has revived its most destructive tactic, the "club deal," whereby PE firms collaborate to take out whole economic sectors in one go:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

We're at an historic crossroads for tax justice. On the one hand, you have the blockbuster Propublica report on leaked IRS files that revealed that the net tax rate paid by America's billionaires is close to zero.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#eat-the-rich

This has left the Bootlicker-Industrial Complex in the bizarre position of arguing that anyone who suggests someone who amasses billions of dollars should pay more than $0 in tax is a radical socialist (so far, the go-to tactic is to make performative noises about privacy).

At the same time, the G7 has agreed to an historical tax deal that will see businesses taxed at least 15% on the revenue they make in each country, irrespective of the accounting fictions they use to claim that the profits are being earned in the middle of the Irish Sea.

That deal is historical, but the fact that it's being hailed as curbing corporate power reveals just how distorted our discourse about corporate taxes has become.

As Thomas Piketty writes, self-employed people pay 20-50% tax in countries that will tax the world's wealthiest companies a mere 15%: "For SMEs as well as for the working and middle classes, it is impossible to create a subsidiary to relocate its profits to a tax haven."

Piketty, like Gabriel Zucman, says that EU nations should charge multinationals a minimum of 25%, and like Zucman, he reminds us that the G7 deal does nothing to help the poorest countries in the Global South.

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2021/06/15/the-g7-legalizes-the-right-to-defraud/

These countries and the EU have something in common: they aren't "monetarily sovereign" (that is, they don't issue their own currencies *and* borrow in the currencies they issue).

Sovereign currency issuers (US, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, etc) don't need to tax in order to pay for programs - first they spend new money into the economy and then they tax it back out again.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/10/compton-cowboys/#the-deficit-myth

These countries can run out of stuff to buy in their currency, but they can't run out of the currency itself. Monetarily sovereign countries don't tax to fund their operations.

Rather, they tax to fight inflation (if you spend money into the economy every year but don't take some of it out again through taxation, more and more money will chase the same goods and services and prices will go up).

And just as importantly, monetary sovereigns tax to reduce the spending power - and hence the political power - of the wealthy. The fact that PE bosses had billions of tax-free dollars at their disposal let them spend millions to distort tax policy to legalize fee waivers.

Taxing the money - and hence the power - of wage earners at higher rates than gamblers creates politics that value gambling above work, because gamblers get to spend the winnings they retain on political influence, including campaigns to rig the casino in their favor.

This discredits the whole system, shatters social cohesion and makes it hard to even imagine that we can build a better world - or avert the climate-wracked dystopia on the horizon.

But for Eurozone countries (whose monetary supply is controlled by technocrats at the ECB) and countries of the Global South (whom the IMF has forced into massive debts owed in US dollars, which they can only get by selling their national products), tax is even more urgent.

The US could fund its infrastructure needs just by creating money at the central bank.

EU and post-colonial lands can only fund programs with taxes, so for them, billionaires don't just distort their priorities and corrupt their system - they also starve their societies.

But that doesn't mean that monetary sovereigns can tolerate billionaires and their policy distortions. The UK is monetarily sovereign, in the G7, and its finance minister is briefing to have the City of London's banks exempted from the new tax deal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-08/u-k-pushes-for-city-of-london-exemption-from-global-tax-deal

Now, the City of London is one of the world's great financial crime-scenes, and its banks are responsible for an appreciable portion of the planet-destabilizing frauds of the past 100 years.

During the Great Financial Crisis AIG used its London subsidiary to commit crimes its US branch couldn't get away with. The City of London was the epicenter of the LIBOR fraud, the Greensill collapse - it's the Zelig of finance crime, the heart of every fraud.

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak claims banks are already paying high global tax and can't afford to be part of the G7 tax deal. If that was true, it wouldn't change the fact that these banks are too big to jail and anything that shrinks them is a net benefit.

But it's not true.

As the tax justice campaigner Richard Murphy points out, the risk to banks like Barclays adds up to 0.8% of global turnover: "The big deal is that the 15% global minimum tax rate is much too low. Suinak has yet again spectacularly missed the point."

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/06/09/how-big-is-the-tax-hit-on-banks-from-the-g7-tax-deal-that-sunak-fears-really-going-to-be/

Image: Joshua Doubek (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IRS_Sign.JPG

CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years ago

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 21, part one

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff) (Previous Post)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Reunions

All together in The Unclean Realm, The Yunmeng trio find a spot inside where they can sit down and have a proper Yanli-Wuxian reunion, while Jiang Cheng sits across the table watching them.

For years Jiang Cheng has been rejecting Wei Wuxian's free and easy affection; now Yanli might be the only person Wei Wuxian offers to hug until Wen Yuan comes into his life.

Jiang Cheng is really going through it. He'll do nearly anything for Yanli--except, uh, stay in the goddamn inn with her when she's sick and the Wens are hunting them--and what makes her happiest is Wei Wuxian. He's brought them together, and so he's happy, even though he's excluded from their dynamic. This absolutely fucking kills me.

Here Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian are sweetly pledging to always keep the trio together and put each other first. Neither of them will keep this promise.

Wei Wuxian will leave first, to take the Wens to the Burial Mounds. Jiang Yanli will leave second, staying in Lanling at Jin Zixuan's request instead of accompanying Jiang Cheng to retrieve Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng will be the last to let go.

(more after the cut)

Nie Huaisang comes literally running in, filled with joy at Wei Wuxian's return. When he goes to pat his shoulder Wei Wuxian flinches away.

I feel like something important is happening in this rapid sequence of glances and expressions between Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang. NHS is startled, and WWX realizes he's shown something about himself that he didn't want to show. He glances at Jiang Cheng and back at NHS before laughing and covering his slip with a squeeze of NHS’s hand.

NHS switches from shocked to cheerful just as quickly, helping with the coverup. It’s like they have a quick mutual agreement, rooted in their history of shared shenanigans, to not point out that something is wrong.

Meanwhile, Lan Wangji is wandering around the grounds, having feelings. At this point it's presumably been at least a couple of weeks since their breakup fight.

He sees Wei Wuxian sitting contemplating his flute, and as he sees him he goes from sort of neutrally apprehensive to full on angry judging, complete with sword clenching.

Part of this may be that his feelings are hurt over their fight, but the larger issue is his distress over Wei Wuxian's apparent heretical cultivation. That, at any rate, is what's on his mind when he's selecting music, later in the episode, and when he's selecting flashbacks.

Party Time

Later, the Nies host an excruciating party to celebrate Wei Wuxian's slaughter of Wen Chao return. Jiang Yanli is sharing a table with Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng is sharing a table with his crippling social anxiety.

Everyone starts grilling Wei Wuxian about his sword, because that's suddenly all anybody cares about even though Jiang Yanli, Nie Huaisang, Meng Yao, and probably plenty of other people don't carry swords most of the time.

Wei Wuxian says "after the Wens caught me, Wen Zhuliu crushed my core, so I can't use my sword any more, too bad so sad, can we change the subject?" And everyone is very understanding and admires his resiliency. HA HA HA HA HA. Of course he doesn't opt for that simple lie, but instead mopes audibly without saying anything.

Nie Huasiang tries to change the subject by asking how he killed Wen Chao. Apparently "I had a sexy ghost mostly flay him" isn't good party chat, though, so neither Wei Wuxian nor Jiang Cheng opts to tell the story.

Everyone lapses into awkward silence, all the more noticeable because there are no dancers, musicians, or entertainers of any kind at this event. OP has gone to audit-kickoff meetings that were more fun than cultivator banquets.

Moment of Clarity

While the awkwardness builds, we hear the sounds of the Song of Clarity. Lan Wangji is skipping the party, which is part of why Wei Wuxian is so mopey. But instead of sitting and stewing in his anger, Lan Wangji has shifted gears, and is starting to work on his "save Wei Wuxian's soul" plan.

This isn't the God-botherer version of soul saving, however. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian disagree about correct practice, but they both are still practitioners within the same spiritual system, and the majority of their beliefs are closely aligned.

Lan Wangji has powerful magic at his disposal, and now he's taking a step back from his plan of forcing persuading Wei Wuxian to give up heterodoxy, and instead he's preparing to use his magic to offset the consequences of Wei Wuxian's choice.

He still isn't ready to accept that choice, but he's working on it. This is a big moment for Lan Wangji's relationship with Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji is a deeply, deeply uncompromising person, as well as being super bossy, and he’s taking his first steps toward supporting Wei Wuxian’s free agency.

Wei Wuxian leaves the party in the middle of Yao's toast, saying "I have to see you and your lover all over my tumblr dashboard but I am NOT going to listen to you talk!" He takes his wine to go roam around near Lan Wangji's quarters to pine and feel conflicted. Lan Wangji has thoughtfully set up a projection scrim to catch his shadow and make the pining easier.

Jiang Cheng comes looking for Wei Wuxian, partly to reprimand him for rudeness and partly to see what the hell is wrong with him. Jiang Cheng is trying very hard to be pleasant. He's bad at it, but he's trying.

Wei Wuxian is trying to be unpleasant and he's pretty good at it. He won't say why he isn't using his sword. He’s obviously super fucking depressed about it, calling his former self childish for liking to spar, and only smiling once during the whole exchange.

He finally tells Jiang Cheng that he will always want to do the opposite of what Jiang Cheng tells him. Jiang Cheng lets this go with an eyeroll.

(Point Break Quote Alert)

But actually this is a sign of trouble, right here in River City, with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for abandoning the Jiang Clan. Wei Wuxian has just told Jiang Cheng he has no intention of obeying him; not just about the sword, but in general. That's no way for a disciple to talk.

OP has nothing to say about this gif. OP watches gif over and over and over and over

Wei Wuxian ends the conversation by tapping Jiang Cheng's chest with his flute and then walking away. The (still nameless) flute has no problem with this - does it, like Subian, recognize Jiang Cheng as an extension of Wei Wuxian?

The next day, Wei Wuxian is chilling in his room, looking ungodly sexy in his bold slashed robe, holy frack. I mean, he is sex-on-toast at all times, but the cut of his post-burial-mounds combo is particularly heart-stopping when he decides to stick a knee or two out.

He's meditating and flashing back to being in the burial mounds, where he was also meditating. I admire his ability to fractally meditate about meditating.

Chenqing

He didn't put a sock on the doorknob, so Jiang Yanli comes in and startles him. He brandishes his flute at her before calming down. The flute definitely does not see her as an extension of Wei Wuxian, because when she touches it, it smokes and then knocks her out of the frame so fast it's comical.

Did they put her in a jerk vest for that shot?

Wei Wuxian hides the flute from her, freaked out by its behavior. She, however, is unfazed, and gives him the first & only affirmation he's gotten about his new cultivation path, and says the flute is "like Mother's Zidian." She kind of walks him through the whole "first class spiritual tool" concept, beaming with approval and telling him he must name the flute.

Jiang Yanli is hardcore Jiang Clan, seriously. Freedom and impossibility. You survived 3 months of mystery trauma and now you're all fucked up? We'll roll with it. You have a demon flute now? Rock on. You're going to use necromancy to beat the other clans in a group hunt? Gold star for you.

He names the flute Chenqing, which @hunxi-guilai translates and explains in depth over here.

Bichen

Lan Wangji has finished practicing the Song of Clarity, and regardless of whether it's had an effect on Wei Wuxian, he himself seems much calmer.

As Wei Wuxian contemplates Chenqing, Lan Wangji contemplates Bichen and remembers Wei Wuxian's assertions about resentful energy way back in Gusu summer school.

This time when he grips his sword, it's loosely, as if he's made some progress with his anger.

Soup

Jiang Yanli sits Wei Wuxian down for some soup, and talks to him about what's going on with him, saying he's changed. He insists he's fine and works very hard to be convincing.

She's not convinced but says she won't press him, and then abruptly shifts tone and works very hard to act like everything is fine. She leaves, taking a lot of soup with her, and Wei Wuxian remarks that it's unfair she is giving so much to Jiang Cheng. But of course, some of it is secretly for Jin Zixuan.

Everything isn't fine, as Wei Wuxian scream-meditates with resentful energy just rolling off of him. He's got some of the dark energy stored in the Yin sword in his bag of holding, but I get the impression that a lot of it is just stored in his body.

Club Ruohan

At some point in the episode we stop in to check on Wen Ruohan. He and his wind machine are mad that Wen Chao is dead.

Meanwhile, his interpretive dances with the Yin iron now turn his puppets into...Klingons? Sure, why not.

Literal Stand-Up Meeting

Jiang Cheng needs Wei Wuxian at games night a meeting and comes running to Jiang Yanli to find him. He is freaking out and she tells him to chill.

No matter what fuckery is going on in the world, Jiang Yanli is going to find herself a nice little outdoor table and she is going to sit her ass down and have some tea and civilized lady activity. Queen.

This shot of the meeting is composed so nicely. The blocking (placement of actors) in this scene encapsulates the familial dynamics, and I’ll talk about that as soon as I finish admiring Jiang Cheng’s proportions.

Here we have four clans represented by four family pairs around the game war table. The Jin cousins, despite their differing personalities, are side by side, matchy-matchy, in lockstep. Jin Zixuan lets Jin Zixun do the talking for him, so maintains his own rep as a reasonable guy.

The Nie brothers are even closer together, also in matching greys, Nie Huaisang giving all of his attention to his brother/clan leader. You can see his careful watching of his brother's temper...not fearful for himself, but fearful for Mingjue.

The Lan brothers have a growing distance between them; they are in different colors (which is pretty usual for them), and Lan Wangji is standing well away from his brother and the rest of the group. Partly this is his personality, but it's also symbolic of his growing distance from his brother and other proper cultivators. He's carrying WWX-related secrets, and he's wrestling with what he's learned.

While Nie Huaisang is looking at Mingjue, Lan Xichen is turning around to see what's up with his own volatile sibling.

Lastly you have Jiang Cheng, alone in the room, with his shidi nowhere to be found, and seriously feeling the heat because of his isolation.

He's alone in his purple, but the color value (lightness/darkness) of his robes exactly matches Xichen's.

And Xichen, bless him, makes a point of speaking to him respectfully as a fellow clan leader, gives him a path out of the "where is your brother" conversation, and is just generally his kind and helpful self with Jiang Cheng.

Next: Awkwardness Increases!

#the untamed #the untamed gifs #wangxian #the untamed meta #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #restless rewatch the untamed #my gifs #canary3d-original

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drabbles-of-writing · 4 years ago

Text

Reverse Au! Dump

Don’t mind my idea dumping here. Brain decided to have fun while I was at work and I have too many wips as it is, so… Thought I’d ask before I dumped, experience. Used morningmark’s comics as a base, so if you want reference. Now this isn’t all that well compiled, but here it goes.

Magic in the Other World is varied as it is crazy. So many styles over the generations and not a lot of organization. There are some that try to categorize it all, but that works as well as you’d expect. Some were lost, some erased, some weren’t passed down/recorded because “the power is all mine! Ahahaha!” It took a lot of time and collaboration, but eventually a sort of system was installed to help out. Still a lot of work to do, but its a step forward. Nowadays the term Wild Magic is generally reserved for those that aren’t all that well documented and understood.

Some Magics are very powerful and desirable, but also tend to be very high risk/high reward, kinda pass/fail, pretty literally Do or Die most times. So not a lot of people can use those or are even willing to. Story says this one guy named Odin hung himself on a massive tree by his own spear for nine days, no food water or rest in constant pain before he could unlock the secret of Runes. But it’s also said he gouged out his own eye to drink from the Well of Wisdom so…

There are lots of different ways to channel magic too: wands, staves, jewelry, certain gems, familiars, potions, enchanted armaments, chants, scripts, etc. Each tool has its own advantages and disadvantages and play into a Witches’ style. Every Witch has at least two methods of spellcasting. Only children have one. Haven’t thought of how Luz gets her Palisman though. Maybe its one of those magic Artifacts like Dr. Strange’s cloak, Elder Wand, Thor’s hammer, or a Green Lantern’s Ring. Something that can’t be recreated because the secret is lost, materials no longer exist, too hard/dangerous to make, accident that can’t be recreated, etc. Happens more often than people like.

Camilla is sometimes called the Blue Witch. She’s a healer by heart and trade, but push her and she will become a one Witch Battleship. Bismark who? Aaaaand she just deleted a whole battalion. And the fortress behind them. Hide me. There are the very rare occasions, like count on one hand rare, when someone near and dear to her heart is in trouble that she takes up her other job. She’s especially terrifying when she decides to torture, those who know how to heal the body know best how to break it. Many shades of Blue, some are very close to Black. She doesn’t necessarily hate Humans exactly, but doesn’t have the highest of regard from past experiences.

Luz has training and is a proficient Witch for her age. Camilla and her father were adamant about having a general knowledge/skillset alongside her specialized skill. Jack of all trades and a master of none, still better than a master of one. She has gone through the system for her magic with varying success. Oracle magic? Zero talent. Bard classes? She can play an instrument, but can’t sing at the same time. When she does sing she tires too hard and messes up. It’s only when she doesn’t try, like absently singing along with a song or playing by her heart, that she’s good at it. Beasts? Can use them, but would rather play with them. Bleeding heart and all that. She does have a good handle on healing magic partly due to Camilla drilling necessary skills into her and partly osmosis. Her father arranged for some CQC lessons from an old friend of his which the girl loved. You get the idea. It wasn’t until she discovered Glyphs that she found her niche and her skills took off. Glyphs are one of those ‘eccentric’ or 'archaic’ styles since they haven’t been used in so long after being lost and are barely understood. She still has a long way to go, but she is on her way.

Luz never really had much in the way of friends, partly cuz of high profile parents which leads to certain pressures and a target on her head, partly because of her magic style and personality, and partly because of the trouble been going on. Luz grew up her whole life with this tension of a group of anarchists trying to burn society that’s just trying to do the right thing. The anarchists started small, but have been a growing problem the past few decades with talk how to 'reshape the world’ in not a good way. Anyone with critical thinking skills can tell this is a bad idea, but they are too brainwashed to notice. They harass anyone who doesn’t follow their rhetoric and attack anyone who even questions them. Luz’s parents put a real kink in a lot of their plans for years, which makes Luz guilty by association.

Luz got caught in one of those sudden larger scuffles and was accidentally chucked/blown through a portal created by an attempted tactical retreat that went off course. Hence why she can’t go home because she hasn’t learned how to do portals yet. Those are high level anyway so how did these guys pull it off so easily? Luz has a hard time blending in obviously. Learning how to use a phone was a fun endeavor. Internet was a trip. Luz is amazed how these people can do all this cool stuff without magic. Keep a low profile sure, she can pass off as a weird out of town kid. Keep the beanie on, underperform in gym and stuff because some things don’t change, like genetics. Someone sharp eyed will see discrepancies. The Beanie has a small Glamor spell built in that covers her witchy traits but she forgot the ears which is why it sits like it does. Luz can erase memories in case she has an accident, but it’s less of a 'remove my face from this picture with a scalpel’, and more of a 'lemme just hack off the past hour or three from your brain with an axe.’ If she tries to take any more then she starts burning into some more dangerous territory and those Wiped are groggy and disoriented for a while after already. Then the magic attacks start happening and her heroic instinct/anti-bystander complex kicks in and there goes that. It runs in the family so Camilla isn’t surprised in the slightest when she finds out.

“Oh titan, why did you curse me with another me?” “I’m right here Mami!”

Eda has a shack very akin to Grunkle Stan. Lots of junk that Lilith can’t believe that people are dumb enough to buy. She’s also involved in some not so legal dealings on the side. Well, Eda isn’t actually hurting anybody and the tax dollars she should be paying would only go towards some politicians’ next yacht or another pointless overseas 'investment’ instead of where it’s supposed to go so. Eda does give some good intel on occasion and a place to vent so Lillith overlooks her. Lil’s more of the secret police for witches and a petty crook isn’t part of her job anyway. Eda understands Luz’s predicament and is willing to help. The cover story is that Camilla work in hospitals and has to work crazy hours while her dad passed away so is living with Eda for a while. King is that kind of critter that grew up weird and acts like ten different animals all the time.

Gus is the nerdy kid who infodumps on everybody, even if they’re not listening. Loves anything fantasy/sci-fi related and plays Minecraft too. A good kid at heart, but needs some social skills. Keep him away from anything more sugary than tea. Luz learned a lot listening to him. Not all of it is entirely useful, but still. Some of his ramblings give her some good ideas for magic and stuff, like putting Glyphs on cards.

The Blights are the cool rich kids obviously, and have some discipline and social issues. Big family name makes them intimidating for normies and a meal ticket for the unsavory. These kids need real friends. They decided to act out to get some attention from the parents who then decided to ignore them. “If you’re going to act like a child tantrum, get treated like one.” Ed is perfect for Drama classes, if he were allowed to partake. Can’t decide what Em is great at, hacking perhaps? Amity’s car is an inheritance from the only family to treat her as such Twins aside, even if she’s too young to remember it. She only remembers that she has feelings surrounding the car. All three of them were pretty impressed with Luz for standing up to them, calling them out on their shit, and not giving a crap about their family name. Being treated like a normal person is pretty weird. Can we get her to do that again?

Amity tried dating Boscha once, didn’t work out very well. Boscha is still hurting over Amity’s comment of “I’d rather go date the new weird kid (Luz) than go back to you.” It’s one of the reasons she goes after Luz. She has that kind of Bud personality from Spider Man, feels lesser and so acts out so much.

“Wow, this new Witch is amazing. Not as cool as the original Witch.”

“What is it with the Witch with you?”

“Oh, she’s a hero. Looks out for the city and the little guy. She inspires me. Makes me want to be a bigger person. *sees Luz* What’s up Luz-er?”

And that’s what I got right now. I know there was more, but it’s lost to the void right now. Might come back later, maybe not. Lemme know what you think.

............

DAMN you weren’t lying when you said you had an info-dump this is *chefs kiss* you got me intrigued now

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kiri-ah · 4 years ago

Text

File: Sector 5

Part of the Action Figure Collab hosted by @go-shotaro

Pairing: Kim Jungwoo x gn!reader (no pronouns mentioned for reader), low key Taeil x Sicheng if you squint

Themes: Dark Matter (TV Show) AU, Elite Dangerous (Video Game) AU, basically space stuff, gunfights, lasers, hackers, set in the future, spaceships, Star Wars is mentioned like twice, Sicheng is a jerk, Mark and Johnny are half-brothers

Warnings: Major character death, gunfights, blood, two swearwords, mentioned burials, mentioned black market

WC: 3.7k

Summary: In a galaxy divided into factions, war is rampant. The ship files that you’re searching for could solve all of your problems - if only you can get into the classified sector of the space station where they’re housed. With Jungwoo on one side and Taeil on the other, nothing can go wrong. Right?

Taglist: @allegxdly , @stayctday , @leelatte , @dundun-baby , @kunrengui

Author Note: Welcome to my first collab fic! This is also my first full-length fic on tumblr which is pretty cool. When I saw the concept for this collab I decided it was perfect for my first foray into working with other creators. In the process I made a lot of new friends and I had a lot of fun. Plus I’m pretty proud of this fic. Please enjoy File: Sector 5!

You walk as quickly as you can while still being discreet. There are a lot of people that you wouldn’t want to notice you here. Jungwoo and Taeil, following behind you, seem to have had the same thought. Taeil has a cap over his projector glasses, and Jungwoo has on a black too-big hoodie that hides his give-away physique. In your earpiece there’s silence, but that doesn’t bother you. Yangyang told you to reach out once you got to the section of the space station you need. You still have a few more obnoxiously crowded spaces to traverse before you arrive, so you focus on draining the urgency from your movements and walking like you belong here. Like you’re not about to break into a classified sector and commit a crime.

You make your way through the bar, the ship parts market, and the casino with minimal issues. You think you see a familiar face across the way in the market, but he turns away a second later and you breathe easy once again. If it was who you thought it was, you wouldn’t be alive anymore. Nakamoto Yuta is famed for his cruelty. You enter Sector 5 and speak quietly into your earpiece.

“Yang, we’re in sector five. Where do we go from here?”

“I’m getting your location still, hold on,” comes Yangyang’s voice into your ear.

“Take a left here, and then head down for a few hallways. This is one of the permanent sectors like ours, so you can use your gun now if need be and not worry about puncturing an outer wall.”

You take the left where he says to and continue down, checking to make sure that Jungwoo and Taeil are still behind you. They are, and so is another figure.

“Get over here,” you hiss, pulling them into a side hallway. The figure doesn’t appear to have seen you and passes by, turning down another hallway. You recognize the face of Xiao Dejun, an infamous criminal like yourself. You try not to think about what would have happened had he spotted you. You wouldn’t be dead, but you would probably wish you were.

“What happened?” asks Yangyang in your ear.

“Security,” you mutter.

“Oh.”

You pull Jungwoo and Taeil out and walk down the hallway until Yangyang tells you to stop by a door. “You guys will need to get through this door without my help,” he says. “Beyond it, I can only get high energy drain levels. Be careful.”

Taeil kneels by the card scanner and pulls out his tools. You and Jungwoo turn around, standing guard in case another member of security comes and you need to shoot them. Taeil carefully prys the backing panel off of the scanner and maneuvers until he can see the wires. He scoffs.

“For a high security organization, their security is terrible,” he mutters. He cuts the casing off of a wire and does something you can’t see with it, and the door slides open. You continue keeping watch as Taeil packs up his high-tech phillip’s head screwdriver and cleans up the casing. When you turn around, you’re speechless.

“We found the source of the energy drain,” Jungwoo says in a low voice. Before you is a room of lasers, the kind you thought only existed in old movies. They cross back and forth across the space like an absurd red spider web and fizzle oddly like Redstone in that old game Chenle likes. Minecraft, was it?

“What kind of black market did they get these on?”

Taeil shrugs and walks into the room. “Looks like we can get in,” he tells you. “The lasers are designed like shark teeth - easy to get in, not so easy to get out.” The analogy doesn’t help you feel any better about the situation, and you clutch at your gun.

“Can you turn them off?” Jungwoo asks Taeil, seemingly as nervous as you are.

“I can, but we don’t need to to get in. Let’s focus on that on our way out.”

You nod and walk in, spotting the pattern like Taeil did. “Maybe their security is just bad,” you say. “This is so easy.” You swing your right leg over the nearest laser and start your way across. You get a finger close to the laser and feel the heat emanating from it. You turn to warn Taeil and Jungwoo of this, only to find that they’re already in the maze themselves. You duck under the next beam of red and feel the heat on the back of your head from the proximity, then step easily over one that reminds you of a tripwire - right at ankle level. You hear Jungwoo and Taeil following behind you, Jungwoo struggling a bit because of his wide shoulders. At some points you have to turn around and help him since he can’t see where his biceps are about to brush one of the heated red lines. At least Sungchan isn’t on your team, he’s even larger than Jungwoo. Chenle and Hendery will have to help him or find another way in. You almost laugh at the thought before deciding that you rather like all of your teammates, actually, and you don’t like to think about them dying by heated laser. Each time you stop to help Jungwoo, Taeil reminds you that you need to hurry. You eventually just tell him to please be quiet, because some people are trying to focus here. He shuts up, thankfully.

When you reach the end of the room, you’re faced with another door. Taeil tampers with the wires and it too slides open. The hallway is paneled with light gray and the floor is tile reminiscent of a hotel lobby. Your guns are poised to fend off an attack as the door opens, but nobody is there. You lower them slowly and Jungwoo steps out into the hallway. There are footsteps fading away down to your right, but nobody is watching for you here. You look for the source of the footsteps and spot who you’re pretty sure are the team Johnny and Mark, orphan half-brothers notorious for their sudden team changes depending on the paycheck. They’re for sale to the highest bidder, and they don’t care who that is. Your guess is confirmed when the shorter man laughs - you’ve worked with Mark before, and that laugh is both contagious and unique.

When you refocus, Yangyang is back in your ear and instructing you to go the opposite way that the pair is walking. He says that the door at the end of this hallway is the one you want. Your shoes shuffle against the tile as you try to go quietly, with Jungwoo in front of you and Taeil nervously watching your backs. He isn’t as confident with a gun as you or Jungwoo, he prefers to work behind the scenes. The nature of this mission required a tech whiz on site, though, and he came reluctantly. He knows how important it is to steal the USB drive with ship plans on it. The newest fighter models will make or break the war for your faction, and you have reason to believe that those ships also have teleportation devices in the plans. Not just lightspeed travel, but all-out teleportation. You can only imagine that sort of power on your own ship, the Phoenix.

You walk all the way down the hallway and find the door that Yangyang has pointed out to you. Taeil once again gets down to open the wire panel and gasps in delight.

“Finally a good security system! Give me a moment.” His face disappears behind the stand housing the card reader and he hums as he fiddles with whatever has made him so happy. Even laying at an awkward angle, his voice is beautiful. You sometimes wonder why he became a technician for a faction like yours when he could be a singer for one of the more powerful factions that aren’t always at war. When confronted with this question, he would smile a little and tell whoever was asking that his one true love was testing security systems, no matter how much his voice delighted other people. He said with a dry laugh once that the selfishness of that reason made him perfect for the job. Part of you doubted that story, but everyone working for your faction had baggage. You didn’t need to pry into his.

Eventually there comes a pleased “aha!” from behind you, and Taeil reemerges. His face has a smudge on it that you wipe away with your thumb.

“Have fun?”

You ask the question sarcastically, but Taeil nods happily. “That’s what I like to do. The other systems were easier, I think this room must be important.”

“That’s what I said,” grumbles Yagyang in your ear.

The door slips open with some prodding and you walk into a lab with pristine white surfaces and surfaces that look as though they’ve never been used. In the middle is a silver table covered in instruments of some kind, although you don’t know what they would be used for. The walls are lined with diagnostic panels, and one is a window into a secret hangar you weren’t aware of. Inside is a ship that looks a lot like the X-Wings of the Star Wars franchise. The movies are still iconic today despite how obsolete they are, and everyone knows that the X-Wings were never recreated due to a problem with their size in relation to the way they were meant to work. It appears that whoever made this ship has been hiding their discovery.

“Y/N, focus,” Jungwoo whispers. You nod and turn away from the hangar, albeit reluctantly.

You look at the remaining two walls, both of which are shorter and lined with counters. Taeil is looking at one, and you walk over to the other. You find a monitor completely shut down and follow the cords down to discover that it isn’t plugged in. That’s a little strange. You look at the computer tower and find a USB drive, labeled “Schematics.” That’s even more strange. Why would they leave something so valuable lying around? Hiding in plain sight, perhaps? You plug the monitor in and turn it and the tower on, opening the USB files. You’re low on time, you know, but you have to make sure this is the right drive.

Once the files are loaded, you gasp. “You guys, look at this.” Jungwoo and Taeil stand and look over your shoulders as you scroll through page after page of exact instructions and diagrams for the X-Wing.

“They even stole the name from Star Wars,” Jungwoo scoffs. Taeil laughs lightly.

“These are the right files, we should get out of here.”

“Agreed,” you say. You pocket the USB drive and unplug the monitor again, making sure to leave minimal traces of your passing through. “Let’s go.”

Yangyang repeats the directions out of Sector 5, and you walk quickly. You make it to the laser room without incident and go back through the doorway. “Taeil,” you ask, “can we get out of here faster if you turn off the lasers, or if we just walk through like we did on the way on?”

“Definitely turning them off,” he assures you. “It’s too time consuming to worry about things like this when we need to be worrying about the USB being reported missing.” He settles down by a panel near the start of the lasers and peels off the cover where it looks like maintenance might be done. You only know this because he tells you happily that there might be an off switch.

“Aha! Found it!” he singsongs after a moment. The lasers go off a second later and you’re about to celebrate when a siren screeches from the ceiling.

“All units to Hall Sixteen!” A voice yells over an intercom that you hadn’t noticed. “Lasers have been disabled!”

“Shit,” Jungwoo and Taeil say in unison.

“Let’s go!” you yell. There’s no point in being quiet now. You hear the clomping of boots down the hall and yelling from both ends of the laser room. Hall Sixteen.

You run out towards the exit and find yourself facing Xiao Dejun and another man you don’t know. They both have guns and are shooting the moment you get within range. You shoot back, missing Dejun by inches.

“Sicheng?” cries Taeil from beside you. He lowers his gun slightly. “I thought you were dead!” He runs towards the man, completely ignoring the battle around him. Dejun shoots at him but misses. Jungwoo hits him in return, a nonlethal hit to the arm. It’s enough to make him take pause though, and long enough for you to see with crystal clarity as the other man - Sicheng - raises his gun and shoots Taeil in the chest. Taeil doesn’t even have his gun up, and the shot tears right through his body. He collapses into the fall, blood spouting from the wound. It looks like Sicheng hit his heart.

Someone is screaming, and you realize it’s you. You feel your nose start to burn and your eyes brim suddenly with tears. Not Taeil! you want to scream. Taeil can’t be dead! Your body reacts faster than your brain, and you shoot Sicheng in the gut as he stares at Taeil’s body, looking almost shocked. Then you rush forward and kick the wound, making sure it hurts.

“You asshole!” you cry. “You killed Taeil!” You dodge another bullet from Dejun (it hits Sicheng in the upper stomach, and you have just enough brain space left to be smug) and spot Johnny and Mark behind Jungwoo. You scream and point, not even having words. Thankfully Jungwoo understands and spins to meet them. You shoot at Dejun, wasting bullets. One hits his left shoulder, and another hits a rib. You hear it crack. He writhes out of the way of the rest. You kick his gun hand to disarm him and knee him in the balls, a simple solution to his frustrating ability to avoid bullets. Having properly taken care of him, you turn to face Johnny and Mark.

They have Jungwoo cornered, and he’s desperately dancing out of the way of more bullets. He already has red spreading across his right side. It looks like just a graze, but it could have easily been far worse. You pick up Dejun’s gun and use it to shoot the back of Johnny’s thigh. He crumbles to the floor, blood already gushing angrily out of the wound. Mark turns to him, worried, and somewhere in the back of your mind you realize that’s sort of sweet before you shoot Mark too. He doesn’t deserve to die any more than Taeil did, and you liked working with him, but he’s the enemy right now. He needs to go down. You take aim and shoot him in the side, which is the best place you can hit at this angle. He looks almost surprised at the intrusion. You turn away. Jungwoo runs up behind you.

“Taeil?” you ask, looking down at his body. “Are you in there?” You reach down to feel his pulse, except there isn’t one. His neck is already cooling where he lays, a surprised look still painted across his features.

“Y/N, we have to go,” Jungwoo says.

“We have to bury him!” you screech. You didn’t even know your voice could sound like this. You suppose you’ve never lost someone as important as Taeil before, though.

“We’ll come back for him as soon as we get the USB back to home base,” Jungwoo mutters. “Come on.” He tugs on your arm, and you follow him, letting the tears flow. Jonny shoots one last time at you, but misses. Of everyone who could have died, it had to be Taeil. Precious Taeil with his lovely voice and sweet temperament, the person everyone went to if they needed someone to chill with. He would never again hear you complain about uncertain futures or how you missed your home planet. He would never again hug you or make you smile or gift your ears with his sweet tunes.

“We’ll come back,” you repeat, nose stuffing up. “We’ll come back.”

You leave Sector 5, only meeting one more person. Jungwoo shoots whoever it is before you even register their presence. Thank goodness that one of you has their head still on right. Getting back inconspicuously is a little harder with bloodstains on Jungwoo’s side, but you somehow manage to avoid everyone you don’t want to see. You sneak in the back way to your building and get up to Doyoung’s office. He’s the leader of your little group, so he’s the one you take the info to.

When you knock, he invites you in, and you enter the room. You’re never quite sure if he’ll be happy to see you, so you walk in with some trepidation. Thankfully he has one of his beautiful smiles on and welcomes you in.

“What did you get?” he asks.

“A USB Drive, it has files for new ships,” you tell him. “ Exactly what we were looking for.”

“Where are Jung-”

Doyoung gets cut off by a voice coming through the radio on his desk. “Sir! Doyoung, sir?”

Doyoung holds up a finger to you and presses the talk button. “Yes Yangyang?”

“Is Y/N with you yet, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Y/N,” Yangyang says, “he doesn’t know yet what happened.” Doyoung looks at you, eyes questioning.

“Okay Yang,” you say. “I’ll- I’ll tell him.”

“Okay. That’s all, sir.”

Doyoung looks at you across the desk and narrows his eyes. “What happened?”

“We got in without incident,” you say. “There was a laser maze, but we got through okay. We didn't get caught on the way in and found a lab. That’s where we found the drive. I made sure these were the right files, and then we left. Taeil-” You cut yourself off, tears threatening again.

“Taeil turned off the lasers so we could get out, but it activated some sort of security system. Some men came to kill us and Taeil recognized one. I think his name was ‘Sicheng.’ Taeil-” You take another deep breath. “He ran toward the man, gun down, like he thought the man wouldn’t hurt him. But Sicheng… He killed Taeil. Shot him in the heart.”

The tears are flowing freely down your cheeks now, and you make no move to get rid of them. Doyoung looks shaken for the first time since you’ve known him, and he stands up. He walks around the desk to hug you, mindless of the blood on your clothes.

“We’ll give him the hero’s burial he deserves,” he murmurs. “In the meantime, you should go and put the drive with our other ship plans.

You nod in the affirmative and leave his office. The file storage room is just down the hall. Your surroundings are a bit blurry from the tears in your eyes, but you make it fine. Yangyang is already there, and he pats you on the back as you plug the USB drive into its designated spot. It has a blood spot on the label and you sort of smile at the irony. You won, but at what cost?

A moment later the entire course lights up. “The Red Team wins!” proclaims a voice from the speakers. You feel the character you were playing melt off as your laser tag gun powers off. The dryness in your throat and the tears on your face fade away with the persona you became for the game. You high-five Yangyang and run to get Taeil from where he lays on the other side of the course, still playing dead. You run into Johnny on the way. “Good game,” he says, bumping your fist. “Hitting my thigh patch was a fantastic idea! You’re a really good shot.”

“Thank you. Your team owes us pizza,” you remind him smugly.

“I know.” He throws you a playful glare on the way past. “We’re going to the fifth floor dorms once everyone’s rounded up. I think Lucas and Jeno tied up Sungchan, Hendery, and Chenle, so I’m going to get them.”

“Sounds good. We’re gonna go get Taeil, Sicheng, and Xiaojun.”

“Okay. Meet you at the entrance!”

He walks off and Yangyang follows you to Sector 5.

“You did an amazing job acting!” he says. “It really helped me get into my role.”

“I thought I would actually cry when Taeil fake died,” you tell him. “He actually looked dead.”

“Well I couldn’t see, obviously, but after you guys left he just sat and hummed. It was hilarious. In one channel, you’re screaming your revenge and sobbing, and in the other, Taeil is humming Baekhyun-sunbaemin.”

Taeil meets you at the beginning of the laser hall. “That was so much fun,” he enthuses.

“Yeah it was,” you agree. “You did a great job with the puzzles!” You’re referring to the puzzles that kept Sector 5 locked. Supposedly they were hard enough to keep intruders out, but Taeil had gotten in pretty easily.

He smiles. “Thank you. You did a great job kneeing Xiaojun in the nuts, he was out for a solid minute.”

“ I didn’t hurt him too much, did I?”

“Nah, he’ll recover. He might want to punch you or something though, I don’t think he was acting with that part.”

“Oh.”

You walk back to the entrance with everyone in the group and do a quick headcount. Twenty-three men. Okay, you’re good to go.

You pile into multiple vans out front where their managers sit, bored. They congratulate the winning team and drive you to the dorms, where you all squeeze into the 5th floor apartment and Johnny orders pizza for everyone. You’re very glad that you don’t have to pay for all of the food for twenty-four people.

“We should do that again some time!” Mark suggests as you’re eating. There’s a resounding cry of agreement as everyone lifts their pizza slices to the idea.

You’re totally going to do that again.

End.

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scribble-fox · 4 years ago

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Secondary English Teaching in WA; An Open Letter.

I am an English teacher. I do this job because it is a calling. It’s a passion. It’s something that can make a real difference in people’s lives. But I have a problem and it’s a problem that affects all of us. I am failing to be the best I can be because there is simply too much to do.

In the first place the job of an English teacher encompasses a lot. A child needs to be able to read and write and understand sophisticated vocabulary. They need critical thinking and empathy and the ability to comprehends both fine detail and larger trends. They need creativity and accuracy and clarity and conciseness. But we also look at modern issues, new media, social values and the broad and changing landscape our students must make sense of. This stuff is all in the curriculum in grand sweeping statements up for our interpretation. We are good at our jobs. We do our best to arm our students with the skills and knowledge they need to take on the world they will head into and if only that were our only job.

Not only must we compete with rapidly changing media and the increasingly diverse set of backgrounds and beliefs, but we must individualise the learning experience for each of the 31 children in each class. If we have an hour of lesson and we manage to get into it right away without any disruptions – the children all magically sit in their seats with pens and paper out smiling eagerly and quietly up at us – that still gives us less than two minutes per student. Many of our classes contain five, six, seven – I once had 13 – students with individual education plans. This means I need to remember who needs checklists and who needs chunked instructions and who I can’t directly instruct and who needs coloured paper and who must be reminded to wear their glasses. All while managing the behaviour of 31 teenagers, many of whom have mental or emotional issues to contend with.

This is just in the classroom. Contrary to popular belief, teachers don’t go home at three o’clock and spend half their lives on holiday. A study of English teachers in NSW found the average English teacher was working 49.4 hours per week. But that includes part time teachers. Those of us on a ‘full load’ often work 55+. Each class takes planning. Each IEP needs adjustments within those. Each class takes printing and prepping and most of all, marking. The biggest problem with comparing English teachers to other secondary teachers is the marking. On average, a paper in English takes 15 minutes to mark. If you have the standard five hours of DOTT time (duties other than teaching) then you can mark 20 in a week, assuming no interruptions. But remember that a class is 31 and a teacher has many classes. Some weeks you have three or four classes worth of marking to do. And when are you supposed to make resources, find worksheets, read texts, do professional development? In what other job are you expected to spend your weekends sitting at a desk?

Then there’s the admin. More and more of it. Recently I spent an entire hour of DOTT time recording unsubmitted assessments in each student’s digital profile. Another hour I spent calling parents because a no surprises policy means you have to contact home at any hint of failure. Two hours after school filling in reports on negative behaviours and the consequences that resulted. I’ve spent my short lunch time making sure misbehaving students scrape gum from under the desks or finish off work they didn’t bother to do in class. I’m supposed to put the goal, the lesson resources, the homework and a detailed plan online for every single lesson. Forget about excursions. No one on a full English load has time for that. And job progression? There’s a reason most principals and deputies are ex Phys Ed or Math. I’ve wasted hours doing the same few professional developments over and over because they are required. I’ve had three identical sessions on how to use a particular piece of technology and I know what the process is for dealing with asbestos despite the complete irrelevance it has to my position. The kids with IEPs have a separate reporting system that requires us to comment on each curriculum point tackled. We are expected, especially if we are young, to be on committees and in working parties and be going above and beyond. We are already going above and beyond. A not-English teacher has too much work to get on with. We are being paid the same wage to do twice as much.

But it isn’t money we want. We aren’t greedy. We aren’t complaining about the pay. What we want is conditions we can work in. What we want is to be able to be the best we can be. The number one asset to education – the one thing that makes all the difference – is teachers. Teachers are the biggest factor in the success of a child’s education (See Hattie 2018) and a school’s stats, and we cannot be great teachers when we are stretched this thin. Is it any wonder really that our literacy has slipped so far? In the 2018 PISA rankings we dropped to 16th in reading. We were 8th back in 2006. 8th!

This problem compounds. With each year we are spread thinner and thinner. With each year our kids are further and further behind. And they are already coming into high school behind because primary school teachers aren’t specialists in everything. How could they be. Just because you can read and write, doesn’t mean you can teach phonics. And they are expected to cover English, Maths, Science, Humanities and Social Sciences and anything else they can’t get a specialist for. Kids also need to spread their writing between typing and digital literacy and handwriting. You wouldn’t believe how quickly their hands hurt from writing.

The problem, as it is, compounds but the plans are worse. In the name of progress, the plans in the department are to make sure kids have access to as many electives as possible. That sounds nice in theory. What this means in practice is that they lose lessons in their core subjects. One school is already paving the way for this with only three hours of English (and other core subjects) per week for lower school kids. Are they crazy? School is about creating a strong foundation to build on. Gap years are for trying things out. This tester school has been testing it for a few years now. But the test has failed. Kids are struggling. And of course, they are struggling! The English curriculum is huge. The subject is challenging. We already know that it’s too much, even to be delivered in four or five hours a week. Soon, English teachers everywhere will be expected to cram their carefully crafted courses into 3/5ths the time. Well, we won’t stand for it. Not least of all because we won’t cope. The teachers at this tester school aren’t coping. Especially when it means a fuller timetable.

How does less classes mean a fuller timetable? Well, just like for subjects with a lighter marking load, teachers are timetabled by teaching hours, not by number of classes. Instead of teaching four or five different classes. Teachers end up with six or seven. Either all lower school or the gaps are filled with subjects out of area. What does more classes and more students mean? More marking, more planning, more admin.

But there is a solution. There is a way to lift the standards of our teachers and our students in turn. Give English teachers less work. Put a cap on the number of students and classes. Make a full-time load for English teaching .8 (Hale does it!). Don’t expect out of hours work. Make less admin or provide aides to do it (Job creation?). Don’t cram curriculum into three lessons a week and fill up any extra time. Don’t interrupt the term with constant assemblies and activities. If you have to add more work, employ more people to do it. It’s simple and It makes a colossal difference.

I’m an English teacher. I dream of being able to plan interesting and innovative lessons. I long to provide the support my students need. I need to inspire. I know I can change lives. I can empower children to break free of poverty and trauma and build a future we can all be proud of. That’s what all teachers dream of but right now we are drowning. Right now, we are treading water in a vast ocean, hidden behind the waves and the swell and we are shouting to the distant shore. Hear us. Please hear us.

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itsnothingofinterest · 4 years ago

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Have you heard? Apparently, Horikoshi said Hero Academia might be headed to a conclusion soon. This was surprising to say the least; not just because fans don’t want it to end but because it doesn’t really feel like it’s anywhere close to it’s end (plenty think it’s closer to halfway, with a select few like me thinking it’s closer to the 1/3 point). This has led some to speculate, partially in denial, if the conclusion Horikoshi is talking about is not actually the series’ “conclusion” concussion, but instead a Naruto Shippuden style “new name for the next part” type of deal. (Or if he’s just having the word “soon” put in some serious work.)

So I want to discuss that; go over as many reason I can think of for why the series could end within the next year or 2, or for why it could see another 5+ years to it’s life. It mean it sounds fun, right?

(Going into this though, I would like to state my bias. I don’t want the series to end soon; and if it kept at it’s current pace to conclude Deku’s academic life in chapters 800~1000, I would be a very happy camper. I’ll try not to let this affect my judgement, but I’ve got no oversight but myself here so...)

Anyway, here we go.

Reasons for the series to end soon.

I think a good point to start is that Horikoshi once stated he planned to end the series at around 30 volumes, roughly what’s already been covered, before finding he needed to expand the series further than that. That’s understandable, it’s easy to see how this arc could’ve been the end of the series had things played out differently enough in the last few chapters; but if he’s already said he’s expanded beyond that, what does that have to do with this discussion? Well for this side of the argument, it means 2 things: 1) all that’s left can be considered the ‘expansion’ on Horikoshi’s original idea, so how likely is it that there’s a lot of that, & 2) that Horikoshi likely didn’t intend for the series to last for Deku’s full school life, a major belief for those expecting the series to last a significant time.

And when we look at the actual content of the series, yeah there’s certainly things that could point to the series ending soon; namely all the arcs and plot threads that kinda just got resolved rapid fire. Dabi’s reveal, Mirio getting his quirk back, Hawks launching the attack he’s been orchestrating since his first appearance, Compress’s face, Bakugou letting go of his resentment for Deku; just to name a few. True, this is nowhere near all of the arcs & plot threads; but it’s a sizable enough portion if we’re assuming the rest have the next year or 2 to resolve themselves. A few more arcs like this last one and yeah, the series won’t have anything really tying it down from ending.

There’s also Deku’s rate of vestige quirk acquisition to consider. I mean in the 3 arcs featuring him since we learned about his extra quirks, he has acquired 3 quirks. At that rate, he’d have them all in 3 more student arcs and basically be at all but full power by then. Not that him keeping up this rate of quirk acquisition is guaranteed, but it sure seems like a sign of the series not lasting too long.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are ways for the series to end soon, easy paths to the finish line available to Horikoshi. It wouldn’t be that hard, for example, to get to confronting Dabi & Toga and resolving their arcs in some timely fashion. And AFO’s presence as a bigger bad over Tomura could allow for him to pull a Kaguya to his Madara, allowing for the plot to resolve with his defeat without really needing to address a lot of Tomura’s issues. And heck, that might’ve even become more likely after this latest chapter, wherein AFO acquired his very own army. That would likely involve finding too-easy solutions a lot of the more complicated issues, or worse, brushing them under the rug; but it can’t be denied that this is an option for how Horikoshi could resolve the series in just a few years.

Last piece of evidence worth mentioning is the simple nature of shorter series being the “path of least resistance.” You can argue all you like how the series lasting longer makes more sense or might result in a better story (and I’m basically about to); but in the end it can’t be denied that the less the series has left, the less work it is for Horikoshi. And that’s just gonna make it inherently more likely; a largely equivalent result for less effort is never not gonna be attractive for people.

Reasons for the series to last a long time.

Okay, I’ve done my best to be fair and included as many points as I could think of in favor of a shorter lifespan; but I won’t lie, this 2nd half is gonna be the fun part of this post for me.

Let’s start at the opposite end of the other side’s first point; Horikoshi planned to originally end the series at around 30 volumes. This past arc, ending in Volume 30, took place in the space between Deku’s 1st and 2nd school year, or you could say it took place during the end of his 1st year. This implies that while the original plan was not to go through Deku’s whole school life, he did intend it to end at a point of significance; the end of a school year. And what that implies is that he won’t end the series smack in the middle of the 2nd year, which would be where the series would end if it only lasted less than 3 more years. It implies he’d likely aim to end the series at the end of year 2 at the earliest, a significant ways away. (And before you ponder about a time skip; remember that year 1 had a time skip and still lasted ~30 volumes & ~6 years.)

Another reason to think the series is gonna last a while; it’s quite slow, in an overall sense at least. It’s hard to describe but; It doesn’t always feel that way because the moment-to-moment pacing is very good & it always feels like something is happening and stuff is getting tackled. But this is because it tends to tackle plots one at a time; so while plots make good development while in the focus, they can stay out of focus for a significant duration. For example; the ‘Shinsou becoming a hero’ plot was introduced in the Sports Festival, only saw real development during Joint Training, and has still yet to resolve with year 2 not starting yet. Or for another example, we learned over 150 chapters ago that All Might had his future predicted where he’ll die at the hands of a villain, setting up a plot where he’ll try to twist his future and survive this unknown threat to his life. His life has not once been in danger since. Not even in a broad sense like someone’s targeting him; no, this man has not has one risk to his life since the plot thread was introduced. There’s tons for plot threads like that, I’m barely scratching the surface here. And that’s actually fine...if the series has a long future ahead of it. This system of pacing actually works wonders for BNHA; because while people can occasionally miss their faves and their plots, crying out “where’s Shinsou” and all that, they generally like what’s being focused on when it’s handled and paced well (which it usually is). As long as the series itself has time to get to all of these plots and develop them to their resolution, this pacing system works like a well oiled machine.

Deku especially is a useful measuring tool for how slow this series can be. He’s not like the other plot points see, because he’s almost always around so he’s made to develop at a more even pace until the end. This is in contrast to characters like Shinou, Aoyama, Kirishima, Toga, or Shigaraki; who get bursts of development because they don’t spend consistent time in the spotlight and Horikoshi can’t be entirely sure when he’ll get the next chance to make use of them. So with that said, how slow is his development & how far along is it? Well, not very actually. Aside from in terms of powers, his development has been a bit lacking. Not to say he hasn’t had character moments, but they have been a bit scarce & minimal; and a lot of his major flaws (such as his self-destructive tendencies, his self-esteem issues, and his toxic hero worship) have barely been addressed, let alone resolved. In general, his character feels like it’s barely changed since he got into UA; in stark contrast to characters like Shigaraki, Todoroki, Shinsou, & even Bakugou. And that kind of implies a long road a head of him.

To bounce off another point from the “short future section” I mentioned how a lot of overarching plots just ended. The thing about that is, I actually made a post talking about that and how a lot of how they ended seems to set up more overarching plots then they seem to end. To not repeat myself too much, because this post is already really long; it’s like the series resolved the greater part of 6 years of content only to set-up up to 6 more years of content, and all in one arc. (Goodness that was a busy arc.)

And that’s just the advancement of already existing plot points. There’s a lot it can feel like he hasn’t even touched on yet. Mostly characters. There are just. So. Many. Characters in this series. That are in positions of seeming importance, but have done nothing. For example, Horikoshi’s been known to suddenly focus on class 1A students to make them feel important, and has gotten through maybe over half; but hasn’t really touched on Sero, Sato, Koda, Ojiro, Hagakure, & especially Shoji (who really, really feels like he has something planned, but nothing’s happened yet). And that’s just the guys below Mineta’s development level, which itself is pretty low. To say nothing of Class 1B, or Ms. Joke’s students, or most of the 30 faces known in the PLF, the main antagonistic group of the series! And yeah, this could all just be because Horikoshi likes introducing characters in larger groups than he’s actually equipped to handle; I’m not denying that. I’m just saying it’s also possible that he could be doing this because he feels like he has the time to explore them whenever he wants. (Heck, it could very well be both.)

Conclusion:

...I don’t know dude. I mean a longer series looks more likely to me; but I am very well aware that I’m not unbiased enough to make any real conclusive statement. Maybe I should consider that to mean it’s more even than that.

Perhaps we’re just too far away from the ending to really be able to tell either way. I mean low estimates still give the series at least a year. But even so, I do think this was all worth considering; because if nothing else, I did get a feel for all that’s likely to happen between now and the inevitable end. And I guess it turns out to be kind of a lot. So that’s neat.

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philosophicalparadox · 4 years ago

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Dark Headcannons for the Demon Bois, part 2.a : Physiological Adaptations and Defense Mechanisms (physical)

I continue this ideology with more horror HC's (kind of) detailing some of the physiology and physical defenses of our boys - HOWEVER there is quite a bit of science invested in this particular post, so there's a little explaining to do first.

Note: I have removed Iblis from the list for the next few rounds because we really dont know anything about her, and I've also removed Egyn because I have zero idea what kind of adaptations he has since no one's ever seen his body. Azazel is floating in kind of the same boat. We seen his clones, but not him, and we have only really seen two of his kin - from that alone its hard to tell. We haven't even seen Beelzebub except in Gehenna, and for all we know they are stuck there. Im basing all this off hypothetical and mythological sources as well as my knowledge of animal and human anatomy.

Onward!

But first! (Yep, scientific Exposition Time Baby! I promise it won't be long) Something that strikes me odd is that all demons seem to be stronger physically than their non possessed counterparts, and so for the sake of not repeating myself where unessessary, we will assume this is due to increased muscular density, as a default which is the same thing that allows much smaller primates to be much stronger than ourselves.

However, be aware that there are MANY factors that influence physical strength alone - efficiency of respiration, bodily waste management (aka, kidney and liver function) and efficiency of metabolic processes (digestive system, pancreas, and again liver). I'll touch on all these things in their own right, but just to let you know, everything is interconnected.

Onward!

Samael

Is, in everyday scenarios, about 7x stronger than the average human. In times of high adrenaline that can shoot up to 10, due to possessing a unique respiratory system, detailed below.

Samael has a physique designed to be an ambush predator, with a body that puts nothing to waste, but he is also built for bursts of speed and agility, both skills vital for his hunting strategy type, detailed in part one, to be effective. Standing out in a crowd may lull prey into a false sense of security, but it also draws a lot of attention from competitors, as well as parasitic predators like Chuchi and Coltars.

Samael is a demon often depicted with avian wings, and for his body to put out the strength it does and be able to at least glide requires an avian-modeled respiratory system. In other words he breathes with lungs, but has additional air sacs in his chest and abdomen to draw as much oxygen from the air as possible. For a demon optimized for bursts of speed and high agility, being able to metabolize large amounts of oxygen very quickly is vital.

More vital still though is having the kidneys and liver to be able to handle it. I suspect he would have a lobed liver akin to a rabbit, and kidneys much like a cat. Technically speaking, if he eats right, he never actually has to drink any water. His kidneys are that efficient.

Now onto the fun one: bones. High density muscles put out huge forces on the bones they are attached to. There are two ways to fix that: make the bone harder and denser, or make the bone softer and flexible with cartilage. Samael does the former. The most efficient way to have denser bones without adding weight is to make them hollow, at the sacrifice of not having much bone marrow. This works out perfectly though, since to metabolize high rates of oxygen you need specialized red blood cells with lots and lots of hemoglobin, and hollow bones allow for the production of just enough of these cells.

Now that the basics are out of the way, Samael has some other unique adaptations, including a ratcheted tendon system in his forearms, like those found in raptors. This gives him a virtually unbreakable, iron-strong grip from which escape is virtually impossible. Combine that with talon-like claws and long fingers that can really dig in, and you're screwed from the word "go".

Making that escape even more impossible is his highly flexible joints, which make twisting out of his grasp before he has a chance to bite damn near unheard of. Remember, it only takes one bite to kill. If he catches you, you're dead already.

As far as defensive abilities go, Samael hasn't got any besides evasion. So much of his body is devoted to being a specialist that there isnt any room for special physical defenses - in fact his hollow bones, while very good at handling internal stresses, are no less brittle than a birds when it comes to some external forces. A sledgehammer to the side of his thigh (impact) would absolutely shatter his femur bone, though he can land on his feet from a great height (compression) and barely bruise.

Lucifer

Is maybe 5x stronger than the average human, on a really good day. He has a bit of muscle, but he is a magic user, not a berserker. On his bad days he can dip below a 1.

Physically he isn't too different from a human mostly, other than having an ultra efficient heart and lungs that are 20% larger to compensate for his increased muscle density.

Except that he has very strange cells. To all appearance his body is mostly human, but one look under the microscope would tell you instantly that something is odd about this duck, because his cells have tiny crystals in them. These crystals are of unknown composition, but they are thought to assist with fluorescence, or the production of the stuff mentioned below.

Also odd about his cells is that they're filled with an almost cellulose like substance instead of normal cytoplasm. Its a bit denser and is THE most heat resistant organic substance on earth. It also makes his cells completely immune to all forms of radiation - this boy could literally survive a nuclear explosion as long as he was in a shelter where he couldn't be impacted by debris or the shockwave. Heat and radiation from it would be like a sunburn at worst.

However, he is not fireproof. While this substance is resistant to heat, it is not resistant to oxidation, so it WILL burn. Not well, and not fast, but it will burn.

Which leads me to the fact that he has some very unique organelles. Multiple types of mitochondria, Golgi bodies and ribosomes help manufacture the weirdness.

Part of that weirdness is of unknown deadliness though. When fully charged up, the light he emits contains dangerous wavelengths, and further study has yet to be done on whether and what types of radiation he may emit. It is known that his dense cytoplasmic substance can hold onto nuclear radiation, but does so very briefly.

As far as defenses go, he does actually have a pretty interesting, but accidental one, for the dense cytoplasmic substance of his cells naturally permeates into his blood plasma. This substance is extremely bitter and even potentially toxic at high enough doses. A mouthful of Lucifer's blood is enough to induce severe nausea, vomiting, cramping of the intestines (colic), and if swallowed, diarrhoea.

The strange substance of his cells also mediates the use of Elixir that is specific to himself. Elixir used for other purposes are rejects of the ones formulated just for him, and are effective at treating a wide variety of things.

On a related but unrelated note, though, the elixir has nasty side effects on humans and demons alike, often triggering the onset of various cancers and cysts, though it's not clear why this happens to some and not others. It is not known why Lucifer is seemingly immune to these side effects, but he could, potentially, be immune to cancer altogether.

Amaimon

Amaimon is a fucking draft horse, with a baseline strength of 9x that of a human. That's somewhere slightly above a pissed off gorilla and/or an attacking tiger, for reference. In high adrenalized mode, that number shoots up to a 12, which is about as high as biology will let anything go, courtesy square cube law.

His muscles are SO dense and heavy, in fact, that he is incapable of floating in water. He also isn't very fast for long distances. He has high stamina at low energy output, and low stamina at high energy output. He can walk for days on end, but in a dead sprint he can't go more than a kilometer at best before his muscles start to rip him apart.

Which leads to : bones. Amaimon takes a very reptilian approach to the issue of having super powerful muscles, and has fibrin and cartilage reinforced bones that bow rather than break. However, these bones have many sharp angles for muscular attachments, and as a result are very poor at resisting torsion (twisting) and high rates of compression. The last thing he wants to do is land on his feet from a great height, for he is likely to fracture his long bones.

But those are not the only bones he has - much like monitor lizards, including komodo dragons, he has ossicones embedded in his skin, forming a chain-mail mesh of steely bone just below the dermis that makes his skin very resistant to slashes and cuts, but very weak to stabbing and thrusting. Cleaving into him wont do much damage, but impaling him on a pike works great.

His organs are strange, made stranger by his blood, which has a pH value of 7.8, far more alkaline than most viruses or bacteria can survive, making him virtually immune to disease. Unfortunately that also impacts the bacteria in his gut, which as a consequence can exist nowhere else on earth.

On the flip side, his stomach secretes acid that is so caustic it dissolves bone in hours, and also destroys even the worst of pathogens. As touched upon before, he can regurgitate this acid onto attackers in self defense, even going so far as to spit it at them from a distance of two meters. It has a patently unpleasant odor too, adding to its defensive quality.

Amaimons claws are semi retractable and grizzly-like, making them excellent tools for digging and prying things apart. They're also really good at ripping people apart, and there is no armor that can really do effective justice except for one: spiky. His skin isn't super resistant to impalement, remember, so the pricklier the better. That is assuming he cant chip away at it. Good luck with that.

Another organ to mention is his tail. It's not exactly prehensile, but it is flexible and very, very powerful. One whack across the midsection could kill a man. In fact his tail is often his first line of defense against attackers; it's so robust and armored that it's almost impossible to injure, and it hits like a truck. Good for offense or defense, or even just lazing around.

Astaroth

Fungi boy has an average strength of just twice that of a human. But when pushed to his limits, he can use hydraulic musculature to increase his strength to 9x that of the average human.

Speaking of which, Astaroth has some weird musculature- or lack thereof. Rather than having ordinary, dense tissue, he instead has a hydraulic system of movement akin to that of a worm or slug. Not only that, but his muscles are not his own - rather they are controlled by slime molds, with which he has a symbiotic relationship. The muscles are very little muscle tissue and a whole lot of mycellial fibers. His body is literally made of fungus, controlled by fungi and microorganisms, and is fed and defended by these things.

He is, in light of this, able to turn his body temperature on or off in any area he needs to at-will, giving his slimy friends the home they need.

He has a perfect mastery over the simple organisms he controls, and can exchange them at will. This combined with the ability to live without body heat means he is completely immune to all but the most severe of environments. As long as he has access to moisture, he can survive and thrive at sub zero temperatures and well into the triple digits. However he can not live without his slimy friends, and so can not endure drought very well. Deserts are the bane of his existence.

When it comes to defenses, Astaroth is nothing but. Toxic spores, all colours of miasma, foul smells, and even sharp needles and thorns when necessary. Nothing with a lick of sense would dare try to eat him, with the exception of microorganisms and parasites thereof - but it's not him they consume, but his symbiotes, which again he can simply discard or exchange as need be.

He is however very slow moving, typically, and doesn't really have a 'flee' or 'fight' response. Instead he freezes, exuding and oozing his more unfriendly companions to deter attack. If this should fail though, however unlikely, he is remarkably fragile and slow to heal, though virtually impossible to kill.

His only real weakness is well established: fire. It is the great sterilizer, though light is also not something he can easily defend against either. Neither are vacuums and immense air pressure. Basically if it's not within the realms of ordinary natural phenomena he has no ability to escape or defend. This gives him an edge against the younger of the Kings, but makes him powerless against the older half.

Whew! That was a lot. This post took FOREVER to make!

Questions and comments are welcome, reading with a grain of salt in mind is recommended.

#ao no exorcist #blue exorcist #demon kings #headcannons #this is just the a.#theres a b. coming

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teaspoon-of-salt · 3 years ago

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some thoughts i’m just turning around in my head but. i think centering children’s rights in political agendas is good and i think the right largely beats the left in organizing and agitating for (their idea of) the good of children.

of course the right largely mobilizes toward establishing increased control over children-as-property and often uses children’s rights as bluster for reactionary ends but imo they’re so much more vocal and largely dominate the american political landscape and the narrative of children’s rights with their agenda. the left just has no counter-narrative to offer.

i’m not saying leftist theorizing doesn’t address the marginalization of children, but imo it largely fails to center children; children end up more as an afterthought to larger ideas about the failures of the nuclear family and get discussed often as, like, subsets of other issues (marginalization of lgbt and youth of color, etc.). but the left doesn’t have a foothold in the narrative about children’s rights the way there’s a foothold about, for example, the justice system. the safety of children in schools, their families, their communities is, something that is weakly addressed and again usually in conjunction with other issues.

actually i feel like there’s much more effort pushing back against the right’s narrative of children and what children “deserve” than time actually spent building a leftist foundation for children’s rights. to the point where “what about the children” is a phrase of mockery and seeing places becoming more “child-friendly” is treated with derision; in many cases the arguments and changes that get dismissed DO come from a right-wing perspective, but that’s what i mean. the right has its foot in the door while the left complains about what they get done while never seriously building our own movement for children.

of course, there’s often support when kids organize, there’s often atomized safety nets for kids from leftist community members, but that’s not taking a place in the dominant narrative of children’s rights. the most vocal people who agitate against pedophiles or act as “pedo hunters” are right-wing or work with the police. like, for fuck’s sake, can’t we TRY to be louder than them? TRY to do things better than them? why are they the ones controlling the narrative and why don’t we put up any good fight with leftist ideas and protective measures?

(part of the reason i got to thinking about this was again because i was observing reactions to media containing csa. i’m talking about stuff that generally depicts it seriously (like parasite, or fun home, or even the bluest eye), but from a reception standpoint it seems like most of the people who have anything to say about the csa (if anyone says anything about it at all) were right-wingers trying to get these stories banned, while the generally-progressive cultural critics who support the continued availability of these stories seemed to have no comment or analysis on the implications of csa in the narrative. there was a lot to be said about capitalism, or queerness, or misogynoir, but when it came to csa, they just had nothing to say at all.)

#rambly fragmented thoughts that may not even be correct #so no reblogs pls but i'm def open to like talking abt it #i'm not limiting this just to csa issues btw #also stuff like covid and school shootings and bullying/abuse

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emptymanuscript · 4 years ago

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The breath of life Part 1.

Not really, I just wanted to say something dramatic and I’m looking at breathing systems now.

Humans breathe like so:

You breathe in through the nose, mouth, or both into the trachea. At more or less the same time they contract the diaphragm, a dome-ish shaped muscle that divides your stomach from your chest. By contracting the diaphragm it flattens and so both lowers its top and pushes out its sides, opening the thoracic cage (the ribs) wider, which creates negative pressure on the lungs, causing them to expand. That in turn causes negative pressure inside the lungs which pulls the air from the trachea into the lungs to balance out the pressure. Inside the lungs the 48 million or so Alveolar Sacs bulge with the air and shunt oxygen (and some other stuff) into the blood vessels they’re woven together with, while taking back the Carbon Dioxide (and some other stuff) from them in return. The diaphragm relaxes, squeezing the lungs like they’re bellows, shooting the air back into the trachea which you breathe out through the nose, mouth, or both.

This is called exchange tidal flow. Because it works like the tide of the ocean. Air comes in, air goes out, you make the gas exchange at the peak, where the air is all the way in but hasn’t gone out yet.

Like the tide though, there are inefficiencies in the system. Two of interest. If you’ve ever looked at the tide you’ll have noticed that as one wave comes in, the dregs of the previous wave are still trickling out. There’s an overlap. This happens in breathing as well. Which is why breathing exercises are all about exaggerating the points in the cycle. Breathe in more than you do naturally, hold longer than you do naturally, exhale longer than you do naturally. You are, in essence, controlling the tide to decrease overlap. It’s also part of the reason that when you do all that you breathe in through the nose, the narrower aperture, and out through the mouth, the wider aperture. Because you’re trying to flush as much of the outbreath tide out as possible.

Most bodies are fairly well adapted at getting as much oxygen as they need. And they have a natural enforcement limit. If you can’t get enough, you just can’t keep going. You get tired and you fall over. So the inward tide full of Oxygen is absolutely necessary but it is the tide of lesser concern.

The old truism of death by fire is that the fire’s smoke, the waste product of its chemical reaction, is more likely to kill you than the fire’s flames. Carbon Dioxide is the smoke in this simile. CO2 is one of our bodies’ fundamental waste products and the one we can tolerate the least of. Too much in our system at a given time and it makes it so we can’t get enough oxygen because there isn’t room for the exchange and it poisons us.

CO2 eventually leads to panting for more oxygen that you can’t get, a racing heart rate, arrhythmia so your heart can no longer steadily pump your blood, and “impaired consciousness” like difficulty thinking and being able to move. Concentrations of greater than 10% may cause any or all of convulsions, coma and the big D.

So as important as it is to get Oxygen in, it’s extra important to get that CO2 out. That’s also a part of why long term meditators and conscious breathers tend to feel healthier. They literally do have less toxic material in their bodies.

The second feature of interest for me is dead space.

Not that dead space.

This dead space

Dead space is the amount of space given over to breathing where no gas exchange takes place. Which for us is the trachea, oral cavity, and nasal cavity. If you snorkel, you add in the snorkel because the length of the tube is always used to move the air while having no role in making the breath pay off. It just helps you get the air where it is going. It’s easier to understand with the snorkel because without it, you don’t breathe at all. Necessary, not wasted.

And our natural dead space is much the same. It performs vital functions besides gas exchange. Mostly adjusting the temperature of the air toward our internal body temperature so it’s easier to deal with and the amount of moisture toward where it is easiest to perform a gas exchange.

And another benefit of exaggerating the tide of breath is in there as well. By dividing the air ways, breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, you can dedicate a short portion of dead space to a particular part of the exchange, allowing for less overlap of the tides and less mixing of CO2 and O2.

But depending on where you put lungs or whatever breathing apparatus they have in a Centaur, there’s the issue of either having a LOT of dead space, too small lungs, or too far to carry the oxygen, or etc. etc. etc.

If there is only one set of lungs. The human lungs are small and there is a lot of body to cover that is very far away from the lungs. So picking that set has issues. The ungulate lungs have a giant dead space though. Way too large. So that’s not great either.

So, is it two sets of lungs that each work that way. I’m not sure that isn’t worse instead of better. Because you would still have the dead space of both. The anterior humanish lungs would have what all mammals do. The posterior ungulate lungs would have what more extreme mammals like giraffe’s have WITH THE ADDITIONAL DIFFICULTY or sharing part of that space with the other lung set. And they’re both using the same set of apertures designed essentially to feed just one set. Unless you do a full redesign and add a second set of intakes for the second lung set. There is apparently a book somewhere out there that has a nose in place of where the humanoid naval would be. Which just doesn’t sit right with me for no particularly good reason. Other than it adds to the pressure problem.

If the lungs aren’t synced right, then you might have the pressures from one set of lungs interfering with the other set. If you modulate the anterior lungs to talk because Centaurs talk like people, then you’re altering the airflow without there necessarily being regard for the posterior lung set, which would up the pressure, forcing an exhale instead of speech. You might get little snippets of talking but unless you exactly sync the lungs will interfere with each other. Worse, if the larger anterior lungs purposely hold their breath because they don’t want to smell some stupid scented perfumery, with it deflated and held, you’ve got a low pressure force pulling on the anterior lungs, keeping them expanded, which is going to make it darn hard to breathe, even once the posterior lungs give up, because the anterior lungs have formed a high pressure block in response, and somehow they would have to force that to deflate before you can rebalance the system. So, all in all, mammalian style lungs just aren’t sounding great to me for Centaurs.

But, thankfully, while mammals are all pretty much the same as people, that��s not the only type of pulmonary system that there is. And some pulmonary systems work much better than ours. So that’s part 2.

Edit: *sigh* respiratory systems. Not pulmonary. RESPIRATORY.

#Foxfoot #worldbuilding #centaur #writeblr #monsterbuilding #lungs #how lungs work #thinking out loud #I'm spending way more time and effort on this than I should #Still having fun though #centaurs #centaur biology #centaur anatomy #respiratory system

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self-loving-vampire · 3 years ago

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Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle (1993)

Summary

Serpent Isle is a direct sequel to the Black Gate. The arrival of the Guardian has been prevented and his cult has been outlawed and disbanded, but his most loyal follower has escaped to a place called the Serpent Isle to enact their backup plan.

But the Serpent Isle is not just an island, it is another world that you find yourself in after sailing your ship between the Serpent Pillars (yes, you get isekai’d while already living in another world).

This strange land is populated by people who fled from your lord long ago, and it seems to be suffering from an apocalyptic event that you soon experience for yourself, as a magical storm teleports your companions away and replaces most of the potent items you arrived with with random junk.

So your goals are clear: Recover your items, find the Guardian’s followers, and try to prevent the world’s destruction.

In many ways, Serpent Isle can feel like a more linear and limited game than the Black Gate (for one, you can’t own and freely sail a ship), but there are actually many things that I think it actually does better.

I played it using Exult and the SI Fixes mod.

Freedom

While Serpent Isle is not fully linear, it is definitely not nearly as open as the Black Gate was.

Where the Black Gate lets you travel nearly anywhere in the world almost immediately, even enabling several forms of transportation for this purpose, Serpent Isle initially allows only one section of the island to be explored with the rest opening up as one progresses through the game.

To its credit, the way in which these areas are locked off are sometimes reasonable and do not feel arbitrary. For instance, Moonshade is an island and nearly every ship in the land have been wrecked by the same magical storms that affected your party at the start of the game, so reaching it is not as simple as just buying a boat and going there.

There are other cases, however, where the restrictions do feel nonsensical. Such as the way the Bull Tower pikemen demand obscene amounts of money for the captain’s release but will happily accept a single much less valuable gold bar instead (since acquiring those is tied to a plot point). Then there’s all the stuff with the Hound of Doskar...

On the positive side, you can deal with various parts of the game in whatever order you desire within these limitations. This includes resolving the central quests in each of the land’s three cities in your own preferred order.

However, the game is still lacking in alternate solutions for quests in general. There are some decisions to be made, but they are rather minor in the grand scheme of things.

Character Creation/Customization

This aspect of the games is just as barebones as the Black Gate. You can only select your name, gender, and portrait. Your starting stats are pre-set and there are no further decisions to be made there.

However, Serpent Isle does have a marginal benefit over the Black Gate in that how you spend your training points matters a lot more, since you can’t just automatically max out your stats by completing the expansion.

Even then, there is not much to the character creation here at all.

Story/Setting

I think this is one of the game’s stronger points. The Black Gate may have had a larger world with more total settlements, but Serpent Isle’s three cities of Monitor, Fawn, and Moonshade are each significantly larger than the average Black Gate town and, most importantly, this world feels more dynamic.

Due to the way many of the game’s quests and events work, Serpent Isle manages to feel more alive than its predecessor. I will not spoil the details, but you often feel like something is always happening and like new developments are organically finding you rather than you having to actively search for them.

As has become typical of the Ultima series, the setting this time around is also centered around virtues, but in this case it goes beyond the Eight Virtues you mastered in the last trilogy.

Serpent Isle’s three cities are inhabited by the descendants of people who fled the reign of Lord British and who resent his edict of the eight virtues. The knights of Monitor considered Valor to be the highest virtue, the sailors of Fawn wanted to elevate Beauty as a virtue, and the mages of Moonshade did not feel that their profession should be associated with the virtue of Honesty.

But in addition to all that, much of the game revolves around learning about and mastering the ancient Ophidian virtue system, which functions differently from what you are used to.

The Ophidian virtues are divided into Order (Ethicality, Discipline, Logic) and Chaos (Tolerance, Enthusiasm, Emotion). The forces composing both sides must be in balance to achieve a new set of principles (Harmony arising from Ethicality + Tolerance, Dedication from Discipline + Enthusiasm, and Rationality from Logic + Emotion).

The incoming apocalypse you face in the game is the result of a cosmic imbalance in these forces. The ancient Ophidians polarized into Order and Chaos factions that warred each other, with Order winning the war and destroying the Chaos Serpent, which causes the universe to begin unravelling.

While this game does have an antagonist, resolving this imbalance remains the most significant part of the game in terms of story.

The game also has multiple big scripted scenes that did not quite exist in the Black Gate, and the world as a whole changes dramatically partway through as a result of a certain event.

Immersion

As previously mentioned, things like the quest design and more dynamic world can help make this game more immersive than Black Gate in some ways. I am reasonably certain that some of the NPC schedules are a bit more complex this time around as well.

There are also a few new things, such as a frozen wasteland up north that you need warm clothes to traverse without freezing.

Apart from that, all the features mentioned in the Black Gate are still present here, such as weather, day/night cycles, and more.

But really I think one of the most significant differences is actually just the fact that you are significantly less overpowered than in the Black Gate and have less allies. I feel like that changes the feel of the game a lot on its own in ways that have to be experienced to be fully understood.

Gameplay

Combat is, as in Black Gate, automatic and uninteresting, though it is slightly more difficult now overall.

The rest of the gameplay is largely the same as in the Black Gate as well, though dialogue has been slightly expanded with more complex trees.

Really the main difference comes down to the differences in the world and available items rather than any mechanical changes.

Some of the most significant items are a ring (obtained from the Silver Seed expansion) that provides infinite magical reagents and a magical goblet that provides endless nourishment. These things are not nearly as broken as what the Forge of Virtue provides in the Black Gate, but are still nice conveniences.

While this game has less towns than its predecessor, it does have larger and more interesting dungeons overall. The one issue with them is that some of the puzzles in them are not very interesting (often amounting to just placing items on pedestals and such).

This is also where I should talk about one of the game’s major flaws: It is the first one where the influence of Electronic Arts began to manifest. It is nothing too major at this point (just wait until we get to Ultima 8 and especially Ultima 9) but it does mean there are some questlines that were left unfinished due to EA rushing things.

It’s not just questlines either. The towns were supposed to be larger and with more content, the player was meant to eventually gain a ship they could freely sail like in the Black Gate, and a major plot element had to be changed. The Silver Seed expansion in particular feels incomplete and inconsequential in terms of story, and is largely centered around four dungeons to explore for unique loot (both the dungeons and the loot are reasonably good at least).

I also dislike just how many plot-critical items are in the game. I would like to use my backpack space for other things.

The game also offers a decent amount of locations to explore, including many optional curiosities unrelated to the main quest.

Aesthetics

While the engine and graphics are largely the same as in the Black Gate, there have been graphical upgrades, most notably in the form of significantly more detailed and lifelike portraits for NPCs.

But I would say that the biggest aesthetic changes here have more to do with the game’s design and atmosphere.

Serpent Isle is a far more unfriendly place than Britannia, and you will be accosted by assassins and deceivers during your quest. It makes for a more grim adventure.

The whole game has a much darker tone than any in the series since Ultima 5, I think. The world is completely falling apart due to the imbalance, with storms obliterating Fawn’s fleet, goblins making significant gains in their war against Monitor, and plagues are starting to break out. You do get the sense as you explore the world that this is a land experiencing its final days.

And things only get worse from here too.

I also like how unique several of the locations are. The city of Monitor is not just a walled city, it is populated by knights who organize into three different commands that rule the city. Meanwhile the city of Fawn is completely unlike any other in the series, being built entirely over the sea.

It is good stuff, and I wish they had had the time to expand and develop these locations as they had originally planned.

Accessibility

Exactly as good in this regard as the Black Gate, I think. Even the increased difficulty (which is still not enough to make this a “hard” game by any means) does not really matter since at the start of the game you get a magical hourglass that can be used to resurrect any fallen party members and the local monks will take care of your own mortality as well.

If there’s frustrations to be had here, they may come more from some of the less intuitive puzzles than anything and plot points than anything. The core gameplay is still extremely simple.

While the game can theoretically be played on its own, I strongly recommend playing at least the Black Gate first to learn a little about the events that led to this whole expedition. The two games really are part of the same package.

Conclusion

Between the Black Gate and Serpent Isle, I always got the impression that the Black Gate was the more popular of the two. I can understand why, as Serpent Isle was a bit rushed and lacks the open exploration that has defined the previous games in the series.

Despite this, I remember loving it about as much as the Black Gate largely because of the atmosphere and how the game feels. It is a particularly easy recommendation for those who enjoyed the previous game, as the engine and mechanics remain largely the same.

I also recommend this game for anyone who may be interested in following the story or looking for an immersive experience, but who doesn’t want to bother too much with stuff like combat or numbers. Even just watching the NPCs go about their day can be fun in this game.

#vampire reviews rpgs #ultima 7 #serpent isle #long post

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sepublic · 4 years ago

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Makuta and Rahi

I really have to speculate about the Makutas’ relationship with Rahi as a whole. It’s never quite defined within canon the purpose of Rahi’s existence in the Matoran Universe, did the Makuta ever consider this, and did it bother them? While Mata Nui created various sapient races with no-doubt clear-cut purposes as part of a larger machine… Did the Makuta ever feel insecurity over the seemingly pointless addition of the Rahi? Did they ever feel extraneous alongside their own creations?

Especially since I can see a LOT of thought, passion, and creativity going into a lot of Rahi species and their designs, behaviors, the way they interact with one another… There’s a delicate thing that needs to be considered when designing an ecosystem, and that’s Balance. I have to wonder if that’s a concept that the Brotherhood of Makuta held dear to their hearts, especially given how inextricably tied it is to their creations.

Thinking on it, I can better understand why the Makuta saw taking over the universe as just a mere extension of their pre-existing duties. Their ordained purpose in life had already been to create species who have specific niches, roles, and purposes to play… Mata Nui’s handling of sapient species was no different, right? You had Makuta actively working to improve upon pre-existing creations, so improving upon a fractured universe by uniting it just makes sense! The line is further blurred when one considers the presence of sapient rahi… And in that scenario, I guess it’s not too surprising that the Makuta saw themselves as not all that different from Mata Nui, in the end- Maybe even better.

The creation of ecosystems also means establishing a cycle of life, which often means designing species with the intended purpose to be devoured and/or killed by other Rahi creations. That sort of lifestyle and mentality, raising and designing entire species for a specific purpose, one they both live and diefor… It can really create a God complex amongst some Makuta. They have literal divine justification in creating a ‘greater system’ where the lives of countless Rahi are meant to be sacrificed and hunted down, all to maintain a cycle of life, a specific balance.

And considering their roles, the Makuta no doubt got used to the idea of culling populations in order to maintain an order and ‘balance’ within ecosystems. And with the line between Rahi and sapient species blurring… I can see, more and more, how the Makuta became so nonchalant to the idea of killing others for a ‘greater purpose’, and how this casual attitude just led to the Brotherhood becoming more and more desensitized- Until we have people like Icarax or Gorast, who outright revel in carnage. They were encouraged from creation to create species that were meant to die, or species that were meant to kill- Oftentimes both. And as one takes pride in their ability to fulfill this role, some end up taking pride in their creations’ ability to kill, and/or die…

I’d even argue the Makuta are the Matoran Universe equivalent to the Great Beings, as amoral scientists who saw ruling the world as just a natural extension of their pre-existing duties, and themselves as the best candidates for the job. After all, the Archives Massacre taught them that it was necessary to kill a few, in order to save the rest… Aside from Teridax having always been genuinely terrible, I can see why his role as a Zoologist framed the way he perceived the situation. It wouldn’t have been much different to the nonchalance that comes from killing off an invasive species in droves, all to maintain an ecosystem- Or introducing predators whose sole purpose is to kill those creatures.

I can also see this desensitization towards individual plights and smaller issues, all for the greater good, really getting to the Makuta. As they spread out following the Matoran Civil War, a lot of Makuta likely had a policy of just letting smaller incidents, chaos, and injustices occur without interference- So long as they didn’t interfere with the grand scheme of things. It’d be like turning a blind eye to a helpless prey being pursued by a hungry pack of predators- Sure, you feel sorry for that prey. But in the end, this is just nature, it’s just how it is… And those predators have to eat, man. It’s like how Zoologists, out in the wild, generally don’t interfere with the stuff that goes on around them, unless this is something threatening an entire ecosystem or species. I can see some Makuta coping with their roles by deciding that it’s downright immature to be caught up in the life of a single Rahi, learning not to be so attached to creatures that just come and go, living and dying, etc.

I can see how their roles as ecosystem overseers led to the Makuta being discouraged from getting personally involved, nor closely attached to the actual subjects they were working with- And how this practice translated towards their oversight of the Matoran Universe, letting the Toa do the heavy-lifting of protecting society. I can see how they became resentful of the Toa, who were blessed to be but mere heroes and protectors, and received adulation for this; While the Makuta felt unappreciated as beings who had to make difficult choices for the greater good, and often sacrifice the lives of others for this purpose.

No doubt, many coped by seeing the callous reality of their duties as being noble in its own sense, as is the idea of making the difficult call to kill others for the sake of a larger world. There must’ve been jealousy amongst the Makuta towards the Toa- Who were revered for fulfilling their roles, only for the Makuta to be vilified for doing the same. Don’t blame THEM for their detached manner of overseeing the universe, the Makuta were just doing what the Great Spirit told of them! And that could lead to resentment towards Mata Nui, for even making the Makuta to be like this…

And when the League of Six Kingdoms fell, following the disappearance of the Barraki? It’s no wonder the Brotherhood of Makuta took over, they applied that same principle of enforcing a balance and functioning system, an interconnected web of interactions, and applied it on a grander yet similar scale- This time to the countless civilizations and sapient species of the Matoran Universe. Given how apathetic Mata Nui was towards maintaining the Matoran Universe, I can see how the Makuta thought themselves as better rulers.

As Zoologists, they’d be intimately aware of the process of observing populations in their natural habitat, keeping an eye on them, herding them towards a desired path with a guiding hand. The Brotherhood probably saw itself as paying more attention to the goings-on of the Matoran Universe than the Great Spirit, and they were probably right! And it really does seem like common sense, that people who actually know more about the world they’re governing and more closely involved with it, should actually be running it VS some detached, apathetic Great Spirit that can’t even notice the formation of a League or Toa Empire in his own body, so long as it’s not directly affecting him.

When you’re designing ecosystems, you have to take everything into account- So the Makuta likely saw themselves as more attentive, responsible, and even compassionate towards the Matoran Universe inhabitants, than their own god. Not to mention the idea of constantly manipulating the lives of being they see as lesser, more primitive, and not having the same rights nor intelligence as them… I can see some Makuta mistakenly dismissing the sapient species of the Matoran Universe as no different. Or at least, that same detached, patronizing attitude of treating others without regard to what THEY have to say, because they’re too dumb to consider the bigger picture… I can see how it was applied to beings like the Matoran.

I can see why the Makuta saw the sapient species of their world, and ‘dumb animals’ as not being all that different… And on the flip-side, this naturally meant that just as Rahi were lesser beings to them, so were the other sapient species in the Matoran Universe. And it just led to the Makuta distancing themselves, creating that sense of detachment and superiority, that mentality that the ends justified the means… Being encouraged to create others with the purpose to kill and/or die, taking pride in one’s ability to create something that causes death, or satisfaction at the demise of something else…

Not to mention, the diversity of Rahi may have exceeded that of sapient species, which not only influenced the Makutas’ fascination with shapeshifting and their creativity, but likely made them see themselves as being more clever and imaginative creators than Mata Nui himself. Working closely with the Great Spirit also made him seem much less distant to the Makuta, much more approachable… And thus so much more flawed and vulnerable. Especially if they knew exactly how a jeopardized system could easily throw Mata Nui’s health out of balance, how he was outright dependent on the lives of his ‘lesser beings’ and creations, while the Makuta lacked such a weakness and only continued to transcend, evolving past physical bodies.

The Makuta, most of them, were terrible people. That much is not up for debate, and most of them really DID choose their own horrific paths. People like Gorast and Icarax enjoyed carnage far too much, while Teridax was just awful to an unprecedented degree. But it makes me consider Krika’s sadness, how he sees the Makuta as trapped to their fate, like their decisions to become conquerers and usurpers was merely inevitable… Because in the end, they were made for that. They were made to be Zoologists, and thus predisposed to traits that would better enable their purpose.

Just as the role of the Toa made them predisposed to being heroic and beloved by others… One could argue that the Makuta were similarly fated in a sense, albeit doomed. They had a completely different purpose than the Toa, and that meant a different mentality, way of life, and handling of others… The Makuta weren’t made to necessarily care for others, and to even disregard the lives of some for a ‘greater good’, for a balance. They were placed in an environment and position that both encouraged and required the attitudes that led to their corruption, so I can see why Krika felt his fate as a traitor to the Great Spirit was inevitable- Because one can’t escape their reason for existence, nor can they escape Destiny. And, it’s funny that Krika becomes so resigned to the idea of being unable to escape one’s inherent nature… Because one can argue that the Makuta DID rise above that, alongside their intended purpose. They weren’t meant to take over the Matoran Universe as conquerers, yet they chose to act contrary to both the plans of the Great Spirit and Great Beings.

And while Krika saw this lifestyle as a natural extension of their creators’ intended roles for them… There’s still the realization that they DID defy the plans of their makers, to an extent. To the point where they could outright rebel against them- Again, as a result of attitudes implanted by their creators, for the purpose of carrying out their assigned duties. But still… It’s not entirely hopeless, and that’s Krika’s downfall- He just sort of gave up. He was too much of a coward, too resigned, and too apathetic to make a difference. Krika saw one’s environment as dictating a person’s existence and identity, but I can see why- After all, with regards to the idea of evolution and adaptations, for many animals their environment literallyshapes what they are!

And just as environments can be created by the Great Beings, so too can Rahi be made by the Makuta, with regards to how they’ll function in said environments. Krika lived by the idea that beings are dictated entirely by the circumstances they were made in… If his own Rahi could never rise above their environmental circumstances, then could Krika? Especially since he, too, is a creation of a higher being? Overall, I can see how Krika became so defeatist and cynical; At least until the last second, but by then it was too late. To Krika, beings’ lives are dictated by an unchangeable environment/situation, and the only way to survive is to adapt and conform to that environment, to live by what it dictates- There is no changing one’s situation, you are entirely subject to its whim and power. Perhaps it’s no wonder Krika became so disillusioned.

#bionicle #makuta #brotherhood of makuta #rahi #krika #mata nui #speculation #meta

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