#so while in their original universe the relationship has had literal books to play out... these one-shot fics are like “OK HERE'S THE GIST”
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Late night mush-brained I-really-need-to-edit-this-draft-because-this-is-probably-all-way-too-much-irrelevant-information late night thoughts
#deedoo thoughts#deedoo original#meme#memes#writing meme#writing humor#writing memes#whump meme#whump memes#whump humor#humor#Idk man recently I've been on a kick#The problem is that technically this is all AU fanfic of other long-established OCs of mine#so while in their original universe the relationship has had literal books to play out... these one-shot fics are like “OK HERE'S THE GIST”#but the gist is long#oh well this is a first draft and this is why I edit as much as I can before I post#hoping that after I sleep this doesn't sound as rambly to me as it does rn#also to be clear I love my readers!!!#I just feel like I myself am like “wow Deedoo shut up this backstory isn't why the people are here!!”#and yet I cannot shut up
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Why Greta Gerwig should adapt The Magician’s Nephew instead of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
I had some thoughts. They are below the cut in list form
Something we Haven’t Been Shown Before- to put it bluntly, we already have a perfectly good adaptation of TLTWATW, and it’s probably as good and accurate an adaptation as you could ask for. There are a few minor details that got cut and added, but honestly, as far as book-to-movie adaptations go, it’s extremely faithful to the plot, themes, characters, the whole shebang of the original book. Even if you don’t count the live action movie, there’s still the animated movie, the BBC production, and several play adaptations out there. It’s had its time to shine and by adapting The Magician’s Nephew, we’d be getting something fresh from the franchise.
Equally Accessible Starting Point- while TLTWATW was the first Narnia book to be written and published, chronologically The Magician’s Nephew takes place before it, serving as both a prequel and standalone story so that newcomers to Narnia could get into the series with either book. C S Lewis himself said that it didn’t matter which one people chose to start with, so it would serve as a great entry point for anyone looking to get into the Chronicles of Narnia as well as provide an interesting prequel for people familiar with the movies that already came out, leading me to my next point:
Worldbuilding- this book has so much cool stuff you guys. The pool world, Charn, the apple grove, the rings, Frank. ¡Actual literal worldbuilding! Also Sherlock Holmes and Atlantis for some reason. There’s just a lot of really interesting concepts and locations in this story that have the potential to be a true spectacle while also serving as a rewarding expansion of the universe that Narnia fans know that newcomers will still be able to appreciate.
Our Heroes- Digory and Polly are incredibly adorable and likable protagonists. They feel a good deal more fleshed out and realistic than the Pevensie kids in the books, and even though the movies went out of their way to give them some more depths, our dynamic duo from The Magician’s Nephew still feel quite distinctive in their own right. Their interpersonal conflict never grows as deep as something like, say, Edmund’s betrayal, but they both have different perspectives and things they bring to the table as individuals while also having a very fun, genuine friendship. Bonus points for being a rare boy/girl relationship that is never so much as hinted to be anything beyond platonic.
The Villains- The Magician’s Nephew has a pretty perfect combination of antagonists who manage to be memorable and legitimately menacing as well as pathetic little meow meows. This book gives us Jadis’ backstory as well as her getting to wreak unhinged havoc in downtown 18XX London as well as Uncle Andrew, a conspiracy theorist incel Redditor before Reddit was ever a thing. They’re delightfully entertaining in completely different ways, and seeing them onscreen would be an absolute treat.
Thematic Resonance- lots of things that happen in this book carry a lot of similar motifs to other films that Greta Gerwig has worked on, and since she hasn’t really created any epic fantasy style films yet, they could provide a strong emotional core to center any experimentation she tries out in the genre. You’ve got Digory’s loving but complicated relationship with his mother due to her illness displacing them from home, the coming-of-age aspects as the children encounter various adult figures they feel powerless to oppose, and learning the consequences of one’s actions. It’s even mentioned in the book that Polly is working on a little writing project that she’s sensitive about, like Jo March. A lot of people have complained that they feel Greta Gerwig will neuter the story by toning down the religious elements (which there is A LOT to dissect about concerning how C S Lewis’ beliefs led to things like the Problem of Susan, but there just isn’t enough information about the actual movie out yet to draw any actual conclusions) yet I’d argue that these emotional arcs, which play into Gerwig’s strengths as a director, could easily hold up a movie on their own if handled well. Combine that with the potential for unique visuals, the book’s surprisingly good sense of humor, and the many concepts that could be brought onscreen in a truly unique way, and you’ve practically got a recipe for a great addition to the Chronicles of Narnia unlike anything the movie fans have gotten before.
Feel free to disagree about any of that, though. Hearing where other people think the netflix movies should pick up would be really interesting, so leave any thoughts on the subject in the notes if you want. I just wanna see Fledge the pony accidentally get yanked into another dimension.
#narnia#chronicles of narnia#the chronicles of narnia#the lion the witch and the wardrobe#the magician’s nephew#greta gerwig#digory kirke#polly uhhhh#fuck i can’t remember if polly even has a last name#to be perfectly honest i think netflix will just adapt tltwatw because that’s the most famous one#but this was my favorite book and dammit more people need to know about polly and digory
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Hey, 343. We call "expanded universes" that for a reason.
It also hurt for those of us who actually LIKED Fireteam Osiris and saw potential in the characters. Halo 5 sets up a neat "Brothers in Arms" relationship between Chief and Locke like Chief had with Arbiter in 3, maybe even a little bit of Master & Apprentice, with Locke standing to learn a lot in the days and battles to come from the much older and more experienced Master Chief. But then the next game comes and... wait where is everyone? 343 wants me to buy more books?! A lot of fans already had to buy half a library's worth just to grock Halo 5, and here's 343 repeating that mistake again!
The Halo games really have just become a means by which 343 plugs the Halo novels. "There's a book that explains that" is the constant refrain I hear these days. No. I WANT THE GAMES TO EXPLAIN IT. The games are the only thing literally EVERY Halo fan buys. EXPLAIN IT IN THE GAMES.
I will give the audio logs in Infinite SOME credit for answering SOME questions I had, but mostly it was used to introduce irrelevant subplots that actually WOULD be better as a novel. Escharum doing his damnedest to keep the ragtag and ill-fitting family that are the Banished together with the disappearance of his protege Atriox, a warrior who was like a son to him, knowing full well he doesn't have Atriox's charisma and he can't maintain the cult of personality Atriox cultivated at the core of the Banished in the same way? Or a fireteam of Spartans, feeling lost and surviving without any real support, realizing that they'll likely die one way or another, deciding to risk it all on a single desperate all-or-nothing Hail Mary attempt at cutting the head off the snake, only to fail, with their only monument being their broken bodies, and their armor that Chief has to scavenge for gear with little if any knowledge of what happened to his comrades? These are plots TAILOR MADE for a spin-off novel. But instead a HUGE CHUNK of the total audio logs gets devoted to this kind of stuff, instead of explaining where Blue and Osiris are, if they survived, and setting up a reunion in a later story — you know, something actually relevant to Master Chief's story that connects with the plot players are already familiar with.
I get that 343 wants the Halo Universe to feel like this big connected thing while keeping the "mysterious" feel of the original trilogy, but for 343 that takes the form of locking players out of the loop: deny the players critical information necessary to understanding characters or the plot (even if the players can operate without that information) and then demand they cough up $8-15 a pop to gain access to that information (or just wait until Halopedia editors inevitably do). What they keep forgetting is that the original trilogy told players everything they needed to know as the game naturally progressed. The Bungie novels were interesting and sundry, but nothing they related was essential — not even The Fall of Reach (often considered the most important book in the expanded universe) was necessary to understand anything in the games proper. And then, when Bungie actually made a GAME about Reach, they made a point to showcase a separate cast of characters on a different part of the planet, playing a different role in the battle, with an entirely different team dynamic, all for the express purpose of keeping it so that the book wasn't essential to understanding what was going on. That's the secret that 343 just doesn't get: keep the books interesting, but keep them at arm's length — the GAME should tell the players everything they need to know.
More than game mechanics or graphics, if 343 can learn to tell stories in the games the way Bungie did, and learn to keep the books away from the games, then that alone will MASSIVELY improve Halo's appeal and bring back much of what was lost.
#video games#halo#halo infinite#343 industries#halo 5#halo 4#halo reach#the fall of reach#master chief#spartan locke#Bungie#expanded universe#blue team#fireteam osiris#the arbiter#microsoft game studios
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omg im the tsc anon, i literally sent it cause i knew from the past aftg opinions you shared - you'd likely feel similarly to the way i did about tsc
neil outshines jean to such a shocking degree when he only has a handful of scenes... neil is a fantastic protagonist so ofc it's hard to live up to, but come on 😭 jean has such a weaker personality imo? he does/says less interesting things, but also has a less interesting perspective on things. his lack of standing up for himself when the trojans badgered him constantly and talked behind his back bothered me to. can u imagine neils reaction if the foxes had been sharing his secrets over a group chat?
but just in general. tsc felt like a sanitised version of aftg, if that makes sense? scrubbed clean of the controversial and unconventional aspects. and it's those aspects that, in my opinion, played a huge part in what made aftg so good. noras a very talented writer, but i can not comprehend the decision to make tsc... all that it was, yknow? it feels almost like it was written for the 'andreil say ily' part of the fandom...
neil really saved this book for me icl. outsider pov of him is fascinating. and while andrew barely said/did anything even when he was there, i actually kinda liked that? it puts into perspective how ig off-putting andrew can appear to those who don't put in the effort with him. 'creepy little goalkeeper' is so funny and so accurate, he IS a creepy little goalkeeper and i love that for him.
idk, some things i had anticipated - the trojans being who they are were never going to match the foxes. jeremy x jean was never going to match andreil (and ive seen ppl comparing them already... the blasphemy.) but there were things i was surprised weren't there. i had expected kevin and jeans relationship to be a lot more tense ig? i had thought jean would harbor a MUCH deeper resentment towards kevin, but i suppose its just not his character? but when i was reading, i couldn't help asking what would the fan reaction had been if that had been the case? if kevin and jeans past relationship, and places in a cult hierarchy, had shown through in a much uglier and uncomfortable way? i can see why she didn't do that, i don't even necessarily want that, i think i was just desperate for this book to have some sort of deep conflict between the characters.
on the subject, kevin felt quite different from how he was in aftg. but i can't quite put my finger on why.
anyway, it is nice to see someone else have mixed feelings towards the book. i enjoyed it, but i was shocked how many people seemed to really love it. not because it was bad. but because, to me, it was so fundamentally different from aftg.
thank you for sharing your thoughts! i suspected you might have written me bc i used to be the resident notorious contrarian of the fandom lol
yeah neil is a textbook example of a protag who drives the plot forward, he has that main character energy which jean totally lacks which makes sense since jean was originally a minor side character. at the same time the differences in their characterization make complete sense in universe due to the different ways they were brought up and the different trauma they faced. so it all comes down to each reader's personal preference: for me, neil's arc is a self-indulgent power fantasy. i think i have a strong sense of self and when i can't achieve something it's due to circumstances so far out of my control it's impossible to overcome them. it's therefore very satisfying to read about neil facing impossible odds and winning thanks to the sheer force of his personality, whereas jean's way of dealing with trauma feels less fun by comparison. but other readers can relate to him more and all the power to them. i do however think tsc does a disservice to its new characters by opening with a rather lengthy recap of how cool the foxes were in the last act of tkm and closing on a chapter where neil comes along and reminds us who the real hero of this story is🤷♀️
i don't think tsc has been entirely scrubbed clean of controversial aspects - i saw plenty of reviews complaining about the amount of dark content (in book 4 of a series known for its dark content, le gasp) - but i do think the handling of certain things was less nuanced than in aftg. for instance, both stories have a plot bit about someone unknowingly exposing a character to their abuser which leads to them being retraumatized (jean himself comments on the similarities between drake and grayson). in aftg that someone is nicky - a person andrew knows and trusts, a person the readers grew to care about (lol not me but certainly some other readers) - so his role in the tragic sequence of events is that much more upsetting. rape and abuse is terrible but the fact that a person who means well can exacerbate the issues bc they don't have the framework to understand the other person - that hits so much harder for me personally. so in the end drake is just an evil rapist but nicky is a much more nuanced character bc through him nora questions whether being nice and having good intentions is enough, whose feelings should be centered on in such a complex situation, whose emotional needs should be prioritized etc. by contrast, in tsc that person is lucas - someone we basically just met, who is nothing more than an antagonistic stranger to jean and who we therefore don't care about. which is why when he leads grayson to jean it's like, first of all, duhh. but secondly, bc it happens against the backdrop of the other ("good") trojans' cheerfully patronizing attitude it doesn't come so much as a shocking twist that puts the ways how we deal with complex trauma into an unconventional perspective than as a culmination of everyone disrespecting jean's boundaries all the time - which is likely what nora intended but the overall constellation feels much less interesting to me.
ig this ties into your point about the book lacking the kind of deep conflict aftg had - but maybe that was intentional too, maybe it's supposed to be aftg light in that sense, sort of a post canon character study fic. which i am not opposed to, not everything has to be high plot and tension and grey morality, but unfortunately the emotional core the story relies on in the absence of the plot just didn't work for me. i can accept jean's "weaker" personality, i can understand him not being able to stand up for himself even tho i can't admire it, but i draw the line at how forced his friendship with jeremy and the girls ended up feeling. like, i still can't get over cat's sex toy joke right on the heels of jean being badgered into admitting he had been sexually abused - the info which jeremy promptly spilled to the girls. if something like that happened to me i would never be able to trust these people again, much less call them friends so soon. it's such a bizarre contrast between how neil joining the monsters in tfc despite their problematic initiation rituals feels valid bc the narrative earned it both plot-wise (we're now facing a bigger enemy together) and character-wise (neil pushing back, talking about why they did it, nicky apologizing) on the one hand - and how jean accepting jeremy, cat and laila as his new friends feels rushed and artificial despite them being so very nice and domestic and wholesome on the other hand. idk maybe it's bc i'm inherently skeptical about disingenuous cozy/hopepunk subgenres in modern lit bc they usually have a darker underbelly people are loath to confront but ngl the words sanitized and conventional did come to mind while reading and so did the idea that tsc will especially appeal to a certain subset of fans which found the (at times uncomfortable) complexity of the original trilogy too much to handle. well, i hope they're enjoying their fantasy of healing a survivor of cptsd by cooking and shopping and hugs - i certainly got to enjoy mine in aftg, there's plenty to go around lol
besides, tsc being so different/separate from aftg makes it really easy to just not engage with the fan content and discussions if it starts feeling like they veer into the annoying territory too much. tbh my primary concern when tsc was announced was that it could contain some retcons about andreil and aftg which i wouldn't agree with - and that didn't happen, my boys are still very much in character, so i can just retreat to my enclosure and leave tsc to jean stans who are its main target audience in any case.
#aftg ask#aftg mine#book tag#all of this makes me want to reread aftg#neil is The Best#but the absence of andrew was felt acutely#like#if you think jeremy is a better or more interesting love interest we can't be friends lol#where's the finesse where's the showmanship#anyways#i'm also wondering about people's reaction to how the trojans are a queer friend group - almost to the point of caricature??#idk how i feel about that#if anyone wants to share their thoughts on that i'd love to read them
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I forget.. how exactly did Tim become Robin again? Was it only because Damian left? Or something else?
There wasn't really a reason given for it in-universe. It was a gradual transition that played out over the course of a few different story lines and like five years.
What really happened, I think, is that the New52 attempted revision of Tim Drake was violently rejected by the fan-base, one of the clearest and most obvious reactions of "fuck no that's not our boy" in that whole mess of an attempted universe reset. And a big part of that stemmed from their total re-haul of his personality, motivations, backstory, and superhero career to insist that he was never Robin, he'd only ever been Red Robin, supposedly to "honor" Jason, because frankly somebody behind the scenes was sucking Jason's dick hardcore and dragging other characters under the bus to do it.
Thing is, DC always has a tendency to underestimate how popular Robin actually is because there's a certain mindset of straight white male comic book creator who's under the delusion belief that only straight white men like him read superhero comics. But Robin has always been popular with women and queer people. It's why Dick Grayson is the most sexualized man in comics, why Jason Todd exploded in popularity after they hired one of the Supernatural guys to voice him in the animated movie, why New Teen Titans could save DC in the 80s by being an unapologetic teen soap opera, heck, it's even the origin of the infamous Seduction of the Innocent "Batman and Robin are gay" claims, but that's another post.
Point is, New 52!Tim got a lot of backlash, so he was one of the things they focused on when they started dialing that back. To compound things, while Damian does have a fandom, he's not really popular as Robin, not Bruce's Robin anyway. Most of his popularity comes either from his relationship with Dick, or from Super Sons, which calls him Robin but treats him narratively as only "The Son of Batman" -- he could be called literally anything else and it wouldn't change the dynamic. And the thing is that you really kinda need a proper Robin to tell good long-term Batman stories. Even the animate series only kept him solo for a single season.
So they gradually nudged Tim back into his place. First came Rebirth with Batman Eternal where they were still calling him "Red Robin" but the only non-Robin thing about him was the extra "R" on his costume, he still looked and acted and filled the role of Robin in every other extent. And, more importantly, they had some measure of his original personality coming back.
Then he encountered with an explicit version of his pre-Flashpoint self (Titans Tomorrow!Batman) that starting bringing back memories of the timeline that everybody preferred, including all the Young Justice friends that people who'd rejected the New 52 Teen Titans were desperately missing, and he went off into Bendis's YJ run and just, started calling himself Robin again.
And then it just, stuck. Because it works, because they were bringing back the old status quo that the fandom preferred, because Tim is well-suited to the role they needed in the narrative, and because he's just the kind of guy who would go, "Huh, that very important job is not being done and nobody seems to see how important it is, somebody should take care of that" and then just, do it.
It's kinda how he got the gig in the first place.
#dc comics asks#tim drake#robin#batman#bat family#I think I've answered this before so it got a little rambly#longish post#meta#also! when Tim got his coming out story it was a big freaking deal SPECIFICALLY because he was Robin#they got a LOT of free press from that story and I mean A LOT#It was Men's Health Magazine. It was on NPR.#that's a lot of good word of mouth right there they weren't going to waste it by changing his codename and confusing people
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Ahhhhhh, YES!!!
There has been an essay lying in my draft for so long, yet this one here is perfectly written. I think the draft drawer can be the tomb for my wordy scribble now, just let me carve its gravestone.
| Rambling thoughts on Gale's relationship with Mystra
If there's anything I would like to add on top of the already elaborated and well-illustrated picture: aside from all the chosen's boons, Mystra's love must have given an intoxicating vanity boost for the 'proud as a peacock' wizard. Imagine how he humbled all his rivals and made them envious, with the goddess's hands on his shoulder... That certainly felt GOOD. I personally have never thought of Gale as a 100% innocent victim. Nor do I see Mystra as too much of a person; while her capacity for sentimentality is unknown, she is a blend of the natural spirit of the universe, an once-human thousand-year-old deity (who shed tears and could be emotional at times), and another once-kindhearted-human, young goddess. I see it more as Gale was dating a sentient sun, or talking wind, or conscious dark matter, just in a dress, with long hair and boobs. To think Mystra's command was never about Gale's life. What she wanted has always been the destruction of the Absolute and Karsus's Crown. After all, how much could a perished mortal means to the universe? In Gale's introduction, he uses 'miscalculation' to describe his folly, and the way he talks about Mystra in the cursed land... I believe Gale knows his goddess and probably (at least to some extent) wasn't unaware of the risks he was taking by 'seeking to cross her boundary.' He was playing with the fire of a goddess, and he KNEW. What he didn't know is the truth about the orb and therefore he lost. Everything.
A conversation between player and Gale. I do suspect Gale is designed as an Icarus-coded Karsus's successor. I ponder how his attempt for the orb went unnoticed by Mystra, when reading Karsus's book is a firework to Elysium. Did she allow his folly to happen? Or perhaps something the orb did?
Mystra even let her little butterfly (I am in love with the metaphor. That's how Mystra sees him, isn't it?) bargained and offering the cure if he manages to serve her well. She was willing to let all the bad blood be bygone after all had happened...Gale DID think about killing her, or at least challenging her when he learned about the crown. I would say she does adore him and was in a forgiving mood.
In BG3, I think Larian originally wanted to portray Mystra as a 'reward,' a hard-earned one. I didn't feel she was a fickle, cold-blooded goddess in my gameplay; in fact, I found her quite tolerating, despite I was only ever romancing Gale or playing as Gale. I was surprised when I finished my uninfluenced, vanilla runs, went online, and figured out how much hatred there is towards her. Maybe it's because the ex-lover part triggers a lot of feelings and expectations?
Sidenote: This just gets me thinking, how many have struggled in this fantasy world, and their prayers have never been answered. To hear Wyll saying "Mystra wants to meet Gale? Impressive. The only thing a god has ever offered me is a cold shoulder." To hear Asarion saying he tried every divine, and "None of them answered"—for two. hundred. years... Wyll wouldn't even look at whatever good deal Mizora pulled out from under her dress; if Tyr ever made an offer. What wouldn't Helsin do if Silvanus offered to cure the cursed land? Shadowheart was promised by her goddess with the 'blessing' of amnesia and pain...(and a spear and some powerful abilities of course)
Yet Gale is the one who gets to bargain, pout and plead while he knows the goddess, the universe herself, is listening because he is literally seeing her and having a conversation. I do think he is the beloved one by fate. His fall hurts so tragically because he was once standing so high, close enough to reach the stars. But most have never dared to imagine even the possibility of attaining the height, because they are too occupied struggling in the puddle...
Note[1]: A very interesting post pointing out how Gale could be Icarus-coded. His last name Dekarios even sounds like the combination of Daedalus (Icarus's father) and Icarus. Sus. ↀ ↀ
Note[2]: A beautiful post/idea about what if Gale and Mystra was attracted to each other because he could make her human, once again like in the old time...offff thinking of it gives me feelings...
Note[3]: With all being said, it doesn't mean I love the wizard any bit less. Quite the contrary, I am so amazed and in love with the depth of his backstory! All the multifaceted layers only ever made him my favorite character in the game, really.
What a successful character to trigger so much thoughts and feelings. Good job to Larian!
Thoughts on the thunder wizard again.
Genuinely, I find Gale's relationship with Mystra to be fascinating when you consider all its facets. Unhealthy, imbalanced, definitely poisonous, but also very, very intricate with a lot of blurred edges to it. One of those things where you're both like "wow, what the hell, that's horrible" but also "that makes perfect sense for their characters, and while I would NEVER, I know why they would, and why it happened."
You've got a wizard who doesn't know what real love is, who thinks he's finally being shown it by the person he adores most. His greatest fantasy, his most potent joy, his most heartfelt aspirations, and they were all offered to him.
And he wants to see what all she's hiding from him, because of course he does. She's the keeper of all things forbidden to him. The empire of Netheril reached magical heights that will never be touched again, and all that knowledge is beyond her curtain. She loves him, right? Surely, if he proves himself enough, she'll let him grasp that power he so desperately wants.
And not even in the power-hungry sense! All that magic Mystra's locked up was accessible during Mystryl's reign. Think of all the answers to theories about the universe that are back there. Every question of "can this be done, and what would it do" would be answered, if he could just bargain hard enough.
She loves him, right?
Surely, if he proves himself enough...
And then, on the other hand, Mystra. Once Midnight, her human personality has been subsumed by the goddess of magic and her duty to the Weave. She has a responsibility to magic, she IS magic.
Then along comes this mortal boy who knows how to handle her Weave. Who doesn't try to wrestle with and dominate, who sings to it. He handles it with such ease and grace—it's not just that he could be Chosen, but he deserves it. To put her Weave in the hands of someone so intrinsically in tune with it, who understands its potential with a wonder like no other. Few enough can handle the raw power that comes with being Chosen, but this one? This one is perfect.
And he adores you. And you adore him, like one would a beautiful butterfly that's landed on their finger. And he's willing to be devoted to you in all things, not out of transaction like most of your worshipers are, but out of love for you, your craft, your magic. You're so deeply and utterly charmed by him.
And it's not like Mystra hasn't walked this path before.
She gives him what he desires, because what he desires is her. And, in a different way, she desires him. She wants him to be her representation in the world. She indulges his adoration with her own presence, and takes indulgence herself in mortal comforts. He's never satisfied with her answers, but who could blame him? She keeps a whole world away from mortals, because she knows what such unfettered power might bring about (again).
And the wizarding prodigy's ambition is lit (again).
And the height of power is reached for (again).
And she stops him (again, again, again).
She does care for him. She doesn't want to see her little butterfly burn himself, and she doesn't want to be the one to ruin those wings.
But then he's not a butterfly. He's a mortal, wielding a weapon of murder, of her murder, and he's brought it to her doorstep because she told him "no." And he's cut himself on it, he doesn't know what it is, but it's hurt him—and it's only a fraction of the hurt it could do to her. How dare he want her help after threatening her?
(He didn't mean to.)
(He only wanted to help.)
(He only wanted. How human.)
She doesn't help him. If he wants to pursue Karsus' weaponry, it's his responsibility, his hubris, that led him to injuring himself on it. She's furious. She's hurt. She's cold.
(What fools these mortals be.)
But then, there's a greater threat to her. Something that could drown the Material in Karsus' failings. And that little boy, who nicked himself on the sword he lifted, still wants her help.
It's a fair trade, isn't it? She'll forgive him, let him into her domain again, if he accepts his punishment and goes into battle for her. He picked up a sword, it's appropriate that he learns to use it in her name, right?
If he was telling the truth, he wouldn't hesitate. If he really wanted to serve her with the Netherese Orb, he would jump at the opportunity to do so. He would have to give up a few petty things in the process, ("petty," she calls mortality, as if family and home mean nothing, as if friends and love are finite. Because to her, they do mean nothing. Because to her, they are finite.) but it isn’t atonement without sacrifice, is it?
It's the tactical move. She's not above hurting one man to save a nation. It's not even the first time she's done it.
(Dornal Silverhand sends his regards.)
If he loves her, he'd die for her, because she'd let him into her paradise. If he doesn't love her, he won't, and she was justified in removing him from her grace.
He doesn't love her. Not anymore.
Does he hate her enough to try to take his dues?
Ambition has always been man's greatest folly.
#gale of waterdeep#galeology#not mine#this is it#Thank you OP#yes yes yes yes yes#Especially love the line: “He sings to it”#beautifully precise#Excellent post#bg3 spoilers#bg3#bg3 datamine
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Noble children are fostered from the ages of seven to maturity at 16 or so. In no human hands to touch Morgause says "The seven-year-old I had fought with and beaten and solaced regarded me through the poised and guarded gaze of the young man." I would assume that Artos send Medraut away to be fostered shortly after the birth of his own legitimate children. The story starts with the sentence "WHEN MEDRAUT STEPPED OFF the merchants’ ship I had not seen him since Artos, his father the high king, had taken him from me at ten" Did he spend only three years with her? It would certainly explain his defiance and kindness. Had he been his whole childhood with her he would have been to brainwashed and felt not the level of loyality to his father he does right now.
Ok. Guys. Storytime.
I gotta tell you. I originally read "the winter prince" in the year 2000. My first copy of "the winter prince" was a library copy, and then, because I read it so many times, I asked my mom to buy me a copy, which she did. And that's the copy I've had ever since.
Then, in the year 2020, during the pandemic, I was like, to my wife, hey, since we're bored, do you want to read this really short book with me, I remember being really into it as a child. And so we read it together, and I was like "lol I guess this book was more fundamental to my development than I thought it was", and so I started pulling it apart, like ya do.
And it was only then that I discovered that Liz had written more entries into this universe. I found the first couple of pages of the first "lion hunter" book online, didn't like it, and so just completely wrote it and everything else re: "books liz wrote after the original book" out of my mind
This is all to say, I had to look up "no human hands to touch". I didn't know it existed until literally right now. I am not interested in reading it. I am not interested in any part of this story other than the original book that I unwisely imprinted upon as a child. Ironically, I don't think Liz herself is interested in the original entry of this series, seeing as she appears to play it very loosey-goosey with the original chronology and themes in the subsequent books.
Now, regarding your interpretation of this timeline:
I don't think it makes sense for artos to have raised medraut between the ages of birth and 7. Morgause would have birthed him, so she would be the obvious one to keep him, especially if artos was as ashamed of his bastard-by-incest as he appears to be. Morgause's seduction of artos and then her subsequent reveal that she is his sister is probably what got her put into permanent exile in the first place.
I also don't think there is evidence to support medraut being sent away for fostering after artos took him in at age 10. We know lleu and goewin grew up with him in the household. We know that lleu wrote to him for 5-6 years while medraut was sent around europe and Africa, and he wouldn't have done that if his brother were a stranger to him.
I do think you are underestimating the amount of damage that can be psychologically inflicted upon a child within the first 10 years of life. Medraut was viciously tortured, beaten, burned, ostracized from Morgause's entire household. He had no relationship with any of Morgause's other children except to be beaten for infractions they caused. His only positive relationship in that house was with Morgause, his torturer, who was also the only person who would lovingly comfort him after he had sustained her tortures. Like, I don't think I can overstate how fucked up that can make a child.
The next ten years of his life he spends with artos, who is never loving to him, but who is also just, calm, consistent, and fair. Artos has him cared for and educated, and while Medraut is never legitimized, he is allowed to be a part of Artos' household.
It is not difficult to imagine why medraut would feel safety with his father and loyalty toward him, while still at the same time craving his mother's approval. I don't think this is a farfetched psychology to ascribe to a man.
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CHARACTER INFORMATION:
**CHARACTER NAME:** Howl Pendragon (real name Howell Jenkins)
**KNOWN ALIAS'**: Wizard Howl, Jenkin the Sorcerer, Heartless Howl, Howl the Heart Eater, Sylvester Oak, Malcom Orion Blackwell, Wizard Pendragon, he literally has fifty million of them please kill me
**CHARACTER FACECLAIM:** Jamie Campbell Bower aka that fuck from twilight
**CHARACTER AGE/DOB (if from enchanted forest, general age okay):** 27, born December 1996
**CHARACTER PRONOUNS/GENDER IDENTITY/SEXUALITY ETC:** He/They; Gender Fluid; Likes Women Like A Lot
**CHARACTER FANDOM:** Howl's Moving Castle Book
**OC OR CANON:** Canon
**WHICH LAND ARE THEY FROM: ** Wales, technically. Magical Land - Ingary. However he has a magic house that has has a portal connected to the enchanted
**CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY:**
- fuck boy
- grew up in Wales to a perfectly ordinary family. He has an older sister named Morgan. Morgan and Howl grew up loving each other dearly until Howl began showing he was different. It wasn't a Petunia/Lily Evans situation, as Megan was originally taken in by the magic and wonder... the problem came when their parents despised it.
- Their parents did everything in their power to get him to stop and be normal. But how do you tell a child with magical power to cut the shit? Especially one that's literally a genius.
- Is a genius but is also So Fucking Stupid.
- Their parents practically gaslit Megan, and as Howl distanced himself from his family to be with other like individuals, she couldn't help feel abandoned... thus bringing that tension.
- Howl went to University early, and graduated even earlier with a fucking DOCTORATE in Paranormal Occulpt Studies, Charms and Spellwork, and Magic theory. Don't fucking ask me what university he went to, he's in Wales.
- Howl played rugby as a sport and was quite fit
- He also is into old cars.
- Remember when I said he was a fuck boy? Yeah, he's a fuck boy slut whore who sleeps around and can't commit to anything.
- He ghosted a girl when he was 18, and when her three brothers came to beat the shit out of him, he did a fucky and opened a portal to another universe. Oops! Because his parents threw him out when he was 16, no one but his sister and some of his magic friends noticed.
- In a strange land called Ingary, he found a master - a Witch named Mrs. Pentstemmon. This woman loved him like a mother and taught him everything she knew in a matter of twoish years, after being able to tell his power level could grow to be on the level of the Witch of the Waste.
- At some point during this apprenticeship, his sister MegN gets married to a fucking asshole who is implied to be emotionally abusive. She has two children named Neil and Marianne (Mari). Howl adores all three of them, but especially Mari. His relationship with Megan and Neil are strained.
- And here's where he fucks up.
- While wandering a mood to watch the a meteor shower, he manages to do the impossible and catch a falling star after feeling a strange magical pull. The star, he realizes, is screaming in fear, for once a falling star touches the ground, it dies. The star doesn't want to die, and Howl, having a weak heart, asks the star what me can do. The two form a bargain, which ended up being both the worst and best decision he ever made.
- The bargain transforms the star into a fire demon. In exchange for boosting Howl's power, Calcifer retains hold on his heart... But both realize their mistake right away. Calcifer must be kept alive and bright, otherwise they will both die. Another issue: not having a heart for so long will cause Calcifer to consume Howl's soul. Now, Calcifer is a demon now, and normally wouldn't give a shit, but he has Howl's heart and included is his empathy and love. Howl saved him. He isn't an old enough fire demon to not give a shit. But they're stuck relying on each other.
- Howl has always had, let's say, commitment issues. Stemming from parental issues and watching his sister in a loveless marriage as she became bitter and jaded, and maybe some more internal complexes too, but Howl abandoned his apprenticeship (that was basically done anyway) and became a nameless hermit. He is a Grade A Coward which is why everytime he dates someone or someone expresses any time of feeling, he runs Away!
- "Nameless Hermit"
- In comes the Moving Castle. This is a magical feet, a ginormous fucking machine that prowls the moors of Ingary, near what they call the Wastes. It's run by Calcifer.
- But here's the thing, fucking Howl is high maintenance. The son of a bitch has so may vanity potions and make up and fine clothes and everything that he could send a fucking diva to shame. and to do that he needs Money.
- ENTER THE PORTALS.
- There's a magic door in the "castle", which is, in reality, the little stupid house he lives in in Wales that's connected to Ingary. It's the guest house in his sister's estate (bc her trash husband is rich). So, depending on what color changing blob the door is set too, it takes you different places. One, always black, takes him back home to Wales to his sister and his neice/nephew.
- THE CURRENT PORTALS: Purple takes him to Kingsbury in Ingary, where he is Wizard Pendragon. He upsells his charms and potions and what have you to the rich, where he makes most of his money. This alias also does business with king, though he always dodges the "when will you become one of my official wizard" question. Green is where the castle is currently roaming. People who know the moving castle as the home of "Heartless Howl", a fearsome wizard that eats beautiful women's hearts. Blue is Portshaven, a seaside town in Ingary that is mostly low to middle class. He undercharges his customers here, as most can't afford it but need the help.
- Not having his heart doesn't mean he's "soulless" or feelingless, but it's almost as if his feelings are being passed through a filter, or there's a film inbetween them and him. His eyes are green, and are noticably a glassy color, as if they're empty.
- SO, when he finds a poor recently orphaned boy sleeping on his doorstep in Porthaven... Well, actually, he doesn't do anything. Calcifer let Michael Fisher (13 at the time) in. And Howl, listening to his circumstances... just never told him to leave. Mind you, he never told the kid to stay either, but suddenly, six months went by with Michael (who has no where else to go) helping out around the various shops before either of them realized that Michael was effectively Howl's apprentice. Michael, who was too chicken shit to ask to say just... moved into the spare bedroom and Howl didn't say a WORD. this mans cannot commit to anything.
- Surprise! Howl fuck up again. Well, truthfully, he fucks up a LOT but here's the big fuck up.
- as mentioned before, Howl sleeps around. He runs head first whenever someone catches feelings (or god forbid he has an iota of a feeling) just fucking goes ghost. dips outta there like no one's business. See ya. wouldn't wanna BE YA. This was all fine and good until... well, The Witch of the Waste.
- The Witch of the Waste was beautiful, rich, dangerous, and the perfect temporary sugar mommy — until he realized something was very, very wrong. that magnetic pull he felt when near her wasn't just him being horny, it was her ancient fire demon .
- No one knew how old the Witch of the Waste was - just that she was a giant cunt all throughout history, cursing anyone who pissed her off. Stories said it was a title passed down between mother and daughter... Sorry to disappoint but it's the same lady.
- The Witch of the Waste made the same mistake howl did centuries ago. Her original soul is gone, and all that's left is a demon who no longer has a heart to feel anything anymore, and the Witch is just a flesh sack being used as a puppet. The fire demon wants Howl's heart AND wants to consume Calcifer to beef up the power.
- When Howl realized what the fuck was happening... Well. Howl tried to go ghost. Dip the fuck outta there.
- Yeah that didn't work.
- The Witch of the Waste put a curse on him, binding him to her essence ... which means no matter how far he runs, the demon will always find him. And no matter where he runs, how much protection he gives himself, she always finds some way to slither through.
- Michael, when traveling to the various towns for supplies, makes up absolutely BONKERS stories about Wizard Howl to keep people away from the Moving Castle, which is the sturdiest when it comes to protection wards. His favorite so far is the "he eats beautiful young women's hearts" as a reference to his white behavior
- Howl added a fifth spot onto the portal door. Storybrooke. Look, he knew it was a cursed fucking town okay? He knows curses. But here's the logic: why the fuck would she looked for a cursed fucker in an already cursed town on EARTH??? So he let them live their repetitive lives over and over again... and well, _okay_, he _said_ he wasn't going to do anything - not his monkeys not his circus.
- He's a fucking liar. The only way he's able to get himself to do something is tell himself he isn't going to do it under any circumstances, ESPECIALLY if it's scary.... and by the time he got around to be like "Oh maybe i should stop pretending to be the weirdo homeopathic magic wizard boy in town and actually do something", someone else already broke the curse! Not his fault.
- Except, apparently, there's a whole other place some of these fuckers have to get to and now his apprentice doesn't want to leave because he "feels bad" and Calcifer is COMPLAINING about being moved again, AND he has to go see a rugby game next week that moving makes him cranky —
- Plus, the Witch hasn't found him again yet. So he's still safe, for now.
- So now he's fifty shades of 🧍
- Howl may be a coward, but he is one of the strongest sorcerer's in the world. If you do manage to pin him down, maybe don't. Big Do Not Fuck With Him energy. ESPECIALLY when he has Calcifer bumping up his power. Despite him running away from the Witch of the Waste like a little bitch baby, he CAN go toe to toe with her in battle.
- He has a temper when it comes to people he cares about - not that he would admit it. But go after his sister, niece, or nephew and he'll fucking live up to his fake reputation and rip your heart out.
- Bad With Money. It's a miracle Amazon doesn't take gold coin.
OOC INFORMATION:
MUN NAME/ALIAS: Love
MUN AGE: 26
MUN PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
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regarding continuity and looking at cape characters as mythologies
Unpopular opinion asks
Part of what draws me to comic universes is the extensive continuity and just how long these stories have been going on. It amazes me that my grandfather might have read about these same characters as a kid, that generation after generation has grown up with these characters the same way I have! Because I very much did grow up with comics and superheroes— my dad introduced me to X-Men as a kid, and I’ve been watching Batman cartoons and other DC shows since I was a baby. I literally cannot remember a time where I didn’t know and love these characters.
A lot of the times — especially by people who aren’t into comics — I see continuity treated as a bad thing or a hamper on the stories. While it can be, such as when an otherwise good run has to reckon with a godawful writing decision made by the previous writer, or a character has a history of being portrayed very poorly, I find that for me it’s a benefit.
I like characters with a rich history, and I especially love seeing how they’ve changed over the decades! Whether it be a character or a mantle, what draws me to it is the meaning and history behind it. With characters, I love to see how they’ve changed as a person, what they’ve been through, who they’ve known.
Take Batgirl, for example— the mantle means nothing to me in current comics. Not Cass being Batgirl, not Steph, none of it. There’s none of the history the mantle had, none of the meaning that came with it being passed down. The exchange of the suit from Helena to Cass, how it was created to represent the Bat, to give Gotham hope during No Man’s Land is so impactful, especially when you take into account Cass’ loyalty to the bat itself. That suit, created to represent not Batgirl, but the bat itself, being the suit Cass wears! The passing of the torch from one disabled woman to another! It’s incredibly powerful, and reading those books is what made the Batgirls my favorite part of the Batfamily.
Now that both Cass and Steph are Batgirl (except when they aren’t) and that Babs is Batgirl again (except when she… possibly isn’t?) there’s none of that history. It isn’t a mantle passed through generations, it’s “when girl is bat” and I’d argue that the mantle no longer works. Robin certainly doesn’t work when there’s two of them, and Batgirl doesn’t either! These titles mean nothing to the characters, and they mean nothing to me, either.
To use another example that nobody except me and four other people care about, Garth. He’s here in the current continuity, and I, a dedicated fan of him, actively want him to stop appearing! Because the writers cut out everything that made him, well, him! The kingdom he comes from is gone, cutting out the heritage he struggled with. He’s got magic, but the person who mentored him and the role it played in his development and understanding of himself is gone.
The romantic relationship that he defined so much of his life by is gone, cutting out so much character development regarding his acceptance of her death and moving on from it that was the crux of his arc in his solo. Also, said character is now his cousin, permanently removing any possibility that this could be restored.
He doesn’t act like himself whatsoever, and how could he? The new continuity removed everything that defined and shaped his character! His suit change, while a minor detail with most characters, really shows how little they cared for Garth’s character when rebooting him. While there are many in-universe details that make it a bad idea, my main complaint is that his original Tempest suit was a tribute to Neal Pozner’s Aquaman design. Phil Jimenez, the writer of said solo, had been in a relationship with Pozner prior to his passing from AIDS, and dedicated the solo to Pozner. This disregard of prior continuity and history cuts out so much meaning, and I’d argue is rather disrespectful to the creator of the Tempest mantle.
While no comic continuity is perfect, I think disregarding the history of characters is not a solution whatsoever, and by doing so you often gut them of meaning. It’s irritating when fan spaces are full of nothing but disregard for the source material, and it’s unbearable when comic writers totally disregard what came before. I can’t stand most modern Fourth World content, despite it being my favorite part of DC, because of a total disrespect for Kirby’s original saga and what it meant. Darkseid is stripped of context, Orion is erased from his own story, it pisses me off!
You lose so much when you disregard a character’s history, and they end up being a hollow shell of what they used to be. Why should I care about this character and their story when the story itself doesn’t? I’m not saying comics need to be dense and full of citations, but when they stop caring about their own history and refuse to engage with the past of the characters they’re writing, I check out. I love Cassandra Cain because she’s Cassandra Cain, not because she’s some random girl in a bat suit!
In regards to comics as modern mythology, I’d say I’m not well-versed on the discussion enough to have an opinion.
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Dragon Age development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development
Some really tasty factoids here.
Cut for length.
Dragon Age: Origins
The continent of Thedas was at one point going to be named Pelledia, a name initially floated by James Ohlen
“Qunari” was a temporary name that ended up unintentionally sticking, much like “Thedas”
Mary Kirby wrote the Landsmeet. To this day, nobody understands how it works, except possibly her. If she’s “really really drunk” she can explain how it works. There’s as many words in it as Sten’s entire conversations put together
Concept art for Thedosian art - as in in-world art - draws heavily on Renaissance-era portraiture, the Art Nouveau movement, religious styles and media like stained glass, and favorite pieces from the golden age of illustrations in the early 20th century
Andrastianism in-world (art-wise) is depicted in wildly different methods depending on who in-world made the art in question. “One religion, 3 different lenses”. There’s the Chantry take, the Orlesian take and the Fereldan take; each with its own different interpretations, different mediums and different stories
The stained glass images were drawn by Nick Thornborrow for DAI, to decorate religious spaces in that game “and beyond”
irl Viking art influenced Ferelden
Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais
The book also had other insights into and anecdotes from the development of DAO, but I’ve transcribed them recently as they’re essentially the stories DG has recently been relating on the awesome Summerfall Studios DAO playthrough Twitch streams. (On those streams he provides dev commentary while Liam Esler plays through DA. The ones with DG are currently once every two weeks. Check them out! Here’s a calendar where you can check when the next one is) Instead of repeating myself I’ll just provide the link to the first transcript. From there you can navigate to the subsequent parts. Note these streams are ongoing. At this point I will also point you to a related post which is cliff notes of the Dragon Age chapter in Jason Schreier’s book Blood Sweat and Pixels.
Dragon Age II
DAO had the longest development period in BioWare history. In contrast DA2 had the shortest
Initially DA2 was going to be an expansion to DAO. A few months in EA said “Yeah, expansions like these don’t sell very well, so let’s make it a sequel.” So it suddenly became DA2 and they had to make it even bigger, although they still only had 1.5 years of time in which to do this
Production of DA2 officially lasted only 9 months, and at the time the team was still supporting live content for DAO! They finished development that January after the design team crunched all the way through the holiday period that year. Then it went to cert 9 times
The limited time they had is why the story takes place mostly in and around 1 city, and over 7 years (so it was temporal, rather than over physical distance, because a more expansive world would have taken more irl time to make)
They had no time to review even the main plot. Mike Laidlaw pitched the idea of 3 stories taking place at different points in the PC’s life, tied together by Varric’s recollections of events. DG rolled with this and made 1 presentation on the idea. This presentation was then approved and off they went
As they were writing DG realized that there was going to be no oversight and that everything was going to be a ‘first draft’. “Because nobody had time.” He sat down with the writers and said “Look, here’s the conditions we’re working under. A lot of what we’re putting out is gonna be raw. We’re not going to get the editing we need. We’re not going to get the kind of iteration we need. So I’m going to trust you all to do your best work.”
Looking back, DG has mixed feelings on DA2. “A lot of corners were cut. The public perception was that it was smaller than DAO. That’s a sin on its own.”
Despite this he thinks DA2 has some of the best writing in the series, especially character-wise. The DA2 chars are his favorite
The pace with which production progressed may in some ways have helped. “When we do a lot of revision, we often file away [as in buff off] some of the good writing as well. Somehow DA2′s whirlwind process resulted in some really good writing”
The pace meant chars landed on the writers in various stages of completion. For example Isabela was fairly defined due to appearing in DAO. In contrast Varric at the start was just that single piece of widely-shown concept art
Varric was conceived as a storyteller not a fighter. His skills are talking and bullshitting. Hence the question became, so what does this guy do in combat? The direction was to make him as different as possible to Oghren, so not a warrior. He couldn’t be a dual-wielding rogue in order to differentiate him from Bela. But you can’t really picture this guy with a bow. “For a dwarf, it would probably be a crossbow. We didn’t have crossbows, or we only had crossbows for the darkspawn. And they were part of the models. We didn’t have a separate crossbow that was equip-able by the chars. They had to like, crop one off a darkspawn and remodel it. And that became Bianca” (quote: Mary Kirby)
“Dwarven mages are exceedingly rare.” [???]
If DAO was a classic fantasy painting, DA2 was a screenshot from a Kurosawa film or a northern Renaissance painting. (Here Matt Rhodes was commenting on art style)
John Epler: “In any one of our games, there’s a 95% chance that if you turn the camera away from what it’s looking at, you’ll see all kinds of janky stuff. The moment we know the camera is no longer facing someone, we no longer care what happens to them. We will teleport people around. We will jump people around. We will literally have someone walk off screen and then we will shift them 1000 meters down, because we’re fixing some bug.” John also talked about this camera stuff in a recent charity Twitch stream for Gamers For Groceries. There’s a writeup of that stream here
Designing Kirkwall pushed concept artists to the limits of visual storytelling, because it has a long history that they wanted to be present. It was once the hub of Tevinter’s slave empire, so it needed to look brutal and harsh, but it also then needed to feel reclaimed, evolved, and with elements of contemporary Free Marches culture
The initial plan was for DA titles to be distinguished by subtitles not numbers, so that each experience could stand on its own rather than feel like a sequel or continuation. (My note: New PCs in each entry make sense then when you consider this and other factoids we know like how DA is the story of the world not of any one PC). Later, DA2′s name was made DA2 in a bid to more clearly connect the game to its predecessor. For DAI they returned to the original naming convention. (My note: so I’d reckon they’d be continuing the subtitle naming convention for DA4)
DA2 was initially code-named “Nug Storm”, strictly internally
The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March
This was a precursor to DAI
It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI
It focused on the fallout from Kirkwall’s explosion, with Cory serving as the villain
Meredith’s red lyrium statue was basically going to infest Kirkwall and it would end up [with what would end up] the red templars taking over Kirkwall and essentially being Cory’s army
To stop him Hawke would have recruited various factions, including Bela’s Felicisima Armada and the Qunari at Estwatch, forcing Hawke to split loyalties and risk relationships in the process
It was meant to bring DA2′s story to an end and end in Varric’s death. DG was very happy with this because all of DA2 is Varric’s tale. The expansion was supposed to start at the moment Cassandra’s interrogation of him ended in the present. “And we finished off the story with Varric having this heroic death.” It tied things up and would have broken many fan hearts, something BioWare writers notoriously enjoy. But between a transition to the new Frostbite engine and the scope of DAI, the decision was made to cancel EM, work any hard-to-lose concepts into DAI, and in the process save Varric’s life. DG has talked about the Varric dying thing before
Concept art for EM explored new areas previously not depicted in the DA universe, with costumes that reflected next steps for familiar chars. Varric was going to war, what would he have worn? With Anders, if he survived DA2, the plan was to present a redeemed Warden
A char that vaguely resembled Sera in DAI was first concepted for EM. This fact was mentioned near this concept art (see the female elf) and this concept art of Bethany with the blond bob
The writers sketched out plans to end it with Hawke having the option to marry their LI. This included alternate ceremonies for party members like Bethany and Sebastian if the player opted not to wed. There was even a wedding dress made for Hawke. This asset made it into DAI (Sera and Cullen’s weddings in Trespasser). The dress can also be seen in DAI during an ambient NPC wedding after completing a chain of war table missions
The destruction of a Chantry was explored in concept art as it might have happened in EM. This idea ended up carrying over to the beginning of DAI. (My note: Lol, the idea that DA2 could have had 2 Chantries being destroyed in it 😆)
World of Thedas
Sheryl Chee and Mary Kirby started with “a disgusting little dish called fluffy mackerel pudding”. In the middle of DAO’s busy dev period one of them (they can’t remember who) found a recipe online for this, scanned in from a 70s cookbook. “I don’t understand why it was fluffy. Why would you want fluffy mackerel pudding?” MK says. “We loved it so much we included it in a DAO codex.”
This led them to create more food for Thedas, full recipes included, like a Fereldan turnip and barley stew from MK and SC’s Starkhaven fish and egg pie. The fish pie became Sebastian’s favorite. “To me it made sense for it to be fish pie because a lot of the Free Marches are on the coast”, SC says, “It was something that was popular in medieval times, so I thought, let’s make a fish pie! I looked at medieval recipes and I concocted a fish pie which I fed to my partner, and he was like ‘This is not terrible’”
For WoT the whole studio was asked to contribute family recipes which might have a place in Thedas. SC adapted these to fit in one Thedosian culture or another, including a beloved banana bread that localization producer Melanie Fleming would regularly bake to keep the DA team motivated. “Melanie’s banana bread got us through Inquisition”
DAI
It says part of DAI takes place in or near the border with Nevarra [???]
This game was aimed to be bigger than DA2 and even DAO in every conceivable way
The first hour had to do a lot of heavy lifting, tying together the events of DAO and DA2 while introducing a new PC, new followers etc in the aftermath of the big attack. DG rewrote it 7 times then Lukas Kristjanson did 2 more passes
DG: “Our problem is always that our endings are so important, but we leave them to last, when we have no time. I kept pushing on DAI: ‘Can we work on the ending now? Can we work on the ending now? Can we do it early on?’ Because I knew exactly what it was going to be. But despite the fact that it kept getting scheduled, whenever the schedule started falling behind, it kept getting pushed back... so, of course, it got left til last again.”
“The reveal of the story’s real antagonist, Solas, a follower until the end, when he betrayed the player”. “Solas’ story remains a main thread in Inquisition’s long-awaited follow-up” [these aren’t DG quotes, just bits of general text]
Over the course of development they had 8 full-time writers and 4 editors working on it. Other writers joined later to help wrangle what ended up being close to 1 million words of dialogue and unspoken text. While many teams moved to a more open concept style of work for DAI, the writers remained tucked away in their own room, a choice DG says was necessary, given how much they talked. All the talking had a purpose ofc as if someone hit a bump or wall in their writing they would open the problem up to the room
As writing on a project like DAI progresses, the writers grow punchier and weirder things make it into the game. This is especially the case towards the end of a project (they get tired, burned out)
Banter and codexes require less ‘buy-in’ (DG has talked about this concept a few times on the Twitch streams) from other designers. DG liked to leave banter for last as a reward because it was fun. Banter begins as lists of topics for 2 followers to discuss. These may progress over time or be one off exchanges. One banter script can balloon to well over 10k words. “The banter was always huge because we were always like, laughing, and really at that point, our fields of fucks were rather barren, so we would just do whatever”
The bog unicorn happened pretty much by accident. It was designed by Matt Rhodes and was one of his fav things to design. They needed horse variations and he had already designed an undead variant which was a bog mummy [bog body]. irl these are preserved in a much different way to traditional mummies. When someone dies in a bog their skin turns black and raisin-like. The examples we know of tend to have bright red hair for whatever reason. It’s a very striking look and MR wanted to do a horse version of this as he thought it’d be neat. 5 mins before the review meeting for it he had a big ‘Aha!’ moment, quickly looked up a rusty old Viking sword, and photoshopped it through its skull like that was how it died. “And I was like, ‘I just made a unicorn. Alright, in it goes!’” It got approved. “So we built the thing. It fit. It told a little story”
With the irl Inquisition longsword, one of the objects they tested its cleaving ability on was a plush version of Leliana’s nug Schmooples
The concept art team explored a wide variety of visuals for the Inquisitor’s signature mark. It needed to look powerful and raw but couldn’t look like a horrific wound. In some cases, as cool as the idea looked on paper, they just weren’t technically feasible, especially as they had to be able to fit on any number of different bodies
Bug report: “Endlessly spawning mounts! At one point during development, Inquisitors could summon a new horse every time they whistled, allowing them to amass a near infinite number of eager steeds that faithfully followed them across Thedas. “You could go charging across levels and they’d all gallop behind you,” Jen Cheverie says, “It was beautiful.” Trotting into town became an epic horse siege as a tidal wave of mounts enveloped the streets. Jen called it her Army of Ponies”
The giants came from DA Week, an internal period when devs can pursue different individual creative projects that in some way benefit DA. They also had a board game from one of these that they were going to put in but they didn’t have time. It’s referenced though. It was dwarven chess
Josie’s outfit is made of gold silk and patterned velvet, with leather at her waist. She carries “an ornate ledger” and she has “an ornamented collar sitting around her neck, finished by a brilliant red ruby, like a drop of Antivan wine in a sunbeam”
Iron Bull’s armor is leather. His loose pantaloons and leather boots give him agility to charge
On DAI in particular, concept artists took special care to make sure costumes would be realistic, at least in a practical ‘this obeys the laws of physics and textiles’ sense. “While on Inquisition, we thought about cosplay from a concept art perspective. Given how incredible a lot of [cosplays] are, I now am not worried about them. In fact in some cases in the future I want to throw them curveballs like, ‘All right, you clever bastards. Let’s see if you can do this!’”
2 geese that nested on the office building and had chicks were named Ganders and Arishonk (it wasn’t known who was the mom or the dad). Other possible names were Carver Honke, Bethany Honke, Urdnot Pecks, Quackwall, Cassandra Pentagoose, the Iron Bill, Shepbird, Garroose, Admiral Quackett, Scout Honking, HChick-47 and Darth Malgoose
Bug report: “The surprising adventures of Ser Noodles!” DAI was the first time the series had a mount feature, meaning this had a lot of bugs. A lot of the teams’ favorite bugs were to do with the mounts. There was a period of time where the Inquisitor’s horse seemed to lose all bone and muscle in its legs. They had a week or so where all quadruped legs were broken. It was a bit noticeable in things like nugs and other small beasties but the horse was insanely obvious. “The first time we summoned the horse [for this] and started running around, the entire QA exploration room just exploded with laughter.” Its legs flapped around like cooked fettucine, leading testers to lovingly nickname it Ser Noodles. At galloping speeds the legs almost looked like helicopter blades, especially when footage was set to classic pieces such as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries
For DAI the artists were asked questions like “What would Morrigan wear to a formal ball? Can Cassandra pull off a jaunty hat?”
On DAI storyboarding became the norm. John Epler: “Cinematic design for the longest time was the Wild West. It was ‘here’s a bunch of content, now do it however you want’, which resulted in some successes and some failures.” Storyboarding gave designers a consistent visual blueprint based on ideas from designers, writers and concept artists
Quote from a storyboard by Nick Thornborrow (the Inquisitor going into the party at the end of basegame sequence): “Until Corypheus revealed himself they could not see the single hand behind the chaos. A magister and a darkspawn combined. The ultimate evil. So evil. Eviler than puppy-killers and egg farts combined.”
A general note on concept art:
In the early stages of any project, before the concept artists are aware of any writing, they like to just draw what they think cool story moments could be. It’s not unusual for the team to then be inspired by these and fold them into the game as the project progresses
– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development
#dragon age 4#the dread wolf rises#dragon age#bioware#video games#the da4 tags are due to a few references to da4#cassandra pentaghast#my lady paladin#lul#feels#solas#mass effect#garrus vakarian#best boy#morrigan#queen of my heart#fenris#the Fenaissance#Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development spoilers#Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development spoiler#Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development#spoilers#spoiler#mj best of
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why we ship darklina
an essay literally no one asked for
Nobody needs a "reason" to ship Darklina. But considering this is a villain x hero pairing, it got me thinking about why we shipped it in the first place when the narrative and author so badly wanted us to root for the more sensible alternative pairing and why it became the most popular ship of the entire trilogy.
Personally, I find it really interesting (and low-key hilarious) that a lot of the reasons shippers gravitated towards Darklina can be directly traced back to how badly Bardugo bungled Alina's character arc, Mal's entire characterization and narrative role, Nikolai's wasted potential as an alternative love interest, and the noble intentions she gives the the Darkling.
Alina's Character Arc
Alina's character arc doesn't match who she is as a character. I've written more about that in this post, but a lot of readers were introduced to a passive and insecure protagonist who we were expecting to undergo a typical YA coming-of-age character arc where Alina acquires self-acceptance, confidence, and embraces the full breadth of her powers over the course of the trilogy. Instead, Bardugo gave Alina the kind of character arc that's usually deserved for power-hungry anti-heroines or tragic heroes with a fatal flaw to punish.
The plot offers a strange binary: either Alina suppresses and hides her powers and therefore stays away from descending into villainy OR Alina attempts to find Morozova's amplifiers in order to defeat the Darkling but then becomes corrupted by power in the process. Alina's journey to self-acceptance and exploring her own powers are unfortunately entangled with her relationship with the Darkling. The only way she is allowed to move forward through the plot is to succumb to the corrupting influence of the amplifiers.
For better or for worse, the first character to really embrace her powers instead of thinking she's a fraud or that she's weak or that she's an unholy abomination is the Darkling. He's the first person to recognize her power for what it is and accurately judge its potential and implications for the rest of the world. He advocates for her in front of the royal court, in front other Grisha who think she's weak, and even against Baghra who is initially a very ill-tempered mentor with little to no faith in Alina's abilities. He even rather ironically advocates for her even when the heroic person who's supposed to be supporting her (Mal) does not.
At the start of her journey, Alina is insecure and in constant need of assurance and validation. The Darkling's role as her mentor and guide into this unfamiliar world of Grisha makes him the perfect advocate not only for her powers but also to help Alina see her place in the world. However, once he is revealed to be the villain, Alina also fails to realize that it's time for her to advocate for herself and throws the baby out with the bathwater.
Mal's Characterization & Narrative Role
When Alina loses the Darkling as an advocate in S&B, Mal steps up to take this role. Alina is still rather passive for the majority of the first book and it's Mal who originally wants her to have Morozova's stag as an amplifier if it will mean being able to stand against the Darkling. Bardugo intended for him to be a heroic love interest as a foil to the villainous love interest and I believe she mostly succeeds for the first book.
However, because this is a story about punishing Alina's "evil ambition" (despite there being very little evidence of that) Mal is supposed to serve as a voice of reason in the narrative. Once Alina considers the necessity of acquiring more amplifiers to defeat the Darkling, it is Mal's role to warn her of the potential consequences, to remind her of her inner humanity, and to ward against the corrupting influence of Morozova's amplifiers. Mal's declarations that he wants back the old girl he knew without any power is meant to drive an ideological wedge between them, yes, but he's also meant to be Correct™ because, again, Bardugo is writing a story about a corrupted power-hungry heroine who goes too far and needs to be punished rather than the arc we were all expecting and the one that Alina's character needs: a coming-of-age story of self-acceptance and personal growth.
Some point after the backlash of Siege & Storm, Bardugo seems to have become aware of her mistake and attempts to scrub Mal's character to be more sympathetic. There is a bizarre exchange half-way through the third book when Mal finally declares:
"I wasn't afraid of you, Alina. I was afraid of losing you. The girl you were becoming didn't need me anymore, but she's who you were always meant to be."
This is an interesting line because it's a complete reversal of Mal's narrative role so far. He's supposed to be her voice of reason that opposes her at every turn but readers interpreted him as being resentful of Alina's powers and angry that she was no longer dependent on him. Bardugo is forced to retcon Mal's entire role in the narrative from being a voice of reason that opposes Alina's quest for power to a supportive friend who will fight by her side. But this was never her initial intention and I believe this change was brought on 100% by audience reaction because she failed to understand the arc her heroine needed and the kind of story her audience was anticipating for such a character.
Needless to say, having your heroine's main love interest actively resent her quest for power until half-way through the third damn book did not endear many readers to Mal. Because Bardugo failed to understand the kind of character development her heroine needed and failed to understand audience expectations, we hated Mal. He became the embodiment of every toxic chauvinist we'd ever met who can't stand the idea of his partner's success and feels entitled to be the center of her universe. He was not the voice of reason. He was an annoying gnat hellbent on dragging the heroine down and away from her destiny. We did not want to root for him. Even the villain was more sympathetic than him because he could bring her closer to achieving the self-acceptance the narrative was obsessed with denying her.
Nikolai's Wasted Potential as a Solid Love Interest
Nikolai plays several roles in Alina's journey but most importantly in our discussions for why we ended up shipping Darklina, his entire potential as a serious love interest is wasted.
When we meet Nikolai, we have hitched our wagons to the Darklina train because despite being the villain, the Darkling is the only one who will allow the heroine to accept her powers and come into her own. Her heroic love interest, Mal, is actively sabotaging her efforts and holding her back from her true potential. But then, in swoops Nikolai and we pause, wondering if there may be a better heroic alternative after all?
In a lot of ways, Nikolai and the Darkling alike: they are eager for Alina's power and see her as a solution to all their problems. They may want to use Alina to prop up their own agendas, but unlike Mal, Alina's summoning powers are a massive plus, not a burden. Nikolai is the heroic alternative to our villainous Aleksander. So we wait, wondering if Nikolai will be the one to fix this mess of a romantic subplot. His royal connections offer an easy path to upwards mobility for our heroine and we sense that an alliance between them (even if it's initially political in nature) may bring our heroine closer to obtaining more power, influence, and self-acceptance not only for herself, but also for the oppressed minority she is a part of.
But, again, Bardugo is still obsessed with that "punish the heroine for wanting power" agenda so while Nikolai exists as another mentor figure who offers Alina advice on how to rule, how to appeal to other people, how to charm, how to win people over, and Alina learns and applies much of what she learns from him, he is not treated as a real love interest.
Despite Nikolai being written as a fairy tale prince (handsome, charming, smart as a whip, brave in battle, etc) Alina never actually considers him romantically. They are friends and allies at best and the only time she considers kissing him is only when she's pissed about Mal.
Nikolai's proposal at the end of Ruin & Rising feels like one last saving grace, one last opportunity for our heroine to take control of her life and make a dramatic change to break from the past. But this too is rejected because Alina's arc will never let her access any power. She does not reject Nikolai because she wants to marry for love. She rejects him because she has been "punished" for wanting power and has internalized that she must not seek any more power for fear of angering the plot gods (and Bardugo). She must return to being nobody in order to remain a good and moral person.
(And, of course, we resent Mal even more because who in their right mind would choose him over Nikolai? Once again, he becomes a roadblock on our heroine's journey to power. We grow irritated that the heroine is failing to grasp an opportunity to elevate herself. We throw the book against the wall. Why are we even following this heroine?)
The Darkling's Motivations
Still, all of the above might still not have been enough to pull the reader to the villain's side. But the Darkling is the living embodiment of Villain Has A Point™. He is not pure unadulterated evil. He is not Lord Sauron or Voldemort or the Terminator.
He's more Magneto, Roy Batty, or Ozymandias---a man who is part of an oppressed minority who longs for justice and power but is absolutely unhinged in his methods.
Alina runs away because she does not want to be a non-consenting weapon in hands. But we always end up wondering what would have happened had Baghra not warned her. What would have happened if Alina gladly joined the Darkling's side? There's hundreds of fanfics written precisely about this situation because despite the villainy of his methods, we wonder if Ravka might not have been safer after all?
If the Darkling had used the Fold as a weapon against Fjerda and Shu Han, would any of the problems Ravka faces in the later books even exist? Would any Grisha fall victim to the khergud programs or be killed as witches? The Darkling wipes out Novokribirsk and kills hundreds of lives, but how many would he have saved with the Fold as Ravka's greatest shield and sword? 🤷🏽♀️
And therein lies the problem with the trilogy inconsistent moral landscape. The Darkling is an anti-villain that exists in a narrative that is very black and white, unlike the rest of the books in the Grishaverse where our protagonists are anti-heroes who kill, steal, and torture their way through the plot with nary a judgmental glance from the narrative. We long to see our heroine give in to her dark side and get her hands dirty because watching a naive, passive, scared little girl grow into a ruthless powerful Grisha would have made for a hell of a compelling story.
But that's not the story Bardugo wanted to tell.
The Greg Trilogy
Despite taking place in a fantasy Tsartist setting, the Grisha trilogy is oddly anti-Grisha. The narrative doesn't spend much time trying to examine the context or implications of an oppressed minority group fighting for power other than to say "magic powers = evil". Nikolai skates by on a throne of inherited wealth, privilege, and imperialism but it's okay because he's charming and witty and the only monstrous part of him is the Darkling's curse. Literally everything is worse for Ravka and their Grisha after the destruction of the Fold but Ravka must move forward into a new age without relying on Grisha power but putting their efforts into new muggle technologies. Alina must be stripped of her powers and returned to her "old self" in order to be purged of evil.
Basically, it's all one gigantic ✨ dumpster fire ✨ of mismatched character arcs, incompatible moral aesops, inconsistent characterizations, wasted potential, unexamined plot points but it's a a dumpster fire we lovingly and spitefully embrace in fanfic.
We don't ship Alina with the Darkling because we're stupid abuse apologists who somehow missed the giant flashing moral aesop of the books---and honestly, who could have possibly missed them when it's shoved in the reader's face every other chapter? We ship Alina with the Darkling because the entire ship is the embodiment of wasted potential (and wasted ✨aesthetics✨ tbqh 👀). We ship Alina with the Darkling because we're sick and tired of stories where female power is demonized. We ship Alina with the Darkling because the plot gave us literally no other alternative to see our heroine succeed except to give in to her alleged villainy.
But most of all, people ship Darklina because Leigh Bardugo utterly failed in writing the story she intended to write because had she succeeded, Darklina would not be the most popular ship of the trilogy.
#darklina#sab meta#grisha meta#grisha discourse#wow im embarrassed by how fucking long this is#but you know i had to write it#anti leigh bardugo#its not really anti so much as it is just pointing out why her story flopped for a lot of readers#alarkling#viv metas
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HAIKYUU!! COUPLES HEADCANONS
DAISUGA
-Daichi goes to the gym to work out. Suga goes to the gym to ogle Daichi
-Suga has a massive sweet tooth
-Daichi cooks, Suga cleans
-Suga is a little shit who is not above seducing Daichi in public. He can say the most lewd things without batting an eye while Daichi blushes furiously
-Daichi and Kuroo once hooked up at training camp. They do not talk about it
-Daichi is good friends with Michimiya and Kiyoko. Suga is closer to Asahi
-Daisuga rarely fight and are often asked for relationship advice. Daichi tries to discourage this because “guys I didn’t realize Yui had a crush on me or that Suga was in love with me for three years.”
-Daichi can’t dance, won’t dance, and refuses to acknowledge the time he got trashed and twerked
-Suga dislikes his given name unless it’s said by Daichi, who is the only person allowed to call him Koushi
-Suga is extremely flexible. Daichi is not.
-Daichi or Suga getting hit on makes Daichi uncomfortable. Getting hit on amuses Suga, and Daichi getting hit on makes him horny
-It took all of high school for Daisuga to get together, because Daichi is oblivious and Suga assumed Daichi wasn’t into him. Daichi’s dumbness and their mutual pining becomes a fond, shared joke several years later
-Daichi has no gag reflex.
-Daisuga have a very fat, very orange cat named Ninja. He’s surprisingly fast and agile despite looking like a furry basketball. (Daichi is a dog person and did not even want Ninja at first. He suspects Kuroo had something to do with this. Suga sometimes playfully gets upset because “Ninja likes you better than me, Dai!”)
-Everyone expects Suga to be the dominant one but Suga is more than willing to be submissive for Daichi and has on several occasions
ASANOYA
-Noya gets up before sunrise to run. Asahi would rather die than leave his bed before 8am
-Noya turns the coffee pot on and cooks breakfast to lure Asahi out of bed
-Noya is surprisingly patient, gentle, quiet, and kind when it comes to Asahi and his insecurities
-Noya is the type to bottle his insecurities and fears until they explode. The only one who can calm him back down is Asahi
-Asahi makes bratty faces when he thinks Noya isn’t looking
-Noya and Tanaka spend a lot of time with Daisuga because of the Daichi&Suga&Asahi&Kiyoko friendship. Asahi and Ennoshita become good friends
-Asahi doesn’t understand the distance between Noya and his sisters because Asahi is very close to his
-It is impossible to embarrass Noya
-Asahi gets a lot of inspiration for his fashion designs from traveling with Noya
-Noya knows how to braid hair and likes to play with Asahi’s
-Asahi enjoys physical affection but dislikes overt PDA. Noya would happily climb Asahi like a tree in public if Asahi would let him
-Only Asahi calls Noya by his given name
-Noya knows he likes Asahi early on but Asahi’s panic (“omg someone LIKES me?? NOYA likes me?? My crush??”) at his confession prevent them getting together until after the Date Tech match (after Asahi rejoins the team).
-Noya is affected by wanderlust and that’s why he travels. Sometimes Asahi joins him. They get married in Canada during one of these trips. (I once read a fantastic asanoya fic where a significant event happened in Canada so Canada is my asanoya place now)
-Noya sends Asahi a postcard from every place he’s ever visited. Sometimes he’ll spend over half an hour trying to find the *best* one, only to buy them all and send them as a sort of big long letter. Asahi saves them all in a photo album that lives on the coffee table. (Some people have a coffee table book, Asahi has a photo album.)
-Noya prefers to top. The one thing he’s really uncomfortable with is being on the bottom (physically laying beneath someone and also sex).
KUROKEN
-Kuroken have a black cat and a calico and enjoy naps on the couch with the kitties. Kuroo has SO MANY pictures in his phone of Kenma curled around the kitties.
-Kuroo: “Love you.” Kenma: “Hate you.”
-Kenma CAN cook, but likes that Kuroo likes taking care of him
-Every game Kuroo has ever owned is multiplayer because he only games with Kenma
-Kenma’s favorite games involve critical thinking and puzzles. Kuroo enjoys watching him play
-Kuroo is an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. Kenma is an introvert. They enjoy quiet nights in.
-Kuroo has anxiety. Kenma always knows when Kuroo is anxious and how to fix it
-People make Kenma anxious. Kuroo makes himself anxious.
-Kenma’s nicknames for Kuroo are Kuro and Koroemon. Kuroo calls Kenma Kyanma and kitten
-Kuroo has been in love with Kenma for as long as he can remember, since they were kids. Kenma knows this, but doesn’t understand he feels the same way until Kuroo goes off to college
-Kuroo is the one who discovered Daichi’s lack of gag reflex. He’s delighted to learn that Kenma lacks one as well
-Kenma moves more slowly than Kuroo. He’s not as comfortable with physical affection and sex as Kuroo is. Their relationship progresses slowly, and Kuroo lets Kenma lead.
-After Kenma’s confession, how he feels about Kuroo is one of the very few things Kuroo does not doubt or make himself anxious over.
-Kuroo can, will, and has go(ne) on and on and ON about Kenma until someone shuts him up. It drives Yaku up the fucking wall in high school.
-Kenma does a retro game stream once or twice a month made up of games he and Kuroo used to play as kids. Kuroo actually games with him on those days and Kenma’s followers are quick to notice and speculate because Kenma has literally never gamed with another person in the same room before. Sometimes Kenma can only post the actual gameplay because Kuroo ruined the footage of them by being excessively sappy. (Kuroo is NOT above flirting and dirty talk to get an edge and Kenma doesn’t really think his fans need to know that.)
-Kuroken do not talk about Kuroo’s mom or sister
-The Kozumes love “Tetsu-chan” and Kuroo’s grandparents adore Kenma. Kuroken get along with each other’s families better than they do their own.
-Kuroo is tactile. He’s that ass-slapping friend. Kenma thinks he’s ridiculous
-Kuroo used to be dislike Hinata, because Kenma and Hinata are extremely good friends and Kuroo was afraid Hinata would take Kenma away from him. Kenma has assured him he doesn’t like Hinata like that but Kuroo doesn’t warm up until Hinata starts dating Kageyama
BOKUAKA
-Akaashi is 100% in charge of the house and the financials and his word is law. Not because he’s an asshole but because Bokuto is whipped
-Akaashi is a screamer. Bokuto has a big dick.
-Bokuto is the calmest between him and his sisters. His sisters have formed an Akaashi fanclub
-Bokuaka kiss a lot during sex
-Bokuto fucking loves owls
-Akaashi used to be embarrassed over being a manga editor but Bokuto thinks it’s the coolest job ever, “even better than mine!” When his authors need references, Akaashi sends them pictures of Bokuto. Bokuto takes this responsibility very seriously
-Bokuaka exclusively refer to each other by first name but Akaashi can’t break the habit of using -san
-Akaashi and Kenma are very good friends. Bokuto thinks they might even be better bros than him and Kuroo. (Kenma is one of the few people Akaashi calls by first name, and one of the only people who calls Akaashi by his.)
-Akaashi overthinks as a result of anxiety, but he doesn’t think he has anxiety. He prefers to call it “seeing the issue from all sides”
-Akaashi and Bokuto do yoga together. Bokuto behaves himself surprisingly well around Akaashi in yoga pants
-Akaashi decided to attend Fukurodani after watching Bokuto play and literally for no other reason
-Bokuaka are the embodiment of love at first sight and their relationship has an unreal, almost storybook quality to it because they are literally perfect for each other. Because of this, Bokuto doesn’t understand why other people struggle so much to start and maintain a relationship, no matter how many times Kuroo tells him “just because your relationship is straight out of a movie doesn’t mean the rest of the world works like that”
-Bokuaka have a koi pond in their backyard and have named all the fish. Bokuto always asks about them when he’s away for games
IWAOI
-Iwaizumi cooks and cleans because he’s always been the one taking care of Oikawa, but he refuses to fold the laundry because “I’m not doing everything for you, you fucking freeloader”
-Iwaizumi cooks healthy “old man food.” Oikawa’s sweet tooth suffers
-Oikawa is that guy who puts more cream and sugar and other additives in his coffee than actual coffee. He’s tried all of Starbucks’ seasonal drinks and never gets the same thing twice
-Iwaoi have very heated arguments about if Godzilla can kick King Kong’s ass or not. Iwaizumi of course sides with Godzilla
-Iwaoi once fought about the original purpose of Stonehenge and now no one can mention England without it coming back up
-Oikawa only became comfortable with his glasses because Iwaizumi likes them
-Iwaoi have been friends since they were in diapers. The whole volleyball team took bets on when they’d announce their relationship
-Both the Oikawas and the Iwaizumis respond when either boy calls for mom or dad. Oikawa calls his sister Nee-chan while Iwaizumi says Oneesan
-Iwaizumi’s favorite of Oikawa’s features is his legs. Oikawa is in love with Iwa’s arms
-Neither of them can remember when they started liking each other or how their relationship started
-Iwaoi are shockingly codependent and do NOT do separation (during university in Argentina/California or for away games) well
-Deep down Oikawa is extremely insecure and worries he isn’t enough - in volleyball, in school, in his family, in his relationship. Iwaizumi always knows when he’s putting on a front and how to cheer him back up
-Iwaizumi is secretly so soft and weak for Oikawa
-After the Olympics Iwaizumi moves to Argentina to be with Oikawa and they get married. They move back to Japan after Oikawa retires from volleyball and after gay marriage becomes legal there
-Oikawa keeps various plants around the house and the patio and is extremely proud of them. He paints all their pots and even names some of them (which Iwaizumi thinks is disgustingly cute). His most prized plant is a lucky bamboo he bought on a whim when iwaoi first moved in together.
-Oikawa can’t deepthroat. It makes him so jealous that Iwaizumi can
-Iwaizumi blushes whenever Oikawa gives him a genuine compliment
-Iwaizumi has a praise kink. Oikawa has a “whatever comes out of Iwa’s mouth” kink
-Iwaizumi has dom tendencies.
#haikyuu#headcanons#daisuga#asanoya#kuroken#bokuaka#iwaoi#updated it#sawamura daichi#sugawara koushi#azumane asahi#nishinoya yuu#kozume kenma#kuroo tetsurou#bokuto koutaru#akaashi keiji#iwaizumi hajime#oikawa tooru
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TOGETHER AGAIN SPOILERS
A thread of lore, Easter eggs, episode connections, and background details from Adventure Time: Distant Lands: Together Again! Let me know if I missed anything! This is adapted from my original Twitter thread.
Keep reading ⬇️⬇️⬇️
1. I was expecting them to perhaps do a classic style title sequence for this episode, but I wasn't expecting them to straight up use the original title sequence. The only difference is this final screen saying "Distant Lands".
2. The background of the title cards is also the hill from the title sequence.
3. The ice cream having "50 flavours" and having an image of an enlightened soul is an obvious reference to the 50th Dead World as we see it later in the episode.
4. Continuing with the metaphor, the dirt in the ice cream could be a parallel to the fact that Jake's Nirvana actually wasn't perfect, because his inaction was allowing for injustice to perpetuate.
5. This whole scene feels immediately slightly off. Finn has his Scarlet sword and is out on a classic Ice King adventure, but he speaks in his grown voice and all the slang feels much more forced than it did in the real season one. Turns out this was deliberate.
6. The snow golem speaks with a baby voice like it did in the pilot episode, even though in canon it has a deeper voice. This further hints that something is not quite right.
7. The first major break in continuity is these snow golems resembling Uncle Gumbald and Peace Master, who Finn didn't meet until later in his life.
8. LSP sitting on Finn's head like this is reminiscent of Pen Ward's piece for the 2018 Ble crew zine.
9. Finn being given the choice of helping somebody but ending up helping everybody reminds me of "Memories of Boom Boom Mountain". It's the kind of resolution that wouldn't happen so much in the late seasons of the show, which helps make this scene feel even further out of place.
10. Jake is half frozen by Ice King in pretty much the exact same way as he was in "Prisoners of Love", and even has a very similar line.
11. The Snail is seen here. The crew have said that the Snail has been deliberately left out of previous Distant Lands specials, so its placement here is another very deliberate hint that this whole sequence is "trying too hard" to be like the early seasons.
12. The book "Mind Games" appears a couple of times, as seen in several previous episodes of Adventure Time. The first is as Finn is approaching the library in his dream. It also appears as one of the items in Finn's backpack later.
13. Jake is hurt when Finn fist bumps him with his metal arm, revealing that this scene is not real. This is also a callback to the title sequences of "Islands" and "Elements".
14. A whole bunch of familiar skeletons are seen in the bird's nest: Dirt Beer Guy, Abracadaniel, Me-Mow, Lemongrab, Mr. Pig, and the Snail again. This doesn't necessarily mean that all these characters are dead, since this scene is just a hallucination.
15. Old Man Finn! He's still got the chest tattoo of Jake, and this time we know that Jake is dead, so the theory that Jake died before "Obsidian" seems pretty likely. He looks similar to his old man design from "Puhoy", with the same facial hair.
16. There are several cameos of familiar characters who apparently died at the same time as Finn. The first is this duck, who previously appeared in "Ocarina".
17. The second is Donny, from the episode... uh, "Donny".
18. This goblin guy is an unnamed background character from “The Silent King”.
19. This old lady first appeared in "The Enchiridion", way back in season one. Old ladies are a species in the Land of Ooo, so I guess she wasn't actually very old back then, given she just about outlived Finn.
20. This is the cobbler who first appears in "His Hero". Amazing that he lived so long given all the trouble he got into in that episode.
21. Land of the Dead! This place was first seen in season two's "Death in Bloom", and now we are finally learning its actual purpose. It's a sort of gateway and hub to all of the other dead worlds.
22. There are some more minor cameos at the gates: a house person from "Donny", a soft person from "Gut Grinder", and a wood person from "When Wedding Bells Thaw". And, of course, the gate guardian himself from “Death in Bloom”.
23. Finn completely ignores the gate guardian in the same way he did in Death in Bloom. This also has the convenient effect of not having to reveal how Finn died, leaving it up to the audience's imagination.
24. Mr. Fox! We already knew he would die at some point because BMO had his skull in the finale.
25. Finn has his design from the first Distant Lands poster in this scene. Turns out it's young Finn in old Finn's clothes. But they gave him a shirt in the poster so you wouldn't be able to see the tattoo.
26. The clapping that Finn does while he's looking for Jake is a callback to "James Baxter the Horse", when Jake tells Finn to listen for that same rhythm if they are killed and need to find each other in the afterlife.
27. Mr. Fox talks about a "past life quotient", suggesting that there might be some kind of limit to how many times somebody can reincarnate. Finn's reincarnations are also seen in this scene; a callback to "The Vault", and confirmation that reincarnations share the same soul.
28. Boobafina, the goose who Mr. Fox was in love with in his debut episode “Storytelling”, apparently reincarnated into a tugboat. We've already seen that objects can have souls in the episode "Ghost Fly".
29. Finn is initially assigned to the 37th Dead World, which is the same one that Jake went to when he died in "Sons of Mars". We can only guess at what the other numbers on the ticket mean ;)
30. Tiffany! Despite several lucky escapes throughout his life, Tiffany has finally died. I like the use of this imagery to express Finn's conflicted feelings about him.
31. The 50th Dead World has long been established as the "highest" dead world, and the one synonymous with Heaven within Adventure Time's universe. It was first mentioned in "Ghost Princess" back in season three.
32. It's unclear what happens to souls which are destroyed within the dead worlds. It is a similar question to asking what happened to the ghosts that were killed in "Ghost Fly".
33. Death doesn't speak at all in Together Again because his voice actor, Miguel Ferrer, passed away in 2017 long before production began.
34. Finn phases through New Death when he tries to attack him, just like what happened way back in "Death in Bloom".
35. The 30th Dead World contains Tree Trunks as well as many of her love interests; Mr. Pig, her alien husband from "High Strangeness", Danny and Randy who first appeared in "Apple Wedding", and several more who we don't recognise, including at least one who presents as a woman.
36. Literally yelled when these two showed up. Joshua calls Finn a crybaby, which is a callback to "Dad's Dungeon".
37. The wall of weapons in Joshua and Margaret's house includes the iconic Demon Blood Sword, which was broken in "Play Date", as well as Margaret's auto-loading crossbow from "Joshua & Margaret Investigations".
38. Jermaine is sidelined a few times through the episode, in reference to his attitude in "Jermaine" where he feels that Finn and Jake were always their parents' favourites. I would have hoped things would be a bit better by now.
39. Fern gets name dropped while Finn and Jake are reuniting. A shame he doesn't actually show up in the episode.
40. In this scene, Finn says "What time is it?" This is a very subtle reference to the 2010 cartoon "Adventure Time".
41. In a couple of shots during this fight scene it looks like Jake might have a tattoo. It seems like it only becomes visible when he stretches out his arm.
42. New Death's amulet in this scene resembles parts of the Lich's cape, foreshadowing his influence on New Death.
43. There are several more cameos in the 50th Dead World: Booshy from "High Strangeness", one of the Marshmallow Kids from "Scamps", and Ghost Princess and Clarence, who were seen ascending to the 50th Dead World in "Ghost Princess".
44. Finn didn't interact with Booshy in "High Strangeness", but it seems they must have met at some point before they both died because Finn knows his name.
45. It seems like people in the 1st Dead World are slowly melted away until they become part of the landscape. Nasty.
46. Lots more cameos in this scene: a gnome from "Power Animal", a gnome from "The Enchiridion", a Bath Boy from "The Vault", Blagertha from "Love Games", Maja the Sky Witch, a troll from "Dungeon", Chocoberry, Choose Goose, Wyatt, a spiky person from "Gut Grinder", and possibly more.
47. Tiffany's insults are consistently nonsensical and amazing, as they were in the original series.
48. The Candy Kingdom looks extremely different. Peppermint Butler is wearing the crown so he might be in charge now, which is supported by the kingdom's very magical-looking augmentations. It’s not clear whether Finn and Jake were expecting to find Princess Bubblegum or Peppermint Butler, since both have the initials “PB” and both could be going by the title of “Princess”. Perhaps Peps and Bubblegum share the princess duties now that PB is living with Marceline more of the time.
49. Peppermint Butler has a "Boss" mug, although it's not the same colour as the one from "Obsidian".
50. Jake's ghost has the same design as he did when BMO killed him in "Ghost Fly". I also absolutely love Finn's ghost. This scene establishes that ghosts are just visitors to the mortal plane from the dead worlds.
51. Life has only appeared in animated shorts before now. Namely, "The Gift That Reaps Giving" which establishes her relationship with Death, and "Frog Seasons: Winter". This episode gives her a concrete place within Adventure Time's pantheon: she is in charge of reincarnation.
52. A translation of Life’s angry French dialogue by Shado: “After all I did for that boy. After all I did for him. No, it's not possible. It's not possible no, that... that makes me so mad but it's not possible.”
53. We finally have in-universe confirmation that Shoko's tiger is a previous life of Jake. This was previously confirmed by one of the writers, but wasn't canon until now.
54. I feel like Finn pulled off Shoko's look even better than Shoko did. I wonder whether Finn has gained the memories of his past lives now that he’s dead.
55. No Easter egg here, just want to appreciate this image.
56. There is an elemental symbol on the wall here, as seen in "Jelly Beans Have Power".
57. Tiffany's dramatic internal monologue is a recurring gag, as is his habit of nearly dying from falling into holes.
58. The Jake suit makes a cameo in the fight against New Death. It was last seen in the episode "Reboot”.
59. Finn's backpack contains a few familiar items: the t-shirt with the pocket from "It Came from the Nightosphere", Finn's underwear from "Little Dude" and other episodes, and a copy of Mind Games as I've already mentioned.
60. The Lich's Hand is present in the background of Death's... death scene. This is probably the unseen "friend" who New Death keeps talking about.
61. The Lich's menacing monologues often begin with a single command. Previously they have included "Fall" and "Stop". This time, the command is "Burn".
62. Jake uses the word "boingloings", which is a callback all the way to "Hitman" in the third season.
63. Jake's blue shape-shifter form from "Abstract" appears very briefly during his fight with Finn.
64. Finn's lumpy space person form also makes an appearance. This design was last seen all the way back in the second episode of the entire show, "Trouble in Lumpy Space".
65. Jake steps on the Lich's hand in a very similar way to how he stepped on Ash in "Memory of a Memory", which is itself a Monty Python reference.
66. The credits include a dedication to a few AT cast and crew who have passed away. Polly Lou Livingston was the voice of Tree Trunks. Miguel Ferrer was the voice of Death. Michel Lyman and Maureen Mlynarczyk were both sheet timers on the original series. Rest in peace.
67. The message that Finn and Jake write out on the ouija board is "BUTT", which Peppermint Butler takes as a distress signal. This message is also used as a distress signal by the Hot Dog Knights in "The Limit".
68. Peppermint Butler's reversed dialogue from the scene where he makes contact with Finn and Jake is "Kee-Oth Rama Pancake", the spell from “Dad's Dungeon” for banishing demons.
69. That appears to be President Porpoise with all of Tree Trunks’ other lovers.
70. In this scene, Life is humming part of "Lonely Bones", the song which Death tried to record for her in her debut short "The Gift That Reaps Giving". It's hard to notice because it's so brief.
71. Finn and Jake's cover is blown while in the Land of the Dead because Jake loudly farts, which also happened in "Death in Bloom".
72. The place where Mr. Fox explains the perception mechanics of the afterlife is the exact same location as the River of Forgetfulness from "Death in Bloom", which, as it turns out, was imaginary.
These are sort of out of order at the end because I was adding stuff to the Twitter thread as it got discovered. That’s all for now!
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Hey I wanted to fuck around and ramble about how I specifically headcanon and like to portray Jack and Maddie career-wise for my fanfics/personal take on the DP canon.
So to start; I headcanon Maddie as having a masters in electrical engineering and Jack as having a PhD in Thanatology (the scientific study of death and the practices associated with it), though he has a bachelor's degree in mortuary science while also having a funeral director’s license.
Why these? Because I absolutely see Maddie as the builder and thinker, the one who can build things, and Jack as the theorist who knows everything there is to know about ghosts. I picked Thanatology because it was as close as I could find to studying ghosts in an actual applied scientific sense, but I liked the mortuary science because it felt like a good accompaniment. I originally had mortuary sciences as his PhD (if you’ve heard me talk about this before), but I found out that I was actually a big dumb because in the US, you cannot get a PhD in mortuary sciences ihsofsa so I did research for an alternative.
So how do their jobs work? Well, I think it's approached in a very academic-y sense. While I kind of play with it loosely based on the specific fanfiction, I generally say that their job is a sorta combination of any number of the following:
Research grants to study ghosts, from both the government and just private companies
Writing books/textbooks revolved around ghosts (like ectobiology, ghost hunting, etc)
Contract ghost hunting work (like being paid to get rid of ghosts from private residents/buildings)
Income from ghost invention patents (think their Fenton weapons and things like the Fenton thermos)
They do non-ghost research and inventing as well (since they seem to custom build their own computers and other various technologies, and even just things like the Specter Speeder can be marketed to a non-ghost hunting audience like the military, and Jazz implied in GNO that Maddie has a lot of inventions outside of Jack that she works on)
Paid to teach/give lectures or make appearances at seminars, conventions or speak at certain events
Since Jack in this is licensed funeral director, he also occasionally works with a funeral home, and sometimes I even headcanon that Jack and Maddie used to own a funeral home before they got the grant/funding to build their ghost portal (which I touch on a little later!)
Jack teaches part time at a local community college/university, teaching normally one or two classes here but sometimes more, and sometimes even as Casper High teaching ghost 101 safety
Maddie is also a licensed electrician that does occasional work related to that
And this is kind of where you may be asking: wait, aren't they kind of a joke? Why are you giving them all this credit?
Well, honestly, I really like to think of the Fentons as being actually fairly well respected academically and by fellow ghost hunters. There's a lot of scientists that you'll basically learn are real Weirdos, but that doesn't distract from the fact that they are incredibly smart people who made amazing breakthroughs.
To me, I headcanon Jack as being autistic, and that ghosts and the paranormal is a special interest in which he's actually an incredibly well respected scientist, who has the most accurate (as far as the paranormal studies scientific community knows) information and knowledge about ghosts. He's been writing and studying it for twenty years, and arguably, essentially proved that ghosts exists because of his ghost portal and living in Amity Park, where ghost activity boomed. While there's canon evidence dedicated to him being made fun of in Million Dollar Ghost, I personally like to think of this as more of other ghost hunters just kind of seeing how Awkward and ridiculous he can be socially. We also hear about Danny and Jazz dunking on them, but I think this comes more from two teenagers being embarrassed about their oddball parents.
I definitely picture the Fentons as still being the town weirdos because well. You see their oddballness every day. But most ectobiologists would only see Jack when he's presenting and read his work, where I imagine he's presented as a bit less goofy and more serious. Because it's a chance for him to essentially ramble on about his special interest and area of expertise without interruption to an incredibly eager audience that's going to be asking questions and wanting his opinions. To me, Jack definitely seems like the person who you don't really think about how odd he kinda is (purely because of masking and it just not really coming up) until you're really with him 1v1 outside of these of these conventions/lectures/classroom environments.
I don’t totally see Maddie teaching, because while I’m definitely picturing her here as being a very smart mind that would likely also be a good teacher; the specific reasoning why I say Jack would be the ones that does the teaching part time is because it’s literally perfect for him. It's an excuse for him to trap 25+ people in a room on a regular basis to listen to him about ghosts. He'd absolutely just one of those easy A teachers, where if you just show up and listen to him babble about ghosts for 1-3 hours and turn in the homework (he gives no tests, midterm/finals or quizzes), you get your easy A. It’s the similar concept with the seminars and guest lecture things; Jack is just much more enthusiastic and would want that solo speaking time, and Maddie knows how much it means to him, so I feel like she would let him have this.
Maddie herself, I feel liker her heart rests more in just the general inventing and building side of it. While she has an interest in ghosts, this also seems to mostly enjoy the physical side of inventing. I say this mostly because, again, in GNO, Maddie has a whole bunch of inventions that she’s working on outside of things she builds/helps Jack build. To me, this straight up personal invention projects, even though they’re still ghost based, tells me that her heart and passion seems to lie within engineering and not necessarily too much in the way of ghost theory.
The way his and Maddie's relationship works to me is that Jack knows more of the ghost related information and he relays this to Maddie for her to build what they need. For example, he'll tell her “this is what the Ghost Zone is like, these are the dangers, this is what we need to survive, etc” and Maddie will have the knowledge to design the Specter Speeder, and they build it together with Maddie being the primary leader and troubleshooter.
However, Maddie has the education and license to do the electrical work and knows how to properly build and submit the patents. Meanwhile, Jack will eventually do all the research and write and publish the book detailing what they learned about the Ghost Zone. Repeat the process with ghost weapons and other such inventions.
I like to think that Jack and Maddie were essentially going through the process of getting the huge government grant they'd need to build the actual ghost portal, which took a lot of prior research, convincing, pleas for money and getting the city permission and code permits to get the money and permission building it, hence the like 20 year gap between the prototype portal and the final portal. Especially since they obviously started a family during that time too.
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okay like I’m answering like this bc apparently tumblr put a limit on how long you can make asks and I was getting too long as usual but hahahaha well
my friend my countryperson, I can talk about them and then I will see myself out and start drinking way too early because of the pain, but not counting the addendum which killed me because yes hahahahahahahahha OH MY GOD YES *cries and kicks netflix*, it's choke full of parallels because like (I'm going off netflix and what books I read wrt witcher I haven't finished them yet but I got enough)
like first of all there's direct jaskier > stede and geralt > ed comparisons in the sense
jaskier and stede are both nobles/rich people who came from money/titles and gave it up to lead an 'adventurous' life or anyway something that puts them completely outside their original class status but don't care for what it brings them and at the same time are kinda gnc wrt what one would presume is A Real Man in their universes (but also irl tbh) because they both dress well/care about their appearance and put a lot of effort in maintaining it (I mean book!jaskier curls his fucking hair pls)/use what they learned in high society when they have to and the situation calls for it but at the same time they don't behave like anyone who doesn't come from high class is a lesser person and they don't gaf wrt who they're friends with
on the other side geralt and ed never mind the clothing similarities (because the black is just netflix!geralt game and book isn't exactly into LEATHER BLACK AESTHETIC but netflix is so we'll count it) have the whole thing where most people they meet/know perceive them as someone extremely dangerous/at times inhuman [for ed because for geralt it's most of the time when he's not with friends]/feel like they have to play into that part in order to get by in life/are sort of born into a violent job that makes them risk their life over and over (like geralt didn't have a choice about it and ed pretty much couldn't have done anything else) and they basically tried to embrace it as much as they can even if they want other things from life starting with being treated for themselves/like human beings also we can add that they both come from a poor background and they have a shitload of parental trauma that they never worked through (geralt with his mother and ed with his father) and to top it all off they're canonically seen by others (and themselves to a point) as monsters (geralt bc he's a mutant and ed has the whole kraken defense mechanism)
to which we could go with the first obvious bunch of relationship parallels in the sense that in both ships (not counting how bad netflix is at show don't tell) the thing is that jaskier/stede immediately see ed/geralt as someone they like/they want to be friends with and they don't care about whatever bad fame they have if they even knew about it (I mean netflix!jaskier doesn't even know wtf is geralt before he goes and talks to him while everyone was giving him a wide berth and stede had shown ed the secret closet after literally five seconds he didn't know he was blackbeard) and make them feel like they don't have to pretend to be someone they're not at least with them while on the other side they feel like they can also be themselves without getting judged for their idiosyncrasies or for all the reasons they didn't fit in high society
to which we could add that ed/geralt have canonically saved stede/jaskier's asses as well I mean in netflix we mostly had bottled appetites when it came to geralt saving jaskier's ass but in the books it happened way more often as far as I read up and ed signed his freedom away to save stede's life like we serious
but then there's the other parallel which you hinted because yes there's the whole angle with the what makes you happy part but let me go into it a second
like, jaskier and ed in that sense is kinda obvious because they're the two who bring up the whole 'wanting to figure out what makes me/you happy' (and the one difference is that since obv netflix!witcher isn't going that route geralt was never gonna say IT'S YOU while stede did but I mean that went unsaid) but they're also the two that are more in touch with their feelings, because jaskier has no problem bringing up the thing and admittedly he's the one out of the two of them who tries to actually talk about stuff and same for ed who for being like... in a fairly crap position for it is actually way more open about his own feelings and needs and shit than stede is (more on that later), takes the first step and puts himself on the line...
which brings us to the fact that at the end of S1s of both shows jaskier and ed are the two people who are in the same position because they’ve been left heartbroken by ed/stede ie the two people they trusted/cared for the most (and were in love with) and you don’t want to know how much I screamed when ed was working through it with the breakup song because my immediate thought was ‘if it was the same universe and he heard burn butcher burn he’d track jaskier down just to have drinks with him about the fair-headed assholes who obviously broke their heart’ and I’m just sad I don’t have time to write that crossover but like are we fucking serious, and the fact that both of them pretend they’re over it after but actually aren’t (ed cries in the nook at the end of S1 and jaskier is lit. crying while singing the last line of BBB) isn’t anything I can get over atm
I can also rant about the fact that actually jaskier and ed are the ones that have uuuh the most similar fashion choices because YEAH YEAH I KNOW THE BLACK LEATHER but listen to me a second like jaskier dresses all Not Exactly Masculine™ with his own flair, not with previously put-together outfits, and he has the post-breakup red leather outfit, but it’s still nice stuff (the frilly shirt, the silken vest) because he figured out what he wants to dress like and has no issue donning that right, while ed starts with the black leathers but that’s his blackbeard thing, then moves on to stede’s frilly stuff and he likes it but it’s still not him™, and the moment he could actually pick and choose what he wanted... he got stede’s trousers and the silken pretty (red) floral vest, the long hair and nothing else including the trademark beard, which is... Not Exactly Masculine™ but is his own flair over what he found out he liked wearing and he was exploring it before izzy had to go ruin it but I digress
meanwhile netflix!geralt and stede until the end of S1 dress in... well, coded outfits unless someone puts them out of it in the sense that geralt never gives up his leather get-up unless jaskier gives him the nice clothing and stede has only frilly coordinated outfits all the time except when they’re at the academy (and we could talk for ages wrt he and ed being dressed the same when they kiss but nvm that) but at the same time like the other witchers don’t dress like geralt so we can take for granted that he chose that get up and likes it/maintains it same as stede liked the frilly clothing and never cared that he was judged badly for wearing it, but it’s kinda armor-y for them if it makes sense imvho? idk I’m ranting but anyway let’s move on to the actual stuff
because clothes nonwithstanding on the other side geralt and stede have in common a terrible level of emotional constipation brought by the fact that both of them think that they can’t be genuinely loved/cared for by other people/think they’re bad news for them, like the fact that geralt keeps on telling himself he doesn’t have feelings (false) vs how stede keeps on saying he agrees he’s a monster and ruins beautiful things is... kinda the same thing at the end of it because neither of them is anywhere near in touch with his feelings (as much as stede is good at making others discuss them) and it takes them a... I don’t want to say traumatic event bc that doesn’t exactly fit, more like a lifechanging revelation like thing to start getting over it - like, for geralt is finding ciri and having to be emotionally available for his daughter and therefore getting more in touch with his feelings for others at the same time, for stede is hearing mary talk about what it means to be really in love and realise that’s what he was feeling because he couldn’t recognise it as it never happened to him before and no one actually loved him like that either, and while with geralt/jaskier isn’t exactly 100% the same bc obviously geralt is close with the other kaer morhen witchers jaskier is still the first human friend he had and obv in between witchers it’s a different thing
which brings us to the part where geralt and stede are the ones who actually cause heartbreak for jaskier/ed, geralt because he has the pent up rage moment and unloads on jaskier also probably because he knew he could do it with him and on one level he thinks jaskier would be better off without him anyway but doesn’t realise how much it actually would have hurt him and stede because he thinks he ruins everything and that ed would be better off without him when instead ed is a lot worse off without him, so they basically are working on assumption about themselves which are not true and end up driving away the other two who has just bared their heart out to them ops
so like geralt and ed would have an interesting conversation and stede and jaskier would have the same because both would be like eh being a noble sucked, but the double date would be something because it would end up with jaskier and ed siding vs the other two being like eeeeh we did fuck up didn’t we but I digress
and I mean at this point I’m here sobbing like why the fuck are these fictional people doing this to me but YEAH THERE ARE PARALLELS and I’m nowhere near ready to consider most of this without feeling like I’ve been personally attacked
#geraskier#blackbonnet#janie writes meta#god i didn't think this was going to be my first contribution to this fandom but#antiqualugar#I DON'T EVEN KNOWWW#the witcher#ch: geralt of rivia#ch: jaskier#otp: it's onion#otp: fuck it#our flag means death#ch: stede bonnet#ch: edward teach#otp: you wear fine things well#otp: co captains#queue of the beam#put this on queue bc i edited it five times but anyway here you go
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I feel like I've read a ton, but I'm honestly still pretty new to comics rn. That being said... What is one more day? Ik we don't like it and it happened a while ago, but that's about it [,=
Time for Spider-Man History With Traincat: Highly Controversial Storylines! And that feeling is totally normal with comics with huge canons -- you can read a ton and still have some fairly big blindspots in your understanding of the total picture. That being said, this is kind of a big one, both in terms of Spider-Man history/canon and in terms of how Spider-Man fandom functions. I would say probably no other storyline has had quite as much impact on how the fandom views and interacts with the source material as One More Day/Brand New Day. It's been the Wild West out here ever since it happened. (Which was in 2007, so like, yes, fairly long ago, especially when you look at how Spider-Man canon has evolved since, but in the grand scheme of things, also kind of recent. One More Day is not old enough to rent a car.)
So when people talk about Spider-Man's One More Day, they're usually actually talking about two related arcs: One More Day and Brand New Day. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering both. For the sake of transparency, I am going to admit that I think One More Day, as a self-contained story, is good, actually. This is controversial! I admit that! But I stand by my stupid opinions on this blog, for some reason. I think One More Day when you examine it on its own, by which I mean you ignore the decade and a half worth of canon that came after it, as a Spider-Man story and as a PeterMJ-centric story holds up under scrutiny and that people who don't like it don't like complicated love stories and might actually throw their own mothers under buses. No offense to the OMD haters. Little bit of offense to the OMD haters. Brand New Day, which is the continuation of One More Day, on the other hand -- largely bad. Very largely bad.
But let's backtrack. One More Day is a four issue crossover storyline that takes place directly after Civil War, during which Iron Man and Captain America got divorced and divvied up the superhero community and Spider-Man made some startlingly bad decisions and made a fugitive out of himself and his family in a manner that got Aunt May shot, and Spider-Man: Back in Black (Amazing Spider-Man #539–543) which examines Peter's actions immediately after Aunt May is shot and ends with him humiliating the Kingpin in front of an entire prison. One More Day consists of Amazing Spider-Man #544 -> Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 -> Sensational Spider-Man v2 #41 -> Amazing Spider-Man #545. In One More Day, Aunt May is dying, all of Peter's efforts to save her have thus far failed, and, consumed by guilt, he is rapidly running out of time. Approached by Mephisto, a literal demon from hell, Peter is offered a deal: Aunt May will live -- and Peter's identity, which was previously revealed to the world at large during Civil War, will once again be hidden from the memories of all but a select few -- if Peter trades him his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane struggle with this, but eventually both agree to the deal. The clock strikes twelve, the deal is done, and Peter and Mary Jane's marriage fades into history.
(ASM #545) A reasonably simple premise for a story that caused so many problems -- most, I would argue, not actually the original story's fault. So obviously, this was an unpopular move -- Peter and Mary Jane had for a long time been a fan favorite Marvel couple, and in a fictional universe where most relationships are doomed as soon as they begin, the enduring Spider-Marriage was sacred ground. And then, with a snap of its fingers, it was gone: Peter wakes up in Aunt May's house, no longer married, with Mary Jane out of the picture. (She would not return to the book on any sort of consistent basis for over 50 issues.) In the wake of One More Day began Brand New Day, which is basically what it sounds like: a promised "brand new day" of "exciting" Spider-Man content and a publishing schedule where Amazing Spider-Man came out three times a month. (Which sounds good on paper but I think in practice caused more problems than it created good storylines.) Peter, newly single again, had new love interests! And also Harry Osborn was alive again for some reason! I generally like Harry's post-BND stories so that part's fine with me.
But overall? Brand New Day is a mess. It knows it wants to tread new and exciting ground with Peter -- tell new stories! ensnare new readers! make them fork out for a book three times a month. -- but it doesn't know what those stories should be. Readers who were invested in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship -- a major facet of Spider-Man comics for decades at that point -- felt rightfully betrayed that the marriage could be so easily traded in and that Mary Jane herself, perhaps the second most important figure in Spider-Man comics after Peter, could be tossed aside. From a personal point of view, I think Brand New Day fails in large part because it abandons what has always made Spider-Man such a compelling series, and that's the mix of Peter's personal life with his vigilante life. BND sees Peter with new friends, new jobs, new love interests, etc -- it is very much a brand new day! But it isn't a better day compared to the stories that came before it. I do like some post-BND stories, especially American Son (ASM #595-599) and Grim Hunt (ASM #634-637), but compared to pre-BND where I think the majority of canon is good, it's a very lacking body of work that is hurt by the way it divorced itself from the PeterMJ marriage as Spider-Man's central relationship.
"But Traincat, I thought you said you liked One More Day?" Yeaaaaah. I do. This is why I keep saying I like One More Day on its own merits, and not on the merits of the stories it opened the doors for. I like a good romantic tragedy in fiction, and the way Peter and Mary Jane's final scene in One More Day plays out is beautiful. I like the idea of Peter caught in this impossible situation, being asked to choose between two women he loves more than his own life. A really common criticism I see leveled against One More Day is that Peter should have chosen his relationship with Mary Jane over May's life, which is -- okay, I think it's weird that people keep insisting on this, not in the least because by asking Peter to sacrifice his aunt's life they're essentially demanding he commit a callous, out of character act in order to further his own interests. It's also weird because the thing is, Peter already chose Mary Jane over May -- that's what gets them into this situation. It's literally in the scene where May is shot:
(ASM #538) When the gun goes off, Peter's spider-sense kicks in, and he covers Mary Jane, leaving May in the path of the bullet. He does choose Mary Jane over May, regardless of whether he realized what he was doing. And that's why he can't make that choice a second time. His actions in One More Day do make sense for him as a character, whether or not any individual reader likes them, and Mary Jane's actions make sense, too -- after all, she's the one who ultimately tells Mephisto that they agree to the deal when Peter can't bring himself to voice it.
A lot of people also like to nitpick One More Day by going, well, why could (x) or (y) with life saving powers save Aunt May which is like -- yeah, I guess, but if we're going to ask that about this specific comic book near death setup, you kind of have to do it with every single one, and I'm not going to stake every single moment of comic book drama on whether or not that gold kid from the X-Men was busy at the time. Comics are soap operas in flimsy paper form: serialized longform storytelling that relies heavily on melodrama. Sometimes you have to go with things. Sometimes you sell your marriage to the devil. Stuff happens. That in and of itself doesn't make One More Day a bad story -- and while some people blame the Spider-Marriage's dissolution entirely on One More Day, I think that's a little shortsighted when you look at the history of Spider-Man since the turn of the century. It's clear -- and Marvel themselves have been perhaps a little too open about this -- that Marvel in the past few decades has had trouble with the direction they want to take Spider-Man. They WANTED Spider-Man to appeal to a distinctly youthful audience that they didn't think they were actually reaching -- understandable, considering that Marvel nearly went bankrupt around 2000 and was saved by Ultimate Spider-Man, an out of main continuity series which retold Spider-Man from the beginning and focused heavily on Peter as a teen -- but the problem was Spider-Man in the main continuity was at that point in canon a happily married man who was pushing the dreaded 30 whether or not they wanted to admit that. This is also why Marvel has continually pivoted away from Spider-Man having kids, because they feared that making him a dad would age him too much and make him unrelatable to their coveted audience of Teens. (This is also why almost every new Spider-Man property, especially the live action movies, perpetually stick him back into high school, despite that occupying a very small slice of 616 canon.) So around the year 2000, they started trying things in relation to the Spider-Marriage, which was viewed as a major problem -- after all, what's more adult than being married and liking your wife. First, they had Mary Jane presumed dead. Then, they had Mary Jane and Peter separate. Then, when Mary Jane and Peter had only recently gotten back together, One More Day struck. If One More Day specifically hadn't gone the way it had, it's pretty clear that the Spider-Marriage was going to go one way or another -- it's a little bit of a shame it happened when it did, because OMD is the end of J Michael Straczynski's run, and JMS wrote a really beautiful Peter and MJ relationship. But Marvel as a company and especially editor in chief at the time Joe Quesada viewed Peter and Mary Jane's relationship as a major problem in how they wanted to portray Spider-Man and thought that striking the relationship from the books would allow them more freedom in their portrayal of him as younger and more relatable to their Desired Audience of people who I guess really wanted to see Peter sleep with characters who weren't Mary Jane.
(ASM #546. Younger! Fresher! Less attached! Kissing random women in the club!)
The problem with One More Day has always been in the follow through -- from the content of Brand New Day to the pacing of events to the fact that Marvel withheld key information for such a long time that it allowed misinformation to thrive. After all, what does it MEAN to trade Peter and Mary Jane's marriage to the devil? It altered the events of canon in Peter and the majority of other characters' memories so that the marriage didn't exist, but it left people wondering -- did the relationship as they remembered it existed? How much of Spider-Man canon was altered? And the answers didn't come for over 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. One Moment In Time or OMIT (Amazing Spider-Man #638-641), which revealed that while Peter and Mary Jane never got married in the altered canon they did continue their long committed relationship up until just after Civil War, was published in 2010, so essentially readers were hung out to dry without answers for three years. That's a long time to string people along, but not as long as it took Marvel to confirm that the popular fan theory that Mary Jane retained her memories of the original timeline as part of her own deal with Mephisto was also true, which happened this year. I would say, at least from my perspective, a lot of the frustration doesn't come from the individual One More Day storyline so much as how Marvel has continually dragged out the aftermath, using the promise of a Spider-Marriage return to keep fans on the hook. Which is why One More Day continually comes up in discussion of current Spider-Man, because Spencer's run has relied very heavily on imagery from that period with a serious question of whether or not there actually was going to be payoff, something which is still up in the air.
This has been Spider-Man History With Traincat, brought to you by anonymice like you.
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