#this worldbuilding is messy nonsense

[thelediz]

Sonic Underground episode 24: Mummy Dearest

I’m watching Sonic Underground in search of inspiration to finish a fic I’ve been writing forever. It’s a sad state of affairs. See the recap of the first three episodes here, if you're interested!

The plot (for want of a better word): One of Sonic’s ancestors was a prophet that predicted the rise and fall of Robotnik! Can the Sonic Underground find the scroll of prophecy and find out how to defeat Robotnik?

Is anyone getting the feeling someone in the writer’s room went to the middle east in this period of the series, or is it just me?

We begin with Sonia showing the boys a toy Cyrus gave her, called an ‘Intelliputer’ and after the whole zombie virus thing Cyrus cooked up last time I am immediately anxious.

It’s a surveillance laptop, basically, with very limited capabilities. Robotnik’s talking about some kind of expedition and finding Aleena, but walks out of frame before they can get actual details. HOWEVER

Also in the control room is an old book with a symbol on it that Sonia recognises as the Royal Hedgehog Crest. So apparently they need the book.

To do this, Sonic brings another new toy from Cyrus: very light SWATbot disguises. They use them to sneak into Robotnik’s headquarters and with toys like this I really have to wonder how the Resistance hasn’t just snuck in and shanked Robotnik in his sleep, I really do.

I know that’s not how kids shows work, don’t @ me.

They get in and would get the book easy does it, except Robotnik himself shows up halfway through the heist and even then, Sonic’s smooth talking (inside a robot disguise) would get them out except that Manic trips and breaks his disguise.

I question Cyrus’s engineering that it broke that easily.

Sonic just BARELY gets them out before the place goes into lockdown. This moment almost has tension to it!

Anyway, the book shows them the scroll of ‘Amun-Rappi’, which is… just… yep. Yep.

Okay, so let’s pause for a second to tell you why this plot point has always made me sigh a lot. Amun-Rappi is an ancestor to the royal family, and a prophet. To the point that he supposedly wrote out a step-by-step guide about how to overthrow Robotnik. They take him very seriously. AND YET no one saw Robotnik coming. No one has followed these steps. And this whole episode will ultimately have no plot relevance. In addition, Amun-Rappi is some weird… like, he looks like a fictionalised pharaoh, but in universe he is treated more like Cassandra of Greek myth. Which is, you know, whatever. The whole Mobius thing is a weird mish-mash of Roman globalisation nonsense so we deal. It’s just… I give SO MANY SIDE-EYES to the royal family for letting Robotnik into the kingdom with this in their history. This episode has stuck with me to the point that it’s kind of how I built up the entire Hedgehog royal family lineage from this one guy as a priest to the not!Egyptian King, whose descendents immigrated to the central kingdom before the Mobian wars that were mentioned in a past episode, but that IS SO MUCH HEADCANON NONSENSE and if I don’t do it, it just makes things messy.

THIS SERIES IS A MESS.

Anyway.

…Sonic is using Manic’s voice this time. Cool. Jaleel, I really think we need to re-record – no, no, you’re right, timing, move on.

The van (including the Sonic Underground) gets eaten by a Dune Worm. Robotnik and Sleet celebrate, while Dingo mourns Sonia. The audience is less concerned, because anyone who saw Pinocchio knows how this goes.

Sonia, who is the one carrying the braincell this episode, decides the best way out of this situation is to force the sandworm’s mouth open a bit (what) to let sand in (WHAT) until it surfaces (…kay) and spits the sand and them out (…uh huh). I mean, there’s logic to it. Not sure it’s my kind of logic, but we roll.

It lets them out in front of the pyramid and… as someone who replayed Assassin’s Creed Odyssey last year, I gotta say… this black, vaguely metallic pyramid… Issu artefact much?

Anyway. They get in through the secret entrance marked by the Royal H (the Hedgehog Crest. Yes, they call it the Royal H), only to immediately get frozen by magic by a… vaguely Jafar looking guy, who is there to protect Amun-Rappi's tomb.

But he recognises the royal hedgehog medallions, so apparently the necklaces have been things in the royal (which Amun-Rappi is not otherwise implied to be, yet) family for centuries.

Sleet and Dingo have been muddling through the other entrances, but catch up just as the guardian is showing the triplets to the main chamber. Remarkably, Sleet actually catches them with some sticky… stuff. But it’s for nothing, because Sonic ultimately breaks free with a superspin and takes the sticky gun thingy off them. The only thing this actually does is let the triplets know a SWATbot patrol is coming after them, so they have to take a shortcut to the burial chamber through two ‘chambers of death’. As you do.

So called, I guess, because there’s no way to disarm the traps without someone risking certain death first, I guess. But that’s what Sonic’s whole deal is, so he overcomes fire and water with only a few jokes and singeing and all is well.

Amun-Rappi was buried in splendour and with guardian souls but with very few treasures, gotta say. But said guardian souls take one look at Sonic, who is the spitting image of his ancestor, and back off. I dunno, I guess they needed to fill twenty additional seconds of the episode or something.

Amun-Rappi appears as a ghost, and demands a song in payment for the scroll, because of course he does.

THE SONG: We are Sonic Underground. Some… weird 90s rap thing that is directly referencing the plot for once and we just… yep. It is what it is.

Amun-Rappi curses Robotnik’s forces with his ‘Curse of Immobility’ while the triplets get away with his scroll of prophecy. But it’s all for nothing, because as soon as they remove it from the glass casing, it falls apart, as parchment is wont to do.

So that was an episode. I make way too much of it for world building purposes. I really shouldn’t, but egh.

Come back tomorrow if you’re interested?

[artbyblastweave]

Question based on the fascinating Wild Talent's Axes post. Why do you think most adaptations of High Blue settings change them into lower Blue settings?

I think there's basically two reasons for that.

Reason one is that I think that on some level the executive-suite-level aversion to looking too silly or wacky and scaring off unfamiliar audiences was, at the time that it reigned supreme over all of these creative decisions, unfortunately just kind of correct. You're doing Spider-Man, alright, you can kind of bank on the audience's ambient knowledge of Spider-Man to buoy along the question of "How and why Spider-Man" and maybe "How and why Green Goblin." You bring in enemies outside of that paradigm, you bring in wizards, vampires, aliens, now you gotta explain those things too, you gotta spend bandwidth on that. There's a real murky middle ground here between a cynical fear of looking too silly, and a genuine scope and focus problem- how much value added is there in pulling away from the core mutant stuff to start mucking around with the Shi'ar or Cyttorak or Belasco or Dracula? I don't think it's a coincidence that I don't hear people bringing up the fact that there were aliens in Dark Phoenix.

The Suicide Squad(s) are actually a really good example of this issue. Suicide Squad, while very bad, was actually a very high blue movie, to the extent that it actually fucked with the pacing when they kept turning to the camera to introduce new origin stories, to the point of creating a tone-and-theme clash with the previous two movies where this stuff was mostly framed as much rarer and more disruptive. The Suicide Squad was equally high-blue, but also much more deliberate and naturalistic in conveying that this was a superhero setting rife with weirdos. Naturalism is a watchword with this kind of thing.

Which brings us around to issue two, right, which is that, as much as I love the high-blue bullshit of the golden and silver age, you're huffing glue if you think those settings became like that due to some deliberate creative ethos. They needed to meet monthly deadlines and they were writing for small children, it was the corporatized version of making up a bedtime story off the cuff, and over time the nonsense simply accumulated. Later writers take that precedent and run with it to do interesting and valuable things, but if you're creating a classic high-blue superhero setting from scratch these days it's almost always a form of emulation. Approached without clarity of purpose, it can make for weird or bad or messy writing!

Ultimate Spider-Man is an example of a comic adaptation that bleached the blue, and that decision- to tie all of Spidey's villains to a common origin- resulted in a really strong story. Stronger themes, stronger character dynamics, stronger worldbuilding and stronger, cohesive political messaging. Objectively the correct decision for the project they were going for. Tightening the blue can let you do things- it lets you sift through and find the strongest shared points between the disparate elements of the mythology, assemble them into something thoughtful and directed.

[chaifootsteps]

so, i used to be a fan of viv's back when zoophobia was still regularly updating. it's not very well written at all of course, but at the time i was pretty forgiving of its flaws bc i thought the art was gorgeous and it was afaik her first project on that scale. and i see the appeal in self-indulging in one's OCs even if it's not "good" on a technical level

i dont know why i stopped reading it, i guess maybe i just stopped being a teenager, but after all this time, it is both so fascinating and disappointing that HH is following in ZP's exact footsteps.

the main plot is thin

the worldbuilding is borderline nonsensical

the supposed "main character" is constantly sidelined in her own story for viv's clearly favorite male characters

there are way too many fucking characters and not enough time or reason to care about them

and all of the characters are one dimensional because there's not enough time to develop them

the jokes are just not good

i'm much more forgiving of ZP (though not that forgiving... seriously it's pretty bad for a hundred other reasons i'm not gonna list here), but with HH, what the hell happened? iirc this is viv's third major plot focused project. there's a significantly larger budget and a whole team of writers and animators, so why is it still so messy?

Because Vivzie has zero drive to improve and zero interest in ever accepting criticism.

[invested-in-your-future]

I am new to rwde stuff, and I'm wondering why Miles is so often singled out in criticism? Like, with self-insert stuff that makes sense, but I also see people criticize the relics/gods worldbuilding as a Miles thing, without mention of Kerry. Same for similar criticisms like the plot driving them into a corner in v10, or the mishandling of the WF plot line. Is there a reason for that, or is it holdover from not liking him for the self-insert? Is he the one who talks about it the most, or has he specifically claimed responsibility for that, or he writes more than Kerry, or something? Is it because he just seems to be the more public of the two of them, doing things like his cameos? Is he simply the more unlikable one? Thank you in advance, if you answer this question.

I think it is that, yeah - Miles is the one most often putting his foot in his mouth with weird hot takes that come back to bite him.

Him being tasked by Monty to watch a bunch of anime to see what NOT to do and ending up gushing about sword art online and loving the one soul eater character he was supposed to understand about being crass?

Him going on an off-tangent rant about how Korra world building is bad only to then rip off parts of that lore and it all end up a mess.

Him ranting how on how LGBTQ+ rep in Korra has absolutely no build up only for BB ending up getting ZERO PROPER DEVELOPMENT that it SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN FOR VOLUMES (because the show was too busy queerbaiting) and only getting a desperate kiss to attempt to get the views back up... (Mind you Korra was under a LOT of network restrictions and actually doing what the show did took actual guts while the only excuse RT has for dancing around the topic is "we don't wanna")

Him watching Land of Lustrous (a show about an immortal being experiencing trauma and PTSD and dealing with grief and existential crisis) and going "I don't get it" and then delivering the absolute messy v9 nonsense that literally vilifies trauma and goes against basic mental wellness concepts.

There's a trail of Miles stepping on the same rake over and over again going back years so he kind of became the face of all the wrong decisions taken in the show.

Plus, you know, yeah, Jaune is his baby and he somehow ends up being the faux protagonist of the show leeching off the screen time of actual protagonists and getting more development and focus than actual protagonists. And him being the guy to whom "the idea of brother gods came to in a dream" and it's easy to see why he kind of became the poster child for everything bad in the show.

However, Kerry is just as guilty for a lot of aspects of the writing but people are bit more lenient because again two worst parts of the show - Jaune and brother gods both come from Miles.

RWBY having borderline nonsensical setting and offensive problematic writing is a group effort though because RT as a whole never grew out of the "edgy homophobic jokes machinima youtuber" phase - not even after becoming a company that owns million dollar franchises.

[finalgirlgretchen]

cuckoo had a lot of things working against it in terms of audience reception (not least the fact that it was a neon drop immediately following longlegs) but i honestly think it was mostly just. its firm insistence on the sincerity of premises that a 2024 audience doesn't expect or want. like. the cultural obsession right now is a grief/trauma horror subgenre, and has been since babadook. and cuckoo tricks its audience into thinking it's going to be another entry into the trauma horror canon by allowing gretchen to have a dead mother, but then it swerves to be actually about queer feminism, white patriarchy, colonialism, and eugenics. it's a gotcha! they're having fun with genre expectations!!! and so it leaves the audience feeling stupid because they're unable to interpret the film through a trauma horror framework, which is what they went in expecting, and their only option when they feel stupid is to accuse the movie of being messy and nonsensical. but ALSO, even apart from that, cuckoo is. a monster movie!!! cuckoo is straight up just a MONSTER movie and we don't see all that many of those anymore!!! and not only that but its monster is so wacky and zany and bonkers and original that it's even further putting off an audience who ALREADY don't like monster movies. and so again they have to accuse it of being a disaster and its plot not making any sense when actually it's like. the plot makes total sense. everything relevant to the plot is answered by the film itself. there are maybe some worldbuilding or lore things that are left unanswered but they don't impact the viewing experience. it's just that cuckoo is doing something different than what audiences demand from horror in 2024. and i PERSONALLY think that's what makes it the best release of all time

[leescoresbies]

if it's of interest to anybody at all, here's my big picture review of veilguard after my first playthrough! it's not all negative - i think there's a lot of gameplay reasons to really love the game but it also lands overall as a weirdly disjointed, sanitized, and at times soulless followup to a game series that's known for being kind of messy, polarizing and opening doors to argue about inherent contradictions and bad decisions.

i'm a dai HATER so the things i loathed about that game i loathed here too, including a very hateful and lazy engagement with oppression, history, religion & cultural connection, & everything to do with modern elves engaging with their past.

good things: combat! maps, just pure enjoyable playability, scenery, the home base setup, companion banter and some of their relationships, at times the protagonist.

things i hated: immersion, commitment to the bit, an almost dismissive attitude about previous lore and worldbuilding, how all the lore reveals are pulled off, a fear of anything challenging or crunchy that ultimately just pissed off players who love the "argue about inane nonsense" part of da games!

under the cut for spoilers

the good stuff is GENUINELY good. i can tell a lot of focus and time went into elevating some of the clunky parts of previous da games. the character creator! the HAIR! it's so genuinely beautiful and at times breathtaking in its design (realizing that mountain is a titan??) and deeply enjoyable to look at. i LOVED the combat playing as a mage, and loved being able to respec any time to try things and experiment. flexible, entertaining, flashy and fun. inquisition's actual gameplay was such a slog for me as someone who isn't motivated by minmaxing combat strategy in any way, so i loved this.

a lot of people are comparing it to the two new god of war games - for good reason! i think it took a lot of positive notes from them, which is one of the reasons why it's so darned fun to play. it moved away from the party mangement rpg setup of previous da games and, while i do miss that and also understand why people might be frustrated by the change, i think it resulted in a game with compulsively playable combat and a navigable world that's a lot more constrained and exciting - both bigger than origins and da2, and more locked down and specific than dai. this was all a major win, with a few art design things i did struggle with (like the outfits? why? and the fact that you can't preview fits when you buy them from vendors?) i think this let the environments shine, and exploring them was so exciting.

however -- the comparisons to god of war reveal what my fundamental biggest problem with the game is. the GoW games are beautiful, thrilling to play, full of epic fights -- but for me anyway, at their core they're so good because they're a deep dive into a really complicated relationship between two people. they focus on a very specific story, and let that story unspool as you move through the world. the environment supports the story, not the other way around. characters fight and scream with each other, and have friction in their worldviews, and make decisions they regret badly. and the story is linear enough that there's nothing ambiguous or loose about any of it. sure, mainlining those valkyrie fights is fun but the games are incredible because they let the characters really have space to develop their points of view, make hard decisions, get pissed at each other!

DAV does none of this. offers no friction that isn't surface level, gives its characters no space to have contradictory or complex political opinions, and does not touch its own thorny and convoluted worldbuilding that's built on fictional oppressive systems (that are allegorical for real oppressive systems!) there is no discussion of slavery, even though the companions include a tevinter mage and two elves and your character can be an elf, a freedom fighter, or an ex-slave (which i discovered in one-off banter between laidir and taash?????? what?). there is no religious friction between people of different backgrounds. there is no depth or history or context.

the only time the game tries to think about its oppressive systems is when its telling the story of the ancient elves (powerful elf mages oppressing other elves), and has its elven characters (marginalized in the world they live in! they are forced to live in slums and work as servants or be enslaved, or else abandon society to hold onto their fractured history! hello!) APOLOGIZE for the decisions of their ancestors. the moments where bellara or davrin or the veil jumpers discuss how their people's lost deities returning (people who, again, have been slaughtered over and over and over by fantasy catholics for believing in them) and, surprise!, being power-wielding evil aristocrats who enslaved them are few and far between. it's disrespectful and dry and so, so, so boring.

as an example: lace harding (red head, white, grew up on a farm, follows fantasy catholicism) gets a whole moment where the player can lament in her feeling her religion's truths have been turned upside down. you can also say you're a fantasy catholic! bellara and davrin (both a fictional minority in the game, both represented by real-life minorities) are never given that space. and neither is rook.

there's no space for any of the characters to wrestle with those contradictions! to draw connections between themselves and solas, for good or bad! to hold him accountable! there's a reason so many people were expecting a game about a slave revolt in tevinter in the last ten years, because at some point we expected these things to come to a head and explode, changing the rules of the world. that would have been satisfying! leveling a city for no reason with no narrative impact is not.

at the end of the day, i wasn't convinced by the elven god lore reveals -- this is true about DAI too, and i hated it at the time. i wasn't convinced that anything world-shaking was actually world-shaking. i'm a serial RPG character repeater (i've played every background for dao at some point but have settled into a character i love and will play her over and over and over again) and it took me hours and hours to connect with rook because i was so disconnected from her background.

essentially i feel that: this group of writers have inherited a universe with a TON of baggage (racism, sexism even though they say there is no sexism, confusing lore, many worldstates, etc etc) and a ton of possibility. rather than embracing any of these things and trying to commit to saying something, even imperfectly, they ended up saying very little. being scrappy and caring for your friends is good! being evil is bad! there's nothing along a sliding scale of those two opinions that might present itself, and no space where somebody good might also hold opinions that harm somebody else.

the thing that makes da2 so beloved, even though it's repetitive and kind of ugly and at times a bit half-baked, is that the characters hold their own, dig into their opinions, evolve as their circumstances evolve. and so does hawke! i actually wish DAV had just given us a true background for rook and let us play their story, because trying to do everything has resulted in a game that says almost nothing, and seems almost disinterested in the fact that it's a dragon age game at all.

[itsclydebitches]

You know I don’t have a problem with the relics in theory but maybe they should have been naturally displaced items from the…(I forgot the name) “Wonderland”. I think one of the worst things in the course of the story was the introduction of the god brothers. Not looking forward to the team saying a whole speech between the four of them being holier than thou with the deities. Also the Maidens shouldn’t exist. Not without some true purpose cause semblances are already plenty strong and better

I feel that, anon, and I personally hate how none of this fits together now. RWBY keeps adding more worldbuilding that just complicates an already underdeveloped world:

Characters have aura that protects them/heals them from physical harm. At first it seems like everyone's got that - and they technically do - but it needs to be unlocked to work and after showing that once around episode 3, it's never relevant again.

Aura is distinct from Semblances, special powers that let you do cool things by controlling some natural force.

This is distinct from Dust which is substance that also lets you do cool things by controlling some natural force.

Not everyone has a semblance and not everyone has access to Dust. What determines - from an individual and class perspective - who gets what? Not important.

Oh, also one semblance is randomly inherited, but no one cares to unpack that.

Oh, also, also one semblance is randomly The Worst Thing Ever, but no one cares to unpack that either.

Semblances can also evolve! This will happen at random points and will only be tied to the narrative structure in the loosest sense.

Now, semblances can evolve again... maybe. If you're Ruby, anyway.

All of this is how Remnant naturally functions. It's a magical world.

Sike! Actually there's real magic and it's distinct from Semblance magic because... uh. Idek anymore.

Four women are able to wield real magic because a singular magic user gave humanity that ability generations ago.

He got that ability by being a part of Humanity 1.0. Why did the Gods drastically change the skills humanity had access to the second time around? Unclear.

Oh yeah, there are Gods too with their own shapeshifting/creation magic, completely unlike the magic they gave to people.

They did, however, give four random, real-real magic objects to help ("help") one guy with the worst group project in existence.

So at least we've got this settled then, yeah? For however messy everything else is, the Gods are the top dogs who dispense real-magic/semblance-magic to everyone else.

Sikex2! They're actually from another world that functions completely differently from the one they created. They're the product of a third type of magic, which is even more convoluted than what Remnant's got because it functions under Wonderland logic -- AKA, no logic at all.

This includes the real top dog (for now): a Blacksmith/tree lady we meet for a grand total of 10-ish minutes, making miniature people and letting go off into the multiverse to wreak havoc.

That's too much worldbuilding with too little development! Once upon a time a nonsense world birthed two super powered beings who decided they wanted to be Gods. They go off and create a group of people with magic distinct from their own. Then they wiped them out, creating a second group with another distinct magic structure (that supposedly isn't really magic), but remnants of the first group remain. So the world is now populated by everything from "I'm an NPC with nothing going for me" to "I have a super power" to "I have super powers, but not the cool individualized kind" to "I have the real magic super powers" to "I'm a device from a literal alternate reality" and all of it is mushed together without rhyme or reason so that fights are impossible to get invested in now due to the lack of consistency. Are you fighting another normal super powered person? A weaker version of that without a Semblance? A god-like being wielding real magic? A transforming cat possessing the most powerful character on screen? The answers don't matter because Ruby is going to win regardless by swinging her Normal Fighter Weapon around.

Meanwhile, I miss when wielding Crescent Rose was actually SUPER impressive against the grimm, rather than a "How are you even winning nowadays?" puzzlement against the new backdrop of elite forces and magic and godhood.

[fenclip]

sagau idea: crown of insight

Summary:

An AU of the imposter AU, except that some of the items we collect as the traveler... are actually kinda important (i.e. the UR+ ascension item, the "Crown of Insight"). [Sorry for messy English, I just want to throw this into the void bc I think it would be a cool concept :p ]

My notes on this AU of an Imposter AU of SAGAU (whew, that's a lot of AUs) basically say:

Since the Cataclysm 500 years ago, their Divine Eminence has ruled Teyvat from the Throne of Celestia. Only those that have been bestowed a Crown of Insight, can see the Truth - that their current Divine One is a puppet of Celestia placed to set the entire world against its true ruler.

Y'know, this thing.

According to lore, this crown was "once a medium for the storage and transfer of wisdom in ancient times", yadda yadda. This crown must still be able to "impart some transcendent power and wisdom to its bearer".

So, I think it would be cool to build on that. These are just my notes bc I'm a huge sucker for worldbuilding haha :D

To "Crown" someone, is to impart one's wisdom unto the one that they have powered so greatly. The Crown of Insight is a rare and legendary artifact that only the Divine One may use to uplift their most favoured servants.

i.e., whoever is "Crowned" (Talent Lv10, no cons) originally in the game before the player falls into Teyvat, are basically immune to Celestia nonsense due to being granted insight (get it?).

I have other notes on this AU: about the Traveler's Role, about the "Crowned Ones", how the Divine Eminence would fit in the whole Descenders thing, why 500 yrs ago specifically (besides Khaenri'ah), sympathetic magic via magic gold blood (bc whats the point of gold blood if I can't make it do cool sh*t), etc.

But for now, to ruminate... this post is getting a bit long, especially for a first post LOL (I'll edit this post later when I start making more lore for this AU so that everything is linked, fufu)

[the-savage-garden]

ACOTAR Archeron Sisters

I'm feeling unwell right now so I'm going to put my focus on things I hate, it's easier for me. One of those things is the ACOTAR series so here we go.

The drama between the Archeron sisters is honestly a complete mess writing-wise and story-wise. It's not helped with the messy dialogue either.

The beginning of ACOTAR read as honestly nonsensical, not helped that it's in Feyre's POV. I honestly thought it was intentional, especially in the later half of the book when Nesta revealed that she attempted to rescue Feyre. I thought that meant to be a clear indication how biased Feyre's POV is but when the 2nd book happened it kind of ignores it. It even returns to having Nesta back in a bad light again.

Elain... exists I think. She's like a really passive character and I think is supposed to be the peacemaker among the sisters? It's not made clear and the book is really inconsistent about it.

Feyre and Nesta seems to take up most of the spotlight with their drama, it's written weird though. Like, the worldbuilding makes it clear how inferior humans are to Fae and used to be slaves to them, so Nesta hating Fae makes sense. But instead the book series makes Nesta in the wrong for it, even having her hatred of Fae be a verbal attack against Feyre and it's bizarre. Nesta's hatred of Fae existed before Hybern had nabbed her and Elain, and got worse when she got turned into a High Fae. But I don't get what it has to do with Feyre? The book makes it about Feyre and it doesn't make sense to me.

I'm not bothered with the fact that the sisters have problems but I wish it was written better. I have siblings myself, I know how volatile it can get. I know the sisters' mother probably had a hand in how bad things had gotten between them, I wish it would be brought up more, especially in ACOWAR as it's the perfect opportunity for it. I know I haven't finished reading ACOWAR but a lot of focus seems to be on the romantic relationships than making amends with family so I know it's not going to bring up the mother. So far it does a lot of info dumping and it's annoying.

Maybe I'll make a post about "rewriting" the sisters relationships like I did with the individual characters before.

Sorry that this is kind of a mess. But hey, it helped me.

[ahb-writes]

Comics Review: 'Forest Hills Bootleg Society'

Forest Hills Bootleg Society by Dave Baker, Nicole Goux

coming of age

queer

slice of life

suburban teen life

My Rating: 2 of 5 stars

Cluttered. One needn't peruse more than a dozen pages to find the word that best articulates the indelicate disarray of FOREST HILLS BOOTLEG SOCIETY. Chatty narration. Clumsy lettering. Overindulgent worldbuilding. Coming-of-age stories are often messy in their own right, but this is just a messy story. The apparent eagerness to cram a low-key adventure full of "interesting" information never marries its righteous equivalent to what actually qualifies as necessary.

This graphic novel's weaknesses rest in the creative team's many presumptions on the part of the reader. The difficult and sad truth of FOREST HILLS BOOTLEG SOCIETY is that it's a lovingly drawn book with clever and comparatively relatable characters. However, the creative team attempts to wean readers onto the sleepy suburban proclivities of Forest Hills, California, U.S. through myriad, decadent character charts, irrelevant city maps, unavailing side conversations, and other narrative quirks — none of which carry information that is especially relevant to the book's actual story. The graphic novel has, in effect, a lot of clutter.

Readers need to know Brooke and Kelly are awkward lesbian teens with no real clue how to invest in a serious relationship. That's important stuff. Brooke is achingly codependent and constantly hunting for belonging. Kelly is an impatient otaku who, like most teens, accidentally wields her worldly ignorance in an effort to grow up too fast. However, readers will be hard-pressed to pry out these details in time to make sense of them. Why? Because the book actively distracts far more than it informs. Do readers care that a random side character is reading the diary belonging to an unknown tertiary character's sister? Do readers need to know the city's largest office building was constructed in 1987? Do readers need to waste time reading a full page detailing "a brief history of a textiles manufacturing plant" to supplement a passing reference to an idiot celebrity's overpriced jacket?

Readers need to know that "lawful good" Maggie is the prototypical, god-fearing good girl destined for corruption the instant she's fed praise. Readers need to know that Melissa, despite being the friendly foursome's smartest character, is completely lacking in direction and motivation. That's important stuff. Maggie's working-class household contrasts her vehement religious piety, which itself contrasts her friends' curse-laden joke-telling despite their attending a private school across town. Melissa, meanwhile, is at war with puberty and has no one to talk to about it. But, again, one must peel away the narrative nonsense to discern what's worthy of attention. Do readers care about the daily hygiene habits of a character who appears only twice in the whole book? Do readers need to know that almost all of the named adult characters are ensconced in dishonest or illegal partnerships? Do readers need to know multiple, unenlightening details about a character with a lisp who comprises less than one-eighth of a page?

FOREST HILLS BOOTLEG SOCIETY is difficult to read. Not because its characters are irredeemably dumb (alas, all teenagers are), but because there's so much noise that one finds the reading experience that much harder to endure to enjoy the good stuff.

The book's four protagonists form a small ring of bootleg sales between the city's two high schools. The girls prioritize kitschy, sultry anime romps clearly designed for wayward adults, and make some good scratch in the process. But Brook's hunger for status (and the attention of anyone of status), Kelly's ascension as a loudmouthed Japanophile, Maggie's impoverished Christianity, and Melissa's roving insecurity frequently clog the gears of the girls' comical money-making enterprise. Sure, it'd be nice if they had enough money to get matching jackets and all, but what about that cool-people party invite? What about hanging out at the local burger joint? What about building out their personal hobbies?

These trials and tribulations crisscross and overlap with assorted coming-of-age dilemmas. For example, one character questions her sexuality when she realizes she might gain more camaraderie from a girl with similar problems than from elsewhere. Further, another girl's impetuosity gives her group of friends its trademark, kick-butt ambiance, yet wreaks havoc on her personal relationships when push comes to shove. If FOREST HILLS BOOTLEG SOCIETY were a more calculated, prose novel, instead of a frenzied graphic novel, then these and other characters would have flourished more earnestly.

Visually, the book pulls together smart and charismatic character designs that gift readers, occasionally, a qualitative nuance of the relational dynamics buried beneath everything else. Introverted Maggie is short with stubby legs, covers herself with layers, and generally looks confused most of the time. Brooke, whose worst habit is trying too hard, is overly expressive, excitable, and has trouble sitting still. Hilariously, Kelly, the anime fan, is the graphic novel's only character without a dimensional nose.

FOREST HILLS BOOTLEG SOCIETY is more consumable graphically than it is on purely narrative terms, but by degrees. The character art is great and the book's varying page compositions is solid, but the title's occasional merging of the script's chaos with visual chaos is inevitable. Sometimes, one finds these graphic interludes build out the scene quite well, as with filmstrips or a collage of inset panels that serve as makeshift montages, or when the reader encounters six consecutive panels without dialogue to emphasize social alienation. But most of the time, instead of integrating readers into the scene, the opposite happens, as with the various maps of the town, almost all locations of which are irrelevant; or with the book's multiple folio inserts, containing a full-page of character, family, or city background information of little or no value; or through one-on-one panel conversations overloaded with dialogue; or with dozens of character-intro word balloons packed with worthless information.

The clutter, again, makes this graphic novel a difficult book to read. One cannot be blamed for burrowing through the first dozen pages, sighing in exhaustion, and rationalizing the book just isn't worth the energy. The arcs these characters traverse and the problems they face tiptoe on the edge of plausibility given how thoroughly and how often the details that matter are drowned out by the details that don't. For example, does it matter that the popular girl is constantly skimming money from her friends? Maybe. Does it matter that domestic infidelity and domestic abuse are rampant in this little nook of American suburbia? Possibly. But readers will never know, because they can't get away from the stringent, clumsy, and deliberate indulgences of the creative team's hard-worldbuilding notes to finally reach the more credible, valuable experiences necessary for character growth.

Another example rests in the inconsistent treatment of curse words. Most curse words in FOREST HILLS BOOTLEG SOCIETY are swapped with grawlixes, the typographical symbols and markings that replace individual letters. Grawlixes are not uncommon, by any measure, but for some strange reason, FOREST HILLS BOOTLEG SOCIETY goes overboard. Most of the characters in this book use profanity, and most other characters don't care. Yet, for some reason, most curse words are censored. Even further complicating the matter, the censorship is inconsistent. Why are exceedingly common words like bitch and dyke censored, while tits isn't? Sometimes, shit is scrubbed in all its forms, but sometimes, it isn't. Elsewhere, harmless or worn-out turns of phrases like shitface, slag, asshole, and pussy are censored. In some cases, the disembodied narrator's speech is censored, which defies logic. In other cases, the grawlixes work a little too well, rendering the original (implied) profanity completely indecipherable. It's a mess.

One might assemble an argument to use grawlixes to muffle some etymologically benign but culturally (regionally) agitated words (e.g., cunt), but the graphic novel's awkward and mercurial application of substitute letters, in such raucous abundance, pulls one out of the story incredibly quick. Whether a consequence of author preference, editor preference, publisher mandate, or as a victim of corporate zealotry on the part of book distributors, the end result is a subpar reading experience.

FOREST HILLS BOOTLEG SOCIETY is a difficult read. Inconvenient and querulous highlights frequently distract readers from absorbing an otherwise curious tale of "kids being kids," teenagers who may or may not be coming into their own. This graphic novel cannot get out if its own way. Readers learn so many details about the characters and the city at the heart of this story, but almost all of those details go nowhere or have no fundamental bearing on the arc of the narrative itself.

And for what details do exist, they persist in fits and starts, leaving inexplicable plot holes to linger. For example, the story takes place in 2005, yet none of the characters have access to the internet or cable television. Further, anime's popularity in the U.S. at this time was significantly more saturated than the graphic novel implies. Kids driving to an out-of-town gas station to purchase random DVDs from a drugged-out loner makes for a good laugh, but is impractical when, in 2005, anime can be easily purchased in music stores, malls, and specialty film shops all across the country; regularly appears on standard and cable TV; and seasonally invades local popular culture (e.g., Why don't the characters know they live extraordinarily close to the largest anime convention on the continent?).

❯ ❯ Comics Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads

[prince--kiriona]

alex!! great to see you back on here my guy

i have... just started uni so dear God do i not have time for writing but my endless endless rp with @/absolute-nonsense-scribblings (hiiiii maylum, when you see this) continues on! god knows how long that is by now, we have given up all hope of editing it, but it sure is a good time to write

in less messy news! the pair of us are currently brainstorming/tentatively outlining a weird-fiction noir, which at the moment mostly consists of excuses to send each other horrible body horror concepts disguised as "worldbuilding". also mostly just for fun, but more likely to turn into a readable novel than anything we've rped in the last year

WRITEBLR! how are you guys? what are you all working on these days?

use this post to share a snippet of your writing you're proud of (& link to your intros -- i'll boost!)

[pechebeche]

no YOU were up until 2 am debating design choices for a first defendant for an athena cykes game that will probably never exist

[volterran-wine]

🌳🍒🍷🌑 for Renata <3

i literally love your characterisation sm 🖤💝

(Thank you so much for your kind words 🖤)

𝐑𝐞���𝐚𝐭𝐚 — 🌳 Do they have a unique voice/accent? what does it sound like?

Looking at Renata you would think she has a sweet voice, for she is quite short and dainty in appearance. This could not be farther from the truth for Renata is well known for her blunt honesty and her inability to mince words even when she should, her voice is deeper than you might expect.

Her English is coloured by her Maltese accent, which she has no plans to change in the near future. Something specific you will hear is a heavy emphasis on consonants.

𝐑𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐚 — 🍒 What is their sexuality?

There has been many speculations about Renata's backstory, and her families history with vampires is concerning at best. While this is not the time to go into detail, I will say that her family history and being prepared from early childhood to join the ranks of immortality had long lasting effect on her. In my worldbuilding I headcanon Renata as Asexual and Demiromantic.

𝐑𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐚 — 🍷 Are they… messy eaters? Any preferences?

Renata is a no nonsense type of person, she is not picky about her food and a kill is a kill regardless in her eyes. While she is not sloppy with her meals, she is known to be one of the vampires in Volterra who drains her prey the quickest; wanting to get the feeding over and done with in a timely manner.

𝐑𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐚 — 🌑 What is their darkest secret?

Due to her friendship with Aro, Renata has been witness to some of her kings more destructive behaviours; some of them even his brothers aren't privy to. Renata is sworn to secrecy however due to her position as Aro's personal guard. Watching her friend destroy himself is not easy however, and she has many times threatened with leaving Aro's side if he does get his bearings straight.

Renata often thinks about going to either Caius or Sulpicia, but the melancholic eyes of her dear king always make her halt.

[rallamajoop]

The Hidden documents of Tesham Mutna

I’m guessing I speak for most Witcher 3 players in admitting I barely skimmed most of the in-game documents. No-one’s playing an action RPG for the experience of scrolling slowly through umpteen paragraphs of text multiple times a mission, especially when so few of them add much to the worldbuilding or narrative. Which is a shame, because it makes it that much easier to miss the few that do.

Basically, if you never stopped to read the collectable docs from your trip through Tesham Mutna with Regis in Blood & Wine, you have missed out on some wild shit. Like, vampire sex slaves level of wild. I’m not even kidding.

Let’s start with that gloriously-gothic armour suit you can pick up, complete with matching mask ‒ the one that made me go, “wait, is this, like, an armour set for a vampire’s pet human? Are they kitting out humans for ritual combat? OMG, that’s magnificent!”

Well, there’s this one scroll you can pick up containing what seems to be a poem, or maybe an oath of sorts, which might elaborate a little on just who was meant to wear that ridiculous armour.

Champion of Tesham Mutna

I am he who serves the Tribe. Exalted above men, I renounce human weakness. Uplifted above men, I become Keeper of my Flock. Filled with Strength, I turn my sword against the enemies of the Tribe. I am Master and Slave. I am executor of the Will of the Tribe. I accept this sword and this armor so I may serve the Tribe.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but that’s the sort of glorious nonsense I am 100% here for. And there is so much more.

Other gems are buried a bit more deeply. You can learn a lot about what those cells in the basement were used for from a little book called ‘Human Husbandry and Care’* (which has some pretty nasty implications about the minimum effort that can be safely dedicated to prisoner upkeep) ‒ and you can get a prisoner’s view on the same from ‘Notes of a Tesham Mutna prisoner‘ (which would seem to suggest the vampires involved haven’t quite nailed the ‘sustainable captive breeding’ stage just yet). But it’s the bit at the end of ‘Human Husbandry’ where things take a turn for the psychological.

You can read the whole thing on the wiki ‒ but for current purposes, have an extract (emphasis mine).

Human Husbandry and Care

It is worth mentioning here that there is a school of thought that suggests treating human livestock with greater freedom and care [...]. This allegedly ensures a greater amount of favorable elements in the blood and makes it tastier, however [...] this method of husbandry is much more difficult and requires emotional bonding techniques, which will be discussed in the following chapters.

‘Emotional bonding techniques’, huh? What’s that about? Those ‘following chapters’ aren’t included, but you can pick up another document a little later which picks up the same theme.

Battery-Cage vs. Free-Range Humans

Free-range, on the other hand, involves leaving the flock in its natural habitat [...] and then making the herd psychologically or physically dependent on its owner. The most effective method for making a human individual dependent is guaranteeing it safety and permanent access to high quality feed. It is worth adding that a human that trusts its owner does not feel fear and does not defend itself when having its blood drunk, which limits the production of noradrenaline and cortisol, which have a negative impact on the taste of the blood.

Woof. Sounds like everything Orianna was up to with her orphanage was oh-so-subtly foreshadowed loooooong in advance of where you can actually encounter it in the story. (Have I mentioned how much I love that whole reveal, in all its messy, moral ambiguity? Dilemmas like this are so much of what the Witcher series does best.)

But ‘Battery-Cage vs. Free Range Humans’ goes even further than that:

Furthermore, it may happen that a domesticated free-range human may feel a certain pleasure when its owner drinks its blood (most likely associated with sexual tension), which causes an intensification in the blood's flavor.

Hot damn. We’ve moved into a whole other genre of horror here.

So, to summarise: being bitten by a Witcher-verse vampire can officially be sexually arousing. Moreover, sexual arousal makes the blood taste even better to the vampire. Oh boy, they went there.

Does this really match up with how the whole sexy-vampire thing is tackled in the books, where Regis is quick to assure the rest of the party that the whole ‘blood-drinking = sex’ thing is all based on hang-ups about oral sex and other Freudian nonsense? Arguably not. But I suppose you could always argue that we’ve only got Regis’ word for that, and even he stops short of telling us there’s never anything sexual about the drinking of blood (and he’s certainly a plenty-sexual being otherwise ‒ poor Regis, it must be hard being a sexy vampire when you’ve had to give up drinking blood completely for health reasons).

And then there’s that whole bit from the first Witcher game, where you can visit an entire brothel full of sexy, sexy vampires ‒ so it’s not like the franchise hasn’t gone there before.

You could debate how much of that first game is still really ‘canon’ at this point, given how later games pick up the story. But if you were wondering if all the implications of that vampire-brothel business still count as of the third game, well... just maybe they are. 

The last document you can pick up in Tesham Mutna, “Transcript of a Conversation with a Lower Being“, is comparatively a bit of a let-down that casts the vampires as far too ‘beep-boop-what-are-human-emotions?’ to be very convincing.

But I’d be remiss not to at least mention that outside Tesham Mutna, the writers have also snuck a twisted little lesbian vampire love story into some documents from an Olive Grove bruxa battle you can stumble into.

Pick up the diary and letter you’ll find before and after the fight, and you’ll discover there’s at least one woman in Toussaint who very much seems to have been enjoying the attentions of one particular vampire.

None of this is what I’d exactly call ‘important’ Witcher-vampire-canon. As much as I 100% encourage the writing of gloriously melodramatic fanfic about the Champion of Tesham Mutna, all this stuff is so well buried it’s more of an easter egg for the attentive. But I still dig how shamelessly tropey all this vampire nonsense is ‒ and how well some of it ties in with a few minor plot points you’ll actually hear commented on in-game. If you’ve really got to fill your game with text documents, this is how you make them worth the reading. ;)

* For the record, this actually wasn’t an inspiration behind that one deliberately twisted Geralt/Regis fic I posted a while back ‒ by the time I got around to reading this particular in-game document properly, that fic was already mostly plotted. But it's still very obviously responsible for the title

[witchyhoarding]

I'm not a fandom person so pls don't take this as me defending HH with my life (I just like the weird little blorbos and wanna talk about them)

But I do think that the squicks and the morality make it a little interesting, because the morality system of heaven/hell is so fucked up, both the Princess & King (?) and the worst most villainous demons think different things are gross and weirder than they are.

Like, are they demonizing BDSM a little too much? Yeah. They're also like appropriating and doing some other not-good shit with entities like Lilith, so it's a Pick Your Battles situation here

(EDIT: you say you're at the 3rd episode? Things progress a lot and sort of take the weird flaws and highlight them as part of the worldbuilding)

But I think they make up for it with the Consent club, just a bit? The slogan was something about nothing builds trust like bondage. And everyone there was willing and wasn't shown assaulting each other or anything -- they were genuinely consenting.

Same goes for the BDSM place. Seems like everyone there was happy, and idk a bunch of fresh faces walked in, of course half the *demons* would be drooling over them and getting a bit too close. (They didn't touch anyone who didn't want to be touched though!)

I think Charlie's squicks / discomfort specifically is because she was so sheltered with Lucifer / Lilith rather than having to grow up on the streets or in one of the other rings of hell. She's spoiled and although she knows *of* all the nasty weird nonsense in Hell, she's naive as fuck.

And even she was kind of like ehhh not for me at the BDSM club -- in her opening song she looks at some (probably) voyeurs and doesn't flinch.

I don't know. It does feel rushed and messy and convoluted, but it seems like a fun sandbox to poke around in. Especially if half the HH theories are true -- like the idea that people's irl deaths influence or dictate their Hellish/Heavenly appearances.

But yeah, morality being messy + the question of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and who "deserves" a second chance is a fun part of it.

It has a lot of flaws. It really does. But it poses a lot of neat questions *and* has songs and pizzazz.

every time I watch an episode of HH I think about that post that's like "who is the audience for this show" because, the popular virulent contempt for the show aside, it is confusing. it scans like an irreverent slapstick cartoon for older kids but the dialogue is often conspiciously Adult™. the character dynamics seem like they'd be fun to explore but the way they're explored feels more shallow than I'd like. I started paying more focused attention to the animation style and immediately regretted it, but it still can be fun to look at when they play around with the character presentations (how Zenthius moves, Alastor's glitchiness). and sometimes the setting and the way the characters act are at odds to me. I mean, okay, if I think about it for more than two seconds, of course you can work in Actual Hell and still have squicks about BDSM but I can't say it didn't make me go "????" (it's mostly the way they acted about it, for me. I think the morality system at play here is what I'm mostly confused about, not necessarily that a demon can have squicks.)

I think I am almost the audience for it and that's the annoying part, lol. I like it and yet it makes me scratch my head constantly. I'm waiting for the point where the scales tip and I just Can't anymore, and the fact that I almost got there in as early as the third episode doesn't bode well

[thejabberwokk]

14 Days of Dragon Age Lovers

14 Days of Dragon Age Lovers

Prompt: 2. Slow dance

For @14daysdalovers writing prompts :D

Pairing: Female Hawke x Fenris  (Bards Drabbles au)

Rating: PG, alcohol use

I gave myself a sad halfway through and started worldbuilding because I haven't written anything for my Hawke... Just Fenris as he merges into Inquisition au... A bit of the new 'lore' for my Hawke: Name Isobel, half elf because reasons, going to reference the Irish/Scottish origins of Ferelden moving forward.

2. Slow Dance

The wine had flowed much too freely at dinner,  and the spinning room and garbled voices were not easing it’s hold on her intoxicated mind. Or her stomach. Oh did her stomach feel like a mess. Like when Isabela took her out on her ship and the waves hit just right. Oh Makers, that was a horrible thought.

Hawke sat down suddenly on a chaise... Or something like a chaise, head in hands and groaned.  “You’ve done it again Izzou. Smashed b‘fore the night is long.”

“Long..? Gone. Wrong?”  She slumped back against the cushions, arm over her eyes as she leaned back. Her red hair had come loose from its tie a while back, and now its messy waves were splayed about her head, while her woad was definitely going to need to be touched up in the morning. “Maybe a new design. Fen likes the blue bells…mmm’not very scury though.”

Laughter from the room below echoed up towards her. Her friends were safe and well. Her family.,... no her family was dead. She failed them. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut. With the tears came more nausea and she groaned again. Trying to stand up, she wobbled, nearly toppling right back to the plush couch thing, but managed to steady herself well enough. The laughter drifted up again, though closer, and she was soon enveloped by the arms of .. not Fen.

“M’rril I’m done, gunna go to bed,”

“Nonsense, Hawke, you need to dance and lift the spirits.” Merril’s laughter was like bells, bright and merry, but her eyes were dark and sad as she pulled Isobel into a tighter hug. “Just one more dance, Isabella taught me a new one, and even Varric thinks I’m pretty good!”

Head dizzy, Isobel let Merril lead her through the new dance. Fast spins, giggles, stubbed toes. It was fun, but then her stomach flopped and Merril let out a yelp as she hastily pushed her way towards a water closet. Merril tutted and laughed, rubbing her back as she rid herself of that damned demon alcohol. 

“I'm sorry, Hawke, I was just so excited and wanted you to smile.”

“S’kay Merril, I over did it again.” Standing slowly she rinsed her mouth and her hands and looked at her friend with blurry eyes. “Let the other’s know I’m ‘kay. Gunna go to bed.”

“Are you sure, want me to send Fenris up to you? Or Ander’s? He may have a potion or-” 

“S’kay Merril, I’m good. Love you.” She placed a kiss on her friend's brow then retreated further down the hall to her room on wobbling legs. Come morning there would most definitely be a broken vase… Or something to clean up.

At some point, Izzou jolted awake, bleary eyed and confused, she looked around her and found herself on her floor, by the window half dressed in her nightgown. 

“Kaffas!” The whispered shout startled her. Pushing herself up she peeked over the side of her bed, reaching under the mattress for one of her daggers. Another curse broke the silence followed by a dull thud. Crawling around the side, dagger ready, head fuzzy and mouth like sandpaper, Isobel found Fenris leaning on the other side, one boot in his hand, the other stubbornly stuck halfway.

Dropping the dagger, she let out a hysteric chuckle, and crawled to his side. “Y’look lika princess when the moon hits you juuuuust right.” Leaning her head on his shoulder, she smiled into his neck.

“You’re drunk, Hawke.” Fenris’ muffled voice made her sigh as he rubbed his cheek against her brow.

“So are you, asthore,” She helped him pull off the other boot, giggling as it was yanked off with a final tug. Then, she slowly stood up, using his shoulder and the bed to steady herself.

“Com’ere you, I wanna show yah the dance Merril taught me’ “ She held her hands out to him, a lopsided smile tugging at her lips as he slowly stood, his own legs wobbly. He staggered a bit, but grasped her hands tight.

“Fine, fine, if it’ll get us  into bed afterwards,” He dropped her hands and stepped back a bit. Making a poorly executed bow, he looked up at her through his bangs and smiled.

“May I have this dance, Isobel.” 

Isobel just stared, lips parted for a moment. “You really do look beautiful, Fenris, I’m so lucky” She took his hand and beamed at him, pulling him into a close embrace. The scent of wine hit her nose and she wondered absently if she smelled like the good liquor, whatever it was, that Varric had given her.

“I thought you were teaching me Merril’s dance.” He settled his chin on top of her head, swaying with her slowly as she hummed.

“I can’t remember the moves.”

“Ah”

“This is nice though.” She drew her arms up across his shoulders, letting them wrap loosely around his neck. 

They continued to sway, a slow dance in the moonlight, taking comfort in each other's presence.

These will be added to the Rambling Bard’s Tales after the challenge is done. Editing will be done then lol.