#maeri the survivor

[joyfuladorable]

Figuring out how to draw Maeri again, so here's a quick/messy doodle!

[smallwhalesdonotinteract]

Thanks to @melodiiium @faeriesbreakbabies and @braxiatel for all of your correct corrections

[cantdance]

here it is - my page illustration for @2dames2zine! i will be posting my spot illustration as well but i wanted to give this one its own post so i can be mushy about it. some personal info and tmi below the cut so you can ignore it if you want to

this piece became very personal for me as shortly after i started working on it, my mom passed away. i wont get too much into details but it felt very abrupt because she hadnt told anyone how bad her cancer was getting.

i ended up taking a week off of work to go through her things and start setting up a memorial service. during that time i considered dropping the zine, but ultimately decided not to and im glad i didnt. this piece got me through the worst of that time by giving me an outlet to focus on.

and i think the subject matter helped me, too, completely by accident. i had chosen the composition months beforehand without knowing how strangely poignant it would end up being, lol

this is all stuff that ive kept close to my chest for the past half a year, and i debated even saying anything about it now, but it feels important to me to say so that i can express how thankful i am to the r2fil mods and my fellow contributors. you helped me cope with the worst experience of my life, and you didnt even know it!

and id like to send enormous love to the legendlark crew, without whom none of this would have even been possible. the story you all created means the world to me.

i dont usually share this much on the internet, so thanks for reading if you did

[vsilas]

The Weeping God

@damesanddragons

[propafranduh]

Maeri’s Dreams

Whatever Kai and Torvah have going on fascinates and horrifies me. I want to put them in a jar and shake them until their secrets fall out.

[rhythm-of-the-caydence]

Torvah’s symbol is the broken tower and it’s been mentioned that all the other gods have symbols. I wonder what Falen’s symbol is? Or what Maeris will be.

My idea for it would be some type of weed-like flower. Specifically a dandelion cuz like they’re known for being able to grow anywhere. And during her speech as she named herself she said (paraphrasing) “to be mortal is to survive” and so I think that something like that would be fitting.

[a-grayscale-galaxy]

Hello. I drew Maeri the Survivor because I love her dearly. I am gently placing her in your hands in these trying times. Keep her safe (or she will blind you). Thank you @damesanddragons for creating this powerhouse of regal dorkiness

[laikamaeris]

I'm here, my love, but I'm floating, baby, hold me down!

[phyllidaluna]

This goddess is crazy and she's a good friend!!!!

[acetone-free]

Getting the Dames and Dragons wiki up and running proper

Hello!!!

So I’ve been editing and adding to the Dames and Dragons fan wiki for about a year now. I’m an admin and bureaucrat and all that jazz but to be honest the wiki totally needs a revamp and I would really love some help with it!! If you would be interested in writing or editing some stuff please check out the bit under the cut! 

Thank you! :D

First off: Transcripts

@camomilafil got the ball rolling on the transcript front in 2018, but since then only 19 have been completed. I’ve done a couple myself, so I know that they can be pretty high effort and time consuming. But at the rate that they’re going right now Torva will have been defeated and the Guardian’s will have started their true quest of destroying Dawson before episode 50 even has a google doc.

Creating transcripts not only makes the podcast more accessible, but they also make a super good information base for pages on the wiki. Writing episodes and character pages is made so much easier when you can CTRL F for keywords on a transcript doc, rather than having to re-listen to specific episodes. 

At this point there are only four more episodes to transcribe for Into Avelis, but I think it would be really good if people were to begin transcribing later arcs as well. I would love to be able to stay on top of current episodes.

If you are interested in transcribing, you can find a guide on how to format here and the master doc of all episodes here. I’ve only added a little bit to the original rules of the transcribing doc, but I think they were helpful additions :). Keep in mind, you don’t have to transcribe a full episode, or even format any of it. Every little bit helps and even just doing a minute or two is awesome of you!

Secondly: Wiki Pages

Arc and Episode summaries

So far I am up to episode 16 for the summaries. I’m trying to transcribe a few episodes ahead because personally I find it way easier to write a summary with a transcript than while listening to the episode. However, you absolutely don’t have to have a transcript to write an episode summary. On the wiki I have created a page for every Arc so far (except for The Survivor's Ballad, I’ll get on that soon hehe), with an episode table so it should be pretty easy to see episodes that need summarising. 

If you don't want to summarise an entire episode but do want to help, please, please, please feel free to go back and edit episode summaries from Arc 1. I made those about a year ago before I really had a good idea on how to summarise and trust me, those bad boys are rough to read. I’ve been planning on going back and redoing those for a while now lmao. 

Otherwise, whole Arc summaries also need to be written. I’ve already done one for Arc 1, so that should give you a good idea on the type of detail needed. 

For writing episode or arc summaries, I would say try to keep them around 1000 words and generally don’t write anything too meta. Try to keep it as in the world as possible. That being said, it’s totally cool if the summaries aren’t Serious Retellings. I usually try to do jokey subheadings and stuff like that. 

There are a few more things I think are important to keep in mind while writing episode summaries, and if people express interest I am totally down in writing a guide to how I have been doing it. The best thing I think to do would be to go and read a couple of the summaries already on the wiki. Preferably from Arc 2 because I wasn't kidding about the quality of the ones from Arc 1. 

Place and People pages

Hehe alliteration.

Just to get it out there: The main Guardians’ and Maeri’s pages totally need revising. They need summaries for their actions in each arc, as well as updates on their personality sections because these dudes have gone through character development. So if you wanna start somewhere, I’d say go ahead and do that. 

Otherwise, here's what I think you should do if you want to write a character or location page: Choose your favourite character or location or item or whatever. Figure out exactly what episodes they are in, listen to them, take notes, and then write the page. If you’re feeling frisky, even transcribe the parts of the episodes that they appear in. 

Once again, I think the best thing to do is to read a few characters or location pages to get an idea of the amount of detail needed as well as what type of sections you should write. Like, their personality and appearance and whether or not to separate their page into episode summaries or arc summaries for that location/character. If people want, I can also make a more thorough guide on how to write these pages. 

To be honest I haven’t done many of these because I’ve been more focused on getting transcripts and summaries out. So far, however, I’ve been doing these pages as I go. If a new NPC is introduced and only appears for an episode or two, I’ll write those character pages as I’m writing the episode summaries. That being said, if an NPC is introduced and I know they’ll appear later down the line I’ll usually compile all information I have on them in a separate google doc and wait until later to write they’re page. The same goes for location pages, really. For example, I have a google doc full of a half-written page on Danmar that I haven’t published yet because I know that in about five transcribed episodes the party will be back there and I don’t want to have to edit it a whole bunch. 

Thirdly: Editing

If you don’t really want to write an entire summary or don’t feel comfortable enough to do so but still want to contribute the absolute most helpful and important thing you can do it edit. The wiki is like, full of typo’s my dude. (Totally my bad, I’m really bad at catching them hehe). Not only that, but it would be really good if people were to fix any grammar issues or any incorrect information within the pages themselves. Broken links, missing info, inconsistencies in categorisation, all that good stuff. 

You could also go through and double check transcripts that have been deemed ‘complete’ for any typos or formatting issues, if you wished. Absolutely anything and everything helps and it’s always good to have a second or third pair of eyes. 

Fourthly: Where to start

Here’s a list of wanted pages on the wiki. For anyone unfamiliar with how fan wikis work, a red link indicates that the page hasn’t yet been written but has been linked in another page, and that’s where you come in, my dude. 

You don’t have to write a full on, in depth complete page. Even just creating the page and beginning to summarise is great. That creates a basis for other editors, allowing people to build on what you have started. 

If you want to start a transcription you absolutely have to read the formatting and editing guide, linked here once again. Do your best to follow those rules, but it’s okay if you forget or miss some here or there. That’s why other people double check your work! This is collaborative and you can’t be expected to do everything right in the beginning. 

A Final Word

I think it would be cool if we got a few more people to semi-consistently edit and add to the wiki. I don’t expect many people, but any addition to it makes it a better compendium. 

If anyone wants to start writing stuff for it but feels like they need direction please message me! I’m sure I can find something fun for you to do :). Again, I think I’ll write some more in depth guides for how to write pages on the wiki, but if you want to do transcriptions the instructions are already in place and good to go.

That being said, I don’t completely know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to write any of the cool formatting code and stuff that some wiki’s have, so if anyone is interested in helping create a more fancy-schmancy lookin’ wiki and knows how to do all that, it would be really cool if you could get in touch with me as well. 

I would love to hear any other questions or suggestions! To anyone who chooses to help, thank you in advance!

[telemartus]

i have a problem and it’s that every time i try to draw Maeri i end up dressing her like a stylish dad/soft butch. this would be fine except the contrast between Fantasy Clothes and Modern Dad is just very funny. 

[propafranduh]

The Corbin designnnnnnnnn 🥹💕

Dames Doodles - Festival of Lights (Part 8) AND (Part 9) when revelations are finally made and this podcast grips you by the chin to stare deeply into your eyes and say "Time to Pay Attention."

[smallwhalesdonotinteract]

I don’t know how old Diamond is, because all of the group swooning over him reads sort of like middle schoolers fangirling over a much older boyband member, but I DO know that if he IS age-appropriate to crush on any of the main group, he is HEAD-OVER-HEELS in deep, courtly love for Maeri. 

I mean, like. She’s canonically gorgeous, she didn’t lock eyes with him and immediately become a fawning sycophant, she’s incredibly powerful, she holds herself with grace and dignity, and she’s just genuinely good and kind and willing to try to rail against injustice and the systems that harm mortals, she’s a literal goddess but she still has a deeply human side. There’s nothing in that entire description that ISN’T bard catnip. 

Maeri is LITERALLY the stuff of songs. Maybe DIAMOND’S songs. We know that Jambo the Maskmaker knew the Survivor’s Ballad, but (as far as I know) we don’t know who wrote it. Maybe Jambo picked it up from Diamond. 

I just wanna imagine Diamond, newly-crowned champion of Dawson, getting saved by the Guardians and latching onto Maeri as his muse. He hears news of the battle, learns how she Names herself in the most dramatic and thematically appropriate way possible, and is DEVASTATED by the news that she has become trapped in the void. He prays to his benefactor, who gives Diamond a chance to save her. If he gathers all these powerful artifacts from all these dangerous places and brings them across the continent, he gets to bring her back. HE gets to be HER hero.

And then after all that work, somebody beats him to it, and his god shows up and shoos him off to the side while he bargains for his own life. 

And yeah, at least he gets to look really cool while giving the Guardians a concert, which is what he’s best at in the whole world, but Maeri doesn’t even look that impressed.

Heartbreaking.

[skulljar]

can’t escape my brain.... she’s singing the most recent verse on repeat.... like woah... yeah.... the goddess faced the Conquest..... hair gold as his gilded flesh.... what name that war invited.... she named herself Survival.... that's like... art, dude. shits beautiful

[sumersprkl]

I feel like if the party in Dames and Dragons had lost the battle where Maeri named herself “The Survivor,” the whole series could have slid into a very cool YA Dystopia kind of tone. Like.

The worst happens. They don’t hold Torvah back for long enough, he doesn’t stop to monologue, and he names Maeri for his own ends. He names her for what he needs, and he names her in a way that will distance her as far as possible from the beast gods, from the forces of nature, from Kai, from her mother’s power.

He names her “The Strategist,” because he cannot conceive of a better opposite for the wild and chaotic power of nature. He names her “The Strategist,” because Torvah alone cannot outthink every god and every mortal and every force in the world.

He names her “The Strategist,” and in doing so gives her the power she needs to resist him. He binds her with the same language he used to bind Falen, But now Maeri’s entire being is devoted to thinking. Thinking of ways in. Thinking of ways out. Thinking of ways around.

And the party is suddenly without their goddess. They have failed as guardians. They have failed in their purpose. Torvah has enough power to sweep the continent, stealing Slake’s home away like he did with Corbin and Fran and Laika’s. Perhaps Fran and Falen still end up lost in the void, and take the hope of breaking Maeri’s binding with them.

The ensuing parade of guest characters goes a little less like a series of divine fetch quests, and more like the gathering of a ragtag group of allies to fight against overwhelming odds. The guardians have lost the nations and the armies they had rallied, and must be much more covert, because Torvah has supplies and allies and spies around every corner.

I don’t know what the main party would do from there, but I do know that Maeri, perhaps without the aid of her absent friends, must eventually figure out that nature has a warfare all its own. She would have to take back her power as a nature goddess within the bounds of her new purpose: After all, what is the ongoing evolution of life, if not strategy?

[propafranduh]

Emotionally repressed teenagers crying every time they touch Maeri

Swan Rockson weeping holding Maeri’s hand

The tear marks

The Weeping God

👀

So... Maeri’s magic actively makes people cry?!?