#the smaller scale is definitely a fun challenge when it comes to all of their details

[bobababygirl]

[yaut-jaknowit]

First One to Make a Noise, Loses

Pairing: Vic'tao (Male Yautja) x Reader (AFAB) x Uihoy (Male Yautja)

Warnings: SMUT, multiple orgasms, lots of teasing, knotting, nick names, uses of toys, rough sex, breeding, threesome, cum inflation

Word Count: 4970

Summary: A challenge set up by Uihoy. Funny enough, he's the one that makes most of the noises. Fun though to see them squirm yet try to stay quiet. But you make a comment about it and it's all over for you. They both turn against you.

Author Note: Man oh man, this one was perfecto! I fucking love it and them. Just them. The way I write them is something I love. Plus, the breeding and knotting part is phenomenal!

Masterlist

Ao3

“First one to make a noise, loses,” Uihoy stated as he stood above your sitting frame. Your gaze dragged up to him with a raised brow. The Yautja couldn’t be serious? Yet that look on his alien face told he was. You laughed and leaned back on your arms, legs straight out in front of you.

His shoulders raised and fell heavily with each deep breath. Moisture stuck to his scales. Some beads of sweat rolled down his frame. He made a noise of offence and stepped between your open legs. “Does little hunter not trust Uihoy’s word?” he questioned and bent at the waist. Now he was face to face with you. On the other hand, you smirk and booped him on the nose.

Some feet away from the two of you, Vic’tao picked up the discarded training weapons. Vic’s own frame was the same as Uihoy, slicked with sweat and lungs sucking in breaths. They had been at for hours, and that was the honest truth. How in the world they weren’t tired, let alone implying sex, amazed you.

“Do you want the honest truth or me to be nice to ya?” you countered instead. Your smile was honeyed as the two of you stared one another down. He would cave to your command but he, at least, put on a front of dominance. To dominate him was heaven to you. The male tilted his head just slightly. “Alight fine. Out of the three of us, you are the one that makes the most noises. Not that I’m complaining, but this little challenge… you’re going to fail, love.”

A fake sound of pain escaped him as he stood back, hand on his chest. This was something he learned from you. This made you laugh again with a shake of your head. “I asked. Can’t say I didn’t, old man.”

He snorted at you and rolled his eyes. Your purple lover acted like he hated it when you call him that but never does anything in retaliation. And until he told you to stop, you could continue calling him the name that fits him.

Though, you will say, he doesn’t fuck like he’s old.

“So, are you sure you want to do this challenge?” you asked and moved your leg to touch his ankle. In retaliation, he nudged his foot against you.

“They are correct, Uihoy. You would be losing quickly if you want to go through with this,” Vic’tao said as he put up the last weapon and made his way over to the two of you. He stopped next to the smaller male and knocked shoulders with him.

Uihoy clicked something to Vic, the words barely heard to the both of you. “I would happily prove you both wrong,” or something like that. Your Yautja still isn’t all that great. You’re better at writing/reading than listening and definitely speaking it. Your mouth isn’t like theirs.

The other male clicked his laughter and shook his large head, tresses swaying with the movement. “You are on then, old man,” Vic accepted the challenge with a grin and got in Uihoy’s face. The purple Yautja snarled but didn’t make any moves to initiate another fight.

That’s when you smirked to yourself. An idea coming to mind. Let’s make this a little harder for the two of them. Though the rope you have isn’t strong enough, you’ll make do with the other toys you’ve collected. They’ll have their fun while you have yours. Everyone will be happy in the end.

One of them must have saw this, Vic knocked his foot into your calf. “What are you planning, sharp one?” You snicker quietly before standing up and padding away from them. Their eyes watched as you snuck away from them. Your bare feet making light slapping noises. A destination in mind. Nothing could stop you from finishing this.

Once you left their sight, the two snapped their heads at one another. “You’re going to lose, old man. Their cunt will make you weep, like always,” Vic snarked at Uihoy in their language. The latter Yautja huffed.

“You’ll be the first to lose. I’ll make sure of it,” Uihoy returned fire, tongue flickering out almost touched Vic’s face. He knew this might be a fail for himself. Vic was right. Uihoy is most likely to make the first noise. But maybe that’ll work out in the end for him. Vic and their little hunter using him. Paya, he loved the sound of this.

When you returned and saw them in each other’s face, you stopped at the entrance with a hip jutted out. “Getting started without me? I feel so left out,” you whined but kept your hands behind your back, hiding some toys. Not that had noticed that just yet.

The two turned their heads towards you. Both of their jaws and lower mandibles went slack. You had chanced from your normal, everyday light clothing. Now, delicate, purple and yellow lingerie curved over your chest and waist. Hungry looks already washing over their faces. Vic takes the first step towards you but you shake your head. “Nuh uh, I paid a lot for this. I don’t want it ruined, please. But first-“ you walked over to them and kneeled before them. Uihoy’s eyes widened at this while Vic purred ready for you to take his loin cloth off.

What you had in your hands were was set down between your feet, hidden from their gaze. You let your hands touch against Vic’s thighs. They tense underneath your ministration. Your hands skim up to his belt slowly undo it. It fell away to reveal his slit. A light wetness through the middle. A smirk growing on your face. “Starting now, no making any noises. No growls, hissing, purrs, moans, or whines,” you stated then slid your middle finger down his slit.

Immediately, you felt the point of his green cock already pressing against your finger. Vic closed his throat to prevent anything from escaping at the touch. Paya, you were going to kill him.

You reached over to the other male and pulled his loin cloth off as well. “That means you too Uie. No sounds. Be good for me.” His neck tensed to cut off anything coming from him. It was going to be so easy to get him to crack. To be honest though, you want Vic’tao to be the first to lose. Mostly always uptight. He needs to relax sometimes, and you were about to show him that.

The purple male’s hand rested on top of your head, claws lightly prickling your scalp. “Uihoy won’t. Not gonna be Uihoy,” he muttered, almost stuttering as your other hand came up and skated around his slit.

Vic’tao’s dick began to slid out slowly from its sheath. You were quick to wrap your lips around the peeking head, suckling softly. Vic choked on the air entering his lungs, eyes wide at you. Paya, he may be the one to lose first, despite any efforts to be quiet. Your lips were so gentle and plush while your tongue kitten licked. His hand laid on top of Uihoy’s and pushed you closer.

The floor wasn’t nice to your knees. But seeing the Yautja beginning to squirm underneath your administration filled you with power. The hand on Vic’tao’s leg continued to play his slickening sheath. It helped work the rest of his cock. You took more of it into your mouth, enjoying the weight and tangy taste on your tongue.

There was no chance of fully taking him. Only letting the tip almost hit the back of your throat, unable to take any more without gagging. You kept playing with Uihoy’s sheath and felt as his cock slid out. 

Once he was fully out, knot and all, you carefully wrapped your hand around Uihoy’s alien penis and stroked slowly. His hips jutted out. His free hand slapped onto Vic’tao’s shoulder and grasped the flesh there. You pulled of the yellow male with a grin. “Aww, poor, sweet, baby boy is struggling already. You did set this all up,” you purred to him. When your hand got to the base, you squeezed tightly.

Uihoy’s head was thrown back, mandibles spread wide in a silent keen. Yet, the male kept strong didn’t make a noise. “Good boy, keeping quiet and all.” Uihoy’s talons bit into your scalp more noticeably now. You kept your smirk on until Vic pushed you more harshly against his leaking erection. “Suck,” he growled at you.

Your tongue ran up the length of his cock and picked up a bead of precum. His mandibles clicked wildly against one another. That, you don’t consider as a noise per se.

Before anything could continue too far, you release your hold on the both of them. Each had to stop themselves from making a noise of complaint. “What are you doing?” Vic snarled and kept you faced at his twitching cock. You only smirk in response and grabbed at the toys hidden behind you.

Two cock rings and a whole bottle of lube. Lube was your best friend when it came to these guys. Especially with Vic’tao. He had a strange fascination with your butt and filling it. You shivered at the thought.

With the rings in hand, you squirted a little of the lube in hand and coated them. “I-I don’t think that’s necessary, sharp one,” Vic’tao stuttered but didn’t make any moves away from you. He remembers the time you tied the two of them up and put the same ring on him. Uihoy didn’t allow him to come that night after he broke the ropes. Kinda of a punishment. Paya, his ass hurt afterwards. But pauk, his cock throbbed so badly.

“Fear, Vic?” Uihoy teased and turn his body to be closer with you. Both of their bodies radiated heat like crazy and made your heartbeat wildly. “Learned a lesson?” Uie’s hand on Vic’s shoulder moved down over his shoulder blade and grasped a firm butt cheek. The yellow male jerked at the touch. “Be good for little hunter.” It was a threat. One that he didn’t need to learn the consequences of again.

“Shut up, Uie,” he snarled back and tensed as you began to roll the ring onto him. His cock throbbed at the attention as he did everything in his power not to move.

It was a struggle to get it passed the hardening knot but you did it. Once his was on, you went over to Uihoy and did the same thing. A kiss was placed at the tip for him being so good. Then, you returned back in front of Vic and licked up another bead of pre cum. The male couldn’t handle himself forced your head forward. Before a noise of surprise could escape, he hit the back of your throat, triggering your gag reflex.

If only he could groan a noise of pleasure at the way you squeezed him. “Pauk, they’re so good. You feel so good, sharp one.” You tapped his thigh twice to gain his attention. He released his hold on you. This allowed you to pull back and suck in needed air. You weren’t made at him at all. Instead, it made you proud to know you do that to him.

You looked up at them, salvia dripping from your slacked jaw. “You guys keep squirming but are being good at staying silent. Maybe you are a bit more strong willed than I thought,” you teased with a smirk growing onto your face. Between your legs, you didn’t need anyone to tell you how wet you were. The slick coating your legs was all that was needed.

Both Yautjas turned their heads at one another, a dangerous look in their eyes. Your brows furrowed at this. “Hey, what are you two planning?” you questioned and leaned back, away from them.

The two of them began to click at each other. It was Yautja but none of the words you could understand. You would’ve growled if the challenge wasn’t in place. If only they would’ve given you a translator. Your life would be so much easier. Damn them.

Uihoy’s hand slid from underneath Vic’s and let the bulky male have control. The latter Yautja moved it to your neck and wrapped his digits around the back of it. Your eyes widened at this. Uh oh. You’re about to be in super deep trouble with them.

Vic’tao kept you close and stepped behind you. The other male laid down on the ground before you, resting back on his elbows. His eyes watched closely as Vic bent at the waist and licked up a stripe on the shell of your ear. You slapped a hand over your mouth before any noises could escape. Vic clicked his laughter and did it again. Your entire body shivered at this. “You’ll be the first to break, ooman. We’ll make sure of it,” he whispered airily into your ear. “You’ll be drowning in pleasure without thinking about keeping silent, sharp one.”

Your cunt throbbed emptily, throat closing up to stop a whine that was desperate to be let out. “Just don’t ruin the lingerie or I’ll have Uihoy fuck your ass again,” you snarked with an evil grin.

His mandibles twitched with anger then he pushed your forward. You landed awkwardly on Uihoy’s naval and started to get up. “Aww, did that make you mad? I know you love it when Uihoy takes control from you once in awhile. I ca-“ Vic grasped the back of your neck again and tossed you more up Uihoy’s lean frame.

Now, your body was fully on top of the purple and green male’s torso. Vic had placed you perfectly for the two of them. Your dripping cunt hovered over Uihoy’s knot. The rest of him trapped underneath your pinned form.

The male got on his knees roughly behind you, hand still on your neck. “Don’t say a word, Uihoy. They are being testy and need to learn a lesson,” he growled and used his other hand to hike up your hips, That same hand came down on your ass, leaving a stinging mark.

Your teeth creaked against one another as you did everything in your power to keep silent. But you, you weren’t done. “Is that all you have?” God, you were just digging your grave deeper and deeper. The two of them knew this. His claws bit into the soft flesh around your neck, possibly drawing blood. “Come on, baby, you can do better.”

That last sentence sealed your fate.

“Uihoy, fuck them like you haven’t before. Make them crack!” Vic’tao rutted his cock between your butt cheeks, making you tense with a hint of fear. For this to be enjoyable for all, the two of them needed lube. No matter what.

“H-hey, don’t forget,” you stuttered, hands clawing into Uihoy’s scales for purchase. The blue and yellow male immediately released your neck to pet down your back. He could read you like an open book. Both of them could.

“I won’t. We’re going to take care of you, promise.” Your muscles relaxed and you nodded your head. It was foolish to think he would forget to use the lube. But like they’ve said, ooman’s are fearful creatures.

That didn’t stop them from comforting you or facing your fears with you. They, for sure, were your lovers and partners in crime. Human or not, you helped them anywhere possible while they returned the favor as well.

His mouth was close to your ears now, body pressed against yours. “And you’re going to break first, love,” he stated like it was a fact. Well, with the two of them now teaming up against you, you were going to lose. He knew how to pull the right strings, the perfect spots to hit, to get you to cave. But they trained you as well, you were going to give them a run for their money.

Cold, wet moisture coated both of your entrances. Two, thick, dull clawed fingers pressed at the tight ring of muscle. This wasn’t the first time nor the last Vic will do this, let alone fuck your ass. But the male was always careful, mindful of his actions. The last thing he wants to do is hurt you in a bad way. He showed this as he slowly pushed in.

Your jaw dropped in a silent cry. It took all of your will power not to moan at the feeling or even whine his name. That could be consider your loss. “Th-this isn’t, isn’t fair, Vicky,” you said and grasped at Uihoy’s tresses. They helped ground you for the moment. Mentioned male kept himself propped up on one elbow and used a hand to run his claws from your lower spine and up. “You-you’re not he-lping Uie.”

A chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Uihoy knows. Wants to hear little hunter’s beautiful sounds. Let Uihoy and Vic’tao hear you,” he purred and picked up your chin, eyes meeting one another. His thumb nudged at your lips and gained easy access. All of your will power focused on keeping silent.

Vic’tao hummed when he slid down to his third knuckle. You were squeezing him so deliciously that he could hardly wait. But like you had told them the first time, foreplay was key. Like a hunter, he can wait just a little longer for his prize. It’ll taste even better with time. He knocked the other Yautja’s legs wider and pressed closer to their ooman.

An idea came to the larger male. He used his other hand to grasp the Yautja’s penis below him. Said male tensed, hips jutting up. Vic clicked smugly to himself then lined Uihoy’s tip to their ooman’s pussy. He watched as their muscles clenched at the feeling. “Vicky, what a-re you doing?” you questioned to him, eyes shut. Yet, he only pushed about two inches in due to their position.

“Helping,” he responded then pulled his fingers out all the way to the tip. Your stubbornness shouted at you to keep quiet. Keep silent. Don’t lose. Don’t make a sound.

One of them was going to lose. Not you. You were going to try your damn hardest to make sure of that. Then you opened your eyes with a newfound power.

Below you, Uihoy’s mandibles clicked wildly, eyes clenched shut. Here’s your chance. “Co-come on ba-baby boy. I-I wanna hear you. Let, let me hear,” you begged him. If he breaks first then, when your building orgasm hits you, you don’t have to worry about losing as much. Hopefully, he breaks really, really soon!

Uihoy shook his head, eyes opening once more. “Little hunter first.” He gently pushed his hips up. As his cock dragged against your g-spot, you tensed your jaw and clawed at his skin. The older male saw this with an alien grin and started up a slow, light pace. He didn’t push himself fully in yet, at most three inches at a time.

Gods above, you felt that inevitable feeling in the pit of your stomach. This would be your end. You were going to come on Vic’tao’s fingers and Uihoy’s cock and make a noise.

Your orgasm slammed into you. Your body twitched between their muscular bodies. Uihoy wrapped an arm around your torso and kept you pressed against him. His hip still moving drawing out this orgasm, continuing to fuck you through it. White blinded you as your mouth dropped in a silent wail. Hold it together, you mind begged. Your toes curled then your teeth latched onto the flesh that made up Uihoy’s chest.

The male arched his back, elbow giving out and forcing him on his back. Uihoy’s forced his throat close at your dirty trick. Pleasure raced down his body and made his cock throb, on the verge of filling you. Not yet though. This would be a wasted opportunity.

Above the two of you, Vic’tao watched with low satisfaction as you came, not a sound coming from your throat. But you prevented yourself from making even the tiniest of sounds. The squeezing of his two fingers though made him lose his composure. He needed to knot you before he lost this challenge.

His upper mandibles twitched wildly then lifted in a snarl. Vic’tao snatched the bottle of lube off the ground and quickly yet thoroughly dose his erection. You started something deep within him and he was going to finish it. The male pressed the tip of his cock at your tight hole and began to push. Your eyes widened at the feeling even if you haven’t fully come down yet. You bit your lip after letting go of Uihoy’s pec.

“You can make this easier on yourself, sharp one. Just let go and let us hear your sounds,” Vic offered and bent over you. His short tresses tickling against your skin. You didn’t trust your voice and shook your head. No, you weren’t going to give in so quickly. “Then so be it. Uihoy, remember what I told you earlier? No mercy!”

Vic’tao’s hips met your butt with a little forceful shove. You bit your lip harder and clawed at Uihoy’s skin. The male below clicked a couple of times before raising his hips. Your eyes widened at the feeling of being so full of them. Two strong, muscular Yautjas in their prime, about to dick you down. All over a small challenge one of them set up. How could your life get any better?

This was a weakness of yours. They knew this after you confessed it to them one day. The sexual tension grew far too thick to even breath on this ship. You blurted it at random. God, they were happy to make your dreams become reality. There was no way you would survive this and win the challenge in the end. Not when they filled you so perfectly. “Fuck,” you cursed and grasped one of Uihoy’s tresses. Two can play that game.

One thing about your purple lover, he had a thing about his tresses being messed with. You brought the tip up to your pliant lips and licked it.

The muscles that lined his stomach tensed, eyes blown wide. Inside of his mind, he praying to Paya not to just come right then and there.

It wasn’t a matter that it would be over, he wasn’t ooman. No, Vic’tao would make fun of him for it. He always does once these little sessions were over. But the way you licked and sucked it into your mouth. Pauk, he was going to lose.

“Come on, little hunter, come on our cocks. We’ll fill you so prettily. You’ll be round with our seed,” Vic taunted and dragged his tongue from the middle of your spine to the back of your neck. “Be a good little ooman for us. Let us know we’re doing good do for you.”

Gods above, you had to stop everything in your power not just to whine at his words. He knew how to make you moan, keen underneath him. Just the same way he was doing it right now.

Uihoy started back up an even pace to the best of his ability. You could feel your orgasm already closing in. The way they just played with you like a skilled weapon. It made you want to scream their names at the pleasure racing up and down your spine. “Ju-ust let go. Let go and let us fill your womb with our seed,” Vic said with a honeyed voice next to your ear.

Sharp teeth gently latched onto your neck. Both males pace speed up just a hair, knots growing in size. You knew their ends were closing in, just like yours. But you couldn’t hold on or hold it in any longer.

A piercing wail tore from your throat as a blinding light took over your sight. Tears running down your cheeks. Your entire body thrashed against theirs changing in you. You bit Uihoy again out of reaction. The two stuttered their thrusts at the feeling of you coming around them.

It was too late for Uihoy. You biting him was the last thing he could handle. His hips thrusted forward , sealing his knot inside of you. You bit Uihoy all the harder when he did this, hands fisted at his sides. Pain flared to life but it came at the cost of knowing he was breeding you. You whined at the thought.

An all-powerful roar tumbled out of his throat. But it wasn’t him who lost. No. As much as everyone else thought, it was you who pitched a cry. You groaned at the thought and slumped against the purple and green chest of Uihoy. His poor pec was released from your teeth. He gently stroked your back, eyes closed and cock filling you with his seed. His knot prevented any escaping. Big aliens have big knots.

Vic’tao pushed his own growing knot passed the tight ring of muscles, officially knotting you. He grunted at the significant amount of pleasure exploding in his body. You gave a soft cry, hands clawing at the metal floors that made up the sparring room. More pain raced up your spine at the feeling of both of them knotting you. It was a pain that was delicious. He bent down and rumbled a purr close to your ear. His own hands petted over the skin facing him. “Good, little ooman. You did so well for us. Well, besides making the first noise,” he taunted and licked at the shell of your ear.

There was no energy left in your body to even move. All you could do was whine at the feeling. This was your favorite way to end the night, body full of their seed and knots. “I don’t care. I still got what I wanted,” you slurred then kissed at the spot you had left teeth marks. “Sorry, baby boy. Didn’t mean to bite ya that hard.” He patted the top of your head without saying anything. The sparring and this must have worn him out in the end.

Above the two of you, Vic shifted. Fear shot through your veins. A painful flashback to when he had pulled out, knot still inflated. That gave you a newfound energy to reach behind and grasp at him. “Don’t!” you gasped, believing he was pulling out. His purr grew louder in volume as he pressed his body as close to yours as possible. You were sandwiched between them, the best thing known to man.

“I’m not going to pull out. That would a wasted opportunity,” he muttered next to your ear. “Uihoy, slowly turn on your side.” The older male groaned. “Shut up and just do it, old man.” You chuckled at this, eyes threatening to drop shut. Said male snaked his arms between Vic and you.

With slow, precise movements, they turned to be on their sides. Even with being careful, their knots were accidentally tugged on and made you moan and clench around them. One of them was quick to pet their hands over your moist skin. You groaned at the feeling and snuggled more into Uihoy’s chest. The floor wasn’t the best to lay on but you were too exhausted to make complaint. Your lovers made it bearable though with their soothing hands and rumbling bodies.

As you laid there, you felt so full and decided to gaze down. Your eyes nearly bulged out of your head. It wasn’t unsual for your belly to bow outwards when they knotted you. Yet, this was more. Your stomach made you look a couple months pregnant.

Then if hit you, the cock rings. You began to giggle airily, shoulders shaking. “What is little hunter finding funny?” Uihoy questioned and placed his jaw on top of your head. Tiny clicks sounded from him, probably talking to Vic.

“Look down,” you whispered with a soft smile. Even though, at this rate, they should’ve knocked you up tenfold if they were human. But since they’re not, a hybrid was extremely rare. Also, you’ve told them children weren’t something you would enjoy. They respected that and helped find a way to ensure there was no chance of you getting pregnant. Another thing you loved more about them.

The male made a chirping noise and tipped his massive head down. Vic curled his body more over yours to peer over your shoulder. Uihoy’s lower jaws dropped at the sight of your extended belly. That just made him throb inside of you, claws biting at your skin.

Vic’tao groaned and wrapped his arms around you. “I told you, you would be round with our seed,” he growled into your ear. Your lower muscles pulsed at his words. That caused them to rut up into you again. “You’re going to start something you can’t finish.”

You nuzzled closer to Uihoy and enjoyed both of their arms around you. “You’re the one who keeps talking,” you countered on the verge of falling asleep. A yawn cracked your lips open, tears prickling the corner of your eyes. He huffed but didn’t say anything, purring softly against your back. With the peaceful hum of the ship and their purrs surrounding you, your eyes drifted close, and your breathing slowed. Finally, you fell asleep full and content.

[otaku553]

How goes the fma x albedo fic? I hope that doesn't sound pushy, I'm genuinely curious. And in that vein, do you have any little drabbles you may have written or want to write? Especially with your recent kny ocs/yourself and your siblings. That'd be super fun to read about! Your art AND your writing is so freaking good, the moment I see you've posted something new on your blog I'm clicking it so fast. Same with your ao3 account ❤️

Thank you for the kind words!!! Currently not working on any fics, since I just came out of 10 weeks of summer research where my days began at 8 am and ended at 9 pm for probably less than minimum wage hahaha (doing research is a Bit Sad but I get a whole month to relax before classes start again so thank goodness for that)

I do however!!! Have a lot of plans!!! If you’re interested you can read more below!

Plans include but are not limited to:

Finally working on Homuncular Nature again!! I definitely do have a lot of plans and cool scenes playing out in my head for the next chapter, it’ll just come down to when I actually put pen to paper (or stylus to iPad) to actually organize and write them all. The road block I think is that I have seen neither Albedo nor fmab very recently and all my concrete ideas are for around the 30 episode mark for fmab, the turning point with the first actual confrontation against father and the subsequent Briggs arc.

Rewriting Ten Thousand Maple Leaves! A lot of people have been very kind but I think I missed the mark with my first chapter to be honest. My writing has gotten a lot wordier and less succinct, which feels like I’m filling a chapter more with fluff and unnecessary description than actual content. I think I also dislike how I characterized Sanemi and how quickly Kazuha was willing to agree with things. Writing both of them is kind of a difficult challenge tbh! I think in rewriting it I want to give back to Kazuha more of his vagrant role in the games, where he is avoiding the law for reasons somewhat out of his control.

Ebisu siblings content! I think it might be fun to try having them interact with more of the canon characters in kny but I also think there’s some value in a complete sort of outsider point of view when inserting characters into a piece of media. I feel like whenever I see self inserts I see a lot of ocs making themselves indispensable and making meaningful relationships with existing characters that way and that’s totally valid! That’s a lot of what I do for crossovers as well. I think when it comes to my own ocs though, I want them to feel grounded in some form and the reality of it is that none of the characters I make based on myself or real people are that impressive or remarkable. But I also think there’s a lot of value in showing smaller scale things outside of the main interactions and plot to show that even though we aren’t remarkable, we still have our own meaningful connections and ideologies and stories :) in the end the Ebisu siblings are a lot more visual though so I may just continue making doodles and art without writing anything haha

Kirby & Meta Knight ageswap AU: I was mostly doing this on my ask-gikabi sideblog in short form comics, but I lost sight of what I wanted to do after making the discord and starting to interact with some of the people who followed it. I think a lot of people are inspired and have their own very cool ideas that I wanted to take into account but then eventually it was no longer my story or the story I wanted to tell, which is why I’m thinking of restarting it as a fic. This one is still in very rough idea stage though, I have honestly no clue how I’m even going to begin organizing it

Yanfei ace attorney crossover: this one’s just pure crack lmao I would definitely write it as crack taken seriously but I think this is fun to explore just for small ideas that pop up every now and then, i.e. yanfei is semi-immortal because she’s half adeptus so it would be Really Funny to me if she showed up in dgs era, got her attorney’s license, went into hiding after it became obvious that she wasn’t aging, and then re-emerged after rebranding herself as her own daughter or granddaughter. That, and I have a lot of fun imagining someone as pragmatic as yanfei trying to get through the sheer chaos of aa despite being otherworldly

Continuing winter weather advisory: I got to a really good point in that fic and was rereading it today like,,, damn I wrote that? And it would be fun to see where I planned on going with it so I do want to also try working on that a bit if I can

Kazuha & Kunikuzushi role swap au: this is something I posted about a Long While ago but it’s an idea I continue to be fascinated with :) I especially enjoy how these two characters could have had completely different roles and personalities depending on how their pasts happened (with wanderer being so nice and turning so bitter and kazuha growing up so spoiled (for lack of a better word) and turning out so weary and yet kind

Link click and mha crossover: this one is honestly just a very recent idea but I think it would be fun to make a drabble on how lightime photo studio would be able to continue operating even in another world and the trouble they might get into for illegal quirk usage and what using cheng xiaoshi’s powers in a world where being able to tell the future is canonically possible would entail

I have!! So many ideas!! And not enough time or motivation to actually write any of them most of the time :’)

But I’m very glad to hear that you enjoy them and look forward to my posts!! :D I really hope I can work on some of these over the last month of summer vacation that I have :)

[inventors-fair]

You Came, You Saw, You Innovated

GREAT stuff this week, folks! It was a tough prompt, but y'all knocked it out of the park. I have heard you, and my next one will definitely be a lot less complex, but for now, revel in the glory that you all very much gave me what I wanted to see this week.

Here's the commentary!

Abyssal Rebuttal by @nicolbolas96 **JUDGE PICK**

Starting it off strong with Dandan, a format that has approximately 3 fans worldwide. For those wondering, the format centers around a shared deck with multiple copies of a single creature, and other cards that interact with it. The original version of this deck involved, you might have guessed, Dandan as the central creature. I do think a Dandan set would be a little tricky logistically, but that’s not what I’m judging. This card is simple and clean, but the reason it deserves to be a judge pick is because of how effectively it conveys information. The reminder text is short but every inch of it is crucial and easy to parse, and once you read it you go back to the effect to understand it with new eyes. I also think the strongest design choice here is not limiting “the Dandan” of the deck to only be Dandan, which would allow for a much more healthy variety in play. It obviously brings up questions of “how do players decide what the Dandan is” and “how are those cards distributed”, but this card is a brilliant example of showing AND telling in all the right amounts.

Cathar Challenger by @horsecrash

Horde magic is also a very cool direction to take this week’s prompt, and also makes me realize that I could have simplified the prompt into making a card for a “weird” format. It’s tough to evaluate the power on this one, since Horde can vary wildly depending on what variation of the rules you use. It’s obviously calling to Cathar’s Crusade, but doing it on attack and tacking on the lifegain might make it a touch too strong. On the other hand, it not affecting your own board is pretty big, so it definitely depends how many teammates you have. This one is just really tough to evaluate in a vacuum, I think a cheaper version that scaled less strongly could definitely have been a strong contender.

Deep Water Scavenger by @i-am-the-one-who-wololoes

This is definitely a tricky one, but it’s very fun to parse with the information I’ve been given. This being an uncommon helps contextualise a few things- it does have a mill ability, but fifteen cards is such a low threshold that we’re likely talking draft deck (40 cards), or potentially even smaller. Also, since it’s such a small library, and because there’s an ability that cares about cards leaving your grave without any way to make that happen, I’m going to guess that this format involves you shuffling your grave into library instead of losing when you draw from an empty library. It’s a fun card, though the pieces seem a bit disjointed until you fit them together. The shroud is a bit of a sticking point for me- they don’t use it anymore, and for good reasons. Hexproof or ward would serve this design much better. It definitely makes me curious to see the other cards in this set, so well done.

Dreadraven by @wolkemesser

Ahh, the classic “change the name of the design last minute and forget to update.” We’ve all been there. For what it’s worth, I like dreadraven a lot better. The mana cost almost got me for a sec, I was ready to comment that mono blue doesn’t get deathtouch or lifelink, but that little black pip saves me from being all pedantic. This card doesn’t tell me much except that it’s made for a best-of-three format (or maybe even more), but a draft environment built around snowballing one win into another, or coming back from a nasty game 1 loss could make for some really interesting designs. I would be curious to see if this is something they would allow in black-border magic, since they typically seem to want every game to be a totally fresh start. Anyways, you pushed the envelope, and that’s what I asked for this week, so thanks!

Guardian Seacat by @piccadilly-blue

Whoof. I’ll admit, this one I had to look up, because I spent ages puzzling over what this could be for, and I say this as someone who’s played some Judge Tower. I honestly totally forgot about the “X is always 3” rule, but this takes an interesting spin on it. The main issue I see here is that Judge Tower is fundamentally not a format designed for fun, it’s designed as a training exercise. Add draft to that, plus the aspect of a shared library, and you’re left in a confusing spot. Plus, this just tanks a free loss, which either means there are more cards that do this, or this is the strongest card in the set. It’s definitely one of the most creative designs this week, and kudos to that, but I just don’t see how the format would work.

Hekara, Rakdos Emissary by @deg99 - **JUDGE PICK**

It is interesting that those who submitted for Commander Legends-esque sets all tackled the color identity problem. I mean, it makes sense- that’s the biggest obstacle by far, and it’s fun to see all the different angles on it. Emissary threw me for a loop for a second, but once I grokked it, I saw the possibilities. You can run her as a Rakdos commander, or you can pick up another Emissary and go with pretty much any other color combo except Azorius, Simic, or Selesnya. I also like that you tried to include incentive to play her on her own, but I think the ability comes off a bit awkward and too heavy-handed on the idea. I think the mechanic already takes care of that, as you can’t make her a rakdos deck unless you have a black or red Emissary to pair with her, so already there’s some incentive to play her alone if you’ve been pulling good Rakdos cards. That being said, I like that vein of abilities, I just think they could be a bit more subtle. Also, I don’t love the epithet considering it copies the name of the mechanic, so a shakeup there would improve the flavor immensely.

Imperial Protection by @nine-effing-hells

Ahh, emperor. The solution to “Well, we have six players and eight hours, what are we going to do?” This one is cool, again following the philosophy of not making the card useless if you aren’t the emperor, but making it just a bit better if you are. I do think hybrid is a bit iffy here because white anthems and green anthems don’t really overlap in size or function, but it’s a bend at most, so eh. Just like the archenemy cards though, I’m curious how you envisioned the actual drafting experience. Is it a shared pool like 2HG? Do teams draft 3 at a time or separately? Do teammates sit consecutively or staggered? The fact that I’m asking these questions is a sign you’ve piqued my interest, and now I want to go play more emperor, so... good card?

Isrun, Gravewhisperer by @real-aspen-hours

More identity fixing! Last one was limited to two colors, this one to three, both with a very clever take on how to do it. This one has a more strict limit, but allows you to double up on partners with the same colors, and also allows you (the designer) to put a solid mix of 1 and 2 colour commanders for some mixing and matching. The creative element is going over my head a bit I think, since the mechanic is clearly alara-themed, but the flavor text says Tarkir. Is it a mashup of all the 3-color faction sets? If so, neat, but maybe the mechanic deserves a more general name that isn’t tied to only one of the 4 (or 5) planes you’re giving some love to. The card itself is fun, playing into some abzan graveyard themes and their whole “fury of the small” kinda thing. 

Logistics Accountant by @hypexion - **JUDGE PICK**

Oh man, Coup in magic. That... honestly, I kinda wanna do that now. Seems like a lot of fun. Seems like these are more public roles though, since the treasurer would have to be public information. I want to know how big these teams are. Is there a set number of roles that are distributed? Are they chosen from a pool at random? Do players get to choose their roles before the game begins? Can you have more than one role? The second ability would seem to suggest so, and also that they would have various activated abilities. I can see the Treasurer having an ability that (obviously) lets them spend coin counters, which is very clever. Whatever this format is, I want to play more of it, and if you invented it, I demand a full write-up of the rules immediately. Anyways, uh... yeah. Good card.

Loyal Toadie by @helloijustreadyourpost

Scheeeeeemes. It’s a fun word to say. Anyways, another take on archenemy, and this one comes at a different angle than the others. While the other submissions had one effect for the archenemy and one for the team, this one wraps it up into a single effect, basically allowing you to scry or fateseal, either to pull a better scheme or avoid a nasty one. Unfortunately, I’m not quite sure it works as intended, since “setting a scheme in motion” refers to the act of revealing it and triggering the ability all in one go. That being said, it’s a fairly easy fix to make it just counter the scheme ability in exchange for allowing them to set another one in motion. Alas, nitpicky rules are nitpicky. Apart from that it seems very fun, and I love how this can be a competent henchman who supports your evilest plans, or a bumbling buffoon that ruins your moment of greatness. Excellent flavor. 

Malack, Butcher of Worlds by @certification-wizard

Much like one of our examples this week, this submission implies a long, drawn-out event over the course of multiple days, since it both asks you to defeat five or more players, and it references prize packs that are also drafted, implying that you can add to your pool post-construction- as well as a “campaign”, which carries its own weight. What’s interesting to me is the typal element, and the specific commander callout. This is some form of draft league event with commanders, which sounds like a very interesting premise. However, being so reliant on your opponents to be playing different decks is pretty rough, and the ability is ambiguous enough that I don’t know if it would count defeating U, B, and UB commanders as two or three for the count. Finally, the last aspect here is how heavily typal it is. What does the set environment look like, where you can expect to see two demons per pack? Also, if you’re drafting, that messes up card parity, which is a no-no. See cards like Cogwork Librarian, who always keep the same number of cards in the pack to avoid this issue. This is a really cool idea, but the elements feel a little scrambled, and hard to unify into a single idea.

Mask of Elesh Norn by @lanabutnotdelray

Eugh, who would want that mask? Creepy. Also no eye holes. I’ve already made commentary on the idea of an archenemy set, so let’s look at the card instead. More dual effects like this, where one functions as the archenemy and one functions on the team (and in other formats), are definitely a cool way to address the idea of Limited. However, I... don’t know how this would work? Is it subtracting from each “kind” of token (which I’m not sure is an actually rules term for tokens), or just one overall? If your opponent has a Tireless Provisioner, would they choose which one they make, would you, or would they make none? The idea is really clever, but it seems there’s a reason they haven’t tried to implement this effect before. Definitely a cool premise, and I’m right up there with Maro in my love for token doublers, but this one gives me a bit of a rules headache.

Mercenary Auction by @flightyquinn

Hoo boy, okay. This is WILD, and I think I mean that in a good way. This card reads to me as one that was designed for a specific format, but also made ambiguous so it could be played in other formats, and so I say to that... what the hell happens if I make my commander opponent into my teammate? Is it all of a sudden one 2HG team vs two individual opponents? Do the other two team up? Is this meant to be a signifier with no rules baggage like “friend or foe”? It makes my head spin. For that matter, even in the format this was made for, is that really... fair to your teammate? Like in a social sense? You and your buddy are all excited to go to this new draft event, then your opponent says “nope, you’re with me for the rest of the day, or until I play this again.” It’s possible I might be wildly misinterpreting this card, but teammate does have actual rules meaning, so y’know. As for the rest of the card, I LOVE the bidding aspect, where they’re incentivized to show good stuff so they don’t have to discard. However, you’re likely not gonna have much mana left over after paying 5 for this, so I think you could even play it for free without being too busted. 

Omenpath Reveler by @salamileg

...Funny enough, I am literally about 2/3rds of the way through making a planechase draft cube built around the idea of omenpaths. That’s pretty funny, though admittedly it’s an easy idea to go for. This one is simple, but encourages planechase on a few different levels. It wants you to get chaos, obviously, but also wants you to roll as much as possible first. It definitely wants you to be able to roll at instant speed, but too bad so sad for the poor little satyr. The flavor text is great, though the use of the word chaos is a bit on the nose. Obviously there would be some logistics issues with trying to draft oversized cards, but we can assume the business people will figure that out. Nothing much else to say, this is a solid uncommon with a lot going for it.

Radar Bauble by @sparkyyoungupstart

Okay, so originally I had only a vague idea what this did (and to be fair, the card does a fairly good job of conveying some of the information), but, like a vision from the heavens, my phone saw fit to grant me a clip of TCC playing what I can only assume is the format this was made for. Now I must ask, in your set made for this format- can you only submit cards with the Treasure subtype? Any artifacts? Is there a minimum and maximum submission, or can you just mooch off of your opponent’s artifacts? The rest of the card became fairly clear, though I don’t think that’s quite how the second one would be worded. I think this would definitely be a fun one to explore more, maybe with the classic caveat of “one guaranteed treasure in every pack” for logistic’s sake.

Ranger’s Axe by @bergdg

And so we reach our last commander card. I built something similar to this a while back, but I think mine had a key difference- namely, it functioned like Backgrounds, where you could only run the equipment if your creature commander had the appropriate keyword. This seems to say that you can add green to the color identity of any commander you want, with no downsides, drawbacks or punishments. As you can imagine, that gets pretty scary, and is probably something best to be avoided. However, if we move on and assume that it’s meant to be restricted to a specific subset of commanders, the rest of the card is great! You can run it in the 99 for a decent buff, but if you have it in the command zone, it’ll automatically start by giving +2/+2 and trample, and scales really nicely if you have a cheap commander. I do think it could stand to be a touch cheaper either on the mana cost or equip cost, but dealer’s choice.

Waters of Wisdom by @squeezyboi

Framing it almost perfectly as the first and last cards, here is our second of two Dandan submissions. Normally, I try to avoid comparing cards, but it’s hard not to here. The card itself is a nice functional uncommon, but some parts of this confuse me. One of the key features of Dandan is the shared library, so does your format do away with that aspect? It’s not a terrible idea to make it work in draft, but then it does change the format significantly. In the second half, this card falls into a bit of a trap that the other one avoided- forcing the singular creature to ALWAYS be Dandan means that the decks always have to have blue, there’s no variation in the creature aspects, and it severely limits what the rest of the set can look like. I think to make this design work, you want to give yourself more freedom. 

Yulius, the Protean Shadow by @spooky-bard  **JUDGE PICK**

2 headed giant? In my commander? It’s more likely than you think. This one plays really well, and honestly it was hard to not give it a podium spot. Point is a neat ability, though admittedly not hugely impactful on most designs, and it makes me curious to see what anchor would be. Going off of fighting game terms that my friend had to teach me, the point is the first one you send out, and the anchor brings up the rear. With that in mind, I assume it’s some kind of protection or survivability, but I’m not sure what’s small enough to match up with +1/+1. Anyways, the battlebond-esque flavor is off the charts, the draftplay and gameplay here seem lots of fun (as long as you use the 2HG rules of being able to pick two cards at a time and have a shared team pool), and altogether this appeals to my personal sensibilities quite a lot. Nicely done!

So long, thanks for the engagement, and I'll see you all in a few weeks!

~judge @naban-dean-of-irritation

[dany36]

now that i've S-ranked every stage in the DLC and also completed the map, just have some final junk thoughts from the sonic frontiers dlc (plus me raving some more about the music) before i move on to another game :)

i know i mentioned that playing as amy is the best out of the new playable characters, and i still stand by that opinion, but MAN is tails' MAX rings cyclone flying ability fun as FUCK. like, i kind of have a hate-love relationship with it. on one hand, who the hell doesn't like flying around the island at max speed? like, oh, there's something all the way over there, let me just ZOOM right over in a few seconds!! AND the fact that you can control its height unlike knuckles' flying is just insanely cool. on the OTHER hand though, yes it cheapens tails' flying ability because honestly once you get the cyclone ability, you don't even have to do any of the set-paths that the game wants you to follow to get to the map kocos or skill kocos. you can just fly up to them and boom, didn't have to do the set path. which is kind of sad because those can be really fun and satisfying to complete, so what i'd end up doing was get to the area where the map koco would be, and instead of just flying up to it, try to follow the path and get the map that way to not just suck the fun out of the entire thing

but also, that one M-puzzle where it lit up 3 or 4 red beams of light all across the island and you had to reach all of them under a time limit??? MAN i think that was my favorite puzzle of all!!! i first bumped into that one when i was playing with amy, and at first i thought i was gonna have to come back to it with sonic since i didn't think i'd get another character that would be as fast as him (also didn't have the spin dash ability yet since this was early in the game). but holy shit once i unlocked that ability and saw just how fucking fast you could fly around the island (skells from xenoblade x my beloved), i immediately went back to that puzzle and just completed it as tails. just so damn awesome!!

and SPEAKING OF the spin dash....wow. amy, knuckles, and tails may not be as fast as sonic, but they become just as fast as him with this skill. and i can't believe i went through the entire main game without using the spin dash more often. spin dashing around the island and abusing the hell of its physics was just something that never got old, even in the sonic stages. i don't think i ever used the fast travel with the portals since i mean....spin dashing everywhere the island is just like a damn dream come true: it's always something i'd do in sonic adventures' mystic ruins but at a smaller scale, but this time? the ouranos island is fucking huge and gorgeous and then with that beautiful music playing in the background and just rolling around everywhere at high speeds AAAAAAAAAA this game is honestly just the perfect sonic game!!!!!

i think i already talked about this earlier but the new stages were super fun and actually challenging to S rank, unlike the main game. there were some i wasn't too fond of (like that one where sonic's speed as "gears"?? what was that lol) but overall they were a joy to replay over and over and try to bring my time down. i think my favorites were definitely 4-A (with the rocket boosters and beehive-looking things) and 4-B (the one with the hologram tails and the falling platforms).

the music. GOD how does sega keep doing this!!! every single new character theme is just so on fucking point, but i gotta say amy wins this one as well: there's something just so hauntingly beautiful about her theme that just honestly fits the overall mood of the game. but honestly, all just so good. i neeeeed to get my hands on the ost, especially since i'm late to the party and realized that now they have a GORGEOUS BEAUTIFUL AMAZING remixed version of the windy and ripply (emerald coast 2) song AKA a song so dear and beloved and nostalgic to my heart that just thinking about it makes me want to cry tears of joy. like, running around the islands with that music playing in the background is just so freeing and beautiful and exciting that just makes you feel glad that you get to experience a sonic game like this.

oh shit got sidetracked talking about this game's overall out-of-this-world soundtrack again um um um what else. i mean, i really don't know what else to say except frontiers just knocked it out of the park and surpassed my expectations in every single way possible. as i was playing the game and would just be exploring the island and completing puzzles/paths, i'd just keep saying to myself "this game is fucking amazing" every once in a while. sega just fucking nailed the 3d sonic formula and any doubt i had about an open-world sonic game was just thrown out the window: i couldn't stop thinking about this being a MUCH larger, more fun, and more gorgeous version of running around mystic ruins than i could have ever imagined, and it's exactly the type of exploration freedom that i had been itching for in a sonic game.

and it goes without saying that sega bringing back amy, tails, and knuckles as playable characters was just soooo fucking good and refreshing to see, and my god did they do them justice. last time they were all playable was, what...sonic adventure?? really?? like, holy crap. sonic frontiers really was a love letter to 3d sonic games and ughhhh i just can't stop saying good things about it. EVERYONE NEEDS TO PLAY THIS GAME!!!

anyway!!! can't wait to see where the sonic 3d series is headed after this, but for now, time to wait for sonic superstars (holy shit that's soon!!!) since that looks fun as hell too, and that's me saying it as someone who prefers 3d sonic vs 2d sonic!

[onyxedskies]

How about this:

Do the full 50 fe3h asks, minus the ones you've already done

I dare you 💕

god damn razz

challenge accepted >:)

my best friend! they had been talking about it for a while and it seemed interesting so i asked for it for my birthday. though i’d been interested in fire emblem for a while thanks to super smash bros

yes, though i’ve wanted to play other ones for a while but don’t have any consoles to play them on

chris hackney. i know nothing else that he’s done but he did dimitri so well

answered here

crimson flower. i’ve had the game for over two years and i still haven’t finished it yet (mostly cause i despise white clouds)

azure moon, 100%

answered here

tragedy of duscur, definitely, but also what happened with mercedes and jeritza and what happened with ashe and lonato.

the scene after you defeat cornelia in fhirdiad in azure moon. when dimitri says “bloodstained as i am… am i fit to be king?” it rips me apart every time in the best fucking way. best scene to me, hands down, can and will recite it word for word whenever it comes on

bow knight. i love it so much, it’s such a fun class to me. and no, it’s not just cause of ashe, though he does play a role in it

maybe im just bisexual but swords. always.

i don’t know where it is and don’t have the energy to find it but there’s this piece of felix and sylvain stabbing each other in the rain that makes me scream every goddamn time

this!!!

this!!!

i’m working on a thing for ashes birthday on the 17th, but no peeks!

seteth, jeralt, shamir, rhea, flayn, catherine, alois, gilbert

linhardt, caspar, hubert, dorothea, ferdinand, bernadetta, petra, edelgard

ashe, dimitri, felix, sylvain, mercedes, dedue, annette, ingrid

claude, hilda, marianne, lysithea, lorenz, raphael, ignatz, leonie

explicitly, yuri, however every character i have ever written will always be written bi coded so take that as you will

literally all the blue lions

linhardt, actually! i headcanon him as ace but not sex-repulsed

answered here!

yuri!

ashe is pan, and felix is unlabeled

ashe

ignatz

answered here!

ashe. the narrative truly did him dirty. he could have been developed as a foil character for dimitri, even more so than felix, but no. he is still kind of a foil character for him and i will elaborate on that if asked but yeah.

the lords should have gotten supports together. there, i said it. i’m not sorry. i want to see claude play a prank on dimitri is that really too much to ask. also ashe and felix should have gotten an a support

answered here!

answered here!

i hate bernie’s preskip hair so much

lorenz 😭

answered here!

ingrid and sylvain

without paired dialogue, ashe and marianne. i love them. with paired dialogue, dedue and dimitri

dimitri. making him blush is so fun. i love him.

ashe and felix

ashe because i love him, the rest of the lions because i love them, marianne because i can’t bring myself to kill her, and lysithea cause she’s a beast

i don’t know who came up with this, but i love the headcanon that the fraldarius family proposed with a dagger with the fraldarius crest and the marrying families crest engraved in it, and that the dagger goes to their first child. i also love the theory that magic users have scars on their hands.

i don’t think i really have any tbh

either felannie or mariashe

yuriashe and ashelix

mariashe

i firmly believe that the lions + yuri are all in a polycule, but on a smaller scale annette/ingrid/felix/sylvain

boring and typical but dimileth holds a very special place in my heart

petrashe. i have no reason to hate it but i do.

ingrid/dorothea. idk i just… don’t see it.

mariashe.

[gloop898]

2023 Media Thread - Part 109

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Damn!™ I gotta lot to say, so buckle in. From a big picture perspective, the game just nails it. While more iterative than Breath of the Wild and while borrowing heavily from that game, its impressive how imaginative, exciting, and fun it manages to be. The new abilities and gameplay systems lend so much to the combat, traversal, and puzzle-solving.

Returning to the same Hyrule, while maybe less exciting for some, ended up creating a really unique experience. Going to a familiar location only to discover how things had changed, whether big or small, is something I've not experienced to this scale in a video game. Of course, that's not to mention all the completely new stuff, most notably the sky islands and the depths.

The sky islands are less an explorable space and more isolated challenges. How does one navigates and maneuvers from island to island becomes the question. There's definitely fun to be had, but their scope is so much smaller compared to the world's surface and underground.

The depths ask similar questions of navigation and maneuverability but in a much different way. Dangerous foes and gloom covered terrain saps away health. The pitch darkness hides the scale of the world. Pits become bottomless voids of ink. Cliffs reach to unknowable heights. It's such a hostile environment, but that very reason is why it becomes so much fun to adventure in.

The main quest lines are fun, but are a somewhat a mixed bag. The additions or surprises in gameplay are okay at its worst, but its the mixed quality of the writing, characterization, and voice acting that really puts a hamper on things. Engagement really falters when things play out in such expected ways and most of the characters aren't really interesting enough to hold things up either.

There's also a surprising lack of story changes depending on what quests are completed. Some actually interesting developments are revealed through these quest lines, but whether you've completed them or not the ending plays out exactly the same. Which is a huge shame, because the ending is satisfying emotionally and thematically, but really only if you've completed the main quests. I understanding that writing a story is extremely difficult when it needs to match the gameplay expectations that the player forges their own path, thus everything is optional and can be done in any order. But its unfortunate that the level of innovation and experimentation of the gameplay out paces the writing so vastly.

Also, I feel its at least worth mentioning some of the "problematic" or at least less "progressive" elements of the game. The design tropes of Ganondorf and the Gerudo are always questionable from a race perspective. There's a goron or two that's like a step or two away from just being blackface. There's appropriation of indigenous cultures in some of the character, architect, and costume designs. An apparent lack of a queer perspective when it comes to gender and sexuality, with the Gerudo again being a major aspect of this. I don't really have a larger point to make, and while its not exactly surprising, it is a shame that these sour spots exists within the game.

Overall, while a lot of my thoughts here are negative, its less because I didn't like the game and more because I really enjoyed it. The game is so much fun and I stayed up way too late several nights just playing it. Traveling across the landscape. Ascending to grand heights in the sky. Facing the darkness of the depths. Felling horrible monsters with your allies. Fusing together powerful weapons and tools. Engineering goofy contraptions. Its a grand journey forged by your curiosity, wit, and sense of adventure. Save Hyrule. Help her people. Bring the Princess home.

And above all if you complain about the weapon durability: skill issue.

First | Prev | Next

[goldenlaurelleaveswrites]

Back to September

8. Windmill

Based on this prompt list

AO3

_______________________________________

The smell of paint and fresh-cut wood filled the air. She ducked and wove between crew members as they lugged set pieces and building materials across the workshop. “Hey, Nino, have you seen Luka?” she called out when she caught sight of Nino talking with some of the actors. 

“He’s over by the windmill! How are the costumes coming along?”

“Good! The finish on the armour needs to dry before I can do a second coat, so I thought I’d take a quick break.” Nino shot her a thumbs up, then turned to say something to Alya, who was acting as stage manager. As Alya showed Nino something in her binder, she turned her attention in the direction Nino had indicated. 

She saw the unfinished windmill. But no signs of her boyfriend. 

She drew closer to the set piece. Or was it technically a prop? She shook her head, deciding it could be both. 

It was impressive, especially for a student production; it stood just over eight feet tall and was beginning to look like a real windmill. Well, on a smaller scale of course… The frame was fully built and the sides were panelled. The roof still needed doing, and the blades hadn’t been attached yet—she assumed that would be done once all the shingles were in place—but once those were done all it would need was a coat of paint. 

It was looking really good. Luka had done a great job. The thought made her frown. 

Where was he? 

Maybe he had gone to get more building supplies?

She was about to turn to ask one of the other crew members if they had seen him when arms snaked around her waist from behind. She shrieked—she had been so deep in her thoughts she hadn’t even noticed someone behind her—as she jumped. The arms tightened around her waist to steady her, and then a familiar laugh sounded in her ear. 

“Luka,” she whined as he released her so she could turn to face him. She gave his shoulder a playful shove. “You scared me! Why’d you sneak up on me?”  

“I didn’t mean to! I thought you heard me-“

“Did I hear a damsel in distress!” She and Luka exchanged eye-rolls and amused smiles as Kim came running over from where he and some of the actors had been running lines. “Fear not, fair lady! Don Quixote shall save you from the…” Kim paused to look back over his shoulder. “What does he think the windmills are?” 

“Giants,” Alya called back through laughter. 

Kim turned back to her with a grin and flourish. “I shall save you from the giants, fair lady!” 

She hid her laughter behind her hand, then smiled at Kim. “I think I can handle my own against the giants. Dorks, on the other hand…” she added, bumping Luka—who had once more snaked his arm around her—with her hip. 

“I’ll behave,” he said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “No more sneaking up on you,” he said before pressing a kiss to her cheek. 

“I will hold you to your word, sir! If you scare the lady again, you- what’s the word? It isn’t friend…” 

“Fiend?” Luka offered. 

“Yes! If you scare the lady again, you fiend, I shall challenge you to a duel!”

“Can you wait until after he’s finished the windmill?” Nino called from the audience seats. “We all know it’s only a matter of time before he scares her again.” Nino ignored her indignant cry. "And I’d like to have the set finished before there are any duels. And I need you back running lines for this scene.”

“Very well!” Kim called back before turning and offering her a mock bow. “Fair lady. Fiend.” And then he was off running back to the rest of the actors. 

She leaned into Luka’s side, resting her head against his shoulder. She smiled as he nuzzled her head, pressing another kiss to the crown of her head. “He’s having way too much fun with this, isn’t he?” 

“Oh, definitely.” 

[b0rista]

— 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐓 𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: sLight angst, just a lil bit. & language!

𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒: this is bertholdt x fem! reader.

"love me tender, love me sweet; never let me go."

he is,, so sweet.

quite closed off at first, as one would imagine— nevertheless, though, he's incredibly gentle to you, and just an all around sweetheart. bertholdt's known for his kinder tendencies, but with you, it's an entirely different playing field.

you would sit with both him and reiner during mealtimes, which typically goes either one of two ways: it's quiet, and mainly just simple conversation between the three of you. or, reiner gets pulled into some shitty shenanigan (usually enforced by connie or sasha), ultimately dragging you and your poor boyfriend with him.

^ one time, the three of you + connie and jean were challenged to steal a single pound of bread from commander shadis' quarters, without getting caught. you were nearly caught lmao, bertholdt had to enact his long limbs™ to reach out and yAnk you back into the shadows. it was romantic <3

when it isn't nighttime, cuddles with him are a motherfucking godsend. the two of you alternate between little spoon & big spoon, because both of y'all need that sort of comfort. he cherishes the moments where he can pull you into his chest, burying his face within your hair while the two of you serenade in the silence.

when it is nighttime, though, and the two of you are fast asleep, it's literal hell JDJFK. everyone knows about bert's heinous sleeping habits, and with yoU in the mixture?? lord, he's kicked you off the bed before.

he felt AWFUL

"oHhmygoDy/NareyouokAywhaThapPened-"

you end up developing a system, where you just fucking latch onto his back while the two of you sleep, locking him in place while also comfortably cuddling. sometimes you drool on his back lmao, but he doesn't mind.

matching PAJAMAAAAAS

yes, it was his idea. don't make fun of him, he's trying his bEST-

during expeditions, he quietly frets over you. while everyone is prepping for going outside the walls, he stares at you from a distance, trying his best to remain positive. reiner typically has to snap him out of it, placing a hand on his shoulder and telling him to focus.

he, however, does not focus!! the entire time, he's using his goddamn height to his advantage to glance above the crowd, making sure you're doing okay. he doesn't want to openly worry for you, though, because he doesn't want you to feel belittled. he's aware that you're strong, and he's aware that you're capable. still, you're his. he worries.

he'll drop his horse on its ass in order to save you from a dickless ogre, i'll tell y'all that much.

while reiner has grown a liking towards you, annie couldn't care less for your well-being. not at first, anyway. she really, really doesn't like you, or the threat you oppose towards their mission. of course, you don't even know about said mission, but nevertheless, bertholdt is better off without you. to her, you're nothing but a casualty.

^ this doesn't mean she can't GROW to like you, of course. for a long time, though she rlly doesn't like you

catching feelings for you wasn't easy at all for bert,, like at all. he constantly attacked himself for growing attached to you, and as his feelings intensified, so did his self hate. it felt as if he was betraying his homeland and the love of his life at the exact same time— everything contradicted against one another, leading to one hell of struggle. poor bby didn't know what he wanted more, to go home or be with you :,))

eventually (i'll let the reader imagine how), he gave in, and the time the two of you spend together is great 🥺

back to actual headcanons JDJF;&&(& bertholdt is OBSESSED with your hands. touching them, kissing them, holding them, etc. the gestures are always quiet, like placing his hand ontop of yours beneath the table, but they're sweet. he loves your hands, ty. in a modern world, he would paint your nails for you and do a DARN GOOD JOB 😭

if he catches you wearing one of his shirts, he'll melt right into the floor. he's a lanky fellow, so the shirt itself would definitely be somewhat loose on you, which he loves. one morning, you were in a rush to get out of the boy's barracks, and you accidentally grabbed his shirt instead of your own. during breakfast, he walked into the mell hall only to see you, iN his bigass shirt, the ends aggressively tucked into your pants so that it wouldn't sag.

he was like :0

nobody even realized that the two of you were an item until, like,, moNths into your relationship. he's keen on keeping things on the down low, he's introverted & constantly struggling xoxo. they found out through ymir, who caught him pecking you on the cheek before curfew. needless to say, she exposed you to the entire girl's bunker that same night.

one time before he asked you out you made a lesbian joke and he took it literally JDJJF

oh, she isn't even into men.

then like a week later he overheard you calling some random salesman in the city attractive and he was so fucking confused

whTsttegoiNgoN

eventually, reiner got sick of it and literally just asked you flat out: "so, what's your ballgame?"

bertholdt had eighteen back to back panic attacks in the corner KDKGKKOH

when it comes to your hobbies, he's got each and every one memorized. through silent pining for you from a distance, he's picked up on the little things. you're an artist? wow, he's obsessed. you're a poet? please, serenade him to sleep with your wishful thinking. you won't even have to tell him, by the time you're together, he just knows.

if you're short, he's,, protective. he's protective either way, but if you're on the smaller scale, he feels this undying need to just encAse you in his arms, protecting you from the outside world. he also wouldn't know how to act a majority of the time KDJKF he's literally a beanstalk of a man, how the fuck does he operate with you??

^ enjoy him having to lean down a considerable amount to kiss you on the forehead jjdhfh

the same goes for if you're of average height!! not too drastic of a difference.

if you're tall, you're a queen. he's humored whenever he sees you towering over the others, and he lOves the fact that he's one of the only ones that towers over you. it's actually really cute, seeing him smile like a cutie as he rests his cheek on the side of your head while the short bitches are biTteR

he's a tad bit obsessive when it comes to treating whatever wounds you may have, because he worries more intensely than most. you get a measly papercut, he's the only wrapping up your finger .7 seconds after you started bleeding. he does this thing once it's tended to where he places a tiny kiss atop the bandages, it's really sweet.

10/10 boyfriend, minus the angst that i refused to include 💞 smd smd SMD SMD

[lokittystuckinatree]

Assorted Sylki headcanons:

General

Loki is genderfluid, and goes by multiple prounouns, but I’m not sure about Sylvie. Perhaps she is fluid as well, or maybe she’s cis, agender or a trans woman. My current head-canon is that she is AMAB and uses she/they prounouns.

They are both bi/pan (duh), though I headcanon Loki as gray-aro and possibly poly. Once again not sure about Sylvie.

They have a lot of the same hobbies. Both being huge fans of literature, history, science and the arts.

This leads to lots and lots of deep and nerdy conversations.

Ultimate power couple. Could probably take down Thanos by themselves if they teamed up. They laugh together, they fight together, they teach eachother magic and learn some together as well.

I feel like they would develop some healthy competition here. They love eachother enough to be more proud than jealous if one learns something faster or is more natural at a specific skill.

They totally fight for Mobius’s attention. Mobius is just very happy to have two Loki variants in his life to study. (And be besties with of course)

I’m not saying they adopt kid Loki, but I’m not not saying it either...

They have thier ups and downs but always come back to eachother. They are literal soulmates, after all.

Emo

They still ask eachother if they’re okay.

Loki writes her poetry and reads and/or sings her to sleep. She likes to give him massages or use her enchantment to soothe him.

They love slow dancing, though it takes a little effort to get Sylvie onto the dance floor in public. Their song is “if you love me” by Brenda Lee.

He tells her everything about Asgard, reteaches her Asgardian, tells her about the life she could have had. She tells him tales of things she’s seen and he could only dream of.

Then Loki takes her to Asgard. She gets to meet his family. Perhaps they even manage to go back and meet hers.

Loki helps Sylvie trust again, and teaches her how to have fun and be vulnerable. He is the only person she will cry around.

Sylvie helps Loki love himself and opens him up to life paths and ways of thinking he isn’t used to.

I don’t think they’ll have thier happy ending, as much as I want them to. As much as they deserve. So when they are inevitably parted, they console themselves with the knowledge that somewhere, sometime, they are eternal.

But even eternity isn’t forever. In that eternity, they die hand in hand.

Mischief

They cause a LOT of trouble at family gatherings and similar events. They crashed Sif and Valkyrie’s wedding. The heros, Dr. Strange in particular, are fucking fed up with them. The Peters love them.

Everyone is weirded out by their relationship but still somehow ships it. They receive lots of teasing and “go fuck yourself” jokes, as well as the odd “stop touching yourself and concentrate.” Thor definitely finds it weirdest.

Sick of people assuming they’re related, Loki and Sylvie start playing along and introduce themselves as siblings just to see the horror on people’s faces when they’re caught kissing.

But sometimes they’ll use illusion projection to have some (Ahem) fun in public and/or avoid being walked in on.

Matching outfits. Enough said. Honestly if we don’t get to see both of them donning the full costume in season two...

They shape shift into eachother sometimes to either annoy other people or annoy eachother. On a smaller scale, they’ll sometimes switch their hair colors or headpieces for a laugh.

Trick tournaments. They know eachother so well that is nearly impossible to lie to the other. So they make a challenge of it. They compete to see who can prank or fool who first. The winner gets a...ahem...special treat that night. They’re both incredible actors, so these games get intense.

They tease eachother constantly. This banter can get quite mean, but they both know it’s out of love.

Spicy (18+)

These two have two kinds of sex: tearful, tender lovemaking, and the wildest kinkiest shit conceivable. We’re talking shapeshifting, consensual enchantment, illusions, knife play, and some of the strangest and most messed up foreplay you can imagine.

Some of their faves include King and Queen (on Asgard’s throne), twincest (you know they would), conjuring an illusion they’re fucking in front of everyone they know...walking around in public appearing naked to eachother but clothed to everyone else...

It’s also very good sex. They know exactly what the other wants and how. And they have a lot of it. Everywhere. And in the strangest places. You can’t even imagine the situations they’ve been caught in.

Oh and they’re both switches. Sometimes he’ll dominate her and she’ll finally trust someone else to be in control. Sometimes she’ll peg him. Remind him just how powerful she is, as if he needs reminding.

Loki does this all the time, but sometimes Sylvie will change up her genitals for a twist. Or her species.

When it’s rough, it’s rough. Scratching, screaming, roughhousing, biting. Lots and lots of biting.

When it’s tender, it’s tender. Loki whispers softly in asgardian. Sylvie admits things she never has before. They trace patterns on skin. Kiss tears away.

[carmenlire]

Plum

read on ao3

He thinks he scared himself. Just a little. Just enough for it to have an impact.

Maybe. The jury’s still out on that, he supposes.

Falling asleep last night had taken longer than he’d thought. He thinks they’d been hunger pains and he knows it’s ridiculous but a part of him still hadn’t understood.

At that point, he hadn’t eaten in forty eight hours, give or take a few minutes. He’d gotten home from work and he’d been exhausted. He’s always tired these days and even if it had been a couple of days since his last meal, the last time he’d chewed and swallowed, he’d been fine.

Until he’d gone to bed at least. It wasn’t even a struggle to collapse in bed after work. He’s a little tired of his job, of the way he feels like his superiors are always breathing down his neck, at the way the people he’s trying to help just seem to get a little meaner and a little ruder with every passing day.

He’s a little tired in general but that can’t really be helped, either. He’s usually tired. He hasn’t worked out in longer than he cares to admit-- he’s been brushing Jace off every time his brother tries to get him to go on an early morning run or join a boxing class at their gym. There are some absolutes that Alec follows and one of them is that to work out in the morning, he needs to have eaten the day before.

Perhaps it should be a warning that he hasn’t been working out lately-- the past few weeks, really the past several months-- because he just can’t make himself eat with any consistency. He usually eats once a day but it never feels quite right. So he wakes up the next morning and tells himself tomorrow as he hits snooze on his alarm for another hour of sleep that doesn’t leave him any more well rested than before.

Yesterday, all he’d been able to think about during his shift was coming home and taking off his damn tie. Dinner was a far off thing, easily avoided. He’d just wanted to slide between his sheets where nothing matters and where he doesn’t have to be a person.

Where he’s not Alec Lightwood, aiming to make senior associate within the year. He’s just a guy who’s a little sad and maybe a little hungry and so, so empty that he feels like his insides are cracking most minutes of most days.

Well, that’s not entirely true, Alec thinks and it’s not even with a wry little smile because even so small an action feels beyond him right now. He hadn’t just felt exhausted during his late evening shift-- there was a noticeable part of him that had been a little smug, a lot relieved, not inconsiderably proud. Because at that point, it’d been almost two entire days since he’d last eaten and he was happy about that-- felt the stirring of pride at his wherewithal to not give in to what his body demanded, felt good because he felt light.

Usually he feels like he carries the weight of an army behind him and so that feeling-- of being a little smaller, a little less in the way that matters, in the way he wishes for-- it’s.

Well, it’s intoxicating. A little addicting, if he’s being honest.

It’s been a rough year, Alec thinks now. So much is going on and he hasn’t felt this way in years, the way the fog rolls in, the way he sometimes thinks he doesn’t have a body. Still, some of it’s been good. There’s that weekend last month that he spent with Izzy and Jace, the three of them on the camping trip from hell. He hadn’t laughed so hard in ages as he had watching Jace try to put together a tent, as he did watching Iz take her turn during a particularly drunken round of charades.

Then there’s Magnus. Things are so good with him. Too good, a voice whispers in the back of his mind but he tries so hard to knock it back to where it came from, to make it disappear. He has a boyfriend now and just seeing Magnus makes him happy. Or if not happy, then content. Alec can be himself with Magnus and it means more than he can say to have a boyfriend and find such easy comfort within him. He takes great pride in being that person for Magnus, as well.

There’s guilt too, though. Because the longer Alec’s like this, the more he thinks that he might have an actual problem. And it terrifies him because he doesn’t see a way out. He doesn’t think there is one.

Because here Alec sits and he’s staring at nothing in a bookstore a few blocks from his apartment and he wants to die, just a little bit. Because that would be easier for anyone involved in his shit take at taking care of himself.

He feels Magnus staring at him from where he sits within arms reach in his own chair. He feels his boyfriend rubbing a hand over his back in soothing circles but it does nothing to stop Alec from feeling like he shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be anywhere.

This morning, Alec ate a plum.

This morning was day three of Alec’s little challenge to himself. He had idle plans to make it a full seventy two hours without eating. Don’t get him wrong, he’s had a few iced coffees every day and it worries him, a little maybe, because he was starting to fixate on how the coffees felt like cheating, too.

There’s oat milk in the lattes, you know.

But he’d had this date day planned with Magnus for days now. His boyfriend, his wonderful boyfriend, has planned a whole day of things for Alec, for them to enjoy together. Alec was excited for today and he’d been feeling good when he woke up.

A day off from work, a day spent with a man who he’s increasingly sure that he loves. It sounded like a recipe for a lovely day.

Plus, he’d woken feeling lighter. In the past two days, he’d lost seven pounds. He knows most, if not all of it, is water weight. But seeing the number drop so severely on the scale felt so good. It gave him confidence. It made him happy.

It filled him in a way that a meal hasn’t been able to in months.

It sounds so dire now but Alec’s never been underweight. From the outside, he looks exceedingly healthy. It does nothing but make him feel worse a lot of the time.

So, Alec knew that the plan for the day was a bookstore in the morning, followed by lunch at this place Magnus had been dying to try for weeks now, with the afternoon spent wandering the halls of an art museum further uptown.

Alec’s not stupid and he never wants Magnus to worry. So, he’d decided to break his fast and eat some fruit. That way he’d have energy for the day and when Magnus asked him what he’d had for breakfast-- his boyfriend is definitely in the camp that believes it’s the most important meal of the day-- Alec wouldn’t have to lie. It's a bonus that fruit falls squarely into a safe category of food in his brain.

Alone in his kitchen, it’d been equal parts shameful and irritating that taking that first bite of stone fruit had taken several attempts. He washed the fruit and patted it dry with a paper towel and stared at it for a long minute, most of him loathing the thought of biting into it. He felt like a failure not being able to last another minute, another hour.

But Magnus would be here within the hour and he needed to get ready.

Four tries later, and his teeth pierced the plum. Immediately, he’d thought that this had to be the best plum that he’d ever eaten. Perfectly ripe, juicy, the flavor positively bursting from the flesh.

Idly, he’d thought that maybe he’d make these lengthy fasts a more regular thing, if he could truly appreciate food like this at the end.

The plum was small and he’d finished it in a handful of bites. Almost immediately after throwing away the seed, he’d started to feel a tiny bit of shame and a whole lot of regret for eating.

He was so weak that he couldn’t wait until he had a true reason to eat-- lunch at the Korean restaurant Magnus had been raving about. If he’d waited until then, then maybe he wouldn’t have made the full three days but Magnus is worth eating for. It would have been okay, then.

Nothing for it now, he’d finally decided and had been ready when his boyfriend picked him up.

The bookstore was a little busy. Not crowded, but a fair few more people than he’d anticipated. Truthfully, though, Alec hadn’t really noticed because he’d been enjoying his time with Magnus so much.

Magnus, who has such an array of knowledge. He’s interested in so many subjects and strolling through the shelves of books and floating between genres, idly picking up paperbacks with interesting covers and hardbacks by beloved authors he wants to share with Magnus had been fun. He hadn’t noticed the time that slipped by.

They’re climbing the stairs to the second floor of the store and Alec feels a little winded. More than he’d usually ever feel walking up a single flight. His head feels a little weird, too. Light but not in a good way.

It doesn’t make sense. He ate a plum this morning.

Magnus looks over with a smile. “What do you say to a coffee while we look up here? My treat,” he adds with a wink that has Alec laughing.

Alec easily accepts and they get in the short line.

“What’d you have for breakfast, darling?”

It’s an idle question as Magnus looks over the selection of bakery treats on display. Alec looks, too, and thinks that if it was another time, if he was a different person, he might like to try a piece of the oreo cheesecake.

“A plum,” he answers simply as he turns his head to people watch the few occupied tables.

“And?”

Alec shakes his head, bemused. “And that’s it,” he replies. “I ate a plum for breakfast.”

It’s now that Magnus looks over, askance. "I told you to eat something that would give you energy until lunch, darling. A plum is nothing,” he chastises and the tone is light and teasing. “You should eat more.”

Alec keeps the easy smile on his face, though he can’t help a small part of himself from growing a little worried, a little guilty-- but there’s a kernel of anger there too that he can’t really define.

He shouldn’t be upset over his boyfriend’s light teasing. It’s not that deep. Magnus doesn’t know the sharks circling just under the edge of this conversation and Alec’s grateful for that, even more now.

“I guess you’re just the breakfast person, babe. You know I don’t really like to eat before noon.”

Magnus just harrumphs and turns toward the cashier. They’re next in line.

But Alec doesn’t feel so well. His head feels even lighter. He thinks his vision starts to waver but he thinks he’s also being dramatic. He has a tendency to do that, he knows. Sometimes he even thinks he might have some type of-- some type of disorder but he’s usually quick to tell himself that everyone feels this way about food and eating and weight and calories and he shouldn’t add more to his plate of stress.

Magnus takes the final step up to the barista but Alec stands stock still. The edges of his vision are gray and that’s weird because he thought that only happened in books. He thought it was just a clever description but oh God the tables by the window are in grayscale and now he can’t really see them at all and the volume of the bustling cafe area is muted, did everyone stop talking and--

He doesn’t think he’s breathing. He can’t feel his chest. He can’t feel his legs. He needs to sit down.

He thinks Magnus is turning back to ask him what he wants to drink but he can’t answer. His sight is set on an unoccupied table a few meters away and it’s with single minded focus that he puts one foot in front of the other and very roughly sits down as soon as he’s within reach.

More like collapses, Magnus would say.

He stares down at the ground. He counts his breaths. Everything is still quiet and Alec’s still preoccupied enough making sure that he stays conscious that he can’t immediately rationalize everything away to himself. Magnus comes over and brings the other chair around the table until they’re side by side.

“Alexander? You okay?”

Alec can’t answer. He just needs a moment. He hopes Magnus doesn’t get mad that he can’t bring his head up, that he just can’t quite manage to string together a response right now.

Magnus doesn’t seem mad, at least. He isn’t irritated. He also isn’t hovering, thank God, because Alec doesn’t think he could take that right now. His presence is quiet and calms Alec down a little and maybe it’s mixed with relief, too, that there’s someone with him right now-- that it’s Magnus who he knows he can trust.

It’s quiet for a few moments before Alec looks up and makes eye contact with Magnus. His boyfriend smiles a little but his eyes are deadly serious. “What can I do?”

Alec takes a deep breath in and slowly lets it out. He looks down and watches his hands flex, feels his fingers curl. “Can I have a lemonade?”

Normally, Alec doesn’t drink anything with sugar in it. He has a sweet tooth but prefers to stick strictly to water and his iced lattes. He knows he needs something more now.

Magnus merely nods and stands without another word. He’s back a moment later and hands over a bottle of lemonade he’d bought from the cooler. “Here you go, darling,” he says softly.

Alec drinks and Magnus goes back to sweeping a hand over his back in an aimless pattern. “It was rather warm in here, wasn’t it?”

Alec makes some noise of agreement and Magnus adds on quietly, much more subdued, “Maybe you should’ve eaten something more for breakfast.”

There’s that little flick of annoyance that Alec can’t quite squash down but he’s not stupid. And Magnus doesn’t even know the half of it. And so Alec nods a little more weakly than he’d like and says, “Yeah, maybe, babe,” unable to control the tendril of indifference in the words.

Magnus is quiet for a minute and Alec works on the lemonade and thinks through what just happened.

He’s never fainted before. He’s never come so close to blacking out. He thought he was stronger than that and he’s a little mad at his body for showing that it can have a mind of its own, too. It happened so fast that it leaves him with whiplash.

Over it all, though, is confusion because he did eat. He thought the fruit would be enough to last until lunch and it doesn’t make sense to him that he ate an hour ago and almost passed out just now.

Magnus’s voice breaks through the self recrimination. “Why don’t we take a little break, get a treat, and find a table by the windows,” he suggests. Alec knows him well enough by now to know that while it was phrased as a question, it’s anything but.

Seeing as he doesn’t really have a choice, Alec nods and they stand and make their way back over to the counter. Alec takes a look around but no one's staring at them. Everyone’s focused on their own computers and books and Alec doesn’t feel like a bug under a microscope in the way that he thought he might. He doesn’t really want any more witnesses to this.

Magnus orders a cranberry almond croissant and turns to him. Alec decides on a slice of that cheesecake, after all.

They sit down and Alec stares at the dessert. The truth is, he enjoys food. More than he should, he thinks. He likes trying new things and he has a sweet tooth and he enjoys a truly good, filling meal. The problem is that it’s been so long since it’s been worth it. He has a lot of food rules and this cheesecake breaks at least three that he can think of off the bat. It’s a little terrifying actually and he’s mad at himself that a piece of cake can make him feel genuine fear.

When did it get to this point, is all he can wonder. How do I go back.

Magnus doesn’t make him feel like a child. He doesn’t make a scene of things, doesn’t make Alec feel like he embarrassed him. In his quiet, competent way, Magnus simply takes care of him.

The day isn’t ruined, which Alec feared as he took the first bite of food. They spend awhile at that table and they both eat their treats and enjoy their coffee and talk about anything and everything that pops into their minds. Magnus doesn’t rush them from the table, seems content enough to enjoy Alec’s company at a table in the bookstore cafe rather than walking around the store like originally planned.

Eventually, they do throw their trash away and Magnus takes Alec’s hand as they start wandering the second floor. Magnus doesn’t mention what happened for the rest of the day but it lingers in the back of Alec’s mind.

The day ends up being a smash success of a date. Alec buys a few books for Magnus. They enjoy the Korean restaurant-- Magnus was right, it’s phenomenal-- and the art museum is eye catching.

It’s later that night and Magnus is spending the night at Alec’s. They’re in bed and Magnus is fast asleep.

Sleep eludes Alec for awhile, though. He can’t stop thinking about this morning at the bookstore cafe. He thinks that things might be escalating. He thinks that he doesn’t want a repeat of what happened.

He can’t help but think that maybe that episode was a sign that he was doing things right, after all.

He’s so tired and he doesn’t have any answers. He feels rather helpless, really. Maybe he knows that this isn’t normal but he can’t help the way he feels. He doesn’t know who he can tell these things to-- things like how he feels an almost compulsion to weigh himself every day even if he knows the results will devastate him, the way he has a very narrow list of safe foods and feels totally removed from what normal people eat, the way he sometimes asks himself what he’d like for his next meal but the voice in his head immediately retorts but you don’t deserve to eat.

Alec’s an adult. He knows what the signs point to. But he can’t quite make himself believe that he has a problem because it seems only logical that he hold these misgivings, given his body. It’s just the way things are for him. It feels increasingly like it's always been this way.

But maybe today scared him a little. Maybe, Alec thinks as he looks down at his boyfriend sleeping peacefully on his chest, maybe he does have someone he can talk to.

And maybe Magnus will tell him he has nothing to worry about, that these overwhelming thoughts and feelings are normal. Or, Alec thinks with a sliver of dread but an even greater sense of hope, Magnus will look him in the eye and take his hand and say that it’s okay to have a problem and that they can find a solution.

Together.

[twh-news]

Marvel's Loki series just released its penultimate episode this week, and while the story has been wild, one thing hasn't changed and that's the excellence of Loki's score. Composer Natalie Holt has created arguably the best score in the MCU, one that's fresh and memorable, quirky and sweeping. It's certainly made audiences take notice.

Holt spoke to Screen Rant about the challenge of creating a whole new sci-fi musical landscape for Marvel, the freedom of having a character like Loki to lead her, the hardest piece to score, and more.

It's a very different genre and world from pretty much everything you've scored before. Did you find it daunting to have to create a whole new sonic landscape or did you find you really relished the challenge of playing with a very specific sound unique to a comic book sci-fi series?

Natalie Holt: I always have to be led by the story and by the characters and the scale of the music is really dictated to me by what I'm seeing and what I'm reading in the script. I guess the things I've done before, you know, I've done a drama for BBC which was about victims of sex trafficking rings and it was based on a real-life story. It was just these three girls and it felt like it had to be small and intimate and emotional and, yeah, I've worked on stories which have felt smaller in scale. And now this is the universe and the Time-Keepers and this god, and I knew it definitely needed to have a bigger scope than anything I've had to score before. So it felt like a really exciting challenge. I pieced it together and just had to go with the sound I heard in my head when reading the script and watching Tom Hiddleston's performances. I felt like it was okay to go there because what everyone else involved was offering and what everyone was giving me, that kind of guidance. It felt like it was okay to go to those places.

There are a number of distinct sounds and musical beats, like the theremin and the clock ticking, throughout the score. Did you play around with any obsolete or strange instruments or non-musical items to help create the soundscape?

Natalie Holt: You know, the tape machine almost became an instrument in itself because I was recording things onto it, sampling different types of clocks and church bells and stuff. Then I'd play it through the tape machine and slow it down and kept getting these weird, distorted sounds, and they were almost unrecognizable from the things they were originally. So that was quite fun to just play around with distorting sounds.

But also, I met Charlie [Draper], this theremin enthusiast before lockdown. Before I'd even heard about Loki, we'd worked on this musical project for an ad agency. So he's got this 1929 RCA theremin designed by Leon Theremin. I think there are only about 140 of them now and most of those aren't even workable anymore. So he had this instrument that was basically used for all those classic sci-fi soundtracks because for decades they were the only thing people could get their hands on. And Charlie also got a Big Briar 91A theremin, which was designed by Bob Moog and an ondes Martenot, which is bit like a theremin but more mellow. So it was amazing, knowing Charlie and knowing that Kate wanted to use a theremin, it was like, "Okay, I know who to use for this." And Charlie's a huge Marvel fan so he was just brilliant. I was sending him my ideas and he'd just send back recordings of him performing them on the theremin and he'd give me different versions on all the instruments he had, as well, so he was just an amazing collaborator on this as well. So yeah, he was on the pitch to get the job.

Speaking of, how did you get this Loki job? Did they reach out to you or did you reach out to them with a pitch?

Natalie Holt: It was just a general callout. I think there was a thing that went around to a few agents and Marvel was really looking for female composers. So that's already amazing that they're trying to give these bigger opportunities to female composers and that they were looking for people they wanted to try that they'd perhaps not heard of, hence that general callout. My agent had this unidentified Marvel pitch so I sent him my show reel. I just felt like there was a huge amount of luck involved with me getting the job. I remember someone at film school saying, "Everyone gets their moment, you just have to recognize when it is," and I remember being like, this has got that moment written all over it - it's a Marvel pitch! I spent ages on the pitch and recorded loads of live elements and did loads of research. I just wanted to really impress everybody and win the job.

Was there anything you had composed that, when you looked at it with the footage, you realized just wasn't working?

Natalie Holt: Yeah, the scene where Loki and Sylvie, you know, their connection scene in episode 4 where they set off the TVA alarm bells and it's so off the grid off what should be happening there. That one was really hard to get the right tone for. If it was too subtle, it didn't play right. I tried a much more understated version of it and then I just did this bombastic, love-in-space, the world is ending sound, just this huge, sweeping love moment and it just seemed to work with whatever it is that they brought to the table. I mean, I don't think anyone quite knows what's between them, whether it's this narcissistic moment or the system or whatever the connection they have to each other, it's still something really powerful. But yeah, that was the most challenging thing to score.

Right. I mean, it's Loki. His character is so big and bombastic and mercurial at times. Did you find his character being who he is helped you feel more comfortable opening up to do more experimental things?

Natalie Holt: Yeah! Like I was saying before, I'm always very led by the narrative and the characters. I would never want people to come away from something I scored like, "Oh my God, she just tried to impose her music all over the story and it didn't go with it at all." I'm always trying to be really empathetic to what's going on and support it. There's a fine line between dominating it and supporting it. I think Tom's performance, it is big enough to take a kind of big, beefy musical piece and handle it. But then also, there's that moment when he's walking down the corridor and Mobius is pruned and he has these tears in his eyes, you can take it to this really heartfelt place, you're really feeling these feelings for him when he's sad, as well. He's got everybody on sight caring about his character.

Have you gotten to see it yet? Have you watched all of it?

Natalie Holt: I'm a total control freak. I find it really hard to let go. So I was like, "When's the dub?" and they were like, "It's going to be 2 a.m." and I said, "That's fine, I'll be there!" because I wanted to make sure that the levels were right. They were like, "You're the first composer who has ever come to the dub." They were about to sign off on it and I was messaging Kate [Herron]: "Can we please turn it up where he's doing this or that?" It's just really hard to let go of a project and I wanted to hear how it sounded on the speakers, so yeah, I've watched it. [laughs]

[lil-tachyon]

I’m loving your solarpunk drawings and the world you’ve been building around it - even though most of the captions imply a decline in civilizational cohesion from our present condition, it’s reassuring to think ‘well, we’ll muddle through it somehow, we always do, and maybe the world that will follow might even be less shitty than our present one’.

That being the case, I want to pick your brain about more traditional sci-fi societal elements, especially in light of your saying that you don’t think mega-towers or arcologies or whatever you want to call em’ would take off (and I think you’re right):

1. Is armed conflict still a thing? On a national or tribal scale? And in a world with new constraints on resource scarcity, how effective is it at achieving organizational goals? On that note, if the old national-capitalist hierarchies are dinosaur-levels of irrelevant, what’s taken their place? Thinking about the militarization of national parks, the establishment of powerful firefighters’ unions - I guess I want detail on more stuff like that.

2. Does the internet still exist in any meaningful sense? I can see cellular towers going down with the grid, but do satellites still spin ‘round the earth for people to bounce comms off of? Perhaps one of its great features is exchanging material solutions, blueprints for 3D printers or something like that - or are 3D printers economically nonviable in the kind of solarpunk you’re imagining here? (I keep thinking about Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway on one hand, and Raymond Kurzweil’s concept for Atomically Precise Manufacturing and the Radical Abundance he says such technology would bring about on the other.)

3. How stark is the difference between urban and rural areas? Are there even relevant urban areas anymore? (I think there would be, relying on vertical or suburban agriculture to keep themselves independent of the country folk the city folk so fear and despise. But it’s your universe.)

Just thoughts. Really looking forward to seeing more of this rough-and-tumble solarpunk ‘verse in the future!

So glad to hear you’re liking it! I’m having a lot of fun drawing and writing this stuff and it’s really cool to hear people’s reactions to it. I’ll try to answer your questions the best I can.

1. I would imagine large-scale armed conflict with up-to-date weapons can only be conducted by global superpowers that can afford to requisition the oil and electronic components to manufacture modern weapons of war. In this scenario, that would probably be the US with access to most of the world’s oil and China with access to most of the world’s rare earths. They would probably engage in proxy wars over resources. Smaller powers would vie for support from American or Chinese “military advisors” in local or regional conflicts. Combatant states try to avoid total war so as not to completely deplete reserves of military resources, resulting in small conflicts that are feints-within-feints-within-feints of large economic conflicts.

I think empires will always be around, although how well they maintain control over their constituent components will vary. Tian gao, Huangdi yuan. With decaying infrastructures, both physical and electronic, large nation-empires will probably become less cohesive as communities further from the centers of power become harder to reach. The US will go back to being “These United States” rather than “The United States.” But the empires will try to hold on to power regardless. Smaller nations would probably see more overt changes. Resource scarcity and general global instability would likely cause revolutions all over the place (with each one being clandestinely contested by global superpowers). You’d see the emergence of new regimes that could be described as socialist, ethno-nationalist, monarchist, theocratic, democratic, communist, etc. The breakdown of global social order would be fertile breeding ground for new governments, for better or for worse. (I’ve been mostly focusing on tech stuff for the Inktober series as I’m really not very knowledgeable about geopolitics, but I can try to do more of this kind of cultural stuff if it’s what people find interesting. I like it too!)

2. The internet still exists, but for many people it is a public utility rather than a private luxury. Computers and phones are expensive and hard to repair, power outages are recurrent, and the infrastructure supporting the internet is expensive and difficult to maintain. Localized peer-to-peer file sharing networks are common and these networks connect to the broader internet when that connection is available. You’re right, many people in this scenario use the internet to find material solutions to difficult problems, I mentioned that a little in this post. So the internet is still around, it’s use just isn’t as ubiquitous as it is in our day and it’s typically reserved for important information exchanges rather than just web-surfing. 3D printers would actually probably be pretty viable. The difficult part would be obtaining components allowing for precision axial movement but stepper motors probably would still be pretty common and I’m sure you could make power screws with 19th century tech. And I don’t think the computing requirements are super demanding but I’m really not an expert.

As for radical abundance, nanotech, etc. I’m basically writing this whole setting assuming that their aren’t any “miracle technologies” that are going to save us but I can’t really rule that kind of stuff out. Maybe nanotech will become cheap and usable, maybe fusion power will as well. Who’s to say? (My gut feeling is that nanotech, when it comes, will result in some kind of epidemic of toxic nanoscopic trash and that fusion power is a long long way from viability yet, but those are literally just my feelings, they’re not based on any facts.)

3. I’m going to let you in on my dirty little secret: cities are very hard to draw which is why I haven’t drawn many urban scenarios for this project. That said, yeah, urban areas would definitely still be important. I think the key here is that the important urban centers of the future will be the ones that can protect themselves from wildfires, sea-level rise, and food shortages. So cities would probably be rife with greenery, have draconian fire-safety laws and would be equipped with flood mitigation infrastructure to rival or exceed the shutoken gaikaku hōsuiro. They would have more reliable access to 24/7 power and most of the rich would probably live in cities. I don’t see suburbs in the modern sense making it into the future. It costs too much to upkeep. They’d have to become much more self-sufficient to keep from falling apart in the face of food and resource scarcity. Rural areas would likely become self-sufficient communities unto themselves, repairing what they have, doing their best to keep the lights on with wooden wind turbines, providing communal light and heat from heliostat arrays etc. The only thing coming in to rural communities would be data from the internet, and the only thing going out would be food to the hungry cities. 

I hope this answers your questions! Feel free to ask more or suggest ideas. I’m not an expert on any of this stuff, I’m just trying to learn more about ways we might meet the challenges of the future.

Peace

[popolitiko]

How The New York Times is Visualizing the Smartphone Tracking Industry

By Erin Merkel | April 29, 2020

“I used to look at my phone like, ‘What a fun and convenient trick that I can get an alert when I walk near a pizza place.’ It’s not a fun trick. It’s a business, and you’re the commodity.” — Stuart A. Thompson, The New York Times

Editor’s note: Since this interview was originally published in February, the global coronavirus pandemic has shed further light on how location tracking data is collected and the potential risks of how it’s used. Google is releasing aggregated location data reports to show how people’s movement patterns are changing around the world, while privacy advocates are sounding the alarm about governments’ efforts to obtain more location data from telecom companies.

A phone application company you have never heard of before likely knows where you are right now. That information is being bought and sold right now. Those apps and their partners have joined a lucrative industry at the expense of the privacy of smartphone users. It’s an issue of national security, and it’s virtually unregulated.

The New York Times’ Privacy Project is directing attention to this issue. In Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy, Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel visualize phones as dots being tracked around the country, from the Pentagon and the White House to the streets of San Francisco.

Storybench spoke with Warzel, a writer-at-large for the Times’ Opinion section, and Thompson, the head of Opinion’s visual journalism department, about why they chose to create these visualizations and the challenges that arose in constructing this data-driven, yet very human, story.

The article opens up to a visualization of blinking dots on a map of different buildings. It looks like it should be in a spy film. Why did you decide to make this the first thing people see?

Stuart A. Thompson: So, the Times had approached this topic one year prior with a news piece and this is building on the foundation of that. We never really had a good sense of scale for how much data there is. The data that we had was of several cities and super dense and covered everything. And we wanted to give people that visceral reaction. It’s not one person or some strangers. It’s everything everywhere. And we had that idea really early on to do a zoom-out of a city and the idea was to start at one dot and keep going, and going, and going, and it would never end. I think that was the idea, to have an emotional connection to something you never get to see.

Charlie Warzel: It is really hard to wrap your mind around how much information is out there, how many phones, and how much is being sent. I think this is one of those stories that had a lot of the words before the visuals were on the page. As soon as I saw what Stuart had made, I was like: “We don’t even really need the words. The visuals tell the story better.”

Did you specifically ask to have these graphics rather than have a picture or video?

Thompson: The way that newsrooms used to be set up, and a lot of them still are, is you have reporters doing interviews and writing text and you have a bunch of graphics people making bar charts who sometimes do more visual stuff. They’re sort of just sitting in the corner of some dark closet in the newsroom (laughs). The Times for the past decade has been trying to marry those two things closer together and that’s the origin of the team that I run, which is the visual journalism team in Opinion.

Rather than making visuals like the window dressing on a nicely reported piece, let’s find the stories and tell the stories that you can’t tell without visuals or can’t tell nearly as well. Like you could probably write this story without any visuals and it would be a good story that people would read, but the impact really comes from seeing it all together. They’re not separate things.

A reporter might think of a headline while they’re writing and we might think of the visual that we want to lead the piece because that affects what is written. In the first text-only drafts of the piece, it had bubble points for that stat and little annotations around it so editors will know what we’re trying to do there. We show them that you have to imagine this idea with these images. Whether it is a video or it’s animated that it is for additional flair but it does pull you in a little bit more gradually.

Could you walk us through how you were introduced to this story and your research process?

Thompson: So the Privacy Project, which is a year-long look at privacy and technology, approached us with the data and they were worried about the implications. They thought it could use someone with a voice to argue for change. We went out to learn about an industry that’s pretty opaque and hard to understand because it’s totally invisible. When you’re on your phone, you can’t see what’s going on. A lot of the business deals are not announced publicly. The connections between different companies and what they do with the data … none of that stuff is that well exposed. It was a huge research undertaking and there was a lot of data work.

Warzel: This is one of those situations where the data led everything. It was the story, and a lot of the reporting was either to confirm things or get more contact for things in the data. This was sort of an interesting reporting process because a lot of the times you’re going and calling up people or going to visit people. We went to Pasadena for one story. It was an inversion of the general reporting process.

Usually you go to people and are like, “Please tell me this thing. I need to know information.” And we actually had all the information and we’re asking people to see it. It was sort of a weird mode. It was data driven in the sense that the data helped provide so much for those visuals, but it was also in the sense that it was giving us leads and anecdotes. The reporting was just trying to run that down and make sure it made sense or it was accurate.

Did you know at the start from looking at the data how you wanted to organize the story? Was it when you started to talk to people that it took form?

Warzel: Before we started talking to people we found in the data, we had the outline of the story. We made our outline based on our research of companies who promote assumptions. We had problems with that. One assumption was that the data is anonymous, and we felt pretty comfortable saying that it was not. [The companies say] it is really hard to keep this data anonymous and secure, and we obviously had the data so how could it be secure?

We had [the data on] Washington, so we knew that national security would be part of our series. It ended up being the second story of the seven. I think we had a pretty good sense of the parameters of it. That Pasadena story didn’t come until pretty late. Only a couple weeks before. We had stories in the main pieces about the people we had, but it seems like there was a little more to say when you isolate a region … The first stories were big high-level stories about business and the industry and the national security apparatus. The data is also a story of communities, and towns, and people living their lives, going to Best Buy and church. There was enough there that we could make a full story out of that. We wanted to zero-in on an area where there was a mix of different stories to tell.

Was there a situation where someone didn’t want anything to do with this story? How did you handle that?

Warzel: That was a major thing in this. It was actually another reason to go to Pasadena. Originally, we didn’t know how many stories it was going to be, but we identified a lot of people through this and wanted to do the due diligence of contacting them and just getting them to talk about the experience of being in this data set. It was people we found at political rallies, people who might have been in government, a whole slew of people who were relatively famous to those with no public profile. Not a lot of people wanted to talk.

A lot of people thought it was maybe like a scam. You’d think coming from a Times’ email address, the whole premise of it sounded kind of outrageous. Like, “We have reason to believe we’ve tracked all your movements. We work for The New York Times.” And a lot of people were like, “Is this an email scam?” Or people [believed they were being] phished. I think that’s part of the reason we zeroed in on a neighborhood and put ourselves to the ground and do the work of knocking on doors of people cold and had that awkward interaction of explaining.

There were people on the ground who didn’t want to talk. There were people in religious organizations or other community organizations who felt vulnerable and didn’t want to talk to the piece. When we were able to show certain people what we had, and communicate what the project was about and it had this advocacy about it, there were a lot more people who were interested.

You included the companies who use data collection, as well as their logos, in the piece. Is that a definitive choice you felt you needed to do?

Thompson: We talked about that quite a bit. I thought it was really important that companies are identified because, for one reason, is that they operate pretty much behind the scenes. They’re literally hidden in the apps you download. I’ve identified like 80 companies that were working around this. We had to feel comfortable with the ones that we include and make sure it was fair, because companies that work around the industry might not engage with what we are talking about in the story. [They] might have other priorities and might have a smaller part in the business, so we ended up plucking the ones we felt most comfortable with.

Warzel: I was a little more on the outside of that process until we got to this point of needing to talk about it, who we wanted, who needed to be in there, sort of talking to the companies and needing to vet them. That was maybe one of the most frustrating parts of the reporting because it really did highlight just how opaque the advertising industry is and the ways they manipulate language in order to shield themselves.

There were a number of companies that, when you contact them and tell them they’re going to be identified in a mobile data location space, they say no, we don’t do that…instead, they say they track some sort of customer journey path. They change the words around so they don’t fit into the category, but it’s effectively the same thing. It’s very difficult because it is so technological. It is so nuanced and varied. A normal consumer doesn’t stand a chance when it comes to that decision.

Because this process was so frustrating, especially with these companies saying what they did, were there any statements you were careful not to make?

Thompson: The other reason we wanted to identify apps is because when you see a bunch of names, they’re all these weird companies. It’s like, “Wait, these are the ones that have my locations?” It’s not like Google, where we understand that they have everything. It’s more like a startup that you don’t know about. We were careful around apps. It’s tough to talk about apps and companies without isolating one. You want to include everything. That’s what people want to know. When we publish this story it’s like, “Okay, what apps do I need to delete?” And it’s really hard to say. That’s part of the whole system. It’s hard to know what they’re doing.

I talked to Foursquare and brought the CEO a list of apps that were receiving locations and how they were disclosing that to people. He said they do get locations, but you know it’s like we can do it under this specific contact and we don’t use it. We keep it briefly and we throw it out … You have to be really careful reporting the industry because it is so complicated and the companies are so adept. The whole basis of their business is to be confusing to people. That’s part of it: the misdirection that goes on with privacy policies and disclosure screens. They control all the language and they try to make it as finely tuned as they can to get everything they want out of it. Overall, it’s a good idea to be careful about how we talk about companies and what they do and feel comfortable it can be understood totally.

Did that influence why it was published in the Opinion’s section?

Warzel: The sources came to the Opinions section because of the Privacy Project and the ongoing work we were doing in this space. Also, because there was a genuine worry about this information, a desire to advocate for change, and pressure lawmakers, tech companies, and the advertising industry to feel the need that there is something wrong here that needs to be addressed urgently. That is the type of work the Opinion section is well suited for.

Sometimes a newsroom is constrained by that lack of opinionated journalism: “You need to decide for yourself what do think about this.” But our piece didn’t do that. It said that we want you to know this is the argument. This is out of control, this is invasive, this needs to change. And in a couple of ways the final piece we publish in the series is an editorial by the editorial board at The New York Times that argues explicitly that lawmakers need to do something.

Americans didn’t sign up for this, and a federal privacy law is needed. That’s just something that a traditional newsroom is not going to be comfortable doing necessarily, and I think all the rigor of reporting, all of the vetting, all the careful use of language and responsibility… that’s the Times’ standard of reporting and fairness. Our ability to advocate as well was the real reason why they came to us to do it in Opinion.

Screenshot: The New York Times

In the Opinion section, you have the ability to advocate for change. What do you hope readers will take away from this article, the project and the information you’re putting out?

Thompson: I hope they’re afraid. Like, I’m afraid (laughs). Maybe change some of their behavior, but that’s not gonna do very much for the world. I think some of this stuff is a slow build, you know? Congress is pretty distracted right now with some other important matters. I don’t think this story is triggering a new law next week, but what I hope is that it pushes the conversation forward on privacy, how important it is, how far companies have gone in a system where privacy is unshackled, and they can do what they want.

You can argue for banning all this stuff, but for people who are like, “I don’t really care. I have nothing to hide”… I think you can have nothing to hide and also have some limits on what these companies can do: how long they can keep it for, how granular it can be — in some circumstances they can get you down to a few feet of your location — and how often they can do it.

My ultimate hope is that people be concerned. Like Cambridge Analytica changes the view of Facebook, this can change the view of this area of how people look at their phone. I used to look at my phone like, “What a fun and convenient trick that I can get an alert when I walk near a pizza place.” That was so innocent a couple of years ago, and I hope that people change their minds after they read this, that is not an innocent thing anymore. It’s not a fun trick. It’s a business, and you’re the commodity.

Warzel: On my end, I hope that people for the first time, at the scale we are able to show it, understand what they are opting into. The onus is not on the consumer to fix this and police themselves. These companies need to be the ones that change. Lawmakers need to be the ones that put that pressure on them, but the service that I’m most happy to provide people is an understanding of what’s going on on their devices without their knowledge. I think in general, it’s so helpful to know what you’re up against.

I look at everything from Cambridge Analytica onward — and I think the Privacy Project is a part of this — as a greater reckoning with our devices and our privacy and the safety of our information. I think that’s a slow building process and one of the biggest tools in that fight is knowing what it is you’re up against. That’s why I’m so glad to see the way Stuart and his team were able to present this, because I think it gives people that understanding to know what they’re participating in.

This article first appeared in Storybench and is reproduced here with permission.

Erin Merkel studies journalism at Northeastern University. Storybench was founded in 2014 at Northeastern University’s Media Innovation graduate program in the School of Journalism as a “cookbook for digital storytelling.”

https://gijn.org/2020/04/29/how-the-new-york-times-is-visualizing-the-smartphone-tracking-industry/

[wixelt]

Stargate: “Hoag” - Mass X’over Idea

About this time last year, I started watching Stargate with my dad. We watched the original movie and SG-1. And Atlantis. And the SG-1 movies. And Universe. And Origins.

We finished the franchise somewhere about a third of the way through 2020, though with how this year’s been it feels like that was years ago, now. And for a lot of the time we were watching it and for at least a little while after it, I had a thought that wouldn’t go away and that I kind of liked.

Namely that I wanted to write a Stargate fanfic of some kind, possibly even a crossover. A mass crossover, in fact. As with most of my fan-fiction thoughts, no matter the work, they eventually fell onto my pile of half-started ideas. I’m awful at keeping to things and not getting distracted by “new shiny” ideas like some kind of fanfic magpie, even when I like the idea.

That said, this was a concept I really liked, so i’m going to share the basics of it now, as far as I got with it. Maybe it will inspire someone else, or maybe i’ll come back to this someday.

Regardless, though here’s the notes:

- Post-Universe, the war with the Lucian Alliance is still going, and despite the slightly dire situation things were headed toward last we saw, the SGC’s winning. The LA are on the back foot, and is starting to break into smaller factions. One of the larger LA factions decides to cut their losses and make a run for it, their space fleet making a beeline for the Supergate the Ori Army built to link the Milky Way and Alteran Home galaxies, having either deciphered or stolen the codes required to dial it. The SGC puts together an attack force to intercept the faction at the gate and stop their escape. The fleet is accompanied by several characters from existing series.

- The battle’s one sided, but the LA faction continues to make a run for the gate. And then it happens. I’m undecided on the details, but a mix of weapons fire on the ships trying to pass through and other circumstances - in much the same way as that classic episode of SG-1 - causes the open Supergate to “jump tracks”, the destination shifting to somewhere not in the Alteran Galaxy. A side effect of energy on this scale causes all ships in the vicinity to be pulled through.

- Emerging on the far side, the surviving ships exit through what seems to be another Supergate, albeit of less refined design. Later study will show it to be Ancient, instead of Ori. This lesser design proves unstable, leading to the SGC fleet being forced to destroy both it and their crippled ships to force a ceasefire with the LA ships, stranding a cast of both old and new faces wherever they’ve ended up.

- As for where they’ve found themselves, it’s the Hoag’s Object galaxy, they eventually discover. For those unaware, this is a real ring galaxy more than 600 million light-years from the Milky Way (~200 times further from Earth than the Pegasus Galaxy). It’s a galaxy for which we have a low understanding of the mechanics behind its formation - which sparked my interest as the ideal location for a Stargate series with an underlying mystery beyond just “get home”, in the tradition of Atlantis and Universe. It’s a fun place to read and speculate about.

- The base of operations for the “Hoag Expedition” as they try to contact Earth (a challenge when their arrival method and much of their equipment has been destroyed), is the “Spire”, an automated Ancient outpost which is, as the name implies, a massive pointed tower in space. The story behind it, as the cast discover, is that the Ancients were very interested in what was causing Hoag’s Object’s structure, and sent a large automated seeding ship to the galaxy, with the intent that it would automatically drop Stargates on various interesting worlds and other locales - similar to the Destiny - also seed a few worlds with human life, as was their MO to an extent, then take up a preset location and convert itself into a stationary... station, that would serve as the Ancient’s home once they were ready to arrive - a local Supergate also being constructed as one of the projects they were intending to test alongside their studies in Hoag. Like Destiny, though, they never arrived. The Spire was dispatched late in the Ancient’s time, likely around about when they were fighting the Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy. After that, they focused on ascension, and the Spire lay forgotten, its systems waiting for a crew that wasn’t coming.

- Some of the first things the expedition discover on arrival are tied to the local gates. Firstly, they can’t dial home. Even when they work out where they are relative to Earth, they can’t calculate what the 8 symbol address required to dial would be (for reasons made harder by the second point). There’s no indication what the address would even consist of, given there’s no “dial Earth” address in the Spire’s database - presumably the Ancients didn’t know where they’d end up dialing from, and no-one ever arrived to clarify. Secondly, while the local gates are Pegasus-era 3rd generation Stargates, they have a different color palette - being purple rather than blue, because I like purple - as well as a completely different set of symbols. These symbols are determined to be a very symbol numeric system set up in 5s, presumably because the gate seeding was automated and chose a structured visual system. I actually created a guide for this system. As might be obvious, this gate network has more symbols them any other - to account for Hoag’s Object being a larger galaxy - featuring 41 non-Point of Origin options:

- As I mentioned before, however, I wanted this to be a mass crossover, which is where the Ancients’ MO of seeding human life comes in. Like the Pegasus Galaxy, you can still have those human cultures, but how far out Hoag’s Object is - as with Stargate Universe - allows for more alien cultures as well. Which naturally lets you drop pretty much any non-Earth (or otherwise, in some cases) setting into this concept amid other, more original planets and have it turn up as the expedition does what Stargate does best: explore new worlds. RWBY? No problem. Avatar? Eeyup. Fairy Tail? Definitely. Madoka Magica? Trickier, but even with that being set on Earth the Incubators have to come from somewhere, right? MLP? Simple, if the Equestria Girls world is considered the local side of the mirror and Equestria another reality. Heck, you could even throw in something as out there as Hermitcraft and probably make it fit.

- And yes, I did briefly play around with gate addresses for a few of the above places, too, but didn’t get very far due to waning inspiration (the above symbol system itself was already my 5th or 6th attempt to make something workable). I did include my meta-logic for choosing the symbols, though:

- There were other ideas I had for this whole thing, too. I played around with the idea of writing this on a forum thread on somewhere like SpaceBattles or Sufficient Velocity, and maybe I still could one day, where other people could write in the setting too if I got enough traction (always been a big fan of interactive and/or collab ventures). Also played with the concept of a story-line of two Goa’uld “brothers” who had left the Milky Way in centuries past in search of new pickings, finding Hoag’s Object and setting themselves up as gods over multiple worlds (one of which may have been RWBY, if that gives you an idea of where that was probably going), but that fell apart once I started questioning how they got to Hoag’s Object when the Spire and its gate hadn’t been touched before the SGC arrived.

All that aside, though, this idea is out in the open now. If someone wants to play around with it, they can. Or if people want to ask what i’d do with various settings or features, i’m happy to give it some more thought to get the creative juices pumping again.

For now, though, enjoy! :)

[sneakerdoodle]

On Second Citadel and unity

It was interesting to me that, after making Junoverse a very poignant gender utopia (and general lgbt-utopia, too), Kabert went ahead and made their second storyline so heavily centered around bigotry and discrimination (dealing with topics of ableism, mysogyny, homophobia). now, obviosuly, Junoverse is not even remotely free of inequality, and as far as the mentioned topics are handled this utopia is not disability-friendly, with prosthetics not being readily available with no charge, which, like many other things, strips people of their autonomy, turns them into a rich man’s plaything. But here inequality is arguably explored from the point of exploitation of one human being by another, of abuse of power (interpersonal and social-scale). Whereas Second Citadel opens with an episode about two knights - a disabled one and a woman one - both of whom struggled for similar reasons, so there is supposedly little power imbalance here. And yet they do not see eye to eye, even more so, one of them furthers the other’s discrimination. We can speculate that that’s Sir Caroline’s effort to fit in - strengthen the sense of her hard-earned belonging by othering someone who never got that right to belong. Which doesn’t make it any less infuriating and damaging, but sets the tone of the story very well. There is no strong thriving off the weak. There are just people infinitely rejecting one another on the basis of their differences, often under the weight of their own rejection.

The topic of ostracization and discrimination is tackled in almost every arc of SC, but the idea of othering extends beyond it. The central conflict, the ongoing war is between monsters and humans - and while we’re more familiar with the human side of it, while we may learn more about the history of their conflict and who wronged whom first and worst, for now we’ve seen both humans and monsters express deep disgust for each other and one another’s way of living. And then the same happens on a smaller scale, within one species: we see the mutual disdain between Northerners and Southerners. Sir Caroline is different not only as a woman but as a foreigner; the Cinderclasp episode made it far too clear that the attitude to foreigners in the South is no better. 

And all of that unravels against the backdrop of pretty phrases about unity that get repeated over and over. “Strength in Unity”. “Two in unity, simple, strong”. I believe those are not instruments of irony, however, but keys to the central message, echoes of this societies’ past and - hopefully - foreshadowing of their future.

Sir Caroline twists the meaning of that unity in order to keep her authority:

ANGELO: Sir Caroline, I really don't think-- CAROLINE: What is the primary edict of our Citadel, Sir Angelo? ANGELO: Strength in unity. Of course. CAROLINE: And the sooner you all remember that, the safer humanity will be in these Northern Wilds. Hypocrites. The lot of you. Unified only when it’s convenient. No better than monsters in that way: greed governs all, and everyone just does what they want to get what they want. If you just listened to authority, real authority, you might actually be safe.

And that happens to highlight what unity is not: giving up one’s autonomy and approach and unique competence to fit into someone else’s model of desired reality. 

Here Damien’s words about perspectives come into play. However labored and uncomfortable they were, showing his inability to not fixate on what separates others from him, they are important as a piece of the meta puzzle: they make us think of inherent value of different experiences.

DAMIEN: My kind, kind friend. I agree that it is a shame that we cannot trust these men. They would be valuable allies, as Sir Caroline was – for moving through the world as she has, in a life quite different from ours, has clearly gifted her with ways of thinking that you and I would never come to. ANGELO: Very true, very true. DAMIEN: And so I am certain that given Marc’s...situation, he too must have a perspective of great value in our mission. But the simple fact is that he cannot be trusted.

The importance of these lines is backed up in Lady of the Lake, when Caroline is instructed to use specific characteristics of her subordinates and turn them into strength that would aid the mission. We are told over and over that true unity is in embracing our differences, valuing them and working together to make these differences work in everyone’s favour. 

There is something to be said about quite careless exploitation of Damien’s neurodivergency of course, but that is once again the warped verison of true unity, showing what unity is not, but also simultaneously giving us some idea of its potential. At the core, behind Sir Caroline’s personal errors, the message is kinder, broader. We are told again and again that the importance of the unqiue approach, unique way of thought, unique operation of our minds can enrich our shared experience and cooperation beyond measure.

So when later on Sir Caroline instead tries to suffocate any challenge to her authority, any alternative point of view, it comes as the biggest whiplash.

And of course, when discussing the monster-human antagonism in this vein, the Moonlit Hermit arc gives some truly invaluable material. Rilla and Arum’s interactions are strongly based on the differences of their approach to the world, with Rilla’s being a rational one and Arum operating on what can be called intuition, spiritual sense and probably instinct. He despises attempts to rationalize the free broad flow of the universal energy.

And what we see is two of them coming together, sharing their views of the world and finding something useful, fascinating, beautiful in the point of view that seemed so unthinkable before. That culminates in the truly breathtaking scene of their discussion of the nature of music, whether it’s magic or math:

RILLA: I mean..why can’t it be both? ARUM: Nonsense. RILLA: No, I mean...maybe that’s what makes music special. It uses these predictable scales and measures and combines them with some unpredictable, something-- ARUM: Magic. And what comes out isn’t really either. It’s...more.

“It’s more”. Can’t overstate how hard this hits. And the parallel between this theory and Rilla and Arum’s relationship is more than on the nose, proving to us once again that the idea of unifying our different experiences and perspectives as something incredibly valuable, something that creates something new, rich, priceless, that is more than just a sum of the two, is central to the narrative.

What is interesting to me in the Moonlit Hermit arc is the distinction that is made between the monsters and the humans. Humans are supposedly rational while monsters speak of magic and the Universe - what a fun narrative is that! Monstrous spirituality... And then later on we have Damien raging at his saint, yelling “It is only monsters who listen to their heart above all!” - but apparently it is not. 

The new season offered some helpful context to that, specifically - the Thought Stream. Obviously referencing the Tarot, it has four suites resembling the Minor Arcana while what can be called the Major Arcana is not a part of the deck usually but something that appears unpredictably (specifically: Olala’s card that does not belong to the Wilds, Wastes, Frosts or Mirrors suit). 

The four Tarot suits (Swords, Cups, Wands and Pentacles) represent different areas of our life, separated: Intellect, Emotion, Spirituality/Creativity and the Material. Mind, Heart, Spirit and Body.

The four suits also correspond with the four elements. And Water is the one corresponding with Heart, with our emotions. I do not think it to be a coincidence that Saint Damien - the one encouraging his follower to listen to his heart, teaching him tranquility i.e. not losing oneself in the stream of emotion, the one teaching how to let one’s heart guide not stir - has water and the waves as his symbol.

So if Damien is Heart, Rilla is definitely Mind: she is analytical, a determined problem solver. I believe Arum represents the Wands: the Spirit and the fire - and that it is a symbol connected to monsters’ society in general. 

Wands suit deals with passionate creation, with realizing one’s vision, bringing something into the world. That seems in line with the monstrous philosophy in general. They talk of one’s place decided by the Universe, they say one is justified in their actions as long as they truly do what they want, follow where their passion guides them. There is quite a bit of hypocrisy there as we can see in the Spiral Sage arc, the monster society may just be keeping the platitudes while giving in to the power of the strongest no matter the Universe’s place for the weak - but the ideal is still there, and it is one Arum seems to follow wholeheartedly. (Hence his interpretation of Damien seemingly abandoning his path as a lack of character.)

The same idea - one’s place in the Universe - is brought up again in the first part of “The Fool in the Garden of Death”, showing this belief spreads beyond monsters’ society, into the Western Wastes. None of the elements, be it Heart or Spirit, are strictly one species’; however, we’re dealing with different cultures and ways of life people are most accustomed to, prioritizing different aspects of life. And we’re being shown that maybe engaging with each other is what those cultures are supposed to do.

The Thought Stream’s deck is made up of four suits corresponding with four ends of the world, four parts of it. Where in Tarot we have aspects in Thought Stream we have places. This reinforces the concept of different aspects of life, different ways of approaching it, corresponding with specific societies. 

Each of the suits is given an identity, but all of them make up one deck.

After all, what’s one aspect of a being without all the rest? Reign of just one’s Mind, Heart, Spirit or Body - how long can it last before turning destructive?

True strength is in balance of different elements - in unity that recognizes the value of each of them.

I have a theory that the ideals of the Second Citadel are the forgotten and revamped mottos of the beings of Fort Terminus: “two in unity” being not two partners but two worlds, monster and human, coming together to create something that is more, something new and powerful and full of potential. Capable of building something as impressive as the Bridge. I also have a theory that the Bridge is a parallel to the Tower of Babel. Which brings us to the idea of a divided world unable to see past the differences between societies, and through that losing the power that unity used to give it.

Showing the world where difference is shunned and leads to ostracism, where people that come from different places fail to acknowledge each other’s humanity and refuse to embrace their differences, where two species fail to accept the other’s way of living and deny the enemy their humanity/monstrosity, the Second Citadel storyline is offering a greater value as an endgoal: embracing difference and diversity, seeing strength in what sets us apart from each other, and recognizing that we all complete one another, like the four aspects of our own being, like four pillars upon which the sky rests. Deny one single pillar’s importance and wait for it to come crashing down on you. It says: to know true strength, we should welcome any and all experience, all of the unique perspectives, celebrate the differences that make our shared existence so much richer and make us so much more capable to deal with challenges of life. Strength in unity - not in uniformity.