#not saying her current social link/character is bad or anything!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

prototypeviktor · 10 days ago

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complaint box vol. 1, or "i suppose you all hate whimsy"

in making this blog in part to cordon off my complaining, i now have the opportunity to complain more broadly rather than messaging a friend or two with "this is unfortunate" or similar. whether or not this is an improvement that will result in more mental well-being rather than less is up for debate.

anyways, the average Arcane Poster on social media (not to be confused with the average Arcane Fan, who may or may not also be an Arcane Poster; Posters are outspoken while Fans may be content to just enjoy the work) has at least something of a dislike for whimsy, kitsch, or otherwise actually having fun in the space. this is displayed prominently in my experience when Posters talk about the design differences between league and arcane.

in particular, today i will be complaining about (and broadening out into wider complaints from there) an instagram reel that was thrust upon me in my latest excursion into the instagram tags/discovery page to try to find neat fanart of jinx, whose arcane outfits i do quite like. i will not be linking the reel, because i have made a promise to myself to not copy down links of things that make me mad, because then i will click the link at some point and feel bad again. anyways, it was a reel of the WR caitlyn and jayce animation (which i also quite like) and the original poster had written over top of it that they'd wished caitlyn had gotten her top hat in arcane as they like it as a design piece. anyways, i will now give you a moment to guess what the comments were like. please click the read more at your convenience.

my brief observations of the comments revealed the following categorical trends:

people saying the hat was stupid/ugly/etc. and arcane was good for removing it.

subcategory of 1: people saying her league outfit is a "porn parody" of herself, which i think is a reasonable comment for release caitlyn's duds (although in the spirit of whimsy, i do have a fondness for it) but is actively incoherent for WR/LoL's current look.*

people saying that her hat was totally there, in a cameo and/or in the strange peaked-top cap she wears in S1 for three seconds and in a few scattered pieces of promotional material. this is missing the point of the post.**

people more broadly calling arcane a "glow-up" for all characters.

people calling LoL/WR jayce's outfit or general appearance bad/ugly.

people somehow discussing the LoL vi tutu/ruffle detailing, which was mentioned approximately nowhere in the post.***

*need i remind the gentle reader that her enforcer outfit, or whatever it is, in S1 is bare-legged? and if they are talking about her S1 purple outfit, that has more cleavage than WR/LoL ASU if we're using "showing skin" for "porn parody" criteria. if they're discussing S2, i again really do not see how WR/LoL ASU is more sexualizing than anything from there. perhaps all of these people googled Caitlyn League Of Legends and google "helpfully" returned her first model, but that does not explain commenting on a reel that visually showcases WR's outfit that it's a "porn parody".

** as a hat goes, i think the arcane hat is a bad and goofy-in-the-wrong-ways one. it is tall and has no meaningful brim so it looks bad in silhouette, and the overall design doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the enforcer outfit design language at large imo. caitlyn also being 6ft or so makes the hat especially poor, as i imagine the reason it was used so infrequently is because retaining between-character height constancy in any form while one character is 6ft with a hat that's taller than their head is going to make every single shot look bad. we already know height constancy was played around with in order to achieve some shots, anyways.

i am not going to go check the show again, as i like myself, but i believe very few enforcers are shown wearing the hat in the first place, and that out of the named enforcers caitlyn is the only one wearing an outfit with a skirt and no pants/leggings... ever. maybe some background enforcer was in S1. either way, this gives the in-universe impression that caitlyn's enforcer outfit is not standard-issue for women (standard-issue would be non-ideal, as it would imply some form of gender-based outfit expectations in a world that overton keeps saying has none of that (untrue statement, another post another time), but at least would give logical explanation for why caitlyn is wearing it) and she chose it herself. this does not really make sense for something that someone of low-ish rank would be allowed to do, at least in my opinion.

***the tutu also remains in vi's enforcer outfit in S2, so i think broad and non-nuanced praise re: "fortiche glow-ups" should be tempered somewhat. it exists as a vague signifier and/or in-joke in the same way caitlyn's hat is cameo'd or singed was reveck-baited in S1 and confirmed, due to fan speculation according to the artbook, to be reveck in S2. it's not meaningful, really. jangle the keys for the league players and do nothing more.

all in the span of a few scrolls of the comments. the poor original poster was left to say variations of "i just liked the hat and wish she'd worn it, not that it was a cameo" repeatedly and maybe luck into one or two commenters who agreed that they too liked the hat.

this finally brings me to my initial point after much subnotes and winding about (which will presumably be a hallmark of these complaint boxes, if they continue), which is:

so do Arcane Posters just hate whimsy and having fun? (overgeneralization for comedic effect.) these reactions feel like a step-to-the-left (pun intended?) version of a subtype of Superhero Comic Book Movie Poster: the guy who thinks Supes' comics trunks are stupid, and that whatever part-costume part-CGI outfit design the DCU (or god forbid, Arrowverse) puts out is actually the best thing ever because you can see the Realistic Textures and It's Very Serious. which is a valid opinion, since design preferences are an individual thing, but also fundamentally misses something that i personally think is important about superhero comics^... that it's fun and fantastical, actually, and that sometimes people enjoy fun and fantastical and "not realistic" designs.

^a genre whose production history/choices, at least when it comes to the big two, has a significant amount of overlap with how LoL and Arcane work, in my opinion... perhaps for another post.

if i am a martian manhunter fan, for example (i am somewhat, although i've not read as much as i would like), i probably like or am at least neutral on his goofy shirtless-crossed-suspenders + blue briefs + matching calf boots. (don't worry mr. j'onzz. i saw your Chanel boots.) because that is part of his character design for decades, and because while it may be "goofy" and "not realistic" it's at least a fun, vibrant design that also is relatively simple. i (personally) do not very much like live action j'onns because they are afraid of committing to being faithful to that design, and overcomplicate it and dull it down in a way that i don't think needs to be the case. now, returning to league...

league designs are fantastical and, historically, not very realistic. they operate on rule of cool principles a lot, but that's okay because league historically was kind of goofy. i will not go so far as to absolve caitlyn's or vi's original outfit of sexism allegations, because to be a female league champion is to be sex appealed, but they were also fun designs for a game with minimal lore at the time and a relatively goofy tone. as for jinx, who as far as i know was primarily designed by katie de sousa, one can argue the bullet bikini and short-shorts are sex appeal, but i personally wouldn't attribute them to that. 2013 was a magical time in which a woman being flat-chested was actually a diverse body type, at least at riot internally. i do not think jinx was intended to be a sex appeal champion, at least by de sousa.

as a side note, perhaps the reason i like arcane jinx's outfit the best is that it's still somewhat rule of cool whimsical. does she need that "X" button-style detailing on her top? no. is it fun? yes. do her pants need to be striped? no. is it fun and something i originally read as^^ a homage to early piltover's predilection for pinstripes (see vi leggings and more)? yes.

^^the artbook blows this nice thought up by saying they're a hangover from a version where jinx... went off to bilgewater at the end of S1A1 and... became a pirate...? some things are best left on the cutting room floor.

anyways, it was a goofy setting and that let people do fun stuff. even LoL-verse VGU/ASUs historically kept more impractical-but-pretty-cool aspects in designs, in my opinion, at least until as of late. (skarner.) do i particularly like some of those VGUs or ASUs? no i think a lot of them took dedicated mains out back and slapped them around quite a bit. can i still say that i think that VGU swain, for example, is an interesting character design even if i have mixed feelings on him? yes. the coat's a cool piece. would swain in the arcaneverse be made to have a cloak-chain or cape instead to match that silhouette, because otherwise logic and rationality states his coat would fall off his shoulders? probably.

with arcane, it's all so... practical and down-to-earth, mostly. which works for the tone, i suppose. but now it's leeching back into league. caitlyn's blue, because the warriors cinematic and/or fortiche and co. thought purple was too out there probably. bright, saturated colors exist only for fractured jinx or whatever we're calling her outfit there. arcane chitinbug viktor is greys and dull golds. jayce doesn't even get to wear red, really. caitlyn's wearing purple for two brief outfits. vi's

"i heard you liked gold metallic detailing so i put some in your gold metallic detailing so you can gold metallic detail while you detail" is the hextech and piltover at large motto, which would be nice if the formula then wasn't "neutrals, jewel tones, and/or white and black" for the most part. cyan blue hair's too bright, make it more mid-blue. pink hair's too bright, make it more red. so many uniforms with only brief touches of character personalization, and that's in subtypes of gear worn (all the piltover war/combat uniforms i guess) rather than anything broader.

and all of this is fine for a realistic tone, or what have you, but is it an improvement? not really, at least to me. because for something to be an improvement on something else, those two things have to be playing the same game with the same rules. league designs are made to be fantastical and unique and visible from a top-down perspective. arcane designs are made to fit the setting (and elaborate on it visually, presumably - what materials are used where, small characterization trinkets, etc.) and have different silhouette criteria because it's a show not a video game.

it's apples and oranges. it's not "wrong" or "stupid" to like the league designs, because they are intended to fulfill a different purpose and were concepted by different people at a different time. in counterpoint, it's not "wrong" or "stupid" to like the arcane outfits, because they serve a different purpose. the issue occurs when Arcane Posters act as though there is some aspect of superiority in liking the more gritty-realism of the two, because of... pick your choice of rationale given by the Arcane Posters you've seen. i know that you have seen many rationales, if you are reading this and have gotten this far.

caitlyn's hat is iconic in the same way that her and others' weaponries are. in the same way viktor's pauldron and third arm are. it is not an unreasonable assumption that an adaptation would put caitlyn in her top hat or hats in general, considering that out of her 14 non-arcane non-prestige skins 9 have hats and a further 4 have some sort of headpiece (pulsefire has an updo, but no specific hairpiece so i don't count it).

just like how it is not unreasonable to assume viktor the machine herald would be machine-based, for what it's worth.

the point of all of this, in all its overblown and thinking-too-much sincerity, is that if one more Arcane Poster tells me or someone i know or some poor Arcane Fan Who Came From League that LoL designs are bad/stupid/ugly/goofy/etc. i will probably feel steam whistle out of my ears. i think perhaps people can express their disappointment in something minor and trivial, like not getting to see caitlyn in her cool hat, without getting a hundred or more comments on how they're wrong for thinking that.

why is it on the Arcane Poster's back to go some variation of "nuh-uh, that version's bad" in direct response? what compels the Poster to do that? i may seem hypocritical here as i have just complained about this phenomena for an extended period of time, but i also do not make a habit of going into the comments section of someone who is genuinely enjoying arcane to say "nuh-uh, that version's bad". even if i have thoughts about enjoying a show in which, for example, a character's mental health is depicted with all the sensitivity of a sledgehammer and the primary endgame canon pairing has an act of on-screen partner violence that is not meaningfully resolved or addressed. because it's not my circus, and it's not my monkeys!

going back to comics: at least in comics you can go find and read the comics that have your character designs and narrative tones of choice, if you're not into the latest live-action or other adaptation. might cost you a bit and there is something to be said about obscure issues being hard to find, but they are physically out there in the world. if you're a league fan and you don't know the wiki exists, for whatever reason, you're just out of luck for even looking at old versions of characters or their scant previous lores. but this is a topic for another time, i believe.

anyways, maybe if they put caitlyn in a top hat and leaned less "realistic" we wouldn't have gotten a show whose message is "maybe we can heal the political divide [in america, see linke's comments] by uniting against an outside force and using the underclass as canon fodder". food for thought!

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villain-in-love · 2 years ago

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Pandora Hearts self-insert:

Katharine Mortifera – Pandora's troublesome head investigator and notorious opportunist.

Basic info

Age: 34 years

Species: Human

Height: 167cm

Current occupation: Criminal investigator, Jane Ledford's personal valet

Love interest: Xerxes Break

Abilities

Katharine made a legal contract with a chain called Scarlet Death, whose main ability is killing anything that is mortal in a matter of seconds. Katharine often says that her chain is pretty much useless, because she herself can just kill anyone with a gun anyway. Though obviously, she wouldn’t be herself if she didn’t find alternative ways to use it her chain.

Is capable of using firearms and carries at least two guns everywhere she goes.

Personality

Insufferable genius and hot mess of a person. Theatrical, eccentric, loud and outrageously audacious.

Mortifera is smart, resourceful and curious, and is willing to do anything to get a piece of precious information. She’s driven by her thirst for knowledge, which she considers to be the greatest power.

She keeps a copy of the country’s criminal code on her nightstand. If you don’t think she memorized all of it by heart and actively uses it to her advantage then you’re wrong, because of course she does. Being a pragmatist, she never bothers to play by the rules of morality and will abuse any legal loophole she can find.

Ruthless and sadistic. Struggles with a lot of pent-up frustrations and stress that turn into violent aggression.

Prone to getting into trouble – Katharine hates boredom and routine, so she's on board with anything as long as it's entertaining, even better if profitable. She likes to push her own luck, and how easily she will get away with it depends on a situation.

Socially anxious and uses her eccentricity as a coping method (she wants to be disliked on her own terms). Aside from that, she's not quite in touch with reality surrounding her – she's bad at talking with people informally, bumps into things and is able to trip over her own legs.

Appearance

Woman of an average height and built, has long dark hair and dark-brown eyes. Pale-skinned and has plenty of scars because she often gets into dangerous situations that she is not actually suited to handle.

Katharine cares a lot about fashion (and she will make it everyone's problem). She's usually seen wearing suits, more often than not with a red frock coat and a cravat. Occasionally you might catch her wearing a dress, if it fits the situation. She prefers dark tones, with black and blood red being her signature colors.

Doesn't matter what situation she's in, Katharine maintains a cheerful expression and feels more comfortable hiding her eyes behind dark round sunglasses.

Picrew link: https://picrew.me/image_maker/32223

Additional character that is closely tied to Mortifera is Jane Ledford, another one of my OCs. I'm placing some information about her here, since you can't talk about Katharine Mortifera without knowing who Jane is and taking her into account.

Jane is the countess and a businesswoman, as well as and an old friend of Katharine – they met at the art studio when they were teenagers, and years later Jane offered Katharine to become her servant.

Jane looks like a perfect lady, she's social and charismatic, and easily manipulates people by pretending to be much more innocent and delicate than she actually is. Jane is intelligent, cunning and ambitious. She will do whatever it takes to get what she wants, sometimes getting into the most absurd gambles and misadventures, and of course she's almost always accompanied by Katharine.

Her scheming was also one of the main reasons why Katharine started working in Pandora in the first place

While she doesn't possess any supernatural abilities, what Jane does have is money and connections. And a small revolver, just in case.

Jane is 34 years old, but still looks relatively young. She's slightly taller than average, and very skinny, which is compensated by her voluminous ginger hair and her dresses. She's light-skinned, with grey eyes and just a small amount of freckles on her cheeks and nose. White and blue are the dominant colors in her wardrobe.

Picrew link: https://picrew.me/image_maker/159044

P.S. Picrew picture is not the most accurate portrayal of the character and is just here to give the overall impression. Maybe one day I will draw everything properly myself.

#self insert #self ship #self shipping #s/i: Mortifera

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equallyshaw · 2 years ago

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The Medicated Series: features OC's with medical issues such as depression, anxiety, physical disabilities such as MS or Rheumatoid Arthritis as well as any other autoimmune disease such as Crohn's, endometriosis, infertility, etc. (not an autoimmune but you get it).

I feel, as a person with a physical disability, that there is a lack of representation and have always wanted to see myself in y/n stories. Always have and always will.

In my writing, it will have inclusivity, not exclusivity.

Love you all, stay healthy and safe.

I'm starting off with rheumatoid arthritis since this is what I have, and have so much to say ! haha. Enjoy xx

Links for information regarding rheumatoid arthritis:

https://www.cdc.gov/arthritis/basics/rheumatoid-arthritis.html

https://www.arthritis.org/diseases/rheumatoid-arthritis

triggers/warnings: medications, disformity, and talks of depression/anxiety.

Cale Makar Medicated Series Master post:

Original Character: Eliza Nicole James, 23 years old. Brunette Hair, Blue Eyes, short and curvy.

Word count: 4k.

——

Today was like any normal day. My hands are stiff, my knees unable to properly move, probably shouldn't have had that Chinese food last night but alas, here we are. When I have something like Chinese, Mexican food, or pizza, my body goes into overdrive, and well, it wants to stop working even more so than it already does. I'll wake up with night sweats which is exactly what happened this morning, and now I am walking like a penguin trying to make coffee in my kitchen as well as some toast.

“Bad morning?” my best friend/godsend/caregiver Becca smiled from her computer in the little breakfast nook. I nodded, holding onto the counter with whatever strength I had. “Fuck.” I rasped, realizing I didn't grab my coffee creamer, “Here.” Becca said getting up and bringing me my coffee creamer and giving me a hug. Today was a rough one. My rheumatoid arthritis hasn't been this bad in a while. I go through periods where I'm up and then others are down and today I was down. I’ll need a shit ton of Tylenol to get through. Maybe the full 6 before 4 pm today when I get off of work.

It is currently 7:30 in the morning and i have to get to work by 10, since i have a physical disability, i am allowed to work 10-4 every day - most days. Some days I work less and others I can work a full 8 hours. But today might be only 6 if i can manage. But wait no, today we were having this hockey team come in and visit kids that had terminal illness’. I am a social worker working with kids who are like me or similar, where we will never get better. Never. Go figure.

Becca helped me back to my room to help me get started on my morning routine since she could see I was having a day.

“Okay pretty girl, what pants and shirt today?” she asked, looking in my closet as I sat down on my bed. I bit my cheek before responding, “anything that looks good. I don’t really have the energy or ability to decide right now.” I breathed , realizing that the brain fog was kicking in. When that happens, I tend to get dizzy, the inability to concentrate and sound a bit drunk due to my words slurring.

—

As soon as I walked in, I noticed a bunch of people with microphones and cameras and I groaned internally as I walked down the hall. Eric noticed me as soon as I walked past him and a huge group of guys, the hockey team I believe.

"Eliza!” Eric called after me, and I continued to trudge towards my office and once I walked in I noticed a Trenta iced coffee waiting for me and I smiled, I could cry happy tears right now. My body always could use so much caffeine at one time. I never did not have enough energy. Eric walked in and gave me a sad smile behind me, “Eliza, you should have told me how bad it was today. You didn't need to come in.” he said looking at my cane that i was sporting. I waved him off, taking a big gulp of my coffee as I sat down.

“Thankyou ric, i appreciate it so much.” I murmured and rested my eyes for a second. The energy to get from the outpatient pavilion doors to my office seemed like nothing to a ‘healthy’ person but for me, it was like climbing up mount everest sometimes. Eric sat down across from me, speaking into the walkie he sported sometimes for events. “We should be able to start in 15 minutes. Our star speaker should be ready then.” he said, talking about me and I groaned out loud. Eric took notice and leaned forward on his knees, inspecting me.

“I'll be fine, even if I stumble over a few of my words and they think I'm drunk.” I sipped some more coffee, preparing myself for the day ahead. eric gave me a hearty laugh, knowing full well the extent of my comments.

—

“Now, I would like to introduce you to our very own warrior, miss Eliza James.” Eric announced looking at me at the side of the stage and I smiled, handing him my cane as he met me. He gave me an inquisitive look and I shook my head, smiling. I began to walk towards the podium, walking almost perfectly now that the 3 Tylenol I popped in the car ride over were kicking in.

I looked out over the crowd that was filled with hockey players, media, doctors, therapists, and so many of the warriors themselves.

I smiled before speaking, “good morning and welcome to the Denver Medical Center, Hillside outpatient pavilion for our little warriors. Who, like me, face an uphill battle day in and day out. We are incredibly grateful for your support, especially during these trying times.” I paused, taking a shaky breath.

“I first came here when I was 12, not understanding what my body was going through. I remember the first day I woke up with the inability to move. I could not get out of bed for a month after that, barely functioning to be able to eat and sleep well. I did not know why my body was giving up on me, I was angry, I was sad, I was confused. How could a little girl who did everything right- be dealt this card in life? I went through many weeks not understanding what was happening until I came here, after a long few days of testing and blood work. It was the day after I turned 12 that the incredibly kind and understanding Dr. Hart - who is here today - told me what I had. And told me that I was not alone, that I'd never be alone. And she was right, after many months of fighting through pain and virtually relearning how to walk every morning again, how to hold a spoon, a pen or how to properly sleep, I came to this hospital and met people just like me. I met people like Martha, Phillip, James, and Piper who are all here today. Who I am so very fortunate to work with every day.” I paused, smiling at them in the crowd. “Without the help that I received many years ago, I wouldn't be standing here today. I wouldn’t be who I am, doing what I love. Without the many years of physical, occupational, and talk therapy that took up my youth.” I paused taking in a breath. “And finally, many people ask us, “how do we do it?” “How are you so resilient?” and I always respond, what other choice do we have? What other options do we have? And every day with the little warriors in front of us, people witness that being in pain and living with it is possible and maybe just maybe, we won’t have to be so resilient. Thank you.” I finished smiling a grateful smile.

What I didn't notice was how moved some of the hockey players were, and the tears that brimmed their eyes over the unimaginable. Yeah, it's unimaginable until you wake up one day with it.

I walked back towards Eric, with a smile on my face as he clapped happily for me. “You did so well!” he grinned before walking past me to finish the opening and then we could get around to the hockey players meeting the patients. As soon as he was finished, I walked over to the kiddos and said good morning to them.

Martha, my favorite little Irish dancer, jumped up and gave me a big hug, “How are we doing today M?” I asked bending over a little bit to face her and be on her level. “It's okay! I can bend my fingers more today than yesterday and my hand’s aren’t as puffy.” the 7-year-old beamed. “And oh my god that's makar!!!” she said in a smaller voice, and i peered over to look to see who she was looking at and not realizing who was who. I smiled, looked back at Martha and grinned, “Wanna go color?” I asked and she nodded excitedly as her mom laughed. “Always down to color anytime, any day.” she mused and I giggled understanding her excitement. I took her hand and began to walk with her towards the play area as well as the ‘playroom’ that was used for music therapy and art therapy. Which I help facilitate and run. Five minutes later the players all shuffled in and began to walk toward different kids and began to hang out with them. I was sitting at the coloring table with Martha rubbing circles on my deformed knee. Let’s just say it was bumpy and had no cartilage left, so I was literally joint on bone.

“Hi. is this seat taken?” a young voice asked to the side of me, Martha eyed me. That nervous little chick. I shook my head, “no not at all.” I said with a small smile, taking in the hazel-eyed dark blonde-haired boy. He smiled and sat down in between Martha and I. “So what are you drawing?” the hockey player asked. Martha didn't say anything. “She's a bit shy, give her some time.” I said getting a bit closer to the guy and he nodded looking back at me.

“My name is Cale, what’s yours?” he asked after a few minutes of coloring. cale. “Mar-martha.” the young girl said and Cale smiled. “You have a pretty name, Martha.” Cale mused and Martha blushed. So did cale. “And you are Eliza right?” Cale asked, facing me a bit and I nodded.

“Hey Shelley, I'll be back. I need to go speak to Dr.hart for a few minutes.” I said to Martha's mom and she nodded. Okay, you can do this. No falling now. I pushed back the chair a bit to give myself some room, hoisting myself up and putting my weight on the table. Cale and Martha eyed me, making sure I was ok.

I stood up, flexing my knees a bit and sighing. “You ok Eliza?” Cale asked concerned and I looked down at him for a second before nodding, “Just another day with these old knees.” I half-joked before turning on my heel and walking towards the hallway. Dr. Hart looked up from her desk, before getting up and meeting me halfway. “Bad day?” she asked and I nodded. She nodded, walking over to her desk and grabbing a doctor’s script. “10 mg prednisone. Now.'' She said handing me a doctor's order and I thanked her before heading down to the pharmacy, not without letting a social worker know and having them tell Martha that if I could - I'd be back.

It was a few hours later as I was sitting at my desk, going through some paperwork before I heard a knock on my door. I looked up and saw Cale and I motioned for him to come in.

“Hey- you forgot this.” he said moving the cane closer to me and my eyes went wide. “Oh my gosh! I will never go anywhere without this thing.” I said standing up to grab it. “Thankyou.” I said smiling as I reached for it and he nodded, “Here sit down.” I motioned toward the two seats in front of my desk. “How was Martha? Did she come out of her shell?” I asked and he nodded, grinning. “She's funny and spunky for a 7-year-old. She chirps like a pro.” he said and I laughed. “Oh yeah- keeps you on your toes.” I said and he laughed.

“But that's good. Things like this-” I said referencing the event, “make things sometimes less stressful. Even though when you grow up and don’t have the opportunity to do things like this, as a kid it’s what you look forward to. It takes your mind away from everything, even just for a little bit.” I said rambling before catching myself. “Sorry, didn’t mean to talk that much.” I said with my cheeks going red. He gave a smile, one that I couldn’t read. “All good, I like hearing you talk.” he said before catching himself, “I mean, I like hearing what you have to say. It’s eye-opening and raw. Which I think the dads in the group needed to hear. That things could change one morning and have it not be the same.” he said honestly and I nodded. “It still doesn’t get better, even 11 years later- my dad still gets upset and how he can’t help me in the way he wants to or ‘protect’ me.” I confessed. “13 years? Wow.” Cable said dumbfounded. “Yep, I'm still so young and it's daunting and honestly depressing thinking about the rest of my life. I never thought I'd get to 18 let alone 21. But here I am at 23.” I added and he took that in like a sponge. “Well I'm glad you’re here, it seems as though you are making an impact. And mean so much to these people. Is it true you helped start this wing of the hospital?” he asked very curiously. I nodded, “Yep, there was a room in the hospital next store where we would meet 2 times a week. Here, we meet every day if possible or we have rotating kids that come for therapy and to simply be a kid with others who are going through the exact same thing.” Cale nodded in awe.

Like yeah, it's one thing to be passionate, but it's another to feel the joy come after putting in the time and effort to help kids just like you. It’s more than rewarding.

“You ok?” he asked after a moment of silence. “Ye-yeah, brain fog is bad today and I also got some steroids so I’m in a funk.” I laughed and he did too. “I hate to be forward- but could I possibly get your number? Take you to coffee or whatever you feel comfortable with?” Cale asked and I froze. I looked him in the eyes, not registering what he was saying. “Uh- wait what?” I asked before realizing what I had said. “Could I possibly get your number?” he asked, feeling nervous. “Um, hmmm. That's a first.'' I said, chuckling and closing my eyes as I leaned back in my chair. “Nobody has ever asked me for my number before.” I said, reopening my eyes. Cale was taken back by that. She was gorgeous, down to-earth, and friendly, how could somebody not like her? “Here.” I said handing him my card with my email and work cell number there. “I just want to let you know, there is a very real possibility that I will cancel like I could wake up one morning feeling fine- and then bam as soon as I’m heading out the door, I have to go back to sleep or stay in because of something. '' I said, hoping he’d understand.

“If you do, there will always be another day. I promise.” he smiled a genuine smile that made my bad knees crumble as I stood up. “That's a very sweet cale, but you might be thinking differently when the time comes.” I said hoping he’d understand and I wouldn’t have get my hopes up. “Again- they’ll be another day. Or if you feel comfortable, I could always bring food or coffee over and we can hang out that way. I just want you to feel comfortable.” he said, hoping she’d get the message that he wouldn’t leave or ignore her. I nodded, “thanks cale.” and smiled.

“Now, if you don't mind- I'm outta here for the day.” I said, grabbing my laptop bag and cane, and heading out the door. “Wait, do you want me to help you?” He asked me as he followed me out. I shook my head, “I might look like I’m fragile but I can do a lot by myself.'' I said confidently and he nodded sporting red cheeks. We came up to the pavilion doors, meeting some of the hockey players that were waiting around. As soon as Cale walked up, they noticed me and smiled.

“Thank you guys again for coming out today, I assure you the kiddos won’t stop talking about this for months. It made their year.” I said smiling and they nodded. “Of Course! We had a really good time, I believe we are coming back in a few weeks to do this again.” a tall blonde and beautiful man said. mental note: gabriel landeskog. I nodded, “We will see you guys then.” I said before walking out the electric sliding doors.

“Bye James! Please don’t fall!” Eric joked/yelled from the counter, as Becca pulled up. I opened the door, and waved back to Eric, chuckling a bit. “I’ll try my very best for you, Ric!” I mused before getting in the seat.

“You wouldn’t believe what just happened.” I said as I sat down in the car.

“Ouuu tell me!!!” Becca said as we pulled away. “A hockey player asked for my number.” I said shyly. “Wait!!!!” Becca said, looking over and screaming at me. “Oh my god oh my god!!!! This is the best news!!” Becca exclaimed, causing me to laugh.

“Uh huh, just wait until he sees how many issues I have and then he’ll start running for the hills.” I remarked and she gave me a frown. “No, don't think that. He talked to you after hearing what you had to say spoonie. (autoimmune nickname) Don’t doubt yourself. You don’t realize how much of an enigma you are sweetie.” she said, grabbing ahold of my hand.

“Yeah right.” I said starting to get even more defeated. My phone buzzed in my lap, and I looked down to see a text from an unknown number.

“Text me a time and place, and I'll be there. No rush, just let me know whenever :)” the text read.

“He even put on a smiley face!!” Becca pointed out making a turn at the light.

Maybe just maybe, cale was giving her the time of day, that she deserved so very much.

—

It was a month later, that the team and orginization were going to be highlighting and honoring the kiddos from the pavilion. It warmed my heart to see how much the team was getting out of these little kids. So when I got a call from Joe Sakic himself, I was floored. They personally wanted me to facilitate the evening in whatever fashion I wanted and they’d provide anything and everything for us.

Martha and I walked hand in hand into Ball Arena, it was two hours before puck drop and we were going to see the team before the game started. Well, they were- I was just there as moral support for Martha.

Martha beamed as we walked through the tunnels, rambling on about seeing Cale again. Her and cale had become thick of thieves the few times he had been around. Sometimes on his own without the team, to see Martha and ofcourse me. We had been talking for pretty much the whole month and even had made it to two dates outside of my apartment, the other two were in my sanctuary. Cale had been so sweet and understanding, but it was only a matter of time.

Martha noticed Cale from down the hall and pointed at him, and began to get even more excited.

Cale and a couple of the other players were playing soccer, getting into the zone for the game, and relaxing a bit. “Martha, he’s busy. We will see him in a bit, ok?” I said leaning down to Martha’s eyesight and she nodded with a bit of a pout. “Were gonna go meet Sakic ok?” I said and she nodded as we headed towards Joe Sakic’s office with the nine other kids that could make it tonight. We walked past the group of players, with me attempting to keep them all in line, making sure they got to the first destination. They were like any other kids, they were excited to see the players and had to be reigned in in order for them to not disturb the players. We walked towards the office and saw the king himself, waiting outside of his office talking to my manager- Eric who wouldn’t miss this for the world.

“Hi, guys!! How are you doing?” he asked the kids as we got closer. All ten of them began to shout, and go crazy. It was a sight to see. I watched from behind them, taking in their excitement, and laughed at the whole ordeal. This is why I got into social work, to see things like this happen. And Joe Sakic was taking it all in like a pro, kneeling down and commenting on their jerseys and hats, etc. He was also quite the jokester too. After a few minutes of watching from afar, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Cale. I smiled widely, taking in his presence. “Hi Cale, how are you?” I asked turning around to give him my full attention. “I'm good, how are you today? Any surprises? I see you don’t have your cane.” he asked and I shook my head. “No, thankfully. It’s a good day.” I mused. “Well I am glad. You excited for the game?” he asked and I nodded, “This is actually my first in person game ever, so Martha promised me she’d show me the ropes. Her family being season ticket holder and what not.” I joked causing him to grin. Speak of the devil. “Cale!!!!!” Martha screamed jogging past the rest of the kids and Joe Sakic, and Cale opened his arms and kneeled to her height. Oh, how it would be lovely to kneel again.

Awhile later, the kids were running around or tempting to run around the locker room greeting all the players and having them sign their jerseys. I stood in the doorway leading into the hallway, feeling somewhat overwhelmed but kept telling myself to deal with it because who knows when this would ever happen again. I looked towards Martha who was in front of Nathan Mackinnon giving him pointers on how to not fall so much since the last game, apparently he kept falling. Nathan was enjoying this very much and played along with it, taking her notes and corrections very seriously. Even another player, Erik Johnson joined in with his so-called notes. Martha was a gem, everybody could tell. “You alright? Ever since we walked in here, you’ve been quiet.” Cale asked me as I stepped out into the hall for a brief moment. I was overwhelmed, overstimulated, and just wanted to find some coffee and a pretzel and call it an evening.

“Yeah-yeah I’m fine.” I said giving him a fake smile, which he didnt believe. “Im exhausted, I need to find some coffee and just chill. As much as I love all of this, it's overwhelming. Not gonna lie.” I confessed and he nodded. “Is there anything I can do?” cale asked, hoping he could ease some of the burden. “I’ll be fine, we will be heading to our seats shortly.” I said and he nodded. “Will I be able to see you tonight after the game?” he asked hopefully and I frowned. “Probably not Cale, I will be passed out as soon as the game is over. I know that’s not something you want to hear, but that’s me. I’m afraid.” I said and he shook his head, putting a hand on my arm. “How many times do I have to tell you, that whatever you can do is perfectly fine?” he said genuinely causing a chuckle to escape my lips. “Okay, ill text you though. No promises.” I said as the kids started to walk out.

“Pretzel time, Eliza!!!” Martha shouted causing Cale and I to laugh. “And coffee!” Shelley, Martha’s mom added and I pointed at her with a grin. “You know it!” I mused before turning back to cale. “Have a good game.” I said and he nodded and thanked me before heading back in the locker room.

“Have a good time, James!” I heard from behind me, seeing Bo Byram and I rolled my eyes laughing and waving him off.

“Now let’s see what all this hockey fuss is about, Martha.” I joked causing her to groan playfully and ramble about everything that had to do with hockey. It was time to make notes if I were to continue to see Cale.

What Eliza didn’t know was that she’d be seeing a lot more of Cale inside and outside of work in the coming months.

…

And I know cale wasn’t featured a lot here— but he will be :)

I hope you guys enjoyed it!! I can’t wait to dive more into there relationship.

Let me know!

Please like, repost, and if you want to - give me a follow to get many more stories like this and others :)

#hockey #nhl #calemakarimagine #coloardoavalanche #avalanche #autoimmunedisease #cale makar #colorado avalanche #romance #friendship #bo byram #Gabriel landeskog #fanfiction #Nathan mackinnon #erik johnson #cale makar m series

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clouds-rambles · 4 years ago

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hi could i request something for diluc, xiao, and maybe zhongli with an adhd s/o? if you're not comfy writing that dw tho!! also i wanna say you're my absolute favorite genshin writer, i love how you capture the characters' personalities. i get so excited whenever i see you've posted something kjzhjfhx ily

Lol basing this off my own experiences lmao so if you see some dyslexia related stuff don’t mind it lmaoo </3

I hope these are okay ^^;;

Find my favourite of the three challenge

Pairings; (Seperate) Diluc, Xiao, and Zhongli x reader

Warning(s);

Keep reading under the cut!

Diluc

Telling Diluc that you have ADHD is kind of an experience because he has no idea what it is and you’re horrific with explaining things with big words so the both of you end up giving up and seeing how everything goes.

Though after your bad explanation he starts noticing things that you do that you mention are linked with ADHD, the way you keep losing things about the house just for Diluc to find them on top of the kitchen counter not 5 minutes later.

When your brain cannot physically comprehend the block of text in paperwork you were just given to look at you go to Diluc so he can give you a summary about it then go about whatever is needed on the paper. Diluc tries to avoid giving you large chunks of text to read regarding his business, but alas, sometimes it’s completely unavoidable so he’s more than happy to help in situations like that.

Diluc loves it when you talk about your day and you end up on three different tangents which will never bring you back to the original point. He likes hearing you tell stories about your day, a smile never leaves his face when you do.

If you have something that your hyperfixated on Diluc likes asking questions about it just to see your eyes light up and rant about your current favourite thing.

Diluc also likes to pull strings to maybe get an early copy of your favourite book, or get the sword design you’ve been working on get forged just to see how happy you get.

Xiao

You never actually tell Xiao you have ADHD, more he just notices things that mortals don’t really tend to do. Though it does take a while for him to notice these things thanks to his distinct lack of communication to mortals in general.

So to start with Xiao just presumes that all mortals just have a lack of object permeance. He finds it a little amusing to watch you look about his room at Wangshu to look for the one thing that’s most definitely in his line of sight. Though if you’re looking forever Xiao will give you a hand.

Xiao isn’t much of a talker, he prefers it when you talk to him. So if that means asking you about your interests and such just to get you to ramble about your favourite thing, so be it. He’ll even try to remember some of the things he mentioned just to see the way your eyes light up when he mentions it to you and you explain about it more.

Xiao will never admit it but yes, he does actually get very interested in whatever you’re interested about and may even ask to borrow the media that your interest is from to see it himself. The way you get extra exited when he mentions that is just a bonus to him.

If you ask Xiao to read a big block of text for you he’ll question as to why you need him to read such a thing, you’ll just reply with “It’s hard for me to comprehend big walls of text, it all jumbles up and I get lost on the page”. He doesn’t ask after the first few times, mainly because her forgot the first three or so times.

But, in the end Xiao is more than happy to read the walls of text for you, even if he doesn’t understand the context.

If you have a comfort food Xiao more than understands considering he eats a lot of Tofu when his karmic debt is weighing on his shoulder, and he finds comfort in it normally anyways. Xiao will make sure there’s always at least a portion or two of your favourite food in stock at Wangshu Inn because he knows the feeling of not finding the food he wants when he’s feeling down and overstimulated by everything existing around him.

If you’re easy to overstimulate in social environments Xiao can more than sympathise so if you prefer to eat a picnic in the wilds with him he’s ecstatic to comply. The moment you mention needing to go into town for stuff he always has to end the day off alone just for the fresh air.

Zhongli

The first time you mention having ADHD to Zhongli he nods claiming that it makes some of the things you do make sense. So, thankfully you don’t have to expose him to horrifically worded explanations like Diluc had to endure.

Zhongli has much the opposite of you lack of object permanence. And such Zhongli can easily help you find things you’ve misplaced, be it your keys. Or the fact your pouring yourself a second cup of tea because you simply forgot about the other one you just put down on the side.

Having an ongoing interest in history always works out with great conversations with Zhongli. You might mention something that you remember reading about in a history book and Zhongli is right there to expand your knowledge on the subject. You learn some cool new history facts and Zhongli gets to talk about something he’s incredibly well versed in

While Zhongli can’t entirely sympathise with comfort foods and food fixations he can however supply the foods you like so you are more comfortable. Zhongli tends to read your emotions, so when it comes to making dinner he always knows when you want your comfort food. If the day has already made you upset enough you might just cry at the gesture of Zhongli reading your mind.

Seeing as Zhongli enjoys reading pretty much anything, if you’re dumped with paperwork for whatever reason by the Adventurers Guild Zhongli is more than happy to read through them for you and summarise the papers for you before you sign it. What an angel <33

#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #zhongli x reader #xiao x reader #diluc x reader #genshin impact zhongli #genshin impact xiao #genshin impact diluc #zhongli x you #xiao #diluc

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oni-verse · 2 years ago

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lil post expanding on some lesser seen characters of the superpowered universe (juliet & koda)

this is jay chiang

he's the big cheese. the iron man. the all might. he's based in NYC and he's world famous, known for his immense strength, brains, and contributions to tech, safety, and the superpowered community. he was very active for about 20 years, and then a few years ago, following a large disaster and several blocks being blown up, he stopped working and has rarely been seen. he occasionally makes appearances for publicity and charity/events, but otherwise has been off the crime fighting circuit without an explanation.

jay has a wife, ann, and two daughters. the older daughter is ciel, a dancer that moved to washington. the younger daughter is big in the public eye and has an active online following, but was moved to california with her mother following her father's disappearance.

this is the younger daughter, iris chiang. (formal outfit, current age 19-21)

none of jay's family has powers except for him, but he's honestly relieved by it. jay has seen a lot, had his own fair share of near death experiences, and lost allies. he's a family man! he wants to keep his girls safe, and although the public doesnt know it, thats why he sends his family to the other side of the country.

theres also some other big heroes ive sketched on paper but never posted. theres meetings for the high tier exclusives where they link up, team up, discuss thiiiiings. they help each other and keep in contact. i drew india's largest hero, a woman with a great social presence. there's one i havent drawn but kinda thought about a european man that kinda represents his country. i think jay would be more friendly with the women heroes though lol. theres others. idk who cares

im kinda bad at working this in, in my writing, but i think jay would just be in the main characters' peripheries. he'd be in newspapers, billboards, articles online, advertisements, randomly come up in conversations... juliet would be the only one to never say anything when he comes up o_o

#oni art #jay #jay chiang #iris #iris chiang

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aspoonofsugar · 4 years ago

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Emerald + Mercury = Cinder

BEGINNING OF THE END = MIDNIGHT

The episodes Beginning of the End and Midnight can be seen as complementary.

Both share a similar structure with the first part telling Cinder’s story and the second part showing how past events are influencing the present. At the same time, they show the links among Cinder, Emerald and Mercury and explore their changing dynamic.

In Beginning of the End it is shown how they came together and we reach the climax of their cooperation. The Fall of Beacon is when the trio is at its strongest. It is only because of their coordination and teamwork that the plan succeeds. In Midnight instead we are shown the beginning of their separation.

For different reasons (fears and wishes) both Mercury and Emerald are about to leave Cinder. Mercury already has and it is probable Emerald will soon.

The two episodes also give us two opposite and complementary visions of Cinder.

In Beginning of the End, we have the way Cinder wants to appear:

Cinder: (stepping forward slowly, glass anklet shifting with her footsteps) I've already told you. And I don't like repeating myself.

Salem: I would like to think I have shown a great deal of patience over my many years walking Remnant. But I do hate repeating myself.

Mercury: Is this how you treat a patient? (Emerald reaches over and twists the screwdriver in his leg, causing him to wince) Ah, too tight!

Cinder: Enough. Our Mercury put on a wonderful show. He was quite brave.

Salem: Do you find such malignance necessary?

Watts: I apologize, ma'am. I'm not particularly fond of failure.

Salem: Then I see no reason for your cruelty towards young Cinder. She's become our Fall Maiden, destroyed Beacon Tower, and most importantly, killed dear Ozpin. So I'm curious, to what failures are you referring?

In Midnight we see who she really is. Moreover, it becomes more and more clear that her imitation of Salem is different from the original:

Salem: I will tell you when and where you are needed.

Cinder: Both of you, get out. I’ll let you know when you’re needed next.

Mercury: Yeah about that, Salem’s got other plans for me. I’m not gonna be taking orders from you anymore.

Why is this being shown through her interactions with Emerald and Mercury? Why are they important for Cinder’s character?

First of all, Mercury and Emerald are Cinder’s kids, at least narratively speaking:

Roman: Oh, look! She sent the kids again! This is turning out just like the divorce!

Roman calls them so when they first appear and later on several characters refer to them as kids in relation to Cinder.

Raven (about Emerald and Mercury): Two children you've tricked into following you.

Tyrian: (chuckles as he slowly walks toward Emerald) Careful, little girl. Cinder isn't here to protect you anymore.

Tyrian (mocking Mercury): Oh yes, the world is mean, and I'm a big, bad man now just like the others.

Salem (to Emerald): Speak, child.

In short, they are meant to be the last link in a chain of abuse that starts with Salem, goes on with Cinder and finally arrives to them.

At the same time, as the title says Mercury + Emerald = Cinder because they are nothing more than parts of Cinder herself, both in their backgrounds and in their personalities.

CINDER + “HUNGER” = EMERALD

Cinder: Follow me, and you'll never be hungry again.

Cinder: It's... an emptiness. It burns. Like hunger. I like it.

In Beginning of the End Emerald and Cinder are shown to share a hunger motif.

Emerald is presented as a street rat who survives through stealing. She is poor and starved, so she accepts Cinder’s offer to be taken care of and to be given food. That said, it is clear that other than food what Emerald is truly starving for is love:

Emerald: I just... (sighs) Cinder was the only family I ever had. She cared about me, taught me things...

I'm the one Who rose out of filth and was loved by no-one

Similarly, Cinder too is shown to be hungry. More specifically, she is hungry for power:

Cinder: I want to be powerful.

It is meaningful that in the episode where Cinder tells Emerald she won’t have to starve anymore, she herself is starving. This contradiction conveys the tragedy of Cinder’s character aka a traumatized girl taking in a kid similar to her and becoming like her past parental figures.

As a matter of fact Emerald and Cinder’s first meeting has parallels with Cinder meeting both Madame and Rhodes.

When Cinder meets Madame she asks for food, but is negated it:

And she is later shown to have survived through leftovers.

In contrast, food is the first thing Cinder offers Emerald, who she recognizes as a girl who has survived in poverty, like her.

In their first meeting, Cinder also treats Emerald pretty much like Rhodes treated her. Both discover a young girl, who has just committed a theft and confront her. However, instead of punishing the girl, they both offer to be the girl’s mentor and become her idol.

As a matter of fact both Cinder and Emerald are shown to idolize their saviors to the point that both girls try to look like them by changing their hair/clothes:

So, it would superficially seem that Cinder is acting like Rhodes and in the opposite way of Madame. However, the reality is far more complex. Deep down, Cinder is acting like her adoptive mother because she is targeting a girl and thinking about how she can weaponize her. At the same time, there is a key difference between her behaviour and Rhodes’s. Rhodes had Cinder give the sword back, while Cinder never stopped Emerald from stealing. If anything, she encouraged her criminal activities changing her from a thief to a terrorist. In other words, Cinder radicalized Emerald.

This is once again linked to the motif of hunger both girls share:

Cinder: You Atlas elites are all the same! You think hoarding power means you'll have it forever, but it just makes the rest of us hungrier.

Cinder’s trauma is rooted in the unfairness of the world. She was made to starve simply because she was born in the wrong situation and society completely failed her.

What is more, when Rhodes refuses Cinder as well, she too refuses his vision of the world. Rhodes, pretty much like the Prince of the original fairy-tale, offers Cinder a way to social-climb. In the fairy-tale, Cinderella marries the prince and so becomes a princess in the end. Here, Rhodes is telling Cinder she can reach her own castle. Cinder can escape her misery and reach Atlas. However, this is seen as a lie by Cinder the moment he attacks her.

So, Cinder giving food to an orphan like her and trying to destroy the current order are both coherent with the idea that the world is unjust and needs to be changed. However, Cinder is using the same problems she criticizes to her advantage. What is more, she is exasperating them in order to fulfill her personal agenda, which is only about herself and her self-image.

Let’s see now, what do our two young thieves steal? What are they “hungry” for?

a) Emerald steals a ring:

Salesman: A beautiful ring... for a beautiful woman.

Interestingly, the ring itself might be a reference to the original story of Aladdin, which is apparently Emerald’s allusion.

In the original story Aladdin meets two jinns. The first one is in a ring and Aladdin uses it to save himself and to escape with the magic lamp, where a stronger jinn is. So it makes sense for Emerald to steal a ring (something she wishes) just to meet a woman that promises her she can have more (her personal jinn aka someone that can realize Emerald’s dreams).

Why does Emerald steal the ring?

It is possible she just wants to sell it in order to buy some food, but I like the idea that she steals it also because she wants some beauty (”a beautiful ring for a beautiful woman”) in the harsh and horrible world she lives in (“filth”).

b) Cinder steals a sword:

Like in Emerald’s case, the object of Cinder’s theft can be seen as part of her fairy-tale’s allusion.

As a matter of fact, in Cinder’s adaptation of Cinderella the swords are nothing, but her glass slippers.

This is made clear later on when Rhodes (both the Prince and the Fairy Godmother) gives Cinder the first sword. It is meant to be a prize on his part. He is showing Cinder she does not need to steal it anymore because she has gained it. Moreover, weapons are said to be extensions of a person by Ruby, so it makes sense that the slipper of the original Cinderella becomes a sword in this version. It fits the personality of our Cinder, a fiery young girl, who wants to become a huntress.

Finally, since Cinder’s story uses both inversion and deconstruction when adapting the fairy-tale, it is interesting that in the end the Prince refuses to give Cinder the other sword (slipper) and Cinder takes it by force:

In this way, Cinder goes back to stealing, which was what Rhodes had originally tried to avoid.

Why does Cinder steal the sword in the first place?

She steals something to defend herself with and to hurt her tormentors. Violence is rooted in Cinder’s first theft.

In short, Emerald wants something beautiful, while Cinder wants something powerful.

This difference is coherent with their respective semblances since Emerald creates illusions, while Cinder is able to overheat objects, so that she can create explosions and manipulate their shape. Both powers are representative of their user’s flaw and coping mechanism.

Emerald is a person who has reacted to her traumatic life by chasing illusory dreams of warmth and love. She tricks others and is tricked because she refuses to dispel her self-delusions.

Cinder is instead a person, who has been molded through violence just like the glass statues in the hotel. She is forced to endure until she can’t take it anymore and she explodes:

She herself is the Glass Unicorn, which shatters like Cinder’s innocence when too much pressure is added. Not only that, but Cinder too has started molding others to her will. She has been grooming both Emerald and Mercury for her own ego. This is why the name Scorching Caress fits her so well. It is because behind every act of care it is hidden an act of manipulation. And this happens because Cinder too has been treated utilitaristically and the only kind of love she experienced (Rhodes’s) was a “weak” love Cinder ended up perceiving as fake.

In short, Emerald and Cinder have different coping mechanisms and aim for different things. However, this does not mean that one is better or worse than the other. Their main difference is that right now Emerald is more in touch with her own needs and wishes. Ironically, the delusional girl has never lost sight of what she truly wants.

Emerald wants a family. She has been looking for it in the wrong places and she has been pursuing it in the wrong ways. However, Emerald has never forgotten what she is truly after and she is starting to realize she won’t have it, until she stays on Salem’s side:

Salem: It's important not to lose sight of what drives us: Love, justice, reverence... but the moment you put your desires before my own... they will be lost to you. This isn't a threat, this is simply the truth. The path to your desires is only found... through me.

Tyrian: Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. I want to tell you both a little secret. Your question is all wrong. (laughs)

Emerald: What?

Tyrian: "What do you want from this?" Children, please, if you're not loving what you're doing, then you're in the wrong field.

Salem promises to fulfill Emerald’s wishes, but Tyrian has already told her that pursuing a wish while working for Salem is useless. Emerald is starting to realize it and this is why she will probably leave.

Cinder has instead forgotten what she originally wanted:

Cinder: Like you? You can do whatever you want, go wherever you want.

Cinder’s original wish was to be free and also to be loved, like Emerald:

You're no good I hope you know That your life is of no use And the truth is that No one's ever loved you

However, her being failed by the adults has twisted her wish into a desire for power.

This difference is well conveyed by Cinder and Emerald’s respective line in Beginning of the End:

Cinder: Follow me, and you'll never be hungry again.

Emerald: Thank you...

Cinder: The Huntsman severed the connection before it was complete. (pause) Yes. It's... an emptiness. It burns. Like hunger. I like it. (pause) Yes. I will claim what is ours. (pause) Thank you.

Emerald thanks Cinder because she won’t have to be hungry anymore, while Cinder thanks Salem because she is able to feel a hunger she likes.

This fits well with Cinder’s last words to the Madame:

Cinder: You’re right. Without you I am nothing. But because of you, I am everything.

Emerald does not want to be hungry, while Cinder has been tricked into thinking that being hungry is the only way she can become not even “everything”, but just “something”.

CINDER + “EVERYTHING” = MERCURY

Cinder: Because of you, I am everything.

Mercury: So I got strong, but I never got it back! I've had to work harder than anyone to get where I am.

Cinder’s way of thinking is very similar to Mercury’s. Not only have they both endured their parents’ violence, but they have tried to give this violence meaning. It is because of Madame that Cinder has become “everything” and it is because of Marcus that Mercury has become “strong”. They must believe that it was not all for nothing and that the pain they felt made them stronger instead of weaker.

This is why Cinder thinks that deep down her “hunger” is good. It is because it drives her, but she ignores that it blinds her too.

This is why Mercury keeps going back to his father:

Mercury: Bad hair, used a scythe, and smelled like my dad after a long day. It was him.

Mercury: My dad always said... "if you need to know a city, ask the rats."

He mentions Marcus here and there and uses his teachings to solve problems. That is because those teachings must have some value, right? If they don’t, then Mercury’s life means nothing.

The nature of Cinder and Mercury’s foiling is clear in their first meeting:

Like in Emerald’s case, Cinder finding Mercury calls back a moment of her past.

In particular, it parallels the murder of her adoptive family and Rhodes discovering it. Mercury, just like young Cinder, has just killed an abusive parent and is confronted by a person after the fact.

Once again, Cinder seems to act differently from the adults that let her down. Rhodes was horrified and attacked her, while Cinder praises Mercury and has him join her group.

However, she is deep down acting as Rhodes did. As a matter of fact what truly hurt Cinder about Rhodes’s reaction is that he convinced her that she is irredeemable.

The whole scene plays with the Cinderella’s allusion and inverts it:

The clock strikes midnight and just like in the fairy-tale, the magic is over. In Cinderella, the protagonist goes back to her true self and runs away not to be seen. However, in the end, the prince recognizes her through her slipper (a symbol of her innate beauty and kindness) and marries her despite her humble condition.

In Cinder’s story, midnight is when she reveals a part of herself to Rhodes. She shows all the anger and violence she has been repressing. Cinder is not a “good victim” like the Cinderella of the fairy-tale and Rhodes can’t accept it. Not only that, but he negates Cinder’s dream to be free:

Rhodes: You can run, but you’re going to be running for the rest of your life.

Cinder: I won’t have to run now.

Rhodes: That’s all you’ll ever do.

This shatters Cinder’s hopes and self-perception. She internalizes that she will have to live in opposition to society because she is somehow “a bad person”. She is not a huntress (a princess), but a nobody who’ll have to use violence to survive. And she starts doing it immediately. As the song that starts playing implies, she has been awaken from the “fragile lies in bones”. However, this “truth has broken her soul in two”. This wound is still there and it has influenced, among other things, her reaction to Mercury.

When Cinder meets Mercury, she associates him to his father three times:

Cinder: And you're his son. We saw your fight from the treeline. He's taught you well.

Mercury: Guess so.

Cinder: What's your name?

Mercury: Mercury.

Cinder: Mercury... Tell me, are you anything like your father?

In this way, she strengthens the connection Mercury tried to cut by killing Marcus. She is indirectly convincing him that he can’t be different from his father:

Tyrian: All you ever learned was pain and violence, and now you're too afraid to leave it. Such a tragedy.

Tyrian spells it out clearly for both Mercury and the audience. The only reason Mercury joined Cinder and is now working for Salem is that he is scared. Not only is he scared for his own survival, but he is scared about failing to be anything else than what his father taught him.

Cinder is deep down scared too by Salem and her group:

However, she too, like Mercury, has given up on being anything different than a criminal. She puts up a strong demeanor, but is actually really frail. She is like glass that has been bended through heat (violence) and can easily shatter.

Both Mercury and Cinder are two violent victims. This duality is kind of conveyed also through their names and colors.

“Cinder” is something that has only partially burnt. They tried to reduce her to ashes, but failed and a part of Cinder is still burning. This is why her main colors are black and red. She is black because she was burnt. She is red because she can burn. She was both hurt and has hurted others.

Similarly, “mercury” is a silver/gray metal and this is Mercury’s main color. This choice gains a possible deeper meaning when one considers that his aura is white and that his surname is Black. His aura can be seen as Mercury’s nature, while the surname “Black” is a symbol of the “nurture” he received. Mixing these two factors made so that Mercury turned out like he is (a gray character).

So, Cinder and Mercury have been shaped by their abuse and this is clearly visible on their bodies as well:

Cinder keeps the scar on her neck hidden, while Mercury has chosen to weaponize his missing legs.

It is telling that Mercury made of his own mechanical legs his weapon and that he mostly uses kicks to fight. It is another detail that shows how he is reducing both himself and his trauma to weapons he can use.

Cinder too shows how frail her sense of self is through weapons. It is not by chance that her current weapons are made of glass. In her backstory her swords were a symbol of her true self and of who she could become. Right now, they are nothing, but glass imitations of that ideal.

In short, Cinder and Mercury are both victims and murderers and they needed to have both sides of themselves accepted by their mentors.

However, Rhodes and Cinder failed to do so. They both refused the victimhood of the child in front of them, but they did so in opposite ways.

On one hand Rhodes refused Cinder’s violence and its reasons. He ignored his feelings of affection for the girl and steeled himself, so that he could fight her.

On the other hand Cinder gladly accepted Mercury’s violence and groomed him (Scorching caress), so that he would completely embrace it too.

The difference between Rhodes and Cinder lies in them having different reactions to the violence perpetrated by a child. However, they both fail to address the child’s pain. Rhodes does so because his vision is too black and white. Cinder does so because she is not even able to address her own pain.

However, both Cinder and Mercury need to address their own victimhood. Still, they refuse to do so because it would mean to accept their vulnerability. It is easier to convince themselves that they are the strong and violent ones. They are the ones others are scared of:

Mercury: We're the guys you should be afraid of.

But it is precisely because of this refusal that they are currently caught in dynamics similar to the ones they escaped:

Salem and Tyrian are nothing, but more dangerous versions of Madame and Marcus.

Salem treats Cinder as a pawn, rather than a person. She strips her of her personhood and agency and punishes her violently.

Tyrian is a killer, who enjoys his job like Marcus. He keeps invading Mercury’s personal space and threathens him. Moreover, his own semblance is similar to Marcus’s. It might not steal people’s semblances, but it still messes with their auras (with their very souls).

Cinder and Mercury struggle to recognize their own situations because to do so they must accept they are still stuck in their horrible childhoods:

Mercury: You may not like it here without Cinder, but I think I'm right where I'm supposed to be!

Cinder: I don’t serve anyone. And you wouldn’t either, if you were built that way.

However, this refusal is confusing them about what their true needs and wishes are:

Cinder: I want to be strong. I want to be feared. I want to be powerful.

Mercury: So what's in it for me?

In Beginning of the End both characters receive a line where they express some kind of wish.

As stated above, Cinder’s wish is not her original one, but a twisted version because she thinks she can’t reach her true desire.

When it comes to Mercury, he is not even sure of what he really wants. This is made clear even later on:

Emerald: I mean, there has to be something you want from this, right?

Mercury: Salem's promised us everything. We win this thing for her, we'll be top dogs in her new world. What more do you want?

He says Salem will give him all he wants, but he still fails to answer Emerald’s question. What is it that he wants?

He wants “everything” Cinder can offer him and later on “everything” Salem offers him. However, this is just another way to say he’ll take anything he is given, be it even something as basic as survival:

Mercury: Look, even if what he said was true, we can’t stop Salem. You told me yourself, Hazel tried. He failed and he got in line. Big guy’s not going to pick fights he can’t win, and neither should we.

This is because Mercury is so scared and hurt he can’t even start to think about what he wants.

Similarly, he goes back to a fatalistic vision of the world:

Mercury: Just made sense.

Emerald: It made sense?

Mercury: All my life, my father trained me to be a killer, an assassin like him. And then moments after I killed him, you two showed up looking for someone with my exact skills. Just felt like it was meant to be.

Let’s highlight that Cinder does the same:

Pyrrha: Do you believe in destiny?

Cinder: Yes.

Cinder: You know, Neo, someone once asked me if I believed in destiny. And I'm happy to say I still do.

Both Mercury and Cinder have convinced themselves that there is a “destiny” written for them and that they must play that role (the role of an assassin, the role of the Maiden). However, in this way they are just chaining themselves and accepting to Do As They Are Told by adults and mentor figures, who do not really care about them.

EMERALD + MERCURY = SOUL + BODY

I'm the one That was born in a nightmare a murderer's son Got no gun But I gleam like a blade and I'm harder than iron I'm the one Who rose out of filth and was loved by no-one Delusion I'll steal til your blind and defeat you from inside your mind

I'm the one That was ripped from the earth and exposed to the sun Overrun By the hate and the beatings defiled by a father I'm the one I'll race with your eyes and you'll never outrun Illusions Will conquer your mind and will make you fulfill my design

Mercury and Emerald’s song says several things about them.

First of all, it conveys the idea of two kids that feel let down by the world and have decided to retaliate. They mock their opponents and praise their respective abilities. However, it is clear from the verses above that it is just a mask to hide their pain.

This fits with them appearing for the first time in Best Day Ever where Ozpin says this:

Ozpin: And they will be, but right now they're still children. So why not let them play the part? After all, it isn't a role they'll have forever.

Differently from out protagonists (at the time), Emerald and Mercury are not playing the part of kids, but they are acting as big bad thugs to prove themselves to the people around them.

Secondly, the song is useful to explore Emerald and Mercury’s foiling.

I'm the one Who rose out of filth and was loved by no-one Delusion I'll steal til your blind and defeat you from inside your mind

I'm the one That was ripped from the earth and exposed to the sun Overrun By the hate and the beatings defiled by a father

Emerald was never given love, while Mercury was given hate:

Mercury: I'm sorry you didn't have a mommy that loved you, but I had a father who hated me!

This difference is at the root of their different personalities.

On one hand Emerald attaches herself to the care Cinder gives her and takes it as the most love she’ll ever receive.

On the other hand Mercury is just content with not receiving hate and violence from the people around him.

Emerald is more open about her connections with others, while Mercury is more disillusioned. She is strongly driven by them, while Mercury is too scared to fully embrace them.

Emerald has clear wishes, but she is deluding herself about them. Mercury has fears that do not let him realize what he wants.

This difference stems from the different nature of their traumas. Who was never given anything accepts whatever they are offered, while who received pain thinks even nothing is better than more pain.

Still, we are currently seeing an inversion of this dynamic. Emerald’s wishes and their not overlapping with reality are making her doubtful. Mercury’s fear and survival instinct are making him refuse the truth:

Mercury: And all of this is pointless, anyway. Salem’s not ending the world.

In the end, facing one’s own feelings, being them wishes:

Or fears:

Is still better than repressing them, even if it might be painful.

I'm the one That was born in a nightmare a murderer's son Got no gun But I gleam like a blade and I'm harder than iron

I'm the one I'll race with your eyes and you'll never outrun Illusions Will conquer your mind and will make you fulfill my design

The song I’m the One has four key verses. In the first two ones both characters tell a little of their past and then discuss their abilities, while in the other two Mercury mostly talks about his past and emphasizes it, while Emerald highlights her semblance more.

This ends up foreshadowing the importance of Emerald’s semblance and Mercury’s lack of one (”got no gun”).

Emerald’s semblance is important on different levels. As stated above, it perfectly embodies Emerald’s flaw:

Mercury: You're in denial.

And it is linked to unconscious aspects, like wishes and fears. Finally, it is a semblance linked to trickery and lies and these are among the causes of The Fall of Beacon:

Cinder: Our Kingdoms are on the brink of war, yet we, the citizens, are left in the dark.

It is not by chance that this semblance specifically has been so instrumental in Cinder’s plan, after all.

Similarly, Mercury’s lack of a semblance is one of his defining traits:

Mercury: He never went easy on me! Every day of training was a beating. And when I unlocked my Semblance, he stole it with his!

Ironically, this would make for an excellent narrative objective for Mercury’s character. However, he is so sure his semblance can’t be taken back that he has completely given up on it. This even if he is clearly bitter about having had a part of himself stolen.

The key aspect here may be that Mercury has failed to get his semblance back through his father’s teachings:

Mercury: He told me I could have it back when I was strong. So I got strong, but I never got it back!

And he is now considering it lost forever. It is possible that the path to find his ability again is instead another one altogether.

That said, while Cinder mostly used Emerald’s semblance in her plan, she also made great use of Mercury’s skill and of the peculiar nature of his body:

The first step in her plan, after all, uses both Emerald’s semblance and Mercury’s prostethic legs to spread negative emotions. This tendency continues in PvP where Emerald uses her semblance and Mercury, unhurt because of his legs, prevents Ruby from interrupting the fight.

In short, Emerald mostly relies on her semblance, while Mercury mostly relies on his legs and fighting prowess.

This detail adds to the idea that Emerald and Mercury have been acting as a unit and have been complementing each other. Emerald acts as the “soul” and Mercury as the “body”.

The soul is one’s personal essence (like the semblance). It is where (once again) wishes reside. The body is what protects the soul and is animated by instincts and self-survival.

They complement each other. This complementarity is shown in Emerald and Mercury’s fights.

In the Vytal festival, Mercury takes on both Coco and Yatsuhashi for a short while, so that Emerald can size her chance to fight Coco at her own terms (and she wins by using her semblance).

In the Battle of Heaven, Emerald uses her semblance to help Mercury fight and, in a sense, she compensates for his lack of one:

This perfect complementarity used to make them strong, but right now it is clear that it has become limitating:

Blake: When you’ve been at someone’s side for so long, after a while they become a part of you. But that’s just it, they’re only a part of you. Don’t forget about the rest.

This is why they are currently being separated by the narrative.

On one hand Emerald must learn not to be so emotionally dependant from others and must make her own choices. This is also why her using the lamp might be meaningful:

Qrow: This last great creation would be given the power to both create and destroy. It would be given the gift of knowledge, so that it could learn about itself and the world around it. And most importantly, it would be given the power to choose, to have free will to take everything it had learned and decide which path to follow - the path of light or the path of darkness.

The whole point of the relics (and of the journey we are going through) is to learn about the world, about creation and destruction, so that in the end a choice can be made.

This is why the first relic we saw is the relic of knowledge. Now, Emerald is a character that has been dependant on others, so that she could realize her wishes. Aladdin itself is a story about a character depending on a Jinn to make his dreams come true. However, it is possible Emerald’s arc will be different and it will be about gaining the knowledge to act and realize one’s wishes.

On the other hand Mercury must face himself and learn what he really wants. He must start living instead of simply surviving. In a sense, he must take the soul his father stole back.

Mercury quoting Marcus: "This is a crutch!" "This makes you weak!"

Marcus was wrong. One’s individuality (semblance) does not make them weak. If anything, Marcus’s abuse of Mercury made him need a literal crutch (since he lost his legs) and the boy is still hiding behind this violence to avoid any real choice about himself. This is what prevents him from becoming strong:

Yang: You might be powerful, but that doesn't make you strong.

Raven: Who do you think you are, lecturing me?! Standing there, shaking like a scared little girl?!

Yang: Yeah, I'm scared. But I'm still standing here!

His connection with Emerald might still play a role in this. After all, Mercury is, among other things, the god of thieves and this allusion has been played with by making him protective of Emerald (whose surname means “thief”). It might be used in a deeper and more meaningful way later on.

Emerald and Mercury must grow because if they don’t, they’ll end up as their dark foils:

Both Hazel and Emerald ended up joining Salem out of a feeling of love that was twisted. Emerald joined Salem because of her loyalty to Cinder, who is using her. Hazel joined Salem because of the death of his sister that he blames on Ozpin. Their semblances are even symbolic of their respective flaws since Emerald is caught up in her own delusions, while Hazel is unable to properly grieve, so he can’t “feel pain” on more than just the physical level.

Both Mercury and Tyrian are assassins and Tyrian is who Mercury might become if he truly chooses to live only to kill and does not find a different goal.

It is also telling that both Emerald and Mercury are currently put in similar circumstances as their two foils. As a matter of fact Mercury is leaving with Tytian, while Emerald and Hazel have been given the password to use the lamp and must choose what to make of this information.

At the same time, Emerald and Mercury have also some traits of respectively Tyrian and Hazel as well.

Emerald is fiercely loyal to Cinder like Tyrian is to Salem:

Tyrian: So devoted to someone so incompetent.

Hazel wanted to protect Gretchen (and is still acting on these unfulfilled feelings of protectiveness) like Mercury is trying to protect Emerald. Moreover, Gretchen and (probably) Emerald’s choice was/will be to fight an enemy that can’t be beaten, going against Hazel and Mercury’s wishes.

All in all, Emerald and Mercury have had interesting interactions with both Hazel and Tyrian that can be (ironically) seen as two incomplete and flawed mentor figures.

On one hand Hazel has been acting as a protector of sorts. He carried Emerald when she lost consciousness after the Battle of Heaven and he tried to protect both Emerald and Mercury from Salem’s rage after their failure.

On the other hand Tyrian is seen tormenting the two kids whenever he gets the chance. That said, he ironically ends up spelling out for them truths the two must face:

Tyrian: Do what makes you happy children... please? I'm begging you...

Tyrian: Of course she is! You’re surprised? Salem is destruction incarnate! Our mistress wishes to see the end of it all! There is no ideal more beautiful.

In short, some kind of interesting foiling seems to have been set-up for the four of them and it will be interesting to see if/how it develops.

MIDNIGHT = BEGINNING OF THE END

In a sense, when the clock stroke midnight it was the beginning of Cinder’s end because she entered a spiral she has not been able to stop since then. Not only that, but she has dragged other people in that same spirals and those people are now struggling against it, just like her.

At the same time, midnight signals the end of illusions and that may be a fitting description for where we are in the story so far.

Ruby has just announced the existence of Salem to the world, Emerald is uncovering several truths about Salem, Cinder and herself and the Ace Ops are being forced to face their emotions. Of course, when some illusions end, new ones appear. However, it is clear we are in a pivotal moment, which will hopefully lead to some changes.

Similarly, Cinder, Mercury and Emerald will probably go their own ways soon and it will be interesting to see how their paths will foil and where they will meet again.

As for now, it seems that because of Emerald’s allusion to Aladdin, she might use the last question to Jinn. If so, she will probably aquire knowledge and wisdom (emeralds are the stones of wisdom apparently).

Mercury will probably spiral a little bit as for now, but I wonder if he will receive some pivotal focus in the Vacuo’s volumes. Other than him going there with Tyrian, there is also the fact that it would make what is currently just a juxtaposition with Penny (thank you, @hamliet for noticing) a more interesting foiling.

Penny is an artificial human, a creation who was given life because her father loved her so much that he sacrificed a part of his aura for her... twice. She is at the centre of the theme of creation and it represents the good sides of it. She is a creation with a soul, a child, the fruit of parental love. It is because of the love she received that she is willing to protect creation:

Penny: That is not… I choose to fight for people who care about me.

Penny’s arc is about self-actualization. She struggles to be her own person outside her role, her purpose and even her parent. However, even if she has been objectified and keeps being objectified, she has also been given affection and this is why she fights.

Mercury is her opposite. He was the target of his father’s violence. Marcus not only stole his legs (while Pietro built Penny a body), but even a part of his soul (while Pietro gave Penny a part of his). He taught Mercury hate and violence and this is why he is currently helping a witch to destroy the world. Because of this, it would be interesting for such a character to receive focus on the volumes about destruction.

Finally, Cinder, as the Fall Maiden, is linked to the theme of choice. This has already been explored a little bit in her being obessed by destiny, as said above. However, the theme of choice is one which must still be fully explored.

In particular, there are several references to choice and destiny when it comes to Cinder’s foil aka Pyrrha:

Cinder (about Pyrrha): Hmm... People assume that she's fated for victory, when she's really taking fate into her own hands.

Cinder: It's unfortunate you were promised a power that was never truly yours.

Pyrrha: When I think of destiny, I don't think of a predetermined fate you can't escape. But rather... some sort of final goal, something you work towards your entire life.

Red-Haired Woman: She understood that she had a responsibility... to try. I don't think she would regret her choice, because a Huntress would understand that there really wasn't a choice to make. And a Huntress is what she always wanted to be.

Pyrrha’s arc is about making a choice. She must choose if she wants to become a Maiden. She struggles, but in the end she accepts this responsibilty. She embraces her idea of destiny and tries to be a Maiden even without powers.

Cinder’s idea of destiny is not fully explored. In a sense, just like Pyrrha, she has taken destiny in her own hands. However, she also seems to use the idea of destiny to nurture her self-image as the Chosen One and as the Worthy One.

At the same time, Pyrrha’s choice led to her tragic death. Not only that, but in the end her death accomplished little. Even Ruby activating her silver eyes has more to do with her wish to protect life, rather than with death. Why is that so? It is probably because Pyrrha’s choice was made without knowledge. She had been explained only a fragment of the truth, while the whole point is that one should learn, meet creation and destruction and then make a choice. This is why we have yet to meet the relic of choice.

My guess is that the theme of choice will mostly be explored through Cinder’s character, who will be asked to choose her destiny in the end.

#rwby #rwby meta #cinder fall #emerald sustrai #mercury black #my meta

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thirdhandidiot · 4 years ago

Text

HELLO LGBTs

DONT YOU THINK ITS TIME FOR A REVOLUTION?

NONE OF THE OBEY ME CHARACTERS ARE CIS BECAUSE I SAID SO, ITS TIME WE START PROJECTING ONTO THEM

•i want to see non binary Satan who couldn’t understand why talking to people was making them angry and started lashing out for seemingly no reason, having to go to Lucifer in a fit of angry tears, desperate for help because it hurts so much, why does it hurt?

•I want to see Beel, who passed so easily, worried his twin would grow to despise him because he never had the same ease transitioning socially, getting called the girly one of the two, always being smaller, weaker next to Beel, and Beel hates it so much, he feels guilty

•I want to see Miku Binder Levi projecting onto fictional characters to avoid thinking about his own problems, wearing baggy clothes and locking himself away, jealous of the other brothers, scared of rejection

•I want gender fluid Asmo, proud of their ability to seemlessly shift between presentations, calling mammon in tears, begging him to come pick her up from this guys house because he’s yelling slurs at asmo, who is sobbing please don’t call me that and they won’t stop

•I want to see the great mammon, who is so confident one day, but the next can’t stand the sight of his body, especially when he shifts and you can see his scars, barley hidden by his jacket, who always feels like his screams are just a little bit too high pitched

•Lucifer, so proud, hurt by memories of before, presenting hyper masc at times, afraid to show any emotions because even though he knows it’s not true, he can’t help but think people will see his as more feminine, and he can’t do that, not again

•I want Belphie, who pretends it doesn’t bother them. ‘Why should I care what some lesser demon thinks of me?’ but is kept awake at night, when everyone else is asleep, no one to help as they spiral in insecurities, their voice echoing in their head, the cruel words twisting, stabbing–

•Lord diavolo, whose parents had been so relieved because ‘that means you can be king– we were so disappointed when you were born female’ and it never sat right with him, even though he’d been lucky enough to transition young

•Maybe even Luke, who only Simeon knows is trans, getting upset when he’s called chihuahua because my voice isn’t that high, is it? But determined to stay closeted and so never being able to tell them why they should stop, and he’s not that small, he’s an average height for boys his age he’s checked, so many times

–But I also want to see sleepovers between the brothers (they agreed it was simpler to keep calling themselves that and that it was better than letting Mammon or Levi pick a new name) where they, just for one night, put aside the bickering and tormenting eachother just to make sure the others are ok, because they all know that they’re struggling in their own ways, and for one night they all sleep in the living room, eating food, watching comfort movies and following whatever self care routine it is that asmo is on currently, everyone gets a face mask, no you can’t opt out lucifer, you’re working too hard again, you’ll get wrinkles and that just won’t do, let us take care of you– and Levi! When was the last time you washed your hair?! That won’t do, come with me, let me do it for you I have these amazing bath salts I just know you’ll love

–I want Diavolo, helping them all transition as quickly and as secretively as possible after he finds out. He wants to be there for them, ever since that night lucifer came out to him, sobbing, pride forgotten because he doesn’t want to be that person anymore. He can’t, he spent too long living that lie for his father, he just wants to be free. Simeon telling him he’s changed and being so proud of him, you look so much more relaxed. Diavolo being so happy to know that lucifer is happier because he struggles to talk about it because Lucifer still believes he‘s wrong or broken in someway, pride too much to overcome, but when it’s just him and diavolo, sometimes he can talk about it, lift a weight off his chest

–I want to see them big eachother up in the way that only siblings can, oi that jacket looks good on ya, can I steal it? I’m gonna get junk food because I deserve it, what do you want? I want them to support eachother on bad days, just silently making them tea when they’ve started into space just a little too long, ruffling their hair on the way out. I want a deal between them to let the others know if something is showing in public, whilst in the house being comfortable enough and trusting eachother enough not to judge because really, they’re all in the same boat here

I can’t be the only one here guys. C’mon. Let make this happen. Tag me. ANYTHING YOU POST I want to see it, I want to see your vent art, I want to hurt with you as you project your troubles, just so that your not alone. @7fckingidiots made a Post Abt the Brothers amd it was my final snapping point, Ive got so many little sketches of Satan, they’ve become my muse for any practice drawings, amd I wanted to say something before but yea, check out their post guys I’ll try Link it. But I mean it, tag me, I want to reblog everything you do, make our own supportive family

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border-spam · 4 years ago

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Does troy really have a split jaw or is that fanon?

It's total fanon!

The design of the split lines across his cheekbones and chin coupled with the cheek clips and v shaped hinge outline next to his ears lead to a lot of people coming to that same outcome, that there is something up with his mouth from a prosthetic/mod standpoint.

So much of his design is never mentioned once or referenced in any way (hightech spinal rig with tattoos under it, neuro connector, mech arm that's much older and doesn't seem related to the spine and neuroport, implants on bicep, face mod etc) that like Tyreen's scars and possible lower body Siren markings, fandom took over when it came to coming up with logical explanations for 'em.

This actually touches ground with some Ao3 comments I wanted to share as they are all Leech Lord compliant, so I'll list them here alongside links to the fics they were related to (note warnings!)

You leave no avenue for characterization unexplored. Troy's facial prostheses finally receiving backstory is amazing

- Maw (Gore/Bodyhorror)

I LOVE the idea of it being not just decorative shit on his face, but my MO for any content I make is always based around asking why, over and over, and trying to make sense of what material I'm using in the first place. The modded mouth is a popular piece of fanon but you know... why? Why would he do that shit to himself. WHY would he want to be grotesque, why would he be chasing the reaction people would have to it when canonically he seems to really not be interested in fan attention the same way Tyreen is, what's the difference to him between being adored as his persona or being lusted after as a monster, etc. I just love deep-diving into the logic behind character and world building? It's what adds meat to the bone for me.

Big 'ol character and worldbuilding / lore responses list under the cut -

He could afford better robots but these ones UNDERSTAND Ty, don't you get it?

- Good night in (tooth rotting fluff)

Hey just because it's mangled and broken, and can't perform its intended function to a degree expected of it by everyone around it... and it's got rusty sharp bits it accidentally hurts you with sometimes... and it's cranky but it doesn't mean it... and sometimes it errors out in a way that's mildly disturbing in a way you can't place.. uh.. doesn't mean you should just GIVE UP ON IT you know? He can fix them :) They will be fine :) No one should just throw away something that's trying so hard just because it's damaged... haha... :')

It's so hard seeing how much they tear each other down when they're the only thing they have left. And what a poor self-image Tyreen has beyond all that glitter and bluster...

- Wolf in sheep's clothing

The twins function well enough as a unit till tensions rise, and I was trying to seed in The Leech's influence on them in earlier work like this too - towards anyone else Ty would become MORE aggressively confident, more assured in her complete and utter dominance of the situation, her flawlessness, but against Troy who see's her for what she is, it turns inwards and eats at her instead of lashing outwards. He switches from relatively submissive around her to almost surgical levels of dissection, he knows exactly how to go for the jugular with words, and doesn't hold back. She's The Leech's mouth but he's its eyes and it's only when they lose control emotionally enough for it to claw to the surface of their psyches that you get an idea of how much it really affects them individually. GB had an absolute goldmine on their hands here of cosmic/body horror and the concept of toxic family when all you have is each other, there's so much to work with, and I figure it's a factor in why some people still really enjoy messing around with Calypso content.

I like how you allow Troy to be a disabled character, how his congenital defects and prosthetics colour his outlook and appear in ways big and small in all these vignettes. It's easy, I think, to see him as largely untroubled by his health apart from when he needs a charge from Tyreen in the game, but you allow him to struggle with his weakness.

- Chronic (Drug use)

I'm really glad to hear that's coming through in the writing because it's something I noticed a lot too. Very often when Troy, or other characters canonically disabled / chronically unwell are written it's "told" and not "shown". Chronic pain, illness, it's not something that is just a little tickbox in a life or some descriptive terms added to a character synopsis, it's something you live and deal with. There are bad days. There are times it is a negative that has to be worked around or faced in ways that aren't pleasant. It doesn't make you lesser or weak to have times where illness does leave you unable to function to a level you want to, it's not a failure for you to be unable to perform tasks when a disability or flair up means it's not viable. I feel personally that by showing scenes like this where his health and body issues do have a very visceral and impossible to ignore the effect on his ability to function, and going through his mental processes of dealing with and managing them, it brings the character across as stronger than if he never seemed to be shown dealing with symptoms or weaknesses. People are more than their disabilities and conditions, those aren't just kinda taglines to add onto a character's description and then never address. I feel like doing that in a way undermines what people deal with who manage chronic illness, pain, and who have disabilities that affect their daily lives negatively. Appreciating the effort it takes to manage them is important.

What I really like about these is that you can really understand as a reader how their dynamic must have evolved. How even before Leda's death Tyreen would have felt demonized while Troy got the attention because of his condition, because he was less willful.

- Starlight, Moonbright

Ah man, absolutely - and that shit stayed with them. It wasn't his fault and he never wanted it, but of course their parents would have had their extremely ill child at the forefront of their thoughts, especially during weeks when he was.. bad. Tyreen by nature even without The Leech's influence is a little attention seeker, she'd be the life of any party and she BLOSSOMS if she's got the spotlight, but as a little kid who's got literally no one but her parents and her brother, and who all three of which can't give her nearly as much time as she deserved? That's rough. That's really unfair. That coupled with The Leech's warping effect on their egos as they grew up and the bitterness and resentment they harbored in different ways created a reverse dynamic. She'd never be out of the Galaxy's attention again, and he'd have no choice but to take his rightful place in her shadow.

I love how you illustrate both how much more, and yet how much less Troy is now. How the blameless child, full of potential, is inextricably linked to the brutal, larger-than-life avatar he fashions.

- DeLeon ( Graphic Violence / Gore / Hallucinations)

He's molded the monster he is now out of the bones of the man he should have been - there's no going back really. There's nothing left to go back to. He broke Troy DeLeon apart to build the persona that acts like an iron lung now, suffocating him breath by breath while forcing him to still take them. That life is over, he killed it before it had a chance, but the idea of it is still there in his subconscious. Somewhere in the absolute trainwreck of Troy's brain is the tiny, flickering belief that maaaaaybe one day this will all be over and he can shuck off the bracer and spines, peel off all the shit he's covered his skin with, and just go back to not being Calypso. DeLeon here isn't some aspect of his mental state or his sins haunting him - it's The Leech, spitting venom at a host it loathes in something that's not sound or comprehensible language. His subconscious has just translated it into something it can understand - his greatest regret.

On if Borderlands Humans originated on Earth -

There's a really tenuous link between BL verse and rEarth, but it's there and can't be ignored. The cultures, accents, terminologies, so many are Earth specific despite these people being spread across galaxies, so hell yes - Earth as an emergence point makes total sense. The next question then, is why is it never mentioned - and you can cover for that with a lot of things like say, tt was so long ago that it's not relevant to anything that would ever be discussed, or it could be a mass evacuation from a catastrophe there is little record of now. I like to go with something along those lines, that the first human Siren host emergence on earth just absolutely decimated the planet. Like, we were doing fine till this random woman somewhere in the ass-end of nowhere develops weird markings overnight, then goes apocalyptic. The first Leech maybe, not understanding her powers and having them rip across continents in a spread of crackling electric death that only left husked shells of plants and animals in its wake, or the first Firehawk who went nuclear and burned the sky, or the first Voidgrasp who lost control and began to collapse the planet's core - some extreme shit that had humans fleeing en masse with barely any preparation and HUGE swathes of history and knowledge left behind. That would cover so many social things surviving into the BL verse, cultures, accents, cooking, that shit comes with us regardless of what we were able to throw into escape ships. Like so much data would be stored on any tech and data arrays within the vessels people would use to leave a dying planet even in an insane rush, but that shit waters down over time - if you're farming barely edible plants on some planet that smells like farts, are you really gonna be that stressed about teaching your kids history from a lost planet when your current concerns are not being eaten by something with 19 legs and 4 buttholes? Don't think so.

On if the other Siren entities are as influential to their hosts as The Leech -

I touch on it a wee bit throughout LL, but the others are FAR more passive and meld more to their host's whims. The Firehawk Siren wouldn't.. like.. care? If the host was burning down a planet or fighting off an evil corporation? They are removed from any nonsense happening on this side, they might not even really be able to tell, it's like asking an amoeba or a collection of sentient atomic particles what its opinion is on Brexit. That's not really its priority. The Leech is so aggressive in its control of the twins and desperation to drive them towards an outcome it desires only cause it's split, broken, removed from the song, and completely lost. We're talking a caged, half-mad animal removed from its natural environment and left totally isolated from its own kind for millennia. It's in pain, it's confused, it wants to find its way back to the song and the others and where it belongs, but it's stopped by a barrier it can't comprehend ( the twins and being ripped between them), so in its impotent rage it feeds back that hatred onto them. It's not really sentient in the way we would describe functional intelligence, but it wants, and craves, and FEELS. And it feels very, very angry.

Big thanks to @undergoingcalibrations for talking through so much of this with me!

Asks are Open!

#borderlands #borderlands 2 #borderlands 3 #bl3 #troy calypso #tyreen calypso #calypso twins #sirens #leech lord #my hcs #my writing

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shijiujun · 4 years ago

Note

“you know you’re singing to your headphones out loud, right” au for moshang plz sqh singing modern songs that mbj doesn't know and being hella confused 🥺

Featuring karaoke-loving Shang Qinghua who gets a bit too drunk at a Cang Qiong mountain gathering, and he goes all out.

Or when Mobei Jun wonders why Shang Qinghua is singing about another man called Liang Shan Bo.

---

Sometimes, he thinks about his old life before he ever had the misfortune of landing in a world of his own creation, with an annoying gaming AI system of sorts hounding his every move (in the beginning) or turning up at the most inopportune times just when he thinks it’s finally gone and left him alone (more recently).

Shang Qinghua remembers not having many friends when he was still Shang Qinghua, when ‘向天打飞机 Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky’ was still merely his writing Weibo account moniker and when he had millions of people looking up to him for his crucial contributions in writing this amazing story about his son Luo Binghe and the way he overcame all odds to become a success with a harem of gorgeous women at his feet (damn you, Peerless Cucumber bro!).

Back in those days, he lived off cup noodles and instant coffee. If he didn’t have to leave the house, Shang Qinghua would simply curl up in front of his laptop, either writing for his novel or watching shows (clears his throat) - actual shows! Chinese period dramas were his favourite, where a skilled and intelligent consort in the harem would outwit all the other women to be with her one true love, the Emperor, who falls irrevocably in love with her.

And when he got bored, he switched from the laptop to his television to engage in his second most favourite hobby - Chinese karaoke. Going out to a karaoke bar would require some level of socializing, and also a few friends so he gets more bang out of his buck from what he pays for the room, but at home?

With advanced technology and a tiny ass microphone in either shining gold or silver, Shang Qinghua’s home entertainment system was his very own personal karaoke room, His tiny mic even had that echo-y effect on.

Shang Qinghua has a thing for classic Chinese songs - ‘The New Butterfly Dream’, ‘Liang Shan Bo and Juliet’, The Moon Represents My Heart‘ - and contemporary karaoke must-haves, like Wang Fei. For an embarrassing few days, the Chinese version of Baby Shark was a veritable earworm as well.

After transmigrating into his own story set in ancient times, where he lives without technology, Shang Qinghua would be lying if he said he didn’t miss the Internet. Laptops would be incredibly handy, and so would switches for lights, definitely indoor plumbing for toilets, and induction stoves. Phones too, that would be nice, rather than having to ‘send word’ with letters.

Of course, there is no karaoke bar or machine for him.

Not all is bad though. At least he transmigrated to Shang Qinghua in this world as a baby, so it’s not as if he was surviving on Internet and technology one day and left to do everything manually the next day since someone was always taking care of him. Peerless Cucumber bro, of course, wasn’t as lucky, but the man has definitely taken to this world (and his son!!) like a fish to water.

And as for himself, Shang Qinghua does not need to envy Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe either, because somehow, he has gotten the man of his dreams too, even if said man was a little cruel and rude to him in the beginning.

He has the love of his life (coughs coughs) and they’re stuck in this world for the rest of his life. What more is there to want? Not to mention how his cup of instant noodles betrayed him at the last moment, resulting in his death! It is slightly safer, ironically, to be in this world instead.

All is good except... well...

===

Shen Qingqiu marvels at the sight before him, torn between wanting to step in to stop Shang Qinghua, or watch this farce unfold.

He sometimes forgets where he, or where Shang Qinghua, who has been in this world longer than he, came from. They don’t always talk about the past when they meet, and aside from the occasional meetups, Shen Yuan is a part of him that doesn’t surface, not when he is with Luo Binghe.

Shang Qinghua, on the other hand, grew up here, and aside from referring to Shen Qingqiu by his Weibo account name, he seems otherwise well-adjusted, no hint of modern online writer Shang Qinghua in sight. It doesn’t feel as if he misses their original world either.

This evening, however, memories of modern times slap him in the face, quite literally.

“Shizun!” Luo Binghe calls, frantic, tugging him back into his embrace out of Shang Qinghua’s way. Once Shen Qingqiu is safe in his arms, his eyes narrow at the bumbling, drunk idiot causing a scene in the dinner hall, “Shang Qinghua...”

Shang Qinghua stops where he is, and then before any one can stop him, he picks up a pair of chopsticks, brings it to his mouth, and begins bellowing his way through-

-Jay Chou’s Hair Like Snow.

“Shizun, are you alright?” Luo Binghe fusses, his hands coming up to cup Shen Qingqiu’s face when his Shizun doesn’t so much as respond to him. “Were you hurt? Did he hurt you? How’re you feeling? We’ll go back home now-”

“What is he singing?” Qi Qingqi frowns in disgust.

They all wince when Shang Qinghua attempts to hit a high note, but fails miserably.

Fuck me, Shen Qingqiu thinks, his eyes impossibly wide, who knew Airplane bro was such a karaoke fanatic?

“... maybe he is possessed by a malevolent spirit? Or perhaps this is an unidentified curse?” asks Ming Fan.

“Or is this some new form of cultivation?” asks Ning Yingying, curious.

Yue Qingyuan, seated at the front of the dining hall, cannot help but be concerned for him as well. “Shall we call Mu-shidi to take a look at him-”

They’ve gathered for their annual meeting - a condition that Yue Qingyuan has set in place a few years ago after Luo Binghe ‘stole’ (married!) him away from Cang Qiong Peak - and although Shang Qinghua said he didn’t mind that Mobei Jun was unable to accompany him today, he spent most of the dinner drinking alcohol while in a melancholic state instead.

Who knew that Shang Qinghua was a singing drunk?!

Hence their current predicament.

At the Sect Master’s words, Shang Qinghua suddenly turns around and looks at Shen Qingqiu. HIccuping twice, he then beams, “Cucumber-”

Shen Qingqiu has never moved that fast in his life. Within a fraction of a second, he has his hand pressed over Shang Qinghua’s mouth, holding onto him from the back.

“Cucumber?” everyone choruses in confusion.

“I believe your Shang-shishu has had a little too much to drink,” Shen Qingqiu clears his throat, nodding at everyone else. “We should... send him back to Mobei. Isn’t that right, Binghe?”

His disciple, his husband, still has on an affronted, murderous look for how Shang Qinghua almost brained Shen Qingqiu with his flailing arms in his drunken fit. The moment Shen Qingqiu asks, however, his expression morphs into something so soft and full of love that everyone who sees it chokes.

“Of course,” Luo Binghe smiles, devotion apparent in his eyes. “Anything Shizun wants.”

===

The words that are tumbling out of Shang Qinghua’s mouth are entirely incomprehensible, and so are the tunes he’s humming into his ear.

Mobei Jun thought he had gotten used to Shang Qinghua’s eccentric mannerisms, and also thought he knew everything about his husband, so many years later. Shang Qinghua is mumbling Chinese alright, but none of the characters put together make any sense.

Who is Liang Shan Bo? And who the hell is Juliet?!

His mood taking a turn for the worse, Mobei Jun hoists Shang Qinghua up further on his back.

After getting so drunk, the idiot had the gall to demand for a piggy-back from the throne room to their bedroom. Mobei Jun has never once suffered such indignity in his years of living. A bridal carry? Of course, anytime. A piggy-back? As if he was some beast to be tamed?

Well this definitely has to be a first.

While he was stewing in his thoughts, Shang Qinghua switches from that song to another one, and a stream of ‘du du du lu du lu’ emerges from his lips... AND something about... a sha yu? What the hell is that?!

Shang Qinghua lazily lifts his right hand as they approach their room, balls it into a fist and puts it to his mouth, as if he’s holding something, and whatever monstrosity Shang Qinghua is singing, his voice gets even louder.

Mobei Jun tosses Shang Qinghua off his back unceremoniously and onto the soft bed. Interrupted, Shang Qinghua blinks, his vision blurry, and is about to catch his breath and start singing again when his husband climbs in after him. Trapping Shang Qinghua with his entire weight, Mobei Jun seals his lips with a kiss.

“... My king...” Shang Qinghua murmurs in a daze, when Mobei Jun pulls back a few minutes later, his breaths coming out as short, harsh pants. “My king...”

“That’s right,” he says with a glower. “I’m your Da Wang, your husband.”

Mobei Jun doesn’t know who Liang Shan Bo is, but he’s going to make sure no other man’s name ever leaves Shang Qinghua’s lips again when they’re together.

And when his husband finally sobers up, he’s going to have a lot to answer for.

---

Songs Mentioned (YouTube Links in Comments):

The New Butterfly Dream 新鸳鸯蝴蝶梦－ A Chinese classic, sung by Huang An but done beautifully by legendary god of singing Fei Yu Qing and singing partner for the song A Yun Ga

Liang Shan Bo and Juliet 梁山伯与朱丽叶－ A Taiwanese contemporary classic of sorts by Genie Zhuo, most Chinese millennials would definitely have sang this at a karaoke once in their lives - Song is inspired by Liang Shan Bo and Zhu Ying Tai, the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet to some extent - They both die in the end and become butterflies, so they’re also called the Butterfly Lovers.

The Moon Represents My Heart 月亮代表我的心－ ANOTHER CLASSIC CLASSIC!!!

Baby Shark (Chi. Ver) － ˆThe baby shark hype did move to China, and it’s pretty hilarious LMAO and in Chinese, shark is 鲨鱼 (sha yu) but I’m assuming that in this world, there isn’t a shark kind of animal of sorts? So Mobei Jun and everyone else except SQQ wouldn’t know what a shark is or looks like?!

Hair Like Snow 发如雪－ By Jay Chou, another classic that all Chinese millennials would have sang in a karaoke bar

Wang Fei 王妃－ Jam Hsiao’s version is known best, and it’s pretty epic, not that anyone can reach any of the high notes in the chorus, but does that stop us from trying?!! Hell no!!!

---

Notes: My first Moshang?!! That didn’t really have a lot of Moshang time?! But thanks anon, hope this sort of works?!

#svsss #scumbag villain #穿书自救指南 #渣反派自救系统 #scumbag system #moshang #bingqiu #mobei jun #shang qinghua #shen qingqiu #luo binghe #everyone else is somewhere there except my bb lqg #and anw karaoke sqh!!!!

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felassan · 4 years ago

Text

Gamers For Groceries 2 event

A Twitch stream event from a few days ago. It can currently be re-watched here (it was fun & interesting, so I do recommend to check it out direct). This post contains some notes on things of particular interest & relevant timestamps, in case this is useful to anyone (for example bc of accessibility reasons).

First up is the All About Animating panel, a series of mini-interviews with game devs (animators) asking what they do, how they got there, and advice for anyone interested in getting into the industry. Some or all of the devs that were interviewed are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and a lot about the craft of game dev animation in general. This segment runs from timestamp ~38 mins 40 secs to 1:07:50. Some notes:

[sounded like DA4] Right now the creature team are working on different creatures in a way which involves going through a lot of mocap data

At BioWare they have a pretty big technical animation team, to support their animators, so each tech animator has a different specialty. Tech anim involves animation support, character art support, and rigging the characters so that the animators can pose them

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] One of the featured animators’ area of specialty at the moment is faces and hair (building the control structure for face animations). First they had to decide how the face rig and its control structure would work. This involves a lot of performance capture of live actors for things like cinematics and gameplay animation, therefore the rigs for bodies and faces have to be able to accurately capture the full range of expressions and emotions that the actor is portraying. Right now the stage that this dev is working on most is setting up the heads that they’re getting through the pipeline from character art e.g. making adjustments based on feedback from the cinematics team. “Polish - just trying to get realism”

Hair tech has come quite a long way in the last few years [in the industry]

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] Hair is very complex to get right. “In the past most games have used card-based hair, which is basically like sheets of polygons with a texture on it that looks like hair, through layers of transparency. But real hair is strand-based, digital strands, so we’re starting to look into that kind of tech - try to get more realistic, more beautiful hair, but there’s always a performance cost to hair. Layers of transparent things are always an expense, they need to balance like, it looks good and moves well, but it doesn’t make your computer or console chug. [...] I guess we’re in the prototype stage but we’ve almost got a set pipeline. It’s always fun to experiment”

In Mass Effect 2 or 3, Miranda’s hair was as expensive as a whole character (!)

[on balancing hair costs/performance, general] It depends on things like character importance and how many characters are on-screen at the time. When you’re in gameplay fighting a bunch of monsters you’re not going to be giving full beautiful hair to all the characters and the monsters, as it will cost too much. (Having a helmet on is a convenient way to get rid of hair.) But if it’s a cinematic scene, with 2 characters talking to each other in a dramatic context, there’s a better budget for nice hair allocated

Some of the hair in Anthem was quite expensive in cinematics. They kept getting bugs from QA saying (for example) that a character’s hair was tripling the performance cost in the scene, so it would go back to character art so they could take away some of the hair cards. “Tough balance, quality versus cost”

“I wish all the characters could have beautiful strand hair”

For p-cap, a lot of the time they don’t want to be too prescriptive in terms of the direction that they’re giving the actors, as the actors know what they’re doing and have a lot of experience, so they give them vague instructions that they then riff off of

[sounded like DA4] They recently did a mocap shoot

[sounded like DA4] There’s a bit more productivity happening now in the pandemic situation; now that the animators are not all going to the capture lab in Vancouver in person for shoots, if it’s not their turn to direct a shot they can instead be working on something else on their computers (multi-tasking). ((Lead DA4 Producer Scylla Costa recently gave a talk at a games festival on the challenges of DA production during the pandemic. In part of this talk he talked about various benefits and drawbacks to the remote-working situation. He also talked about and showed some behind-the-scenes stuff for p-cap and mocap. Notes, images and link here))

[sounded like DA4] Special mocap suits were sent out that they can use with a laptop to go anywhere and shoot motion capture. It’s not as high fidelity as what comes out of the capture lab, but it’s really good for prototyping stuff. Before the pandemic they did some of this (going to a park and shooting some running around)

[sounded like DA4] In one of the shoots they had some actors who were really well-trained in dancing. They were trying to get them to do some combat stuff. This was a bit challenging in the pandemic situation as there’s only so much they can demonstrate/portray as an example to the actors from a distance on camera. “It’s hard to describe what a ‘dodge to attack’ is through the camera to somebody who has no idea what combat looks like in video games”

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] The pandemic has really affected performance capture for the face side of things badly, as in order to record, the actor gets dots painted on their face in specific locations by a makeup artist. They can’t do that right now because of social distancing/restrictions, so they haven’t been recording faces at the moment

The more detailed a face, the more joints it has, the more the cost to performance is

---

There was also the Writers’ Block panel, featuring DA writers Mary Kirby, Sheryl Chee and Patrick Weekes, and DA editor Karin Weekes. The timestamps for this segment are ~2:37:50 - 3:26:20. Some notes:

PW has never been weirder than when they were writing Cole on DAI

PW thinks that they accidentally wrote part of “Timber” by Kesha into Solas at one point and they were like “Well, okay, I have to stop listening to Kesha”

For Sheryl, after a while Blackwall’s VA always nailed doing his lines. She loved the quality of his voice and so after a while would always hear his voice while she was writing. This really worked out

^ Mary had this with Merrill. As soon as they cast Eve Myles she listened to several hours of her in Torchwood, and then just wrote to the way that she spoke as much as possible

^ PW had this with GDL as Solas and FPJ as Bull. As soon as they heard FPJ’s delivery, they were like “Oh, okay, I have to write some lines differently, because Bull is smarter than I realized”. With GDL they were like “Okay, he’s going to put poetry into anything I say, in the best way possible”. In early drafts of Solas lines there were parts where they [PW] wondered “Is this too melodramatic? Is this too tragically-angstful?” and then they would hear GDL and be like “Oh! [It’s fine] Game on!”

For localization, German words are often quite long so they often have to make sure that everything fits on the GUI

They think scenes like the romance scenes sound prettier in the Italian versions

Behind the curtain in creating the in-world languages: PW: “There are some awesome websites that have every elven word, like ‘Here are the translations and verb tenses and conjugations’ [etc], [...] and usually Mary and I get very sad slightly looking at those pages going like ‘Does that mean that we have to stick to that?’ [...] The rule is, if I’ve looked at the Wiki and the words, and I go ‘Here’s the correct grammatical way to do it’, and if that turns out to be too long or too many disconnected syllables and it just looks bad or sounds bad, then we shorten it to something simpler, because the key is we want to give the flavor of a foreign language, but we don’t have the world-building budget and capacity to make something that is going to be dictionary-real [in a way that] someone could go through and translate all the background things written on the old temple walls”. Part of the reason for this is the consideration for VAs, who already have to act while bearing lots of things in mind, like the cues in the script for each line

Mary: “For building a language, the first things that I started with for qunlat, elven and dwarven, was what words do we need to use the most? Greetings, farewells, words for friend and enemy, basic things that will come up easily in conversation. After that it’s ‘How difficult is this for other writers to use?’ Can they just pick it off the Wiki? Do they need just one word? Do they need to write whole sentences, and how does that work? Qunlat has almost no grammar to it because asking anyone to learn how to use Qunari grammar and conjugate verbs in a pretend language is impossible, and then once you’ve done that a human being has to be able to read it, while not knowing what any of it means”

PW: “One thing that I was really impressed with with Mary in particular doing, Mary was one of the big lore people across the entire DA series; I can look at a word and go like, ‘That has two A’s in a row, that’s definitely a Qunari word. That word is kind of long and maybe has some apostrophes and has a couple of flowy vowel sounds, that’s probably elven’, I think that’s what’s important. You want players to be able to look at a word, players want to feel smart, [like] ‘Oh I don’t know what that means but I totally know that’s a word from the Qunari people!’”. Mary: “Every language has its own set of phonemes, the sounds that they make, and the sort of word structure and spelling so that it gives a flavor to that language. Hopefully that is always chosen to be pronounceable, because again, very important that the words can be said by human beings :D”

Sheryl: “One of the fun things to do is to make up swear words in the fake languages [...] Recently Brianne wanted a word, I don’t know if she managed to find one”

The origin of bosh’tet in ME: it’s just saying “bastard” and slurring it

PW: “I feel like there are times when past writers kind of leave traps for future writers, where past writers will go ‘Okay, I’m going to write this detailed phrase in a codex entry but don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if it can never be said aloud, because it’ll never have to be voiced!’ and then, next game, guess what guys! Look what you have to make someone [a VA] say! And you’re like [facepalm], c’mon!”

Karin: “Now, four games in, we have pages and pages of all these examples, and I wanna say this, well that’s how we said something before, well that’s ridiculous, I don’t wanna say that, but now we’ve said it and it’s out there, so it’s like, how do we, y’know, how do we evolve, and sometimes we just go ‘Screw it! Languages are living languages! We’ll just say it like this now!’”

PW's favorite is the sarcastic Mythal’enaste, “Because it’s the sarcastic Mythal's blessing that basically means you’re getting screwed over somehow. I love it because Mythal nasty! Whoever wrote that clearly never thought that someone would have to say this out loud”

Sheryl wrote Bull’s joke icicles line. She also wrote Isabela’s big boats line - Jennifer took it out but then DG was like “No it has to come back”

They have a pun test, they get a few of them and have to allot them wisely so as not to oversaturate on the puns. “Is this good/bad enough to be one of the times that we pull the trigger? We did have one of those recently, I obviously can’t talk about it, but it was pronounced Okay to go ahead”

The ‘baby-est’ writer is Brianne, who’s been there 8 years

It makes PW sad that the players never get to see the writers’ temp-text [placeholder text when portions are a WIP]. “People have the best temp-text". Mary: “The number of conversations that I’ve temped in like ‘WELL. I hope nothing BAD happens HERE’”

Q. If you could bring in anybody from outside of gamedev, who would you like to work with and do a writer’s session with? PW: “I will say romance novelist Nora Roberts, she is really smart and also she knows how to write inside a genre, and do wonders within it. Her structure is so good. If you pick up one of her books, you know here’s when this is gonna happen, here’s when they’re gonna meet, here’s when this first moment will happen. We’re all experienced and I feel pretty good about that but I really like all of the things she does that way, and also I am a sucker for romance so I would love to bring a romance novelist in and just have them look at our scenes and go ‘Okay here, no, they should pull the tie so that the article of clothing comes open, we need a sense of how warm the skin is here’ - something like that. I’d wanna see what they could do with that”

“Luke writes the best worst lines”

“I’m always impressed with Mary getting away with lines. There are lines that I look at like, wow, you buried that one. [...] The only players who get that line, I feel like they earned it if they went that far into it. [...] And then Varric or Merrill says a ridiculous line in a one-time throwaway”

Karin: “The group dynamic, you’ll see conversations or snippets of a lunch chat or a thing we’ve been joking about and you’ll see it get pulled in, and how all of you [the writers] are able to take a normal kind of thing - as normal as we get as a group anyway - and then turn it into a moment, and use it to further the plot or use it to further a character. It’s just the cleverest thing and it happens in so many different ways. [...] The little snippet of life, then how you crafted it into this very cool thing”

Quartermaster Threnn was written by PW in half a day. “When I was writing Threnn, ‘Okay, this is a good-hearted [person], I was doing a little bit of Steel Magnolias, southern, no-nonsense, but like, blue collar Steel Magnolias’. This is someone accustomed to the ways of the world so she’s going to call a spade a spade. If you come up to her and you’re an elf she doesn’t recognize you and says ‘Buckets are over there’ because she thinks you’re there to clean, [but] ‘Anyone calls you a knife-ear you come to me I’ll take care of it’. It’s problematic but she’s trying - the good-hearted person rooted for the wrong group on every occasion. She was a proud Loghain supporter, she gets really exited if he comes to Skyhold. That was a fun character for me to write because I had a viewpoint in my mind. I remember someone was like ‘Threnn is really important to me’. And you have to honor that, cause you’re like ‘Cool, it means so much to me that this connected with some part of you’”

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Also of interest was the Mass Affection panel, in which BioWare devs looked back in over a decade of history to remaster a classic. It featured devs who worked on MELE. The timestamps for this segment are ~3:36:09 - 4:24:37. Some notes:

When the pandemic hit the MELE team were in a relatively awkward spot. They were really entering into what they consider full production and were on-boarding a bunch of teams, as well as training and on-boarding third-party external partner specialized teams worldwide. When the pandemic hit, BioWare and EA were super on top of it. They were tracking it weeks beforehand, getting everyone their computers ready, and getting everything encrypted. When the middle of March 2020 hit they were home rightaway. EA were nothing but supportive throughout the entire thing. They got money every quarter for stuff. It functionally ‘hit’ at 4-6 different times for them as the pandemic occurred in different places throughout the world at different times depending on each country’s response plan (and their external partners were in different countries). “So it was one of those things where it was just like, every day we’d come in like can we still work with this company anymore? Do we need to find someone else? Do we need to pull people in off the other projects at BioWare to fill gaps here and there?”

There was a bug on Virmire at the part when you’re coming into the STG camp. If the Mako had its new boosters on and you came hurtling in really fast, it cut to the cutscene, but the Mako hit a jump and when Ash was like “What do we do now?” the Mako ended up literally flying around in the background sideways and then crashing into the camp

Another bug: when they were re-tuning the guns, the physics force on some of the guns with Hammerhead rounds was so high that when you were fighting some of the Thorian Creepers, you could ragdoll them so hard that you could basically embed them in the roof. They’d be moving so fast that they’d penetrate all the walls with their legs dangling out. It was so easy to do and you could do it to everybody. You could launch a geth halfway across an Uncharted World

Another bug: with Shepard’s casual appearance in ME3, if you didn’t have it set up perfectly correctly it would default to Grunt for some reason. You’d be walking around as Grunt, going on dates as Grunt, and your face would be all scrunched up because it was all mapped to human bones still, so it was just, like, Nightmare Fuel of Grunt

Another bug: in ME2 on Illium when trying to recruit Samara, the Asari enemies just would not stop screaming - regardless of whether they were hit or not, it was endless screaming. Later one of the devs got an audio file of the scream, endless and looped, and now one of the devs has it on their phone and uses it for their morning alarm tone

“Shepard would come up to characters and they’d just be screaming”

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There was also the Programming Variables panel, talking about what hurdles game programmers face. Some [or all?] of the devs that were part of this panel are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and about the craft of game dev programming in general. The timestamps for this segment are ~ 4:24:46 - 5:06:02.

[source]

[insights/notes from Gamers For Groceries 1]

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