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velvet-cupcake-games · 1 year ago

Note

Hey there I just wanted to check, with another writing delay does that mean to release is postponed/delayed again? I noticed you didn't actually mention that this could be a factor that would delay the game, but so far it seems to be the biggest factor delaying its release. I'm not sure why you haven't mentioning that when you speak about delays and have been focusing on the art as the thing delaying the release. But it's clear from your weekly updates that the writing for the first route is still not done.

I'm a backer of the KS and it's clear from previous questions you've answered here that I'm not the only one concerned about the lack of writing progress being made for Made Marion. But my biggest concern is your lack of acknowledgment that that is the biggest delaying factor at this point. I really didn't want to write this message, but it's been almost 2 and half years since the KS and I think your backers and pre-order buyers deserve some clarity around the actual delivery time of this game.

Hiya! Nope, there is no further delay to Robin's route due to writing at this point. (Bolded for TL:DR, the rest is ramblings.) Robin's route is still on schedule to release in early November. I'm being more granular with my exact writing progress in our Tuesday updates precisely so that I can provide the transparency that was requested. So you'll hear about my good weeks and my bad weeks, but please don't worry too much if I have a bad one.

The project's writing and coding are the things I can personally control. I had a rough week last week and ending 4a isn't quite done yet, but it's close enough that I know I can still deliver on time. I have re-chunked out my time so that I will complete ending 4a in smaller writing chunks alongside coding Chapter 3, which is actually how I do my most productive work.

When I didn't include writing as a possible delay factor for Robin's early November release, it wasn't because I'm not acknowledging that writing has been a major delay factor (I dedicated an entire KS update to that this summer). It's because I was personally pledging that my chunk of the project will be done in time for the November release.

For the project overall, the writing and art completion are about equal in terms of delay factors right now. I am still waiting on the full completion of three vital sprites needed for Robin's route and several character sprites that have smaller parts in Robin's route but are important on later routes still need to be done. Our cut-in art is behind schedule as well. Once the sprite art is fully finished and our lead artist only has to worry about CGs (and doing the KS wallpapers), the writing will indeed be the biggest factor in terms of when things come out (cut-ins are more flexible since only a few are vital). But right now, all of us except the fabulous Sandra (background artist) are in the same boat.

The year I lost to long Covid brain fog aside, I will say I regret setting what I now realize was a far too optimistic completion time for the project. I didn't know what I didn't know and didn't have access to a lot of knowledge about how long these projects take.

Now that I have a lot more data points to analyze, I realize that assuming it happens close to the start of development, 4-5 years post-Kickstarter is much more realistic for games of this scope. Because I underestimated so severely and because of my lost year, I'm trying to deliver as much as I can as quickly as possible, which is why I'm putting things out route by route with Early Access.

In the future, I'll be doing things very differently. After Made Marion and its DLC is completed, I'll be taking a good long time to finish most of the writing for my next game before I worry about commissioning art or doing any crowdfunding, if I decide to do crowdfunding. I'll have the cushion to do that after having put out our first game.

In the meantime, what I can pledge is that Made Marion is our top priority; I'm not doing jams or smaller games in the meantime, I'm just making this game.

This will probably be the last ask like this that I answer for a while, as it does ratchet up my anxiety. I will continue to report our progress on a weekly basis in preparation for our November Robin launch!

Edit: For clarity on underestimating completion time.

#made marion #ask #made marion dev update

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sibyl-of-space · 22 days ago

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[this will be rambly because i am writing a post to figure out what i want to say instead of going to bed]

I keep thinking about the nature of the specific project I have undertaken with Amadeus. It's incredibly personal, it's incredibly ambitious in scope, and it's incredibly focused on music in its themes. Which means that even writing wholly unrelated music to it somehow comes back around to being "about" it.

Because when the main character is Self-Projection Blorbo Extraordinnaire, and he is a composer and a musician, it becomes impossible to separate any music I write from this story. Because he is the part of me that writes music. Hell, even after Amadeus is finished I am probably still going to associate the part of me that writes music with him for, like... ever.

This isn't a bad thing. I think it's actually cool. It's neither good nor bad, it's just an observation. But I wrote my procrastination fugue because I was like "I WANT TO WRITE A FUGUE" and just kind of did literally nothing else for 3 straight days, and it had absolutely nothing to do with Amadeus, and yet at the end of it I realize it had everything to do with Amadeus. I already consider the other fugues I've written to be songs he might have written. I have already considered the worldbuilding ramifications re: the kinds of harmony contained in these fugues and what I know about specific niches in Western music history.

And when I was working on this one, I realized that I'd written a fugue that you literally can't play as one person on the piano. This was because I am not a pianist and I don't "think" like a pianist when I write, but if I consider this a fugue that was written by him, what does that mean? He IS a pianist. He ought to have written a fugue that he could actually play.

I think two people could play it on a single piano. So did he play it with someone else? Did he write it for someone in particular? Did they ever play it together?

I... I actually have some tentative answers to these questions. But these questions only came up because I wrote something for myself, for fun, and then a connection to this project emerged completely organically, and that led me in interesting directions.

This doesn't really have a point. There is no rule anywhere that says Amadeus has to have written this fugue. But it feels like he ought to have written it, and what's more, considering that he did has made me think more about the story in a way that is continuing to bring it more life.

There are many downsides to undertaking One Big Huge Project like Amadeus. Scope creep is inevitable; major milestones are incredibly difficult to get to; maintaining focus and motivation for literal years on end is an uphill battle; the chances of finishing are significantly smaller than for reasonably-scoped projects.

But there are just as many upsides I think. I keep trying to notice them because they're important for motivation.

I can do things like the anime-ass OP that would not be worth it for smaller projects. When it's done - and I will finish it - it will absolutely fucking slap to heaven. And now, I've also realized, the fact it's so huge and personal means that just kind of living my life I am adding to it. Writing a fugue has added to it. That fugue will probably end up in the game at some point. It wasn't written for that purpose, but because it was written for me and the game is (more than anything else) about me, it'll end up being part of the game anyway.

It's made it easier for me to accept those weeks/months when I just cannot focus on the game itself and feel bad about it. Because since I've decided to make the Big Huge Personal Project, it turns out that just living is still working on the project in a way. It's the kind of project I can draw from literally everything I do because it's a story that was lab-engineered to be About the things that I care about.

you're still not allowed to psychoanalyze me when you play it though btw.

#personal

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razorblade180 · 10 months ago

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Are there any OC ideas you have that didn't make the cut for any of the stories you've written or are planning to right? Like you want to write about the but due to the way the story's gone they just wouldn't fit.

There’s a lot actually and I’m glad someone asked. This will be long.

The scope of Rosebud got away from me really fast and then life happened. I still want to make a proper story. That’s why the one before it is called Rosebud Prep. This AU has the most cut stuff and spur of the moment additions. For example

I had an OC named Walter. He would’ve been the divorced kid of Neptune and Weiss; also he’s 14 and pretty strong due to both his parents having hereditary semblance. Essentially he still follows normal glyph rules, but when it comes to water and ice he doesn’t need Dust. I made a water bender.

Another OC in that au would be girl on Menagerie that was close with Kovu. She would be a Crosshares kid. Additionally, I wanted to write more about Carmine’s normal school experience since she does go to a regular public school but it never really seemed to fit. In a sense, she’s like a casual superhero who will show up late because she decided to stop a robbery.

Another thing I will actually circle back to but just haven’t yet is why is Carmine bad at school terrible with maps, doesn’t drive, and would rather tell Garnet a bedtime story than read one. Carmine is dyslexic and simply refuses to tell her friends because she finds it incredibly frustrating and embarrassing. Jaune knows and though she made him promise to tell nobody, he obviously told Ruby. Ruby doesn’t bring it up because she was the number one person Carmine didn’t want to know. Jaune helps her when he can but the girl is barely home and prioritizes other things.

I wanted to write a short story of Dustin growing up under Cinder and Neo but that seemed needlessly depressing and better left as moments to learn in the main story.

xxxxx

I think I’ve mentioned this before but originally I messed around with Valerie’s internal conflict stemming from the idea she wasn’t sure if she felt like a girl. But after a lot of reading and videos I decided I most likely wouldn’t be able to write such a topic with the necessary amount of care to the standard I would be okay with. It’s a touchy subject and I felt ill equipped.

Another idea I want to write is a Snowflakes sequel where the crew is on summer break and find themselves on a voyage to Vacou. It would explore the new dynamics the group have after Atlas and focus more on Veronica’s mental state and an b-plot with Eliza learning more about her mother.

xxxxx

For those interested in Lasting Embers, the sequel I’ve been actively posting lately has given two more OCs recently named Lilith and Marcus. Lilith was actually brought up in the original story and Marcus as an idea has been around just as long. Feels great to finally realize them.

I actually wanted to do more meaningful things with Yang and Adam during their mission but time constraints got in the way. Other than that I’ve mainly been able to set up a lot of what I want.

In the original story however, instead of Jael fighting those cult members in the desert, I had Adam come home already and the two of them went into town because she wanted to see the festival with him. Eventually she’d go off to get food and notice suspicious behavior; which leads into the cult fight and ends with her own the ropes before Adam shows up. It would be the first time she really sees how dangerous her father could be. I ultimately changed things because I wanted to introduce her older sister as well as keep the idea of Jael hearing/reading about who her father used to be but only seeing the kind dad he is now.

xxxxx

Premonition is more or less the same. I have an outline for a proper story that’s smaller scale than the others and more slice of life vibe. It’s mainly about Lucas and Serenity meeting and what happens when their unique situations of future and fate collide. I did want to do more random prompts but most of them are pretty redundant despite being cute.

I’m sure there’s more stuff I could add to this post but I’m blanking right now.

#rwby #rwby au #ask me stuff

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familyabolisher · 2 years ago

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have you ever talked about the 'spoiler' in fiction and your thoughts about it? i remember you wrote something in connection to nabokov's 'you can only reread a novel' but I fear i may be mistaken (if so, please ignore. have a great day!)

I know the post you mean but I can't find it :( Tumblr's search function stays winning, I guess. To do a brief rundown on my position on 'spoilers' and specifically their relationship to critical work:

I don't have an especially strong position on like, avoiding vs not avoiding spoilers and how conscientious we should be about it in the sorts of environments where avoidance is possible. I try to tag for spoilers when I think it's appropriate; I'm personally not that bothered by spoilers, but like, I'm not mad at people who are. Whilst I think that knowing the 'twists' in a narrative ahead of time can be a fun way of noticing how they're set up (I love to google the plots of things I'm reading/watching so I can pay more attention to narrative construction and less to actually following the plot lmfao), I don't think you can just dismiss out of pocket the value of the emotional reaction that first meeting with a 'twist' can bring + how a reliance on that response can sometimes carry a narrative in ways that aren't necessarily weak or floundering. Some genres rely more on a lack of 'spoilers' than others; a narrative which relies heavily on hermeneutic codes, such as the murder mystery narrative, locates success in a particular balance of concealing and revealing information to the end of audience satisfaction that 'spoilers' can tamper with, sometimes unfairly. That said, when I'm writing critical essays on an external platform (ie. like, writing a Substack essay rather than doing a longform post on here) where a reader's access to it is wholly at their own discretion, I'm not going to be playing the 'writing about this work without giving away a spoiler' game, and I think doing so (even in reviews…..tbh……) is critically lazy; or, more charitably, at least inefficient.

What I mean to express is my frustration with how this excoriation of the "spoiler" (and specifically the placing of an onus on the audience to not "spoil" a work for others) places severe limitations on the scope and capability of the pop critical sphere. A lot of pieces on popular culture will try to posit a critical reading of a work without delving into "spoiler" territory; as such, they'll severely limit the terrain they can actually work on. (A Substack essay I wrote on Severance a while back responded to a Severance piece that suffered from this issue; the piece was bad for lots of reasons lol but one of them was that it couldn't actually delve into its topic with any depth or nuance because the writer couldn't write about any major plot beats not established in the premise or like, the first episode.)

Like, a text isn’t a linear body where any point that you might choose to talk about is solely accountable to the narrative events that have come before it and bears no relation to those that will come after; a text is more like a set of moving parts which all work in relation to one another to construct a cohesive whole. The very process of constructing a narrative relies on 1. the existence of an audience who only hold knowledge of the events that have happened so far up to and including whatever point they’re at in the text, and 2. the notion of all parts of the narrative exerting a force on all other parts of the narrative, of the ‘early’ sections of a narrative being, in a sense, ‘aware’ of their later sections; of the later events shaping the earlier just as much as the earlier shape the later. Obviously it’s possible and valuable to talk in-depth about an unfinished text; cf. for example, ongoing book series, TV series, similar such serialisations where the critic does not have a closed, completed narrative in front of them; but a) often those serialised works will be broken down into smaller units with internal narrative cohesion (one series of a TV show, one book in a series) wherein the criticism emerges from balancing out the tension between negotiating that internal cohesion and speculating on where the open-ended questions posed by the unit might lead, and b) this is fundamentally a different process to just … pointing to the vague opening ‘themes’ of a piece and failing to elaborate in any way because to do so would be ‘spoilers.’

The issue I’m articulating is mostly one wherein this particular form of pop criticism begins to perform the function of advertising before it engages its readership enough to start an actual process of interrogation and evaluation around the work in question. The attempt to talk about something whilst only making reference to the bare bones of its plot + avoiding the major narrative 'twists' severely constricts what you can talk about; it's just not good criticism, and I think this overfocus on never 'spoiling' something for others rather than expecting people to develop some discretion about what secondary material they read creates this impetus to essentially sell something to your audience rather than just … talk about it as a holistic piece. It does a disservice to the work in question and it does a disservice to your own critical faculties, lol?

I don't know how much this matters in the grand scheme of things, when critical practice is becoming a little more dispersed; like, I'm thinking of a phenomenon specific to The Thinkpiece hosted by The (Relatively) Prestigious Platform, but criticism is happening on like, Substack and Goodreads and Tumblr and everywhere else, such that it's easily possible to seek out this actually penetrative analysis should you want to. I am mostly just like, having an old man yells at cloud moment about it.

Also to be clear I'm not like positing a Radical New Position on critical practice here or claiming that other forms of critical practice (such as like, a lit paper) are free of their own problematic aspects; it's really just explaining a personal irritation lmao

#ask

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two-reflections · 7 months ago

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Been ill for the past week. Still not doing great now. (More info below.) But whatever, I'm back, though I'd be surprised if anyone noticed I wasn't around thanks to my queue. 😅

Haven't written anything for MMM because I haven't been awake for long enough each day to do much writing aside from bits for the upcoming exchange. I suppose I'm awake enough now to do a quick story audit, though. Click the Read More to see what I'm working on, and how I'm doing.

Writing Audit:

Aside from the first, these are vaguely in order of completeness/when they're likely to be posted.

TOP PRIORITY - Fic for the summer exchange. I have been doing some reading, and have put together an outline. I'm excited about this one, I really hope my giftee will like it. The problem? If I stick to this outline, the story will be several chapters long, and I'm probably not well enough to write all of it before the deadline. I wonder if it's acceptable to only put up a chapter or two of a gift exchange fic and finish it over the next few months?

Of Steel and Flesh - The next chapter was largely written back in January after the game that inspired this story, but as a consequence, it feels a bit too much like a TTRPG summary... It needs to be fleshed out more. Also, should it be split into two chapters? Unfortunately, while I love this story, it probably takes me the most effort to write, so it has been hard to work on recently. (Update the next day - Put out a chapter of this! Took me weeks to get it together.)

Alpha Legion short - I have a Alpha Legion short I threw together for an MMM post a while ago but I didn't post it because it was more silly than hot. My concern with this one is that I could easily see it becoming something much longer, like Iron Will, Crimson Whispers did. I don't have the space for another long project now, so I've been ignoring this one for a while. But I like it, and it shouldn't take too long to edit it...

Even in Death - The final chapter is basically complete, I just need to decide if I'm moving one section earlier so all the flashbacks will be in chronological order or if I should leave it as it is so there is a happier flashback following a sadder one. Once that's done, I can edit and post it.

Vulkan x Roboute short - Started outlining something for a friend. The pairing is cute and I want to make her something nice involving her OTP. This one will take me some research, though, so it probably won't be ready until after July. (Update - I guess I have to put on my clown makeup now, because I was reading The Art of War for unrelated reasons and ended up YOLOing this one.)

July MMM - One of the discord servers I'm in has been very keen on MMM recently. We're choosing a couple of prompts each month. Problem is, I recently wrote two stories that were a bit similar to July's prompts ("It's raining outside" is a thing in Feel for It, "knives and blood" was a thing in Afterparty). I've got something ready for it, though. Just need to wait til next Monday to post it.

Techmarine Story - This one is still in EARLY days. It doesn't even have a complete outline, just like 7-8k words in disconnected sections. I think I may need to severely narrow the scope of this one and make it either a oneshot or 3-6 short chapters. But I can't think about it anytime soon now I've signed up to a fic exchange.

Salamander Slice-of-Life Romance - My comfort project. It's coming along bit by bit, I probably add about 1k words to it a month. Still, I'm not in any sort of hurry to finish it. This is the one I really don't think anyone but me will ever want, haha. It's literally just an Astartes' first year or two on the job in a reserve company. Lots of mundanity, city life, squad dynamics, smaller deployments, and a romance with his brander-priest. I love it. It'll be ready when it's ready.

How I Am:

Warning, this is kind of a rant.

I miss being well. I was SO prolific just a month ago, before I got Covid again and had to go off my narcolepsy meds for an unrelated reason.

Even mild Covid sucks, but untreated narcolepsy is fucking shite. I've been on meds since I was 19, so I forgot how disabling it is. It felt less crushing before I was diagnosed, but at that point, that was the only way I had ever lived. Now, I've spent eleven years without the constant sleep attacks, and I can't remember how I used to manage this. (Probably badly since I ended up doing a full sleep study, lol.) It feels like I'm out of practice, if that makes sense? This whole thing has really thrown me for a loop.

Aside from writing, I haven't been painting much because I fall asleep when I sit still for more than a few minutes. Coffee helps, but I can only have one a day, so I'll drink my one coffee and then get a decent hour or two of painting at most before I'm back to being a bit useless. That may sound like a lot, but I'm a very slow painter. So, that's no fun.

I really don't want to just complain. My life is great, I'm very lucky to have a lovely spouse and not to be in a position where my narcolepsy could endanger my job or leave me homeless. I'm also lucky to be in the UK, where my diagnosis was free and I could actually afford eleven years of treatment without difficulty. But, fuck me, I want to be able to do normal human things again without falling asleep. This isn't forever, I'm off them for a good reason, but it may be a long time before I can go back on.

Ending on a happy note:

Hopefully, two friends and I will get to play Blood Bowl soon. She has played the digital version, he used to play but hasn't played for decades, and I've never played at all, so it should be a lot of fun. Plus, if there's three of us, whoever isn't playing can sub in for me if I fall asleep, haha.

#I don't wanna be like “woe is me” and all #But man what the fuck has this year been?#2023 was one of the best of my life #2024 is gunning for weirdest and potentially worst #wip wednesday #Writing

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voicefromthecorner · 3 years ago

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i followed you bc of your twewy lb but outside of that, do you use this account to liveblog other games as you play them?

No actually, and that's something I figured I'd address at some point, which might as well be now.

This is going to be an essay on the highs and lows of liveblogging from my experience with the TWEWY games here, so get ready for a long dissection (TL;DR, I hadn't done liveblogs prior to TWEWY but I'm open to doing more in the future but I'd prefer to keep them more smaller scale and less reactive if I did):

If you look at the start of my OG TWEWY liveblog, where this all began, you'll notice I didn't really kick this thing off with "welcome to my big liveblog" or anything like that. I just started posting out of the blue about stuff that I thought was funny or neat to comment on. Post frequency was far less and I didn't analyse nearly as much as I more regularly do now.

But people got really into it and, frankly, I got really into it, so it became a much much bigger and broader thing in scope and scale than where it started. So before long, I was writing essays about my favourite parts of the story and my favourite stages of the character development, as well as still cracking some short one-off jokes or just taking a moment to step back and let some great game moments speak for themselves (which tended to be the posts that got the most attention, which I think is really cool).

This was because I was just playing the Final Remix version for the first time and I noticed that I had the power to take screencaps, which I could then post here if I fancied. I love this game, I was on an excited roll at experiencing the Switch version for the first time and I didn't really have any real life peeps I could share that excitement with, so I figured I'd do that from time to time to add some fun to my playthrough and get to share my thoughts somewhere with some people who might enjoy it. It was just something I figured would be occasional one-off stuff.

So yeah, basically this all kinda blew up from me looking to talk about one of my favourite games ever which effectively created these two concurrent liveblogs. The process has noticably slowed the pace that I go through them, of course, though part of that is my own procrastination or real life busyness, but I don't regret doing it and a big part of the reason I've kept doing it is that I can't shut up about how much I love these games.

I will say, from running a liveblog on these two games as my first experience of it, I think I do prefer the first one as a liveblog. The version of the game was new but I had played the story through before so I knew what I was getting into ahead of time, which meant I had less questions and more answers or at least thoughts to give.

Reacting to a game for the first time in this format is fun, don't get me wrong, but the experience is always getting delayed in certain forms and maybe it's self-talk but I'm often feeling like I'm burning posts on being clueless or being excited at every new thing I see. I'm not ashamed of that, but I can understand if it's not the experience people are looking for, at least as much as a reaction or commentary on the game's bigger moments. Like I said, I keep doing this because I want to ramble and rant about absolutely everything like a madman but it's definitely going to lead to content that is first and foremost only slowing down my playthrough.

And that's the one thing that's a big downside. Again, no regrets - the experience is fantastic and I'm delighted that I get to share it with people who are enjoying it, but it's definitely easier to liveblog a game I've played before because there's no loss in my delayed ability to spend time on it. I know what's coming, therefore I know better how to post about it and I'm not adjusting the pace of a new experience to accommodate it.

In other words, I find this text-based liveblog format is best suited for returning to something old rather than discovering something new. It can definitely work well for both when people are more economic with their posts, but I like to overdo things. Reactive playthroughs are better served by more live formats, like video recordings or livestreams. I did try a couple of YouTube playthroughs in the past (one that I'd played before, one that I hadn't) but neither worked out too well because I don't have the patience for editing.

As far as the TWEWY liveblogs go, if you're enjoying my NEO playthrough, don't be concerned! I'm going to have a lot more freedom as of roughly next week so hopefully I should have more time to power through it and I'm definitely going to! We're in the endgame, so close to the final showdown and I'm determined to see this through to the end! We've come this far together and we will finish it together. And afterwards, expect me to still post about either game when the whim calls for it.

But I think while I'm open to doing liveblogs in the future, I'll likely save it for specific things that I'm already familiar with. I don't think I'll do something on this scale again (with possible exception to a TWEWY 3 if it ever gets made (keep the faith!)) unless I developed a more efficient system for running it.

And to anyone reading this who's encouraged me and/or still encourages me over the months so much on this wild ride that started out as one of those little 4-year-old caterpillar roller coasters that steadily evolved into a 100ft tall dragon that's determined to break the sonic barrier, thank you so much for the support! It's really special to have a little corner of the internet that's enjoying spending time on your antics.

#liveblog #me #ask #anonymous #twewy

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scolopendress-tag · 4 years ago

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I said I'd make a post detailing my kid Asra working for Lucio theory in this post so here it is!

So Let's get STARDED.

So! To start off, how it began. We do know when Asra and Muriel were kids, Lucio came to them each seperately with a deal.

Essentially: work for me, or I'll hurt your friend.

This was the sentiment he repeated for both of them. So, not wanting the other to be harmed, they both agree - unaware of the other's deal.

For Muriel, it was playing heel/excecutioner at the coleseium. For Asra, it was doing... Well, we never know, aside from he worked under Lucio. But that's what we are here to discuss in any case.

Continued under the read more, for the sake of people's dashes.

Now presumably, if I got my timeline right, Asra at this time would've been around 12 or 13. We don't know much about how Asra was when he was younger, other than that he has certainly changed.

It's also worth noting that it's not amiss to say they were both also still homeless at the time, and the hut hadn't come into the play until after.

Asra was still living on the streets.

This all isn't overly important for any of my claims later, but perhaps someone else could make something of it. It does provide us with some framing for the situation as a whole, though.

Now onto Asra's time under Lucio. I don't know that we have any indication of how long it was, but presumably at least a year if not more.

We do also know that Lucio knew who Asra was. Both in that he knew Aisha and Salim had a kid, and that he knew Asra was said kid.

This is bring this up because we know Aisha and Salim were incredibly talented, and likely incredibly powerful. Lucio wouldn't settle for any run of the mill magician or alchemist for the work he needed. So he must've had some idea that Asra may take after that power as well.

To top it off, he also interacted and talked with the dock kids he also used, (two of which would actually later become palace guards,) and seeing as this is seemingly how he learned of Muriel, it's not off to think that this is also how he heard of Asra again to start. The kids knew of Asra's magic, and roughly where he was, and could've even continued talking about both Muriel and Asra to Lucio for unknown amounts of time.

So now Lucio knows that the kid of his two powerful practitioners of magic is not only still around, but taking after them as well.

If Muriel's intimidating size and physical power are what drew Lucio to him, why wouldn't Asra's considerable metaphysical power and talents draw Lucio in as well?

We know how much Lucio loves power, and that he has an interest in magic because of it, as mentioned in the main story. (no ss sorry... If you have one send so I can add. )

Plus, homeless kid in a vulnerable spot. Easy pickings.

That's what I think this whole thing was about, really. It's all power. Though Asra likely didn't have the full scope of power he does in the current game, he was probably still considerably talented, and was only getting better.

What Lucio specifically probably wanted from Asra then was either to be taught how to use that power, to use Asra for things that required it, and/or use his power for entertainment akin to how he used Muriel.

I think out of these however, using him for his power was most likely. Why? (And teaching him now, more on that further down)

(Sorry for bad quality lmao it's a small image. Also thanks to @8-bit-space for showing these to me like months ago. As you can see I can't stop thinking abt it)

These are screenshots from the old prologue. While they're not canon any more, there's reason to believe they still hold merit as to how Lucio feels about Asra.

Two things to me are major here. First is the "powerful potent magic," and how it's the "real deal," equating to a large part of how he views Asra yet again tying back to a heavy interest in his power. Now, you could argue this relates to using his powers in the palace during the plague, but the second point stands out even more to me.

"The one who broke him for me?"

What this implies to me is that Lucio could never quite get all the way through to Asra or control him when he was younger, and he's been dying to do so. He wanted Asra broken, presumably so that he'll become essentially a tool for him to use for his skill and not put up a fight- something Asra likely did as a child.

Because it seems that Lucio for the most part relied on control through fear when it came to Asra, threatening to hurt Muriel, lying to him about how he executed his parents, likely other things as well. But things seem to point to that never quite working like he had hoped.

This could allude to this as well. Though "impossible" is something Asra's been called a few times, namely also by Julian, there's no reason to assume Lucio wasn't also including his work with him as a kid in "always". Impossible to hate could be his draw to Asra for his power, his talent, his skills, the prospect of which I'm sure Lucio found practically mouthwatering. Impossible to love could be his stubbornness or reluctance to do what Lucio wants, always pushing against him or being hard to deal with, both as a kid and during the plague.

And lines like this, where he calls him a coward. I find it hard to relate this to the plague ritual as he was for the most part willingly helping with that, so it could be resenment for when Asra eventually ran off as a kid, unwilling to put up with him any longer, or his reluctance to do certain things for him then in general.

We know, and it has even been mentioned by a character within the canon, that Asra can be incredibly stubborn, to back that up. Plus, he could've been even harder to work with then both being a kid and as I mentioned earlier he has changed from how he was then, so he could've had more spunk to him or such.

This also easily means that what Lucio was trying to get Asra to do then was something Asra was quite obviously opposed to. Being used for his power is already degrading enough, but there could be more to it.

You'll notice in the post that was linked at the top (the reason I'm writing this) I mentioned pushing Asra to his physical limits and magical extremes. This could be one of the reasons for a push back.

If Lucio was having Asra do things for him involving magic, it's not out of pocket to assume he'd practically run him into the ground- I'm sure he really wouldve loved testing the limits of what Asra could REALLY do.

Wether it be huge expendure of power all at once, or tons of smaller things one after the other, it would absolutely take it's toll. We are shown a few times that using magic can exhaust someone, and I don't remember if this is shown in canon ever (tell me if so!) but pushing it even further could definitely lead to other things such as passing out, (Or nosebleeds, for the aesthetic,) alongside likely being incredibly painful and draining, both mentally and physically.

Basically, abusing his powers and the body that commanded them. It's also possible that the stubborness to work with Lucio could also be partially percieved because of this- Lucio taking Asra's literal physical inability to continue as defiance.

Another reason for push back from Asra would be making him do morally compromising things. This is a little more vague, but intimidation is a common headcanon I see for what Lucio made Asra do, and that could tie in here. Other things could be meddling in things and business he shouldn't, but again, it's a vague thing. Make of it what you will. Fucked up stuff all around.

[EDIT - TEACHING LUCIO]

(THANK YOU @tea-tye for showing me these, and credits to @hangedman-magician for the video they came from!!!!!!!)

...I cannot BELIEVE I forgot this, I KNEW I was missing something. Especially when I was fairly certain I remember Lucio being obsessed with the idea of magic. SO, MOVING ON,

There's not terribly much to pick apart here as it's rather direct- Asra saying he has in fact tried to teach Lucio magic. So in my eyes this solidifies that this was a component of Asra's time under Lucio. I still think my points about Lucio treatment (pushing Asra to his limits) stand, as well.

This can also tie in the stubborness mentioned as, well, can you imagine teaching Lucio? Asra backs this up by saying nothing he has ever said stuck with Lucio, and you know how Lucio gets when things don't go his way. He would've blamed his inability to learn on Asra, likely.

Looking to other quotes mentioned: the 'broke him' line still rings to me like he was trying to use Asra in other ways, and the 'coward' line could go either way from refusing to teach Lucio certain things, or refusing to do certain things for Lucio when he was merely being used. The "impossible" line could also go for others, as trying to teach someone like Lucio would've undoubtedly caused some head butting.

This is certainly really exciting and interesting to me as it gives a more complete picture on the exact situation at hand here. I still stay by my reasoning for Lucio simply using Asra as well on top of being taught because it seems highly likely that Lucio would've been too impatient to learn to do certain things himself, and like I said as well, I don't doubt he also just wanted to see what Asra was REALLY capable of. Something he could've saw as a tantalizing insight into the kind of power he could aquire of this kid would just... work with him.

NOW we have a MUCH clearer answer as to what exactly Asra was likely doing under Lucio, or at this point, almost certainly doing. It's a sad picture for Asra of course, but with this you can draw some interesting points as to how he could've been affected by this, as I'm sure it would've left some kind of imprint on him.

Sure it may not have been as traumatic as what Muriel went through, but when you look at it, it's hard to say it DIDN'T leave it's scars. If we consider all the points presented in this post truth we have:

A 12/13 yo homeless child, threatened with his friend's life to work for the Count that he knew was the one responsible for orphaning him and making him homeless in the first place.

Said child believing his parents are still alive, and as we see in Travel at Night, could very likely still be trying to find them. In a situation like Asra's that glimmer of hope probably was a big deal in helping him push on. This may also be a reason he agreed on top of Muriel's safety.

While working under the count, he is told that his parents were executed, no doubt devastating. The manner in which this was mentioned is up for debate, and could affect exactly how it was taken. Options could be Lucio joking or bragging about it (treating it as trivial or an accomplishment), or using it to threaten Asra, (as in I killed your parents, I'll kill you too,) both would work when it comes to controlling by fear.

It is also mentioned that Lucio told him the reason for his parents execution is that they messed up his gold arm, so Asra also has the knowledge that his parents were killed over something so unbelievably trivial.

Being used as a source of power and nothing else, both for teaching and pure work/entertainment, all for the man who killed his parents, day after day.

Being pushed to physically painful and mentally draining limits, expending so much energy that he completely exhausts himself, day after day.

Likely taking all sorts of verbal abuse from Lucio, day after day.

Like mentioned earlier, it seems clear that Lucio wanted to break Asra, so some other form of trying to chip away at his psyche to make him more convenient for Lucio is likely as well.

Those points alone, to yet again a CHILD no less, seem more than enough to cause some traumatic impact, and depending on certain specifics of what exactly went on during that time, it could be worse. I may make a post looking into the long lasting effects of this on Asra, I may not. It would mostly be headcanon regardless. If you want to add your hc relating to this situation though, I'll gladly reblog it!

And now that we are closing out, it's time to revise my summary. So, without further ado, THIS is what I think was going on during this time.

Lucio knows of Asras existence and parentage.

Lucio learns Asra is around and that he's got power.

Lucio LOVES power, so he threatens Asra into working for him.

Lucio uses Asra for his power and to be taught how to use it for himself.

While using Asra for his knowledge and power, runs him into the ground by pushing his limits to physical and magical degrees, possibly even moral.

Asra pushes back against a lot of this, or is at least percieved to, frustrating Lucio.

Lucio does what he can to try and control Asra even more, primarily via fear, but can't seem to crack him.

Eventually it's too much, and Asra leaves. Likely when the plague hit like Muriel, but it's possible it could've been somewhat sooner. Lucio is PISSED, because he wanted that magical power all to himself.

Less related, I can see Lucio trying to brush it off and pretending to be fine with it, excuse being "he was too difficult to work with, anyways," or something.

...And then... years later, as far as Lucio sees it, Asra comes crawling back- and he's tamed down to a degree! He's actually working with him. Lucio might not know what or who did it, but Asra is finally broke for him, and I'm sure he was absolutely ecstatic to have that power back in his hands- and more than ever before.

Think of all of this as you would like!

At the end this is all still speculative, so definitely feel free to make your own points or say if you feel any different abt anything- expansions or counters on this theory/headcanon welcome!

And if you also have any other screenshots or info not here that could add to the theory or change the outlook of certain things definitely add them!!! I feel like I'm missing stuff for sure, and my memory has probably muddled some things (hopefully I didn't get anything wrong, though.)

And @asrascherry thanks for the offer in helping word my hcs also! I forgot to say that. This one is just so long I wouldve felt bad bringing it all to you 😔 it's probably still messy as a result but I tried lmao (worried it's repetitive or unclear 😬)

Uh yeah! That's mostly it for NOW.

+All the love to Asra for going through so much I'm so sorry bb,,

Thanks for reading!

#asra #the arcana #the arcana game #asra alnazar #asra the arcana

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walkerwords · 5 years ago

Text

“Firehouse Blues” Part 1 of 2 - Negan x F!Reader

PART II

Request from anonymous: can you do a negan imagine where the saviors find a woman who's living alone in a huge building and has a lot of supplies and guns and the saviors try to take the supplies but she used to be a engineer and has a strong security system so no one can access the building. and one day she meets negan and agrees to a trade. thanks :)

Word Count: 3448

Warning: Swearing

Song I Wrote To: “It’s A Man’s Man’s World” by Jurnee Smollett-Bell

Note: Another two part request! I was originally going to post this as one, but I wanted to post something for ya’ll so here you go. I had a lot of fun with this one. Mostly cause I love writing flirty Negan! Part 2 will be up soon! Thank you!

Reminder: If you want to be added to my main taglist or individual lists, just let me know!

------

The first time you met the Saviors, you had given them a single warning.

It was early morning when the trucks first rolled up to your firehouse. You had been living in the old fire station for about a year now and it had quickly become a fortress. With a mixture of scavenging and inventing, your home was not only well-armed but equipped with sophisticated security systems that included both machinery and the Dead. Being an engineer before the Turn, when you found the firehouse, it quickly became your new project.

A multitude of traps, alarms, and mirrors was placed around the property. From certain vantage points, you could see every entrance and it would be a miracle if anyone or anything could breach your walls. The collection of Dead was your most recent idea and so far it was working. It had taken you a few weeks to get everything perfect, but soon enough, you kept at least ten Dead ones confined within the entrance area of the firehouse. If anyone was to get through the front door, they would have to get through a group of the Dead that you could release with a single pull of a lever.

When you heard the caravan of vehicles approaching your home, you acted quickly. With a few adjustments and two pulls of a lever, two large hoses deposited gasoline out front of the building, ready for you to ignite it if necessary. The entrance to the main yard out front was lined with two large fire engines that blocked the other traps that you had set up, two tripwires that would activate a loud siren, calling any Dead within a few miles towards the building. You were safe behind your brick walls, but your enemy wouldn’t be so lucky.

Sliding down the fire pole that was just off your makeshift bedroom, you crept towards the main area of the station. In the main garage, you could hear your Dead on the other side of the door as they waited in the administration area. It had taken you a while to get used to the noise, but now if you didn’t have the constant groans of your hungry companions, everything felt too silent.

Climbing up one of the fire ladders, you looked through one of the windows at the top of the accordion door. In the bright sun of the morning, five trucks parked just behind the fire engines. Armed men and women exited the vehicles and gathered around your barrier, looking up at the firehouse in confusion.

You were aware that there were groups in the area. Some were considered safe havens, but of course, there were those who wanted what others had. Based on their weapons and how each of them carried themselves, you were certain they were the latter.

You climbed down from the window and ran for your armory. You kept your weapons in many different places throughout the station, never all together in one place. In the garage was where you kept most of your smaller pistols as well as your explosives. Grabbing two pistols, you slid them into your holsters. You also grabbed your parabolic listening device. You had found the long-distance microphone on a run a few months ago. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked great when listening to conversations that were right outside your home.

Making your way to the top level, you checked your traps along the way. Your Dead were secure, the tripwires fully ready, and every door was reinforced alongside automatic weapons that could be triggered with a few tugs of a rope. You then headed for your main “nest” as you called it. On the top floor of the firehouse, you had a full view of those who threatened your home and that is where you waited.

Peering through a rifle scope, you watched as a man with a rather impressive mustache exited the last truck. He walked with a swagger and a cocky grin on his face. He stared up at your fire station with gratification as if he had just won the lottery. Switching on the microphone, you held the disc towards the slightly open window and you listened.

“You know, when our new friend said this place was well-guarded, I thought he meant by actual men,” the man said. A woman to his left followed his line of sight with a frown.

“Maybe he was wrong, Simon,” the woman said. The man, Simon, shook his head and walked between the fire engines, gauging his surroundings. You watched on in silence.

“I don’t think so, Arat,” Simon said. “He said this place was a fortress. A fortress with guns,” he said with a wicked smile. At his words, your stomach turned. You knew who he was talking about. You had invited someone into your home a month earlier. His name was Justin and he had been starving, weak, and in need of shelter. He was a former Sailor with the Navy so you had offered him sanctuary. Clearly, that had been a mistake. The bastard had betrayed you and brought these pirates to your doorstep. “Spread out!” Simon ordered. “Find a way in.”

The men and women nodded to their leader and began fanning out over your property. You ignored the teams that went to the sides of the building. They would need a bulldozer to get through your doors and even then, you were prepared to take on any intruders. Your main focus was the man with the mustache. He seemed too confident in trying to take your place by force.

You watched him carefully, gauging all his reactions and how he scanned his surroundings. There was a moment when you considered taking him out. A single bullet to the heart would kill him and allow you to add him to your collection downstairs. However, you had a feeling that if you did, the cavalry would return and conflict was not what you were aiming for here.

Simon picked his way towards the front of the building. You were surprised to see that he noted your tripwires almost instantly. He didn’t bother to disarm them as he stepped over each one and placed his hands on his hips. “I know you’re in there!” he sang, smiling up at the windows you sat behind. “Why don’t you come on out and we can discuss this like friends?”

Your eyes went to the gasoline that shimmered in the sun. Simon noticed it as well and toed it with his boot. “Careful, Simon,” Arat said, still behind the barrier the wires provided.

“Something tells me, we aren’t going to get the full welcome wagon,” Simon sighed. “Okay then! Guess we will have to do this the hard way!” Simon then whistled and three of his men approached with a battering ram. You were annoyed when they also took care to avoid the wires. Clearly, you had to do a better job at camouflaging them. The men placed themselves at your front door, ready to take it down, but all you did was smile. Reaching over to your left, you pulled up on a yellow-painted-lever and released your Dead.

As soon as the ram broke down the door, ten lumbering Dead men and women attacked your intruders. You heard the screams first. Two men went down as the Dead converged on them. “Fall back!” Simon yelled, running back to avoid gnarled hands and teeth. In his hurry, he didn’t avoid the wires this time and instantly your home lit up with a fire siren.

Simon and the others panicked as the Dead began appearing around corners. You had purposefully baited them with dead animals whenever you could. You found the Living avoided highly populated areas of the Dead so it played in your favor. Panic ensued instantly as the men and women retreated to their vehicles. You pushed open your window and leaned out slightly, making sure Simon could see you. Meeting your eyes, he glared, cursing. You smiled widely at him and then lifted your middle finger to the sky.

“You might wanna hurry up!” you hollered at him, “I don’t think they’ve eaten in a while!” you shouted, gesturing to the Dead that stumbled towards his people. Simon looked as if he wanted to shoot you right there, but he made the smarter choice and ran for his truck.

“Go!” he yelled, jumping into the passenger seat and slamming his hand against the roof. The trucks raced away from your home, firing at stray Dead as they did. You couldn’t help but laugh as you watched them flee. However, it was then that you realized you had to reset all your traps and you sighed in annoyance. The Dead would be easy to replace, but it was always a hassle to reset the wires and disperse the hungry bodies that surrounded the area after the siren.

Speaking of which, you ran to the other side of the room and slammed your hand against the emergency shut-off button, turning off the deafening sound. Listening to the increased groans of the Dead, you picked up a length of chain that hung on a hook. “This is gonna take all night,” you said with a deep sigh, but you knew it was worth it.

You were considering adding more than ten this time. The only thing that would make the situation better was if you could get your hands on Justin and hang his traitorous ass on the front gate as your first warning. Perhaps one day you would get the chance, but for now, you had work to do.

--------

It was two months later when you finally met the man in charge.

You were on a run for parts to fix a radio you had found in the boiler room when you heard the sound of clashing metal. Running towards the sound, you saw a supply truck tipped over on its side and the Dead circled it like sharks after prey. You thought about turning away. It wasn’t rare for people to come through your area of town. They would get into rough situations and either they lived or they didn’t. You never felt as if it was your duty to intervene. However, when you saw who exited the truck, you reconsidered.

Climbing out of the passenger side window, a tall, handsome man slid to the ground. In his hand, he held a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat, and as soon as he got his bearings, he swung it, crushing in skulls immediately. You watched this man fight through the small herd of Dead as they attempted to make him their lunch.

His leather jacket was splashed with black blood and it seemed as if he was limping heavily. You figured he was injured from the crash, but it didn’t seem to stop him. It was clear to you that he was a survivor and that was what made you pull your weapon.

You ran towards the man, firing on the remaining Dead. He turned to you in surprise before going back to swinging his weapon. Neither of you spoke as your dispatched the rest of the corpses. You then found three feasting on a body that hung limply out of the truck’s windshield. You pulled your knife and took them out, stabbing each of them in the back of the head.

When all was quiet, you turned to find the survivor bent over, leaning on his bat for support. “You alright?” you asked, slightly out of breath.

“Am I alright?” he asked, slightly amused. “Shit, Darlin’, you’re the one who went all fucking Rambo on these dead assholes. I am more than alright considering how much badass I just witnessed,” he said and you found his deep voice incredibly soothing, even when he was swearing like a sailor.

“Your injury,” you said, pointing at his leg, “is it a bite?”

“Nope, just your average big ass cut,” he said, pulling up the leg of his pants. The wound looked deep, most likely from a piece of metal. Looking around, you made a quick decision.

“I can patch you up if you want. My place is just around the corner,” you said, already regretting it. He looked at you for a moment before shrugging.

“Figure I don’t have any other options,” he said, “Lead the way.” You went to his side and pulled his arm around your shoulders, giving him support.

“Ya got a name?” you asked as you pulled him towards your firehouse.

“Negan,” he grunted, clearly in more pain than he first led on. “And what can I call you, my white knight?” he asked, smiling down at you.

“(Y/N),” you said, “and I’m no white knight. Just figured you’ve already had a shitty day. No need to make it worse.” Negan laughed, a broad smile encompassing his bearded face.

“I’ll take it,” he said and you smiled slightly. You took Negan through a back alley and then down the main street that led to your home. As you got closer to the fire station, Negan swore under his breath.

“What is it?” you asked, suddenly on alert for any danger.

“You’re her, aren’t you?” he asked.

“You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific there, bud,” you said, hauling him down the pavement.

“The firehouse chick,” he explained. “My men tried to take this place a couple of months ago and you unleashed a shit ton of corpses on them!” he said, extremely exuberant. “Simon said you were a spitfire, guess he was right after all.” Hearing Simon’s name, you jerked away from Negan, throwing him to the ground. “Shit!” he swore. You pulled your pistol and aimed it at his head. “Whoa there!” he said, raising his hands.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you and mount your head on my wall?” you asked him, releasing the safety on your weapon.

“How about the fact that you’re all about defense and not offense?” Negan offered as he stared down the barrel of your gun.

“And how would you know that?”

“Simon said that everything that happened that day was all bells and whistles. Shit worthy of a badass and a badass you are,” Negan said.

“Your men tried to rob me, take my weapons, and they didn’t seem to care about whether I had people inside,” you told him.

“And did you? Have people?” he asked, his eyes flashing between the gun and your face. With a sigh, you dropped the gun.

“No, I prefer to be alone. Tried to have someone with me once and well, he went and told your boy Simon about my place. Haven’t seen him since, but I plan to gut him from head to toe when I do,” you said, holstering your weapon. “Do I have to do the same to you?” Negan grinned once again.

“No, ma’am,” he said, wetting his lips with his tongue. “I’m quite fine with whatever you decide to do with me.” You rolled your eyes at his innuendo.

“If I bring you inside, are you gonna try to take my shit?” you asked, your hand still resting on the pistol at your side.

“Wouldn’t dream of stealing from the woman that is offering to nurse me back to health,” he said, tilting his head to the side. You offered your hand to him.

“I’m holding you to that,” you said and he took your hand. You helped him to his feet and resumed your earlier position. “I meant what I said about mounting your head.”

“I have no doubt that you did,” Negan said. “All the more reason for me to behave,” he said with a wink and you tugged him along with a jerk that had him tripping on the buckled sidewalk.

------

Arriving at the station, you took him through the side entrance.

Negan leaned against the brick wall as you unlocked the steel door with a series of latches and the help of a small crowbar. “What the hell did you do before all of this? CIA?” you looked up at him, annoyed.

“I was an engineer, genius,” you explained, and with a kick, the door opened. You grabbed his arm again and hauled him into the building.

“Yeah, I guess that makes more sense,” Negan said, leaning heavily on you. You closed up behind you and then took Negan down the hall towards the stairs.

“If you fall, try not to take me down with you,” you said.

“Have some faith, Darlin’,” he said as you started to ascend the stairs. “So, why a firehouse?” he asked.

“It was convenient,” you explained. “And I like the area.”

“Prime apocalyptic real estate, huh?” he joked.

“Something like that,” you said as you finally made your way to the top level. You dragged Negan over to your bed and dropped him. “You’re a lot heavier than you look,” you panted.

“It’s my big...personality,” he said with a suggestive smile.

“More like your big ego,” you said before heading over to the cabinet on the wall. Negan peeled off his jacket, dropping his bat by his feet. You grabbed your first aid kit and a bottle of water and went back to him. Negan leaned back against the wall and you sat at his feet, prepping a bandage and antiseptic. “Roll up your pant leg,” you said. “And no, you do not need to take your pants off,” you said before he could say the lewd remark that you knew was on the tip on his tongue.

“Damn, you’re good,” Negan said, but did as you asked. Placing a towel under his calf, you cleaned the wound the best you could. You were right before, it was pretty deep.

“Needs stitches,” you said, grabbing the sewing kit.

“Go for it,” Negan said, placing his hands behind his head. As you stitched his wound closed, he almost seemed content with the situation.

“You don’t get a lot of downtime, do you?” you asked.

“How can you tell?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Because you’re practically asleep while I tug your flesh back together.”

“I got people to lead,” Negan explained. “Doesn’t allow much leisure time.”

“Right, the people that you lead to steal the supplies and homes of others,” you said bitterly as you soaked the freshly stitched wound with alcohol again.

“We all do what we have to in order to survive,” Negan said, his tone more serious.

“You don’t have to be a looter,” you said, wrapping his leg. You tightly secured his wound and then gathered up your supplies. You gave Negan the water and got up, turning your back on him.

“Why are you alone?” he asked after a few minutes. You leaned against one of the steel columns and stared at him, trying to make your mind up about the man before you.

“I stopped trusting people years ago,” you told him, “And every time I decide to try it again, they screw me over. No people, no problems.”

“Sounds lonely,” he said, his eyes softening.

“You get used to it,” you said, pushing off the column and going over to your work desk, fiddling with pieces of tech. You were bent over the radio, trying to rewire it when you felt his presence behind you. “If you rip your stitches, I won’t redo them.” Negan laughed and took a seat in the chair by your desk.

“I want to offer you a deal, (Y/N),” Negan said, watching you with curious eyes.

“I nearly killed your man, Simon, what makes you think I want to make a deal with you?” you asked.

“Look, Simon, he means well...sometimes and while he is my right-hand, he’s not me. My men do many things in my name, but when it comes down to it, I’m the one who should be shaking hands and kissing babies.”

“And that’s what you want to do with me?” you questioned.

“I think you and I can have a very beneficial relationship,” he said, running his hand over his chin. “Strictly professional, of course.”

“Of course,” you mocked. “Negan, I appreciate that you want to make some kind of deal, but I don’t deal with people that prey on others.” Negan leaned forward.

“Darlin’, I am more than happy to go by your rules,” he said slowly, “but I want you to hear me out. Who knows, maybe you’ll find I’m not that bad after all.” You leaned towards him as well, staring him down. He glanced down to your lips. Quirking a brow, you smirked.

“Don’t hold your breath, Darlin’.”

TAGS: @thanossexual

#the walking dead imagines #the walking dead imagine #the walking dead #negan imagine #badass reader #reader x negan #reader insert #walkerwords #twd imagines #twd pre season 7 #Simon #Arat #Saviors #walking dead fic #walking dead fanfic

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intubatedangel · 4 years ago

Text

Out of Body: Chapter 2

Sorry for taking so long to get back. A bad year followed straight after by a pandemic hasn’t been great, but i’m slowly getting back to my old self and another recent return inspired me to start trying to write a little bit more. I’ll be honest this part isn’t totally new, I did post it somewhere else around the time of the first chapter, but i noticed I hadn’t updated it on here. I’ll probably do a bit more on this story before going back to Anna Swifts stories. Anyway, it’s been nearly 2 years since chapter 1, so you might to check out the previous parts.

Prologue | Chapter 1 |

********

Once I was strapped down on the orange back board, my broken leg packed into a splint, Dave moved down to my feet, positioning himself to lift me into the ambulance. The cop was still compressing my chest as Jane squeezed another breath into my lungs. “After this round, we move. Grab the gear.” She said to the cop.

“27…28..29…30” The cop finished with a nod, immediately shifting back and pushing himself to his feet. Jane and Dave had already lifted me into the air. The cop hurried to pick up the monitor, the leads stretching close to their limit before he made up the ground.

I followed, too caught up in the rush to even notice when my legs passed through the wreckage of my bike. The ambulance doors stood open, the bright lights spilling out across the road. Keith was already standing there, even though I hadn’t seen him move.

“I think I’ve blown your mind enough for now. I’ll explain later.” He glanced down just in front of my chest. “Lifeline’s looking fragile. Best to stay close for now.”

He was right. The thread was thinner than before, more wispy. I climbed into the ambulance as the back board was slid onto the gurney. Jane took the monitor from the cop. “Drive.” She commanded as she placed the monitor in its dock. The cop hesitated for a moment, before Jane’s glare seemed to pierce right through him. He spun and headed for the cab, grabbing his radio, telling his partner what he was doing.

For a second, I was concerned about his partner, but realised that Patterson was not that stupid. His plan was in place. I would die, he would spin the story into a tragic accident and spread some tale of how he tried to save me and the people of the city would eat it up. Dave pulled the doors closed and took up position on my left, commencing compressions without Jane saying anything. She was hooking up a saline bag to the central IV, along with pushing in some syringes, and giving me regular breaths with the ambu bag. I sat down on the bench across from my feet, watching my sister as she danced her steth across my bruised chest.

***

In the bright light of the ambulance I could clearly see the deep purple, almost black, bruising fade through to the pallid grey tone of my flesh. After a cycle of compressions Dave grabbed a pair of shears and snipped off my bra. A smaller bruise was starting to form in the valley between my breasts. As soon as the cups were spread to either side, Dave’s blue gloved hands returned to their position and started thrusting down into me. I could see the wave of each compression translate through my abdomen and down my legs, my feet rocking gently despite the straps of the board and the leg splint.

Jane gave me another breath then grabbed her radio. “304 to control. We are en-route to City Hospital with an RTC, severe left chest trauma with collapsed lung, multiple limb fractures and currently in full cardiac and respiratory arrest. Resuscitation underway.” She didn’t wait for a reply as she gave me another breath the said to Dave. “One more round then I’ll intubate.”

There was a sudden rumbling as the cop brought the ambulances engine to life, followed by the sound of the sirens as the vehicle began to accelerate away from the scene. I glanced back to see Keith’s upper body sticking through the back door.

“Could you please not do that?” I asked. In response he shrugged and seemed to drift into the back of the ambulance.

“Sorry, you get used to it after a while.” He sat down beside me, careful to keep himself from interposing with Dave’s legs.

I shook my head, focusing my attention back on the efforts to save my life. Dave counted out each compression, then once he reached 30 he straightened up. Jane had already prepared the intubation kit. The neck brace already held my head in the proper position as she slid the blade of the scope into my mouth. She followed it up with a size 7 ET tube, pushing it down until only a few inches stuck out between my greying lips, and inflated the cuff. Tossing the mask from the ambu bag to one side, she attached the bag to the tube and gave me a few breaths as Dave listened to my lungs.

“You’re in, but I’m barely hearing anything on the left. Suction her out again.” He told her before looping the steth over his neck and restarting compressions. Jane simply nodded and disconnected the ambu bag, laying it next to my head. The suction tube was threaded down the tracheal tube and began to draw out more blood from my lungs. While the suction tube cleared my lungs, Jane taped the breathing tube securely, two thick strips going from each side of my chin, around the tube, and up onto my cheeks towards my studded ears.

The suction tube ran dry, so Jane pulled it out and resumed bagging while she studied the monitor. I leaned over to see what she was looking at. The line on the monitor was perfectly flat.

“Epi going in.” Jane said, hoping the drug would stimulate my heart into at least a shockable rhythm. She also attached an oximeter to the ring finger of my right hand. It was brief, but I noticed her squeeze my hand. Dave completed his most recent round of compressions, panting slightly, and turned to look at the monitor. The alarm changed from the persistent whine to something more two tone. “V-fib. That’s it sis, now come on back.”

“Sis?!” Dave exclaimed. “I figured you her but…”Jane didn’t answer, she just forced him out of the way, bringing the paddles down onto the orange squares. After a quick glance to make sure Dave was clear she pressed the buttons. The shock slammed through my chest, the straps of the backboard holding me down as muscles around my chest suddenly contracted. The only thing that didn’t react was my heart. “No change.” Dave said quietly.

Jane didn’t even look at him as her thumbs manipulate the other buttons on the paddles. “360. Stay back.” The defib signalled its readiness a moment before another shock jolted my body. The monitor began to whistle before I was even still. Jane cast the paddles aside, her professional façade starting to crumble as she began rapid, almost frantic compressions.

The way her body rocked over my chest I could finally see her aura clearly. The fear had grown, almost over-riding everything else. The anger was there, but different, not directed at me, but inward. The gold of determination was little more than a thread, and it was fading, as was my lifeline.

I looked at Keith. “Can’t you do something?”

He frowned, biting his lip. “I…”

“You can clearly do something. Please. Please do it.” I begged.

“It’s not so simple. It takes a lot of energy. I’ll need to return to my source. I won’t be able to guide you.”

“That won’t matter if I’m dead!” I had gotten to my feet, clipping through the gurney where my body rocked. Dave was bagging me with one hand, while his other held a penlight, running it over my eyes.

“Pupils are sluggish.” He said with a sigh.

Keith mirrored the paramedics sigh. “Ok. It’s not a guarantee, I can’t take control or give her any ideas. All I can do is reinforce an emotion. Then it’s up to her. Just stay close to yourself. I’ll find you when I can.”

I nodded and watched as he stepped up right behind her. He reached out, his hands on either side of her head. I tried to figure out what he was doing, but all I could see was the thin gold thread strengthening. It grew rapidly, crowding out the other emotions. As it grew, Jane’s compressions became steadier, her face more focused. Then, with a flash, Keith disappeared.

***

Jane, almost glowing with determination, finished her round of compressions and grabbed the orange gel pad from my left side. She ordered Dave to take over compressions as she started to root around in one of the cupboards.

“What are you doing?” He asked, as she placed a sterile cloth on the bench beside the ethereal me. She didn’t reply as she placed a scalpel, some gauze, a bottle of iodine and an uncuffed size 7 ET tube with a stylet on the cloth. “You aren’t planning on…”

She cut him off. “She needs a chest tube, or she dies.” Jane dabbed the gauze with iodine and began to spread it over the side of my chest.

“You’re not qualified Jane! We don’t even have the proper equipment!” He reached over for the ambu bag and squeezed it twice, before Jane shunted him to the side. “If you screw this up you’ll kill her!”

Jane turned on him, a blaze of anger, scalpel in hand. “She’s been down for 20 minutes Dave. We’re 10 away from the ER. She’s already dead, unless I do this. I won’t lose her too.” With that last whispered statement, she leaned down over my lifeless body and started using her fingers to count down my ribs. I didn’t realise I’d moved until I watched my ghostly hand pass through her shoulder.

“That wasn’t your fault.” I whispered, even though she couldn’t hear me. “You were 15.”

“4th intercostal space.” Jane muttered as she lowered the scalpel toward my flesh, her hand steady. With one smooth motion she sliced through the skin, a trickle of blood running down my side. She quickly sterilised her finger with the iodine and pushed through the hole, nodding to herself. She grabbed the tube and eased it in alongside her finger, keeping a close eye on the depth indicators along its length.

There was a sudden rush of blood into the tube, held in by the cap of the insertion stylet. “It’s in!” Jane shouted with a grin. She grabbed a carboard spit tray and held it underneath the end of the tube before pulling out the stylet. The blood flowed out of the tube for about 10 seconds, gradually slowing to a trickle. “Give her a breath.”

Dave squeezed the ambu bag my chest rising in response. When it did, it rose evenly. Jane let out a long breath. “That’s it Laura. Start compressions Dave.” He complied, beginning to press down on my battered chest once more. After a dozen compressions Jane clamped the chest tube to prevent it from drawing air back into my chest and began to prepare some more syringes of drugs. She scooted around Dave and pushed the drugs into my system.

Jane gently squeezed the ambu bag every few seconds, keeping one eye on my chest to make sure my lung inflated properly. Between each breath she looked at the monitor, whispering something to herself. After 2 rounds of 30 compressions she held up a hand. I leaned forward to get a look at the monitor. The previously flat trace bounced erratically, and an alarm blared in the confines of the ambulance.

“She’s back in Vfib!” She grabbed the paddles and twisted the dial to 360 as Dave replaced the second gel pad, placing it just beside the improvised chest tube. “I’m all charged, stand clear. Shocking!”

The shock hit my body, my chest convulsing. I fell still, and for a moment silence reigned. No monotone scream, no blaring alarm. Then there was a bleep. Followed by another. And another.

“Sinus! She’s back with us!” Jane exclaimed, her aura washing through with something that must have been happiness. Or relief. Then I felt a hard tugging on my entire ethereal body. I glanced at the lifeline, broad and practically buzzing with strength. Then it tugged on me again much harder, pulling me towards the broken but alive body on the gurney. I got one last look at Jane, a tear rolling off her cheek as she whispered into my ear, before everything went black.

#resus #resus writing #cardiac arrest #cpr #defib

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ariaadagio · 5 years ago

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TSSKSF (FEEI) update

Requisite disclaimers:

TSSKSF = The Super Secret Kitchen Sink Fic; it was my nickname for this thing when I didn’t have a title. The context being, my original concept for this fic was INSANE, there was so much shit going on. It was all that, and the kitchen sink. I’ve since pared down my original ambitions considerably—and subsequently came up with new ones—but I’m still looking at a 200k 250k word fic, at least. It’s plot dense.

FEEI = For Each Ecstatic Instant. The actual title! I finally thought of something that resonates with me! Yay!

No, this isn’t posted anywhere, yet. I don’t post WIPs if I can help it. This is just me chatting about my writing process and keeping you all in the loop :)

For those of you who are interested in following along, I’ve been creating a playlist for this story as I’ve written/speculated chapters (each chapter gets one song). You can listen to it here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4BCGSg4HLWvcPhadFyhywK?si=y9_WwNXRT5GWHhy-c3wcRQ. It’s moody and broody, and I’m enjoying listening to it when I’m out and about, unrelated to this story :)

For those of you who’ve been following along, I said last week I was hoping to have chapters 43-44 done by sometime this week, so I can slide the already written chapter 45 into the narrative. Huzzah! Goal met! I’m currently sitting at 238,955 words, 45 chapters, 47 planned. I’ve now got chapters 35-45 out for comments with my various betas.

That being said, there are some significant pacing issues I’ve noticed with this story, and my to-do list for editing is ... very long. This is something I haven’t talked about much as I’ve been posting my notes on my process, but, guys? This story has a LOT going on in it, and writing it has been a huge learning experience for me, not just because there’s so much subject matter I’ve never tried to tackle before, but because I’ve never actually juggled this many plots before. I’ve never written something with this kind of scope. The result: it hasn’t ended up with a traditional narrative structure (rising action -> climax -> denouement).

If you don’t know what this is, think Castaway. The main problem is introduced. Tension surrounding that problem multiplies and has little problem babies with more tension, and this reproduction keeps happening until you’re like OMFG I CANNOT BEAR IT PLEASE FIX THE PROBLEMS BEFORE I BURRRRST. And then the problems are fixed in a big climactic scene that puts your heart in your throat and sends your stomach on spin cycle. Then ... BLESSED RESOLUTION. Yaaaaaaay. And everybody breathes a collective sigh of relief. The narrative may linger in the “relief” phase for a while as it closes out various plot threads, but the tension never increases again. It’s bottomed out. The journey is done. Holy shit, we need a drink.

FEEI, doesn’t really have this narrative structure right now. Everything, all 239k words, serves an important function toward arriving at the conclusion, but without the “ohhh, now I get it!” benefit of hindsight, there are some big pockets of stagnancy (tension-wise, I mean; there’s still a ton happening in the story). And I’m not sure if that matters—if this even really needs to be fixed. I mean, sometimes, tradition exists to be bucked, but ... I definitely need time to figure out if this is one of those times. I need to think and regroup.

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve written the first few chapters (I did a lot of spec writing in July 2019 that didn’t get recorded in my Scrivener project), and I really want to tighten things up, get comments from my betas on everything I’ve written up to now, have a good long think, and refresh myself on previous developments, before diving into writing the final thrust that finishes this. So, this is me, officially embarking on my editing phase. I’m not sure how long it will take. I will still keep updating here as I continue.

Hopefully this doesn’t frustrate/disappoint you guys too much. It’s something that needs to be done, whether I’ve written the final chapters or not. And getting it done now also means, when I do finally write the last few chapters, the gap between finishing and posting my story will be a lot smaller. I did something similar when I was writing Castaway.

Chapter List:

#tssksf #aria writes #lucifer fanfiction #lucifer on netflix #deckerstar #stuckfic

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higgsinos · 5 years ago

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I may have solved whatever the hell is going on with Higgs’ forehead. And he’s more of a narcissist than we thought.

full post below the cut

So I like me some quantum physics, and I was reading this article on the Higgs mechanism (what are you gonna do, sue me(?)) and I noticed one of the equations looked very familiar...

Then it hit me. It’s literally exactly the same equation we see here.

And because I’m a weirdo who can’t let a discovery sit, I tried to find the rest of them in other papers and articles. Now let me preface this with a disclaimer: my interest in quantum physics has only been a thing for a couple of years now, and I’m by no means anything more than an amateur observer. However, I still gave it a stab and the results are somewhat unsurprising, but still interesting! Bear in mind that I have no physics qualifications, though, and I could have made a whole host of mistakes! Anyway, here’s the results of hours of my life spent researching the dumb writing on the funny video game man:

The smaller equations seem to exist only to define parts of the one at the top, which I think is intended to say something about the state of the whole universe in relation to the Higgs field... which wouldn’t surprise me, as the Higgs we know is pretty obsessed with making himself out to pervade the whole of the universe. He’s just spelling it out for us!

If you see anything I got wrong or have anything to add, please let me know! I put a fair bit of time into researching this and I’d love feedback of any kind!

tl;dr it looks like his forehead is just telling us about the scope of him ‘permeating all of existence’

#death stranding #higgs monaghan #this took so long please validate me

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Why Kid Cosmic Is About “People, Not Powers”

https://ift.tt/3an0ID5

This feature contains some spoilers for Netflix’s Kid Cosmic.

After exploring the stretches of space, wonder, and imagination in shows like Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and Wander Over Yonder, Craig McCracken returns to the realm of superheroes with Kid Cosmic, a more direct, comic book-esque take on the genre than his first smash hit show, The Powerpuff Girls.

The show stars Kid, a young boy who finds a set of superpowered stones, and from there, all heck breaks loose. In the midst of fighting waves upon waves of aliens and creatures from other worlds, however, is an earnest, realistic story about a boy dealing with grief, and the small town that unites behind him through it all.

Den of Geek got a chance to chat with Craig over email about the show, about what it means to be a superhero, and how Netflix allowed for Kid Cosmic to explore that in a more mature, “all ages” way that’s arguably beyond the scope of most animated kids shows.

Den of Geek: Kid Cosmic is about a kid who is so engaged in comic books that when a set of super-powered stones literally lands at his feet, he wants to be a real superhero, arguably at some pretty significant costs and risk. What influenced you to come up with this specific premise? How do you view this, and the serial, thematic nature of it, against the immense number of superhero based media in the world today?

Craig McCracken: I was inspired by the supreme confidence that kids have at that age. I, like a lot of kids, dreamt of being a superhero when I was young, and in my fantasies I was always amazing and really good at it. I had that same confidence with my drawing when I was young. I drew all the time, I studied every cartoon and comic I could get my hands on, and I had the passion to do the job. I couldn’t understand why I had to grow up and go to art school before I could have that career, I was ready for the job at 12!

The answer was that I wasn’t good enough yet, I had way more to learn (still do!). So I took that personal childhood experience with my drawing and applied it to superpowers instead. The thing that I feel sets Kid Cosmic apart from other hero-based media is that it’s focused less on epic hero mythologies and more on the smaller human stories. In writing the series we always reminded ourselves it’s about the people not the powers.

Style wise, the show is heavily indebted to the classic comic book/serial look. The framing and storyboarding; the uses of fonts in the credits; the nifty end cards with the characters on fake comic books. One thing I’ve noticed, specifically, is that the movements at points were jumpy, as if frames were missing. Was that a conscious choice? Do you think that adds to the look and feel you’re going for?

A lot of the choices that we made in Kid were based on the fact that these are real people in the real world, they aren’t cartoon characters. So with the animation we avoided overly smooth and flowy actions or lots of squash and stretch, things that you associate with “cartoons.” If an action felt natural on 3s or 4s we kept it.

New Mexico as a setting is an inspired choice. There’s something freeing about its wide expanse of desert, but also terrifying in its (from a kids’ perspective) unexplored nothingness. How do you think the setting reflects the themes?

It’s not specifically New Mexico but sort of a generic rural southwest desert vibe. It could be New Mexico, it could be California, it could be Arizona, basically it’s a remote enough place where a spaceship could crash and not a lot of people would know about it. The other thing that is nice about the desert is that it forces you to tell a story about the characters because there is no surrounding environment for the characters to get distracted by, it’s a flat empty stage to play in. It’s also alone in the middle of nowhere, sort of like Earth is in the greater universe.

This is, relatively speaking, darker than most kids animated shows. It has pretty brutal alien deaths, and while they’re dispatched in unique ways (colorful blood, “de-rezzing” out of existence), they’re still a bit more intense then what’s usually out there. How was Netflix in responding to this? Do you feel there may be a kind of commentary here on how sensitized kids may be to the kind of violence they witness in superhero comics and films?

Again that’s the reality creeping in, even though there is fantastic stuff happening, Kid Cosmic doesn’t take place in a fantasy world. Danger exists, the stakes are high. This just increases Kid’s struggle and makes it more real. At the beginning, Netflix said this isn’t specifically a “kid’s show” it’s an all ages show that can be watched by young viewers, families, animation fans, anybody. So from their perspective, anything that you might see in a big summer superhero movie was fair game.

I want to talk about the Kid himself, who, to be blunt, is a lot to handle in the first few episodes. The approach seems to be that the Kid needs to learn a lesson about humility and what it means to be a “true hero.” But I’m also fascinated by his tragic backstory. It’s portrayed vaguely, but hints at his motivation. Do you feel that keeping the specifics of what happened to the Kid at arms’ length works to prop up the theme?

I wanted to tell a story about a real kid and kids at that age aren’t perfect. They make mistakes, they may be a bit intense or selfish and are hard to deal with sometimes. It’s part of growing up and maturing. Often heroes for young viewers are portrayed as aspirational. They always do and say the right things. I wanted Kid to be more realistic and relatable.

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As far as his backstory goes, my father passed away when I was 7 so what motivates Kid to want to be a hero is very close to me. We felt he should have a more sincere motivation in wanting to be a hero other than it would be fun and cool. It had to come from a real place and losing his parents and wanting to stop bad things from happening felt more true. Keeping that part of the story at arms’ length was a way to keep the overall tone of the season balanced. Even though Kid carries this real and heavy weight around with him, we didn’t want it to drag down the overall fun and energetic tone of the series.

Stuck Chuck is portrayed as the Kid’s conscious – specifically, his self-doubt, his frustrations, his lies. Can you go into more about the conception of this character?

Frank Angones, who I did early Kid development with, and I are both huge Buckaroo Banzai fans and we were talking about a scene that got cut out where after the Lectroid ship was destroyed Buckaroo found some random Red Lectroids left behind who forgot to get on the ship. We thought the idea of having to deal with random aliens was hilarious. So we applied that to Stuck Chuck, and what started out as a joke turned into an absolutely essential character. Chuck is not only a constant threat to Kid’s life but he is a constant threat to his confidence. He’s like an anti-Jiminy Cricket and is one of my favorite characters in the show.

Later in the season, there’s a big twist in who the real villains are, and in the process, the depiction of superheroic antics are pushed up to a ridiculous degree. It almost feels like a winking satire of the whole “Space Force” thing. Was that intentional? Do you think there’s a tension that exists between the depiction of superheroes and their connection, however tenuous, to a military aggressiveness that merits more discussion?

I get asked that a lot, but I came up with Earth Force Enforcement Force long before Space Force. Aggressiveness is the right word. As a fan of superheros I’m tired of being told dark stories about heroes more focused on fighting and winning wars than actually helping the innocent victims of those conflicts. I miss good guys that are actually “good guys.”

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The ending, to keep things vague, is a pretty sudden transition from the initial premise. If granted a season 2, what other themes would you explore? Do you think you’ll be able to keep a solid grasp on the true nature of superheroics, if you place them in a new setting where over-the-top superheroics would be necessary?

We want to explore other ideas of what it really means to be a hero. If season 1 was “heroes help” what other aspects are essential to be a hero? So we plan on exploring that idea but through the experience of some of the other characters. Namely how does a teenage waitress from Earth suddenly lead a team of regular people to save the universe? Again it’s about the people, not the powers.

The post Why Kid Cosmic Is About “People, Not Powers” appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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