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taylor-titmouse · 4 months ago

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2024 Book Retrospective

i did this last year for all the books i released in 2023, and i've been looking forward to doing it again for this year because it was Such a wonky ride. i released 3 new novellas, collected 3 old ones in a new illustrated release, put out a new freebie, and dipped my toes into artbooks for the first time. that's not even including the multiple extra things i wrote this year but will release next year. it felt to me like i barely got anything out in 2024, but looking back i really did plenty.

anyway let's get into it! these will probably contain spoilers for the books because i want to talk about them openly. if you haven't read them yet... they're on sale for 40% off until the new year!

The Masson Circle Collection (1-3), released in January

so! we started out the year with this updated version of some of my earlier works. daffodils, carnations, and laurels were among my first forays into publishing novellas, and were the last of my romances before i transitioned more deliberately into erotica. the distinction is practically arbitrary since i do still write about people in love, but it's not the focus so much as the sexual titillation.

but anyway. because these were romances and not Porn (despite having explicit sex in them), and because they came out before i'd really hit my stride as an erotic author/illustrator in 2021/2022, they never got the attention i'd have liked for them! they were the last before i made the switch to properly illustrating my books; they had sketchbook sections at the back instead. i started the roger crenshaw series shortly afterward, which is when my work really took off. so it's like these stories just missed their window.

but i wanted people to read them! these stories and characters are dear to my heart and i felt like they deserved a fair shake, so i spent a month or so at the end of 2023 revising the text to be closer to my standards (though they were pretty good to start with!) and made 30 new illustrations for it. i kept myself Busy getting this ready. it would be a huge release to kick off the new year!

.... and then it didn't do very well anyway. lmao. maybe i priced it too high, maybe i didn't hype it enough, maybe it's because as much as i love all the characters, they're hard to draw and not as exciting as a monster of the day. who knows! but i'm glad i did it, if only for myself. as i've said, these stories were important to me and my growth as an author. if you like historical queer romance with a crime thriller edge, something like kj charles (because she was my biggest inspiration at the time) you should check these out! i promise they're really good despite being on the older side.

The Long Road, released in May

boy that's a big gap between january and may. so what happened there is i actually wrote the night guest first in january-february, and then the long road in march-april. but IMPORTANTLY, i learned my editor @petitemortality was going to become available for work again in april. it'd been probably a year since i'd had his hands on my work and i was Gasping for it. i've compared it to receiving the sponge treatment--just being put through the wringer and coming out So much better for it after a year of bad habits and complacency building up. so basically i put all publishing on hold until he could Fix Me.

and then i ended up rewriting both of those books practically from scratch based on his advice and godddd they really Were so much better for it. it's AGONY in the moment, but the work is worth it. anyway let's talk about the actual work huh.

the genesis of these characters is So funny, because i don't think a single one of them was created for the purpose of this story, rather they all existed as various mobs/nobodies to draw. the goblins and bandits beside vanesse were just designs i used a few times when i wanted to draw characters getting gangbanged. vanesse and angre were created Just for a patreon suggestion of "trans femme bandit queen fucking a trans masc knight". and tourmaline only exists because i wanted to draw a princess getting gangbanged and eveline didn't feel "right" for it anymore. and i ended up with this perfect mishmash of characters that slotted together into a story so naturally that i remember waking up in the middle of the night and banging out the outline in the notes app before falling back asleep and starting to write it the next day.

and it was received pretty well! it had a ton of buildup from me drawing the characters constantly for the duration of the writing and doing a ton of public worldbuilding for dwarves. god i love the worldbuilding for the dwarves. i'm desperate to get deeper into it, i just need to find the story for it. and the goblins. everybody loves the goblins and so do i. and vanesse. ahhhhh.... i'm just so fond of everybody in this book lol. just a big confluence of Toys.

oh yeah and since last year i picked favorite scenes, i think my favorite is angre's internal monologue at the start of his chapter. we get a lot of the worldbuilding there (so of course i like it) but also the Point of the book comes together. i'd struggled a lot with that whole bit in the first draft, but the final draft really just *chefs kiss* it works, for me.

The Night Guest, released in July

as i mentioned before i actually wrote this one much earlier into the year! and immediately had known it wasn't ready, and so backburnered it for months until my editor could essentially fix it. and he fixed the hell out of it. it was a directionless mess in the first draft because i hadn't figured out the characters' voices, what they actually wanted, why they behaved how they did, none of it. it was his idea to structure it more deliberately like an old folktale of a woman outwitting a best, and it snapped into place. of course it was a nearly total rewrite that added like 7000 words (and to this day i'm still not sure how) but it was completely worth it. i feel like i've said that multiple times in this post but it's always true. i cannot stress enough how much i was gasping for a good editing. it's like a cleanse.

this is another story that just sort of Happened out of nowhere. mrs. arakawa was a side character in the dragon double feature 2, and people liked her, and asked about her getting her own monster boyfriend, and so toru was born. partially to get practice drawing that bodytype, partially because i think onis are hot, and then the general shape of a story came to me and i started writing it. without a perfectly clear vision of what it would be. and that's how we got to where we were at the start of this. oops.

i have two favorite parts, the first being this illustration:

when toru is describing the oni woman he was supposed to marry. his entire narrative arc and personal struggle was constructed for the purpose of this joke. i agonized for DAYS, maybe weeks, trying to make his motivation of "i didn't want to get married" work with mrs. arakawa's own feelings about marriage and him having to leave at the end and come back and all of that. it was killing me. but it worked out in the end and i'm so happy it did because i still think the joke that he didn't want to marry a shoujo nadeshiko archetype because he thinks she's ugly is fucking hilarious.

my actual favorite scene is him and mrs. arakawa telling each other stories about themselves. i had a lot of fun trying to ape the rhythms of kabuki performance and rakugo with it.

Spring with the Unicorns, released in June

technically this ought to go before the night guest because it came out first but considering i wrote the first draft of the night guest in january *waves hands* it's all loosey goosey anyway

so this came about because i had the idea to do a book called Season's Breedings (so many of my books happen because i thought of a title and worked backwards from there) and it was literally just going to be the breeding habits of fantasy fuckworld creatures arranged by season. i wrote this one first because it seemed the easiest and then it was less than 4k words, and every other story i had in mind was going to be Much More than that and also didn't come together as easily. so on a very last minute whim i illustrated this and threw it out for free on the last day of pride.

it's me at my loftiest because i was going for a sort of third person omniscient fable type beat, because that's what unicorns deserve. i like it, and it's a good little treat to give out for free. especially because everybody loves the unicorns and loves asking me the same four lore questions and i can just say 'go read the free story' lmao.

it's too short to really have a favorite Scene but barberry is my favorite unicorn. just love everything about that guy. angry little bastard.

Poker Night with the Arizona Dogs, released September

it's not prose but it counts! this is the first artbook i've ever released, though technically not the first i ever made. the unicorn stockades series came before it but will be released sometime next year. it's a bit more spring-seasony. but anyway.

these are a lot of fun to make! i am, at my heart, a comic artist (my day job is graphic novels, buy my graphic novel it comes out in february) so telling a single story in multiple illustrations is kind of my bread and butter. and free use/gangbang stuff is like. perfect for it. everybody has to get a turn! and on top of that it lets me play in a space in a way prose doesn't. prose feels so much more official, more canon (which is how i think of the difference between my drawings and my books--books are canon, drawings are not). but with something like this it's easier to say it was just for fun. because it was! it was a lot of fun.

my favorite illustrations were the jackie-ralph licking ones (because i think i did a good job with the mouths and the folds and all) and the one with johnny with his hand over roger's face and hiding his own. jackie-ralph is probably my favorite of the dogs to draw because he's easiest but johnny is certainly my favorite of the Boys.

Objects of Affection, released in December

boy, this one huh! there is so much to say about this one. this one has like three separate catalysts that blasted together at the end of the summer and it just Happened all at once. there was a person requesting variations on "a mechanic taking advantage of an android they're repairing" for a few months on patreon that i kept meaning to do because it kept winning second place. there was another story i wrote that was too short to publish alone that i was like "okay what if i make a sci-fi anthology and one of the stories is robots..." and then i started rereading chobits for inspiration and it Pissed Me Off So Much how little it wants to engage with its own ideas.

and then the sci-fi anthology idea became only about the robots and i never published the original little short (which will come out next year as a freebie). and then my editor's computer Exploded for two months and he wasn't able to edit it ; ; the wait was Agony because this was one i really, Really did not want to release without proper feedback. something fucking Possessed me with this book and what it says about women and consent and masculinity and all the shit. like those are themes i've already touched in my other works, but in this one it was like turning the knob on a pressure cooker.

it's tough to think of what to say about it that i didn't say in the days after it was released. i've always been frustrated with robot stories that preoccupy themselves with the Theory of rights for artificial life and not the reality of rights for the people we already have. i'd watched astro boy 2003 and pluto shortly before starting (so i guess that's actually 4 things that came together) so Robot Rights!! stories were fresh in my mind and i'd found astro boy particularly frustrating with its insistence on pacifism from the oppressed robots as the government and populace kept abusing them. it is very hard to watch something that says "violence is never the answer! don't fight back, choose peace!" while your own country is aiding and abetting a genocide and obsessing over retribution for a single attack born of decades of settler violence as if they are in any way equivalent.

breathes out

so anyway that's why i chose to write about robots who undeniably do not have sapience, humanity, or rights. because we haven't come even close to solving the issue of rights for ourselves, particularly women (an admittedly easier topic to approach in an erotic work than the horrors of racially motivated war). and between chobits, which suggests a world obsessed with androids but doesn't deeply explore the social ramifications of a female-shaped servant class, and my research into real dolls, the closest thing we already have to fuckable brainless androids, there is a lot of material to draw inspiration from. how a person treats an unperson, particularly one shaped like a woman, will reflect upon how they treat a real person, a real woman.

to be less of a bummer and talk about the Stories, ratna's was the first i wrote, and went through the most revisions between drafts as i tried to figure out her whole deal. she was always going to be a stone butch dyke mechanic, so how would that sort of person feel in her line of work? would she be a stereotype of man-hating lesbian, and sympathetic to the android girls she has to send home with them? or would she be an unrepentant sleeze, just as bad as everyone she works for? i think i ended up somewhere in the middle. she doesn't like men, but doesn't think of herself as better for not being one. she thinks she's better because she isn't better, but at least acknowledges it. and figuring that out was important to figuring out the character. and also going in way harder on the beauty of the mechanism. that was mainly for You Guys, but it was crucial to her character working.

touma and shima's story came to me like a lightning bolt as i was leaving for a vacation. it was going to be, if you can believe it, Even More toxic yaoi. touma ws going to jerk shima off from behind as he fucked mari-ko, it was going to be way more explicit that he was mainly attracted to shima. but ultimately none of that served the actual purpose of the book, about treating people as objects and tools, so i dialed it back. but don't get it twisted touma is still insane and obsessed with shima and wants to touch his cock. but the story as it exists is a more realistic place for him to be at.

and samart and marinette's story was pretty much unchanged from first to final draft. the concept waffled a bit before i started writing, where my first idea had been that he makes her participate in taboo fantasies (calling him big brother, telling him no etc) and the narrative basically asking the question--is this wrong? is it better because she's not real, because he's doing it with her and not a real woman? does her 'no' matter if it's a 'no' she was ordered to say? is it worse because she can't meaningfully consent to the play either way? does any of it matter beyond the effect it has on him?

but as much as i'm interested in unpacking those concepts, i decided they would be too difficult for the audience and potentially open me up to scrutiny and abuse, because you can't even breathe the word "incest" without having your doors beaten down. the book as a whole is difficult, and i want it to be difficult, but i didn't want it to become about That. so instead i went with exploring the sort of loneliness and misanthropy of a person who lives the way he does, and i'm satisfied with it. i think it's the sharpest of the three stories.

wow i had nearly twice as much to say about that one than the rest. lol.

but that's it! that's everything i released! as i hinted throughout there were several other things i wrote this year that will see release next year. i have a free short, a $3 short, a novella awaiting editing, and at least two more artbooks to release. there'll be plenty for me to write about in next year's retrospective.

my writing goal for 2025 is to finish a novel. i did actually reach a finished draft with starbuster, the novel i've been pecking at for the past two years, but having done so and mapped out all the work it needs to be submission-ready, i've put it down semi-permanently. it simply needs too much and it's a bit too niche for traditional publishing, and it's in a genre (contemporary) i don't really want to write more of. so the best use of my time is on something else. it's a shame, but it's for the best! hopefully something will crack me upside the head with inspiration and it'll just Happen like all my best work seems to, lmao.

but if you've read all of this, or just read some of it, thank you!! thank you for supporting me for another year, or the first year if you just got here. if you haven't read everything i put out in 2024, it's on sale until jan 1st! go pick it up for cheap!!

#taylor titmouse #tt talks writing

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writingquestionsanswered · 11 months ago

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i'm currently trying to write a story with second chance trope. the story is about a friend group since childhood of 2 girls and 4 boys. the female mc and the male mc were developing feelings for each other, then the male mc left the country without telling anyone. after 3 years of no contact, he comes back. naturally, the female mc has a lot of pent up resentment towards him but she still has romantic feelings for him.

so, any tips on writing a second chance romance?

Second Chance Romance

There are five really important keys to writing a good second chance romance:

1 - Create a Sense of What Was - Even if the story starts after that first relationship (or almost relationship) ended, it's important to give the reader a sense of what that relationship was like. What drew them to one another initially? What were their interactions like? What strengthened their bond? You can paint this picture using a combination of flashbacks, memories recalled in exposition, memories recalled in dialogue, having the character look at photos or video, comparing present experiences with past ones, or even through snippets in dreams.

2 - Be Clear About What Went Wrong - The reader can't root for a second chance if they don't understand what went wrong the first time around. Specific to your story, you'll need to address not only why this character suddenly left the country without telling anyone and without contact, but how they rationalized the negative impact it would have on this person they were beginning to develop a relationship with.

3 - Be Clear About What Went Right - Sometimes relationships fail, even if their foundations are good, but that second go round isn't plausible unless there was something worth going back to. So, not only is it important to be clear about what was good about the relationship when you illustrate it in retrospect, you'll also have to show us those things are still there--or have the potential to be.

4 - Illustrate What Changed - The relationship failed for a reason. Whether there was hurt involved, poor timing, wanting different things, or some other obstacle to progress. So, you can't give this couple a plausible shot at a second chance unless you show us how the obstacles were removed or overcome. In the case of your story specifically, not only will you need to address why the character left in the first place, but why they chose to come home, and how they make amends for disappearing without notice or contact.

5 - Rebuild Relationship Upon Old and New - I like to think of it like this: imagine the concrete slab foundation of a house. This is what the couple built together in round one. But when they parted, the foundation was damaged in places (the amount of damage obviously depends on what caused the split.) When they meet up again, the foundation is still there, it's just got the old damaged parts and a lot of erosion from time and weathering. But it's there. So as they work through what went wrong and patch up their friendship, they patch up the damage from their split. Then, as they get to know each other again and the friendship reestablishes itself, the foundation gets cleaned back up and brought back up to pristine. And from there, they can build the walls of their healthy relationship.

Happy writing!

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popculturebuffet · 1 month ago

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Batman: No Man's Land Retrospective Part 1: Cataclysm

Hello all you happy people. This project's been brewing for a while now and i'm so happy to finally get to dive into it. For the next two years, i'm taking a look at one of the biggest and most influental batman stories ever. This is a story that's been adapted four times, introduced a batgirl, a story massive in scope that gives batman a problem that no amount of money, no amount of punching and no amount of batarangs can solve.

No Man's Land follows Gotham after it's utterly destroyed by a massive earthquake and the goverment "shockingly" decides rather than repair the crime pit, to let it burn and let anyone who can't afford to move or dosen't want to leave to fend for themselves. It puts Batman in his darkest hour: he failed his city, and now he and his allies have to find some way to save it. It's a massive story that i'll be reading as we go, reading each volume before I cover it. I know some spoilers, the story's 27 years old and a lot of it impacts later bat stories and i've read it's direct sequel new gotham, but as for the fine details and how things evolve.. that i'll be figuring out just before you do.

Before we get to the government abadoning Gotham like it'd later do with Riverdale, we have to get to the why: the massive and excellent event cataclysm. Yes there's an event that leads into the event.

Cataclysm is intresting in that while super villians do show up, this is gotham after all, their not the main threat. The main threat.. is simply a massive earth quake that most of gotham was warned about, but only Bruce took seriously. And even then.. i'ts not enough: While Bruce's holdings and headquarters are saved, most of gotham is totaled and the bat himself is left in the one building he couldn't quakeproof: his home. Our heroes are left desperatley trying to help or play catchup as the world falls apart and even as they try to save everyone they can the truth hangs ominously over them: Gotham.. may not be able to come back from this. So join me won't you for an epic unlike any other, a story of dread, hope, and quakemasters, this is Batman Cataclysm

We begin with Detective Comics and a prelude issue. As is standard for an event this size we're going to be jumping around a LOT of books today, along with three one shots. Every book in the bat family is touched and a ton of major bat writers left their mark on this one.

Unfortunately the one who does the most.. is Chuck Dixon

So for those less familiar Chuck Dixon is one of the biggest batman writers ever: He wrote Robin and Nightwing and defined Tim Drake and Dick Grayson as a result. His run on Nightwing is why I became a massive fan of the character and why I tend to prefer bat family books to the bat himself.

He's also a huge asshole. Absolutely giant in the industry of being a dick. I'd like to thank @brotoman-exe for the background here as while I knew Chuck Dixon was a conservative prick, he gave me some helpful info to explain why he became the bitter lemon he is now.

So Chuck as you can tell was a big writer: he wrote most of batman after all. He then got blackballed from the big 2 in the early 2000's. From his perspective, it was for being conservative and he went full right wing asshole before it was cool. In reality.. it seemed he was just a dick. He had a weird tirade about a tounge in cheek Marvel MAX, their mature leaders line, series about the rawhide kid that recast him as a macho camp gay man, and made the bold assumption the writer of the book, a vetran artist, was tricked into it. He sunk his own career and blamed the woke media for it. He bounced around in other companies, as early IDW apparently was fine with his bullshit, but eventually he ran out of options and ... well he made this

Yes that is Chuck Dixon, batman and gi joe writer making an off brand gi joe comic about Q from Qanon. I swear to god this is not something I made up. This.. this happened. You can even buy it on amazon

Look is it fun to dunk on Chuck Dixon making a comic about the quannon conspiracy starring the titular q as an action hero. yes. I mean I could do it all day. But my larger point is that Chuck Dixon sucks dirty ass in thunderstorms, is an objectively bad man. Not sex offender bad, but while the bar for being shitty in comics is high, it's not so high that "being mad a character was made gay and making action hero comics about an active and dangerous conspiracy" dosen't rate.

So I have the unfortunate duty of being objective about his work here. I do not like this man, but he was an objectively good writer. It does not, as he seems to thinnk, excuse him from being a piece of shit. I simply can't avoid talking about him as of the 7 batman titles at the time, he wrote three of them: The afformentioned Nightwing and Robin, along with detective comics.

Since I need to wash the taste out of my mouth and this will be easier than mentoining every writer as they come up, let's meet the rest of our writers room who as far as I know haven't written qanon: the continuing adventures. I wonder if the villian is joe biden as cobra commander. Perhaps bill clinton. Clinton Commander.

Writing the flagship Batman comic is Doug Monech, one of many longtime batman writers on this project. He wrote some in the 80's and what i've read of his run, which has sadly been undercollected or only half collected in the case of one collection I have as he wrote both detective comics and batman up to crisis on infinite earths, is excellent. Well done stuff that helps build up batman's world and his relationship with jason todd. I prefer post crisis jason, but he still does a good job with batman's struggle to let the kid in. He's also the one responsible for blessing the world with Harvey Bullock.

For Shadow of the Bat we have consumate Weirdo Alan Grant, a british writer who afraid to ask "You want nuts. Well let's get nuts". His stories i've read are decent and kind of weird, and fittingly he created my faviorite Batman Villian, Scarface, aka the puppet what bullies his owner/other personality. Grants work here is impecable, as is everyones even ass face and made me want to check out more of his 90's shadow of the bat run. He's got a weird poetic style to him.

For our spinoffs we have batman legend Dennis O'Neil, who with Neil Adams redefined the character. he was also editor and wrote large chunks of other bat mega crossover knightfall. He's awesome and I miss him dearly.

Finally we have Devin Grayson who wrote Catwoman and does a decent job with it. She's the only one besides Chuck Q Dixon to have a bit of infamy though rather than be for being a raging asshole, she simply wrote something what bad. She followed him up on nightwing and while the better person, decided to have Nightwing join the mob for a while, and had him get assaulted by fellow vigilante the tarantula and said assault not treated lik ea big deal because a woman did it.

She's fine here but it's hard not to think about that run so bad I refuse to ever touch it when bringing her up.

So with our writers room assembled let's talk about the issue. It's a fun one off as I said: a criminal brags to his buddies about beating up batman. It's also here where a fairly stupid choice by dc edtorial comes up: At the time batman was to be considered an urban legend by gotham. It's a period I mostly remember for getting mocked in the pages of young justice as Peter David has never met a stupid decision he couldn't take the piss out of and Linkara doing the same in his march of the titans retropsecitve.

Since this does come up with several citzens proclaming batman dosen't exist, I... have to dive into all the ways this is nonsense. So here we go: batman has been on at least three superhero teams, none retconned out by crisis on infinite earths; he was on the justice league of america, left tha tgroup to found the outsiders after political red tape prevented him from going on a rescue mission, and after leaving them rejoined the league as it's leader for the justice league international era. He left soon after to keep his profile low.. but waas still seen on news interviews and coverage and was still publicly on the roster for some time. And by this point he's REJOINED the JLA and was part of them thwarting an alien invasion, an invasion of angels and other very public disasters. On top of that his former sidekick Nightwing was famously part of the Teen Titans as robin, leading two incarnations up to this point. The New Teen Titans in paticular were a very public group, famous in new york and most notably saving the world from Trigon and getting a giant ass parade for it. He also operates as Bludhaven's hero at the time of this book and unlike batman isn't nearly as stealthy.

On top of this the Joker has been a very public meance, killing dozens, fighting the justicfe league a few times, fighting batman in a bi plane at new years and most notably after killing Jason Todd, he became ambassador to iran

The point of this long detour is that it makes zero sense that batman is seen as a "legend" at this point who "dosen't exist". While he does stick to the shadows and is defintely the most standoffish of the justice league any time he's a member, there's enough public tracks to make him being some sort of mythical figure laughable. I try not to be this pedantic in a comics review, writers slip up, canonical mistakes happen. Even now when you can google things. But this isn't a simple mistake this is a weird status quo shift that made things awkward for other books for no real reason. Batman's already feared as a larger than life figure. Just because crooks know he exists dosen't make him less terrifying or them less prone to exagerate.

Thankfully the bulk of attitude , at least for now, from most of the writers was

Most of it is lip service with only two big moments, this one and the other where it's relevant to the plot. Most of gotham tends to know batman and co are out there.

Okay now we can FINALLY get to the issue which again is fun: the criminal embellishes the hell out of the story and we see both his inflated version where it's an ocean's elven style heist and where he goes to to toe with batman.. and the reality: his crew was whoever he could get, he got the info from being a janitor, the heist went sideways fast and both batman nad robin tore his ass up. This is confirmed to his friends when batman swoops over and scares the shit out of the guy. A fun simple story.

The real meat though is in the ending: We meet Jolene Relazzo a character introduced just for this storyline for two reasons: to set it up and to serve as a plot point for the ongoing arc. She's a seismologist, one who warned Bruce Wayne about an inevitble disaster years ago: Gotham is on a fault line and while it hasn't had a quake in living memory, i'ts due and should. Given who she was talking to, Bruce set to work: as the issues after this reveal Bruce quakeproofed every wayne holding except the manor, and fired his board of directors when they all said it was too expensive. Is this a lot to just. .have on exposition? yes. But it shockingly works: I didn't realize Jolene debuted here till I looked it up as she feels like a natural fit: Bruce isn't stupid. He's batman. He prepares for shit. So it makes sense he knows a decent amount of scientests. As Homer Simpson will tell you bruce is one, but while he's a master of a lot of things, he specializes in forensics. He's not a super genius, and thus him listening to experts makes sense. And given his preparedness it makes sense his first action would be "quakeproof my shit". And given the cost he does so for the reasons he does anything: it's the right thing to do. It saves him money sure, but as we'll find out some of these holdings are apartments or hotels. Innocent people could get hurt. employees could get hurt. Bruce could never allow that if he can help it. And as the quake arrives.. Jolene can't reach bruce whose in his cave.

To the writers credit, paticuarlly alan grant who writes the explination there's a simple reason for why Bruce coudln't quakeproof the manor: the batcave. he coudln't risk someone finding out about it. As for "Why didn't he ask steel or another super hero to do it", Clark and Wally could probably speed read the info and john henry is a former construction worker, so it's possible .. but it'd draw too much attention. I'll see how plausable it is as we go as to why the rest of the league stays out, i'm betting not so much but here.. I get it. It's way too many questions to easily answer and might upset unions in town. Batman simply COUDLN'T get the mansion quakerpoofed. Now the fact he had no plans for if the quake happens is a little stretch.. but Batman has to plan for a lot. He probably thought he'd get forwarned or the cave would hold.

It does not. The mansion collapses bringing alfred down to the cave, trapping bruce and leaving Bruce's home gone> it's a truly shattering scene and well done by alan grant, underlying just how sudden this is: like any disaster it just htis and in a second everythings gone. Batman does wiggles his way out and trie sto go for the car or one of the exits but everything collapses. He's truly trapped.

Meanwhile Harvey Bullock was tailing a local criminal bamed "Billy Wildman" but the quake happens. He's forced to team up with Anarky, who as the name gives away is an angsty teen who dressed like an adult. They work together as Bullock quickly realizes he needs the help to help civilians. And that's the big part here: most of the hero work done.. is search and rescule. Batman's not above that and has saved many a person but their usually hostages or kidnap victims. This is the kind of emergency work brave first responders do every day and that while batman will do in a pinch is outside his element.. but he and the other heroes of gotham do. Anarky is a street punk.. but gladly helps.

Finally we have Barbra Gordon, at this point oracle, batman's eyes and ears who after being shot by the joker traded in her batgirl suit for being a computer genius and tech whiz for any hero who needs it, mostly the bat family. Her own Clock Tower base was shaken but is otherwise fine. Naturally it was one of bruce's quake proofings and Barbra presumably bought it from him. She goes to see what's going on but sees the situation as it is.. and takes command. While she takes a second to let her terror at what could've happened to her love ones out, she instantly takes charge of the police she finds, convincing them not to go fleeing for their loved ones; She's sympathetic: her boyfriend, dad, stepmom and batdad are all out there, but they need to help those who need it. So she gets what resources they have and gets to work. It's one of my faviorite scenes in this event: When crisis hits, Barbra is the first to respond and the first to make a dent in the nightmare Gotham is facing.

Batman is having less luck on his end. He does manage to pull a spider man, escaping the wreckage.. albeit instead of just with pure will expert timing. He reunites with Alfred.. but there's no exit. Their truly trapped. The only way out is a bunch of underwater currents Batman never mapped. And I do like this: yes you could say "this is the same man who quakeproofed a city, why didn't he map these tunnels or have an exit" And the simple answer given and one I accept.. is that he never got around to it. Batman has backup plans for his backup plans.. but I like this batman who simply, as a human does, lets things slip. The Quakeproofing was easier: It was an imminent threat, and something he could deligate. Batman really NEVER deligates batman stuff and until recently didn't have any full time staff for the cave itself. If somethings low priority like say exits on the offchance the quake does hit and he's inside or mapping the cave systems he'll ignore it. Batman's a workaholic with control issues: the only things bruce deligates in costume are the stuff Alfred and Barbra are better at, cleaning the house, cleaning wounds, and doing computer stuff. It makes sense SOMETHING would give.

So with no other option he plans to surface and if it exposes him so be it: there's no second guessing, no other option: he's going to save his dad. And as he dives.. he gets hit with an aftershock.

So while batman might be batdead in this 7 part event that has his name, let's check in on the rest of gotham. The first tie in was earlier and in the pages of Nightwing. It's an excellent tie in as Dick hears about the quake during his night shift at the bar he works at, working at a cop bar to get info.

At this point Nightwing is the hero of Bludhaven, which is gotham but worse. Which yes is possible. Less super crime at first, but more street crime. It's everything gotham was pre batman and our hero fights with no real allies and only the right thing on his side. Still he books it the second he finds out what's happening and TRIES to find Barbra and Bruce... but being the hero he is dick gets sidetrack, finding people in distress and putting himself at great risk to save every last person, including a mom who gets her daughter out but nearly dies. It's a heartwrenching issue as you follow these people from the start, and see just how far Dick will go. It's one of the big pulls i've mentioned of cataclsym: Seeing our heroes against impossible odds they normally don't face this way.

As Dick heads off to go find his dad and girlfriend, well sorta girlfriend I forgot it's more of a situationship at this point and we'll get to the actual hookup in this very crossover, but that's for later.

For now we check in on another hero: Azrael. For those less aware, Azreal was the center of one of batman's biggest events and one I might cover someday: Knightfall. To make a very long story short after loosing his first bout with Batman, super genius and roidy mcgoo Bane studied his foe, then released every villian in arkham and blackgate, arkham for the criminally sane, and let batman wear himself out. Then Bane broke into his house, broke his shit and then broke his back, and rather than choose his actual son, Batman choose Jean Paul Valley, a 20 something who he'd resecued from a cult. This.. didn't go well as Jean still hasn't fully got the cult out of his system and went all grimdark and 90's and didn't hand the mantle back when Bruce was better. Bruce kicked his ass, but still let Jean Paul operate once he was deprogrammed.

So JP is currently taking Bane back to the arms of Saran Essen and.. some other guy. Sarah is comissioner Gordon's wife and Barbra's step mom. With him is Nomoz who I had to google as.. he's an actual troll. He was in the same cult Jean Paul was and why he put on costume again but eventuallys witched sides. I think he's neat. It's just.. neat to have an actual troll in the middle of this pretty grounded story. Well grounded for a former cult member fighting a luchador pumped up on steroids.

Bane escapes and a chase insues, but Bane wants Jean Paul to rule with him as "we're not so diffrent you and me' Jean defies him and that's that for now. He just.. kinda vanishes for the rest of this part of the crossover. All it does is explain where Sara was. It's a solid issue and I like this kind of detour: seeing how the rest of the batfamily handled the quake and it's a neat way to weave it into what was going on with Azreal at the time.

Back at the main plot, barbra gets some good news as when Bullock gets back, he decides to go look for her dad when he finds out no one's been sent as what people they have are busy putting out fires in both senses as gas manes have exploded. But her quiet relief when Bullock goes says a lot as does his saving Jim. Babs and Jim's reuinon is also touching.. he tells her to keep working, as it's important.. but is VERY proud of her.

The next issue covers batman's underwater adventure, as he tensely navigates currents. While he's doing that, we get one of my faviorite plots as we follow the Huntress, who had the misfortune.

Huntress is another vigilante in gotham.. and one of the few not given the okay by Batman. She was the daughter of a mob family that got wiped out in front of her eyes and grew up to become both a dedicated teacher and a hunter. The problem is Helena will ABSOLUTELY go for the kill at this point in her life and Batman has a thing about that. Maybe you've heard. And look I can get tired of Batman's "YOU CAN'T OPERATE IN MY CITY WITHOUT MY SAY SO"

Shtick. It's mostly for Stephanie Brown, who we'll get to. But this is a plot i get and like: Helena wants to do the one thing Bruce just CAN'T allow. He can't have a killer in his city claming to do what he does.

This event adds a wrinkle to it though: how justified is his no kill code when there's no prison to take the villians to? When things are hardest how can he possibly justify this? The answer is that he has to, that it's who he is... but does EVERYONE have to stick to it?

In this case Huntress has to help a bunch of people on the same subway car, complicated by some asshole with a gun taking hostages not knowing how bad it is. She manages to rescue his hostage and save the day.. but an aftershock leaves the guy pinned. And she.. leaves him. In the clutch.. she can't hold up to some code she dosen't belivie in. I belivie in it, I get why bruce does, it's a good code.. but where's the line? It's a fascinating thing to dive into... why should Helena keep this up when things are this bad and one more criminal is not going to black gate, but is going to make things so much worse.

The answer of course is just becaue things are hard don't make it right, but I love this situation pushing that. While i'm in the court of heroes not killing unless it's absolutely necessary, I like testing them. Helena falling into it first makes sense but i'm curious as this goes how far batman can be pushed by the horrors that await.

Speaking of the Bat he emerges in teh bay.. and screams in horror, letting out a big no as he sees the full situation: his city is dying, on fire, torn to pieces, the skyline gone.. and there's little he can do.

Now for another interlude and a fantastic one. Catwoman was just casually robbing a department store for the thrill of it. She could just buy goggles but admits in narration ther'es just something about gotham.. something wild that makes someone want to do crazy shit. She loves this stupid city.

The quake hits and no one has any idea what's going on.. but Selina helps. it's a great show of her character: Yes she's a thief and this is long before her protector of those who society forgot schtick I love so much.. but she's a good person. She'll steal shit.. but she'll also help, guiding a group of survivors through the wreckage. She does try to bolt.. but when she sees her city torn to shit... she doubles back and helps and then goes and helps who she can. Despite her protestations... she can't help but to help either.

We then get Robin's tie in.. which is only a few pages long. Yeah Robin was overseas, throwing hands with a dictatorship apparently and at the tail end of this arc returns home.. just as shit gets real. Robin at this poitn is Tim Drake, the third robin and one of the best. Tim was made a contrast to the previous two robins: He wasn't an orphan, he has a family that apparently live right next to Batman at this point, and he leans more into the detective side having figured out who Batman and Nightwing were and urging Nightwing to become robin again in the wake of Jason Todd's death at the hands of Ambassador Joker.

So onto the next chapter, a one shot Blackgate: Isle of Man. We follow a death row inmate Jared Manx whose execution gets delayed.. by act of god. Jared says he's innocent, that he didn't do what he did and despite every attempt was still going to get the chair. He protects his lawyer and a nun brought ot comfort him as things go pair shaped and a riot breaks out with many a criminal escaping, including KGBeast, exactly what that sounds like, who kills whoever's in his way. It's a well done issue especially since it marks Batman's come back. Hearing what's going on Batman SWIMS OUT TO BLACK GATE despite everything he's just been through, and quickly goes john mclane on their asses when he gets there. A few do escape and we'll catch up with them later, but batman's able to help the police helicopters land and clean house. Sadly.. jared does not make it. He sacrices himeslf to save his companions and claims "actually I did do it". And I like the ambiguity left: was he lying the whole time or, and this is what i go with, was he just lying to save innocent people. He died.. but he got to go out on his terms saving innocnet people and wether he's a murderer or not.. he won't be forgotten for that.

Back to the bat proper and the next issue is another banger as Batman grapples with just how hopless it feels... he can stop criminals but.. this is something else. Alan Grant does a damn good job as he waxes poetic about the devistation and how batman feels.. and how he presses on anyway. Saving who he can. He does realize he can only do so much, and thus goes for help: From the Penguin. At this point Penguin's settled into his modern role as a fixer who keeps his hands clean and more brokers crimes and has his men do them than actually get arrested again or try and use a penguin blimp to blow up the Gotham mint or some such. Batman gives him an ultimatum: don't fucking loot, instead help whoever he can since he has the resources to. Given the circumstances batman has nothing to bribe Pengy with... but he can still do threats okay. If Penguin loots Batman WILL come for his ass when thigns are done and will not stop making his life hell. And since he became a shady mobster to avoid that Penguin agrees. His men would be shot on sight anyway and the faster things get closer to normal the better.

We catch up with Tim who can't get back into the city: Roads are blocked and while most would be fine with just having to lodge in Bludhaven, showing you just how bad things have gotten when that's the GOOD option, Tim has no time for that and steals a motorcycle leaving an iou and tearing it up to get back to the city.

Jolene is having a less rad time, as while her building is safe she wants to get to bruce to help.. and instead gets kidnapped by some shady crooks. and "coincidentally" right after things get worse as a mysterious villian calling himself the Quakemaster, real missed oppertunity to call himself the aftershockmaster but whatever, sends a message to the police and a tape to the media: He caused this, and he'll destroy what's left unless he gets his ransom.

We take a break from this newly introduced baddie who will surely last longer than the length of this review for an anthology issue. Batman Chronciles is a batman series I was unaware existed before reading this trade, a quarterly book to help add extra stories. This issues stories really hone in on this event's strengths that while , as always batman is the center, we get a lot of what the rest of gotham is going through, boots on the ground as everyday civilians and other vigilantes deal with this nightmare.

Our first story is the contract, an okay tale that features a kid who belivies in batman. You know batman leader of batman and the outsiders , the justice league, the league of international heroes. That mytholgical figure. It does have a fun twist on the kid waiting for batman to save them: he dosen't.. but a bunch of criminals contracted to do.. contracted by Bruce Wayne. It's a brilliant twist in an otherwise okay story.

The rest are all shorter tails either spotlighting various victims or setting up things to come: Ras Ah Ghul gloats in his evil lair that batman's lost the city.. and he will finally have him as his heir forgetting the no murder thing. The Penguin saves people... but only those he finds useful and only for a favor down the line. A man tragically calls out and is trapped... and is not found, robin finding someone else instead. Two Face's henchman plan to turn him in for reward money. It goes as well as you'd expect. And a little boy waits , having lost his parents.. but finds Dr Leslie Thompkins, who once again comforts a young orphan.

Onto Nightwing. Dick finally makes his way to the clocktower, where Barbra has returned to help cordinate things. The two are relived and as usual are adorable together. Before things can get a bit more serious Tim shows up to kill the mood. Babs is at least still happy to see him as, to my shock, they hadn't met before this. Neat little moment.. that becomes less neat when all involved realize NONE of them have heard from bruce.

Bruce himself is busy in a new identity: Detective Hawke. I love the look as Jim is naturally suspcious of a random officer showing up, the last thing he needs is a supervillian attack fucking now... until it hits him. He's been through so much and i'ts only getting worse so it's likely a huge relief to find that batman is back and doing all he can.

As Batman saves lives the rest of his team look for him.. but find the giant cratered manor, utterly horrifed. While it's not mentioned on text, the art does a good job showing how devistated dick is.. he's trying to hold it in but it's clear seeing his home for some long gone .. it's a lot. He goes in to check on the cave and Alfred, while Tim goes to check on his dad, who hugs him tight, a sweet moment and one of the few bits of hope we've gotten so far.

Dick finds more as Alfred is fine along with Harold, who came in with some digging equipment giving the two an exit now they have help. Harold is batman's mute tech man, forced into working for the penguin till Batman rescued him and gave him a home in his creepy basement. I mean granted who dosen't want to live near a giant robot dinosaur that was used to hunt men for sport?

The next issue deals with quakemaster; The police have doubts about his claims.. but are going to give him the money in case as there's no way in hell they can survive another quake. Batman does his thing investigating, going to find Joelne Relazzo... and finding she was kidnapped. Since Bruce is a distrustful batstard, he does check to make sure she's not a villian.. but isn't and comes to the correct conclusion: the quakemaster kidnapped her for her knowhow to make himself seem more credible.

Batman relays with Gordon and the two try to trap quakemaster.. but like any good villian he sent henchman to collect the money. They have no idea who the guy is and our heroes have no real leads.

So Batman goes back to the cave and brushes off his son and sidekick who were worried he might you know be dead, or lost. Same with his father. I get tensions are high but even for Batman this is a dick move. It's about an 8.. not quite "slapping robin in the face" or "war games" , a comfortable quiet or papa spank.

Batman does put together that Quakemaster is lying

The facts he has are all wrong.. which Batman reads as a clue. Jolene is feeding him bullshit to make it clear no one's in any danger. He still worries for HER, as kidnapped scientest is not a long lived profession.

Time for another side story, and this one is one of my faviorites. Sadly another Chuck Dixon joint but hey. This follows Huntress again this time with Spoiler

Stephanie Brown is the daughter of Cluemaster, aka tenmu riddler . When she found out what her dad was, she became Spoiler, determind to "spoil" his crimes by tipping off Robin. She soon became attracted to him and at this point is currently operating but only when he lets her as Batman is not a fan because "I DIDN'T TRAIN HER AND I'M NOT GOING TO YET BECAUSE BLURRRRRRRRRR". As you can probably guess by now I hate this look for batman. For chuck it was probably "Well it's his city of course he am the god he am the god". For me i'ts being a dick to a teenager who just wants to impress her crush and has a genuine talent for this and making Robin's life harder because shut up. Ther'es a line between "batman dosen't understand people's emotoinal and will often make decisions on pragmantism and not what''s necessarily the emotionally healthyc hoice " and "batman is a giant asshole who wants everyone else to be like him." and this feels like it's crossing it. Maybe it's better in the individual issues I don't know it just feels.. off to have Stephanie HAVE to get the permission of robin or feel like she needs it and I prefer the later her who when given similar dickish paramiters by Barbra when Steph became batgirl, instead just... proved her worng when she could. And Babs gets more of a pass as while she was being a tad condescending this was also after Steph's previous career left her seemingly dead. I put that "death" more on Batman than her, but tha'ts a whole other mess. My point is he had no reason to not take her in then and there, see if she had it then cut her loose like huntress. With Helena i'm more understanding as .. they can't kill people. That's a line they can't cross. I'm understanding in this circumstance, but in regular day.. no. They can't just kill people because their bad people.

It is neat to team the two up though: Steph tries to honor the code while Helena.. does not, but Helena also shows her a bit more repsect.. she's gruff but unlike Robin or Batman dosen't seem to dismiss her. She also relates to having a parent who sucks, as Steph has to confront cluemaster. Cluemaster DOES want to get money to treat Steph's ill mother.. but can't understand why this upsets her. That in the middle of a disaster when at the very least after escape he could've just... fucked off and gone on with his life or helped people.. he STILL chooose to steal money. Steph dosen't let Helena kill.. but still dosen't make it out of the situation cleanly, having once again been fucked up by her dad. It's deeply engaging and while a lot of i'ts probably just being a fan of Stephanie Brown's later apperances as Batgirl, it's still deeply engaging and since Steph was in a mall when the thing happened another nice boots on the ground story.

We'll finish the story in a second but for coherence sake i'm going to save the penultimate chapter of the quakemaster saga to do alongside the finale for Cataclysm as inbetween them are two unrelated side stories that just.. break the flow. Ic an't blame the trade for including them, but instead of moving them after the steph story for better reading their kept when they came out.. wedged inbetween a massive cliffhanger in the Quakemaster plot.

So i'm covering them here. First is catwoman which is.. not a great issue this go round. It should be, it has Catwoman fighting Poison Ivy who plans to retake the city for plants and is written okay, and has a good moment of selena going back to rescue her latest victim she honey trapped.. but it has a LOT of Catwoman slut shaming Ivy. I mean Ivy shouldn't kill and brainwash anyone of any gender, but the framing of it is just.. bleh. I do like Catwoman having to team up with Bullock and Ivy's own spores getting on her face.. and WANTING them to keep growing even if she dies, but this is forgetable and if I read this again, which I likely will, i'll defintely be skipping it over.

The next one's a bigger disapointment: the concept is brilliant: at arkham the power goes out... just as Killer Croc's cage is open so he escapes and Joker convinces him to let him out. He also lets out scarecrow , riddler and two new characters Vox and Witch.. who only show up here despite being given intresting backstories. THey kidnap an unfortunate guard and decide to play a game: whoever tells the best story kills the man.

Unfortunately, the stories are.. eh. Only vox and riddler's stories stick out, vox for her tragiclaly imitating her mom smashing her father in the head with a beer bottle on her brother and the freaky art style and Scarecrow for the fucked up ending where some puppies eat their owners alive. The rest are forgetable. It's a lesser attempt at the BTAS episode "Almost Got Em. The ending, joker delcaring they all one and all of them carving up the poor bastard and leaving him alive but his mind broken, is horrifying.. but the issue is a wasted opprutnity not helped by where it's awkwardly wedged in

So onto our finale: Robin investigates quakemaster as do Renee Montoya and Bullock. The latter two eventually find his hideout while Robin. .figures out who he is. I knew due to the guidebook I mentioned, but it's still a neat way as they give you the clues.. you just don't realize it. Quakemaster tends to do two things: pause mid sentence to rethink his words.. and not use any words with b in them.

While Jolene hopes her clues are getting through, Gordon goes to meet mayor Marion Grange, who seems to be one of Gotham's few competent mayors.. but is tired and pissed having to deal with 80 problems. And she gets an 81st as armed goons burst in to demand the ransom money. She informs them the city.. is broke, another devistating blow but understandable: gotham had two pandemics back to back before this.

As they prepare to kill her the rest of our heroes find quakemaster.. and his hostage, Mackinzie Bock, recurring detective the wiki didn't have much on.

So we come to the end of Cataclysm. Robin.. decides to mock quakemaster, daring him to say his name. Suprisingly this dosen't end in Bock's death, but in Quakemaster loosing his temper and going after our heroes. This allows the detectives to free bock and go fre relazzo whose greatful and gives harvey a kiss on the cheek. Awww.. now she has scabies.

Meanwhile Bock and Robin really rock tonight as they find the Quakemaster... and Arnold Wesker's hand up his ass. Wesker is the vintriloquist, a tragic supervillian and my favorite batman villian alongside his usual partner, Scarface, a chalk white gangster puppet and his other personality. Quakemaster is another of Wesker's personas, forcing him to do this scheme just like scarface.. nad not much else. It's a clever twist and I love the fact that the only super villian to have a major role in this .. was Scarface. The rest were one offs.

The two try to flee but BOck has a clever solution.. he won't shoot wesker.. while the issue is a bit iffy on Robin blaming wesker when he clearly has DID and his alters are the criminals, he doesn't want wesker killed. And neither doe sbock who instead shoots Scarface in the head while poor wesker calls for a medic. It's tragic as it is brilliant. He can't hurt an innocent.. but scarface isn't an innocent.

So with that the day is saved. Nightwing goes to save gordon, Wesker is taken in. Yet.. it's far from a happy ending. As Dick notes.. the city MAY not recover and while batman assures them it will and they at least won... it's very clear gotham.. isn't okay. They saved the day, prevented another disaster.. but like all the victims they've saved.. it's only so much triage. Gotham is bleeding out and there's only so much surgery batman can do before it flatlines.

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strawwritesfic · 10 months ago

Text

(Don't) Hold Your Breath Master List

Summary: You've made a lot of monumental mistakes in your life. Cutting your arm off isn't even at the top of the list. Now you're about to learn a lot of life lessons at the hands of your savior and her brute of a guardian--and they're not about to let you learn them the easy way either.

Challenge: "#32 in His Rulebook" by Edible Heart Monster on Lunaescence Archives

Ratings/Warnings/Tags: M (post-The Last of Us; excessive swearing; sexual references; violence against children; infected children; references to abortion; references to cannibalism; references to starvation; references to riots; implied domestic abuse; implied grooming; implied sexual relationship between an adult and a minor; death of a parent; violence; gore; blood; gun use; ableism; amputee!Reader; enemies to lovers; not canon compliant)

Pairings/Relationships: Joel/Reader; Tommy/Maria; Reader/Male!OC; Reader & Ellie; Ellie & Joel; Ellie & Maria & Tommy

Notes: I've received a few asks regarding this fic. I'd deleted it a few years ago for various reasons, but I got into my old laptop recently and decided that, well, if people have cared enough to track me down and ask about it, maybe I should put it back online.

My feelings about this story are…complicated, which is why I'm hoping people read this before they jump in. The Last of Us is a dark story, and so this story has a lot of dark themes. They're not always executed very well. That might lessen the impact. Maybe it makes it worse. I don't know. But this is a very different sort of work for me. I feel, in retrospect, that I went a little overboard in some aspects. And I don't know how to really even begin putting in warning tags for some of the stuff that's just brushed off like nothing because, to the point of view character, it isn't worth dwelling on. If there's something you see that you feel needs a warning, tell me. I'll add it.

I think the most important thing for me to get out there is that the reader character is an amputee. I had people claiming to be amputees telling me I did a lovely job, but more crucially, I had someone claiming to be an amputee that told me that they didn't like that even 18 chapters in, I was having the reader character struggle with using only one arm in various ways and keep complaining about her situation. I respect that. My thought process during writing was that, in a world without physical therapy or prosthetic limbs, it would be much more difficult to adjust to suddenly having only one arm (and the nondominant arm, at that). And the character whining was because she's got a lot of self-pity that she has to work to get over. That being said, I really took that criticism to heart. I had every intention of drawing back on both aspects…I just never actually wrote another chapter. But, you know, if this gets enough attention for me to justify finishing the story, that's 100% on the to-do list.

I'm not changing anything. It's going up as-is. I'm going to do a quick proofread, of course, and catch a few more typos (I hope), but the excessive swearing and the weird coffee and the thing with Ellie using bang snaps inappropriately are staying in. I'm not doing a line-by-line rewrite like I have with my KHR stuff.

This is not intended to be canon to the television show. I've never seen it, and I don't plan to watch it. This is not intended to be canon to The Last of Us Part II. I've never played it or watched anyone else play it, and I never will. The only thing that this work might have in common with those is that Ellie is a lesbian, because I always intended to give her a girlfriend in this even way before the second game came out.

Anyway, I hope the handful of people that were (mysteriously, miraculously) searching for this story don't find themselves too disappointed now that they can read it again. Thanks for reaching out. It means a lot to me.

Posting Status: Incomplete

Story Status: Discontinued post-Chapter 17

Rule #1: Shut up. The enemy might hear you.

Rule #2: Try not to get yourself hurt.

Rule #3: Try not to get yourself killed. God, are you that stupid?

Rule #4: Quit stealing shit.

Rule #5: Don't touch anything.

Rule #6: Don't piss off the locals.

Rule #7: First impressions are important, so don't be yourself.

Rule #8: The villagers are always a little stupid. Try not to contract that.

Rule #9: If you fall off a roof, don't let go. Nothing will catch you.

Rule #10: Again, the enemy can hear you, so shut up.

Rule #11: If you get badly burned, let me put some ice on it for God’s sake.

Rule #12: If you can’t swim, tell me beforehand. Otherwise I won’t notice if you start drowning.

Rule #13: Don't wander; things around here will kill you.

Rule #14: If it’s your birthday, just remember it’s your fault if we get ambushed at the party.

#straw writes #fan fic #reader insert #second person pov #the last of us #joel #joel miller #joel x reader #joel x you #joel x y/n #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #the last of us reader insert #the last of us x reader #the last of us x you #the last of us x y/n

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akitossohma · 3 months ago

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heyy i love love love your post about lg’s morals you truly read the tea leaves with that one!!! i do disagree with what you said about lg being amoral tho i feel amoral suggests he isn’t aware of morals but he definitely is, and u did point that out in your post! no hate at all btw

hi!! thank you for your kind words :3. i believe you are referring to this post

this got very long and accidentally turned into a whole meta on lu guang and vein lmaoo. answer under the cut:

yeah honestly in retrospect i do feel that my use of the word "amoral" was a bit clumsy lol. this post is nearly a year old so it's hard to recall specifics but i think at the time i failed to consider the full definition of the word, which is not only a disregard for morals but also a lack of moral sense to begin with. and like you said, my own posts contradict that, as lg is shown to be well aware of the moral code. i also was trying to use it as like, a middle ground i guess? between moral and immoral. like my "at best" addition was me trying to be generous, but upon reflection that's sort of a false dichotomy.

for some context, the post you are referencing got posted to twitter (something i didn't know until ppl told me) and was lowkey a hit tweet (a bit scary ngl), and while most people agreed, a small handful Did Not Like it haha

interestingly, a couple of the tweets disagreeing did focus heavily on both the "amoral" thing and me saying lg wasn't a morally grey anti hero. bc i don't want to debate on twitter, i'm gonna take advantage of this ask to explain myself further hehe

DISCLAIMER: what follows is my current perspective and analysis based on available information. i understand everything i have said already and will continue to say going forward could be proven wrong in future seasons.

the main criticism i saw (again this was only like, three people, but still) was that i "disagreed with him being a morally grey anti hero but then proceeded to describe just that". i do understand why this was some people's take away bc the terms "morally grey" and "antihero" have kind of been blurred over the years. since i am by no means the final word on how these terms are to be used, all i can do is provide my understanding of the terms:

morally grey = a character whose actions are morally ambiguous

antihero = a character whose actions/traits are often questionable, but who, at the end of the day, can still be classified as a hero rather than a villain

based on my understanding of the terms (which does seem to coincide with formal definitions), lu guang would not be morally grey as i feel his actions are explicitly immoral (immoral = when the character's actions are definitively wrong and violate a pre-established moral code - i touch on this more in this post) and he would not be an antihero as i feel he cannot be classified as heroic in the grand scheme of things. yes he is complex, yes he is sympathetic, yes he has a capacity for kindness/selflessness and is largely motivated by love, but none of those things make him an antihero. if that were the case, any well written villain would be a antihero haha.

there's a whole other added layer of complexity here because lg is a) not the antagonist and b) not the story villain. for the sake of this argument, the "story villain" is defined as the individual who is the villain only in framing, whereas the "real villain" is defined as the individual who is unequivocally in the wrong by real-world moral standards. the same differentiator can be applied to heroes. so when i say lg cannot be considered heroic, that is what i am referring to. furthermore, vein and liu xiao, who appear to be working together, are currently both the antagonists and the story villains, but that is mostly due to us being anchored in lg's perspective. we don't know much about their motives/goals other than a) they want to maintain the timeline ("make the uncertain, certain") and b) they want csx dead. we of course root against them because csx is the hero & protagonist of our story, and bc they have proven to have very questionable morals themselves. however, based on the information currently available, i’d argue that it's possible to interpret them as very morally grey antiheroes in the grand scheme of things. we already know that they are working against lg because lg has disrupted the timeline and compromised the "certainty" liu xiao mentions. they will (most likely) always be the antagonists, but it would not take much reframing for them to no longer be strictly villains, if that makes any sense. ProWritingAid puts this distinction very succinctly: "A story's villain is always an antagonist, but not every antagonist needs to be a villain." imo the only "hero" this story has is csx, and i have a feeling he will remain that way, though like all things i've said, this could change.

and that leads me to my final point. i am well aware that the show initially frames lg as a hero and hasn’t fully positioned him as a villain yet. however, in my opinion, the ending of bridon arc marked a shift in how he is being framed within the narrative. i want to make it clear my posts have been less about the show's current framing and more about analyzing the ethics of lu guang's actions through an objective, real-world lens. and playing around with some reframing hypotheticals of course. this is something that unfortunately got lost along the way.

anyways, i don't mind it if people disagree or have additional perspectives, but some of the critiques felt like they were missing the point in one way or another. and some of them were straight up rude. sorry for this whole essay, i hope you don't mind!

#ask #link click #link click spoilers #shiguang daili ren #lu guang #i shouldn't let people on twitter get to me but alas #some bitch had the nerve to imply i didn't know what words meant so here we are #morgan speaks into the void

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paperlifted · 2 months ago

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There will always be the softest of spots in my heart for 2003 Splinter, who managed to raise as stable a family as he did despite starting life as just a regular ol' street rat. Which isn't to say I don't like Splinters who were human first - that origin usually brings fun narrative hooks and baggage, and is also, obviously, more logical than “this random rat learned master-level ninjutsu through [checks notes] entirely unexplained powers of observation".

But who cares about logic! Because the emotional story of 2003 is so compelling! He was just a rat!! Assuming he had a rat’s natural lifespan, he was something like two years old when the change occurred, and suddenly he has this new, mature body and mature mind with two years’ of animal cognizance bouncing hazily around a space that’s now a hundred times too big for it, and at the same time there are these four strange creatures who have just imprinted on him like a quartet of mutant ducklings.

He doesn’t even know the turtles are intelligent at first. He does, perhaps, understand in retrospect what it was that Tang Shen felt when she looked at something small and hungry and knew she had the power to change its circumstances. What she felt when the creature came to trust her touch, to desire her company, to seek her comfort when hurt or afraid. The turtles, then, are… pets, yes? It is worth the small difficulties of finding them food and shelter to not be alone. Rats are social animals. He is otherwise so very alone.

Of course, he soon finds they can understand the words he has been speaking mostly for his own sake; they can think and learn and begin to speak back to him. They might be the only other creatures like him in the entire world, and it is a trembling relief, an overpowering fear. Their minds are growing, their needs are growing, and still they look to him with blind trust that he will provide for them without fail. He was just a rat, and then he was more; and now he needs to define what more will be.

I’ve seen folks who prefer versions where the turtles have a more openly familial relationship with Splinter (calling him father/dad more regularly, leaning less into the Stern Sensei behaviour), but I am very fond of it as it is because it’s so clearly something the five of them have built for themselves. What does a rat know of fatherhood? What does a rat know of kin? Yoshi never looked upon the rodent as anything more than an inherited pet, kept and cared for in memory of the one he had truly loved, but Splinter examines those memories and names him father because it’s the only model he has. What does a rat understand of family? The sharing of warmth and resources, and the awareness that there are forces who will take these things from you with cruel indifference and leave you lost and alone and starving.

What does a rat understand of grief? Too much, now.

They are children, and then they are his children, and then they are his sons because somewhere along the line he learns that these are the words for what he feels. And to them he is master and sensei because these are the words for The One Who Teaches and The One Who Protects and The One Who Provides. Perhaps he expects too much of them too soon, but there are no parenting lessons for a rat in a sewer and no one else for him to ask to share in his burdens and responsibilities. Perhaps it is unfair to press them all into a martial lifestyle, but the danger is too real and it’s one of the few skills he has mastered. Hierarchy and discipline are well-known to rats and ninja alike, and his children need structure, routine, defenses. It is the best pathway that he knows. He always does - he can only do - the best he knows.

One day his sons will bring home a human woman, and for the first time they will be truly seen and judged in their home: four brothers and their teacher-father-protector-guide. He is seventeen years old. There has been no one to knowingly teach him. He was just a rat, and then he was more, and through endless trial and error he has pulled together the scraps of his experiences and built a family and taught them love.

It counts for something, he hopes.

#tmnt #tmnt 2k3 #tmnt 2003 #splinter #pulling this one out of the archives and making it its own post because it honestly should have been #it's ratdad season #turtleblogging

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ineffabildaddy · 1 year ago

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on today's episode of understanding good omens through my own life:

a story about my ineffable inevitable queer teenage experience with an intense, volatile, fiercely affectionate 'friendship' that was definitely not just a friendship in retrospect.

when i was eleven, i started secondary school, and i met a girl who quickly became my best friend (i'm a trans man, and i also understood myself as a girl at the time. i still understand myself as a girl at that time). we became known as a unit because we couldn't get enough of each other, and we did absolutely everything together.

on the first day of our second year, we saw each other for the first time in several weeks because she had been away in her home country that summer. i had been counting down the seconds until she came back. when she was in the process of giving out souvenirs from her trip to all our friends, she waited until she saw i was alone and approached me. she handed me a ziploc bag full of shells and rock fragments.

"i picked these out for you at the beach," she said.

i thanked her and asked her to show me the bags of shells she'd made up for the others.

"i didn't do this for the others. i only did it for you," she responded, and walked away.

i had never felt anything like what i felt in that moment, and i haven't since. i was a lonely kid, especially before that age. what i mean to say is... no one had ever done anything just for me. no one had ever thought of me when i wasn't there; no one had ever taken the time to give me something that they had so carefully picked out; no one had ever stated with such conviction, in what was said or what was unsaid, that what they had done for me was not to be enjoyed by anyone else.

i like to remember this when i try to understand this moment in good omens:

i can't begin to comprehend what aziraphale must have felt in that moment, but remembering that day of my own life is the closest thing i've got.

mere months after that day, we started to argue. we had a huge falling out. i told her that no one on earth was capable of hurting me quite like she was (thirteen year-old me, in her own twisted way, thought that was a compliment). she told me in no uncertain terms that she couldn't stand me. we stopped talking.

a few months after that, we reconciled and we became closer than ever, but that tension, that unrest, was always lying under the surface, just waiting to gnash its teeth - and sometimes it did. these were also the years in which we were discovering our queer identities, and it took us a long time to really understand each other's journeys in that regard.

at sixteen, we both left our school and moved to a different institution till we graduated at eighteen. though we were at the same sixth form college, we just had different lives and didn't hang out anymore, though we remained on good terms. now, we text every once in a while, and we always say we'll meet up, but we never do. in october of last year, i bumped into her for the first time in maybe four years while coming home from a pavement gig. she was sitting on the doorstep of her parents' place with a roll-up cigarette. it was like no time had passed.

looking back, i can say with full confidence that i was in love with her. i do not know how else to understand our relationship. she drove me up the wall the way she did because i had never felt anything like what i felt for her for anyone else - and i haven't to this day.

even now, every time she is even mentioned in conversation, i dream about her the night following. and i still have those shells, hidden away in a wooden box i've never shown anyone; it's not too far from the shoebox that contains every note she ever passed me, every doodle she ever drew for me, every card she ever wrote me. in other words, i was permanently altered by our relationship, and her absence from my life has never diminished that. the same can naturally be said of crowley and aziraphale, to a much, much greater extent. i relive my memories of us because they help me understand many things about myself and others, and i've recently found that good omens has encouraged this.

this ended up longer than i intended but i hope you got something out of it.<3

#good omens #personal #ineffabildaddy #1941

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maga-sn · 1 month ago

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Resources Guide for new Shining Nikki players

This is Part 1: Game mechanics

Part 2: Chronology for the story and where to find lore

Hi!! I'm Maga, a daily player in SN Global server, S2 Cloudcrest, and I've been playing since release day. Lately I've encountered a lot of new SN players or Wannabe players on Twitter, and I see some confusion on how the game functions, how to farm diamonds, how does x y z feature work, among other things. So, I wanted to extend a hand and compile some useful videos, guides, docs, and tips that I think would be helpful.

Firsts things first: welcome, stylist! It's great to have you here, and I hope that, in spite of roadblocks and pulling woes, you can enjoy the game and have a positive experience playing it (⌒▽⌒)☆ Looking forward to your creations and reactions to the story~

To begin, I'd strongly suggest joining SNOD, that is, Shining Nikki Official Discord server. There, you will find lots of stylists to chat with, a space to share your outfits, channels to help you find a guild that matches your playing style, a channel dedicated to questions, guides and strategies; also activities with in-game rewards. And lots more, so it just makes sense for you to join and make the most of our community!

If you're planning on playing casually, maybe you're just interested in the story and want to read it, collect few sets here and there, then this compilation of resources will be overkill for you, and you might prefer to skip straight to Part 2 of these Guides. But, even if you're playing casually, you will at some point or another interact with different game features and be blocked by certain requirements, so it will help if you know your way around the game.

On the other hand, if you're planning on committing to the game so you want to build your account correctly from the beginning, or aren't sure yet but would like to play it safe just in case you get hooked, then this will be helpful for you.

Tip: If you haven't started your account yet, make sure to join S3 Rosset. The third server released months after the first two, so most players who locked in are in S1 and S2. Rosset is the most f2p server, with the least p2w players- so even if you're not staying f2p, it'll be easier for you to rank higher, which is a must to save diamonds. Best server to join as a new player looks like this: Rosset > Flowerland > Cloudcrest Miscelaneous: server population and competitiveness (S1 and S2)

Useful Videos

Next, I'm going to add every video that I have personally used all those years ago, plus other guides I consider important to understand the game and play smart from the beginning. Please try to read or skim my notes first and don't just dive into the videos directly.

Simply Nightshade and LoveEffie's Beginner's Guide Playlist

✔ Great, concise introduction to many game features for you to not go in blind.

✔ While these guides will feature an old version of the game with a different UI, the mechanics for the features present there are mostly the same as they are now. This applies to most videos on this list. Some game features aren't present because they hadn't been implemented yet, but I'll try to get those covered through other videos and resources.

✔ I wanted to include this playlist because they cover little things like friend affinity points, which is one of many features that have been left forgotten for a long time now, because we old players are alredy done with them, and have been for a long while.

Vivi Gaming's guides for V0 players for the first week of the game

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7

✔ I don't love these guides, because in retrospective I disagree with certain things, but I can't deny that when you're new and lost and there are so many things to do the first few days, something like this is very helpful.

✔ If I remember correctly, she tells you to buy the diamond stamina pack at first. While I did do that, I don't recommend it if your goal is to start saving from the get go. The schedule used to be a lot more forgiving back then, so that decision didn't affect me too badly, but It's still 300 diamonds down the drain, 60 short of 3 pulls. If you're really itching to speedrun stages and farming, you can do it, I can't stop you, but I have warned you. Maybe the first week it's alright, but it's not a good long-term deal (unless perhaps you're planning on paying for monthly cards often and don't mind it).

✔ I don't remember if she also says to buy diamond arena attempts to get the arena reflection sooner- but in case she does, also take this recommendation with a grain of salt. It will help you rank faster if you're not pulling for current UR limited events, but it's still spending diamonds in an otherwise free feature of the game. Still, if you feel like you want to, go ahead. And do use the Arena Calculator to manage your bought attempts.

✔ My intention with these videos is for you to familiarize yourself with the game and its core mechanics. The long format and repetitive nature of Vivi's videos makes for a great teaching tool regarding the names of different menus, tabs, features and other details. This will help you learn from the basics so you can work your way up to understanding other guides that can confuse you if you don't know the terms, concepts, and names of things very well. It'll also help you develop a routine for dailies: make some actions more natural for you so you don't forget about them. I suggest watching them while you play, so you can see the new locations or looks of certain features that have changed since.

Sei Nikki's guide on Styling Power and scoring

This video covers scoring for Clothing, Designer's Reflection (DR), Awakening, Passive Effects, Call of Reflection, Concepts, and Stylist Academy (This is super important to do early game, I'm begging you to not forget about it. I'll link a farming doc later)

✔ Obviously we've gotten tons more DRs by this point, so when she says "this is the strongest for x attribute" remember this was during global release. It can work as a reference for which DRs you should work on as a new player, but for current rankings refer to the DR tierlists I'll share later. There are plenty of f2p friendly DRs there, that will help you direct your resources to what works best with what you can get.

✔ She mentions that concepts that are part of a Resonance will be numbered, but there are exceptions, so watch out for Concepts that look like pairs, and check their resonance info on 'Promote Concept' in the Ark.

✔ Bond with Nikki isn't super high priority for scoring, but it blocks some rewards, like Chapter rewards in the Achievements menu.

Simply Nightshade's full Concept crashcourse

This video is a wonderful guide to understanding concepts, Concept Voyage stages, how does leveling and petaling (deepen) works, which concepts to prioritize and why, decomposing and merging.

Tip: I didn't go throught the entire video, just skimmed it to verify it was useful, but! In case it's not included: don't decompose R concepts, at least early game. Either merge them to obtain SR concepts (this is just at the very beginning when you're struggling to get new concepts), or leave them as leveling fodder. SSR and UR concepts take a lot of points to level up, so be mindful and allocate your R concepts wisely.

Benign Chaos on Stylist Academy

✔ Stylist Academy is a feature you need to do a lot of farming for, and includes Mind Maze and Challege Stage drops, which you get 10 tries per day for, so you should start farming ASAP so you can be as efficient as possible and not waste those tries. Of course, you'll struggle with stamina at the beginning, so even if there's a lot to work on, it's understandable if it takes a lot of time, be kind to yourself and do what you can when you can. The amount of things to do at the start is simply overwhelming. But don't neglect the Academy.

Tip: what she says about not being sure what the strategy is to choose what to upgrade, she must be referring this: First, upgrade everything to lvl 3 for the 7-day Tour Then, prioritize Dress > Hair > Accessory > Shoe > Sock > Coat > Full

Evie Gaming's Guides

Evie has several guide videos, but next I'll list the ones I think you would need the most.

Ultimate Battle Guide: These videos are heavy on math and calculations, but they offer great insight into how scoring works and what features affect your overall scores. The guide is incomplete, sadly, but that couple of videos are already a great boon.

Nail Salon: Both the video on how the feature works, and the one with tips.

Memory Stairway: Full Guide on the feature, with the weekly schedule, currencies, Idea lab recolors and score boost (though please don't reset your recolor levels if you don't want to spend diamonds freely, this is more for monthly cards players), how to best pick your DRs and concepts, and a couple other details. Super useful.

Memory Stairway Shop

✔ She says there's no reason to exchange the Star Wish (puzzle piece) currency for the Rewinding Hourglass one, but that's more for old players. Since you're new, you might prefer to work on old sets that you aesthetically like more, so feel free to play around with that exchange if it's what you want.

✔ Current Idea Lab cap level is 400, soon to be upped to 500.

Feel free to peruse the rest of her playlist, but there's a lot of videos that were meant to be useful before the events came out (pre-farming for example), so I didn't feel it was necessary.

Sei Nikki's other guides

✔ Diamond farming guide (doesn't include Memory Stairway)

Recommendation: Like she says, please don't spend your diamonds on the permanent pavilion sets. And as an adendum, don't spend your Fantasy tickets (InNikki equivalent is the blue crystals) on the Fantasy pavilion- focus on Gleam. You'll collect SR and SSR sets way faster, and slowly but steadily nip at the permanent URs. There's a strategy with Fantasy for endgame but until you get there, you'll see more results with Gleam.

✔ Intel Hub Tips

✔ Redundant, but in case you prefer her video about the Nail salon

✔ Styling Competition feature

Tip: These competition DRs are SUPER easy to max for their Call of Reflection, so make sure to check the DR tierlist I shared below and see which ones are worth gunning for if you're lacking a good enough UR. Remember; a good and properly leveled SSR with maxed Passives and Call of Reflection can beat a base leveled UR.

✔ General tips, tricks, recommendations, and reminders

More Videos:

Mind Maze

How to make and/or change your name card: unfocused but it does show you. This video is on a playlist of similar inquiries, such as profile pictures, use lighting, filters, backgrounds etc. I will continue linking a few more I consider important, but you can check out other things she explains in those.

"Why Can't I Decompose My Echoes?"

Hard stages for Clock Workshop and Concept Voyage (same idea applies to Neverfall Courtains and Memory Stairway): This video and This video

Reverie Moment: basics about our Instagram-ish feature

Set Breakdown videos so you can decide what limited events you'd like to save for, and see a variety of other sets.

Docs, Written guides, Tierlists, Archive of Past and Future Suits, and more

Here I'll put together guides and other resources available on Shining Nikki Official Discord (this is partly why I insist you join), that I have used myself in the past and that are incredibly useful. Lots of respect and love for the creators and contributors of these.

Remember to make copies of the docs that require it

Terminology used in the server

So that you can understand the other docs and answers you receive in the server

Farming Docs

Designer's Reflection upgrade costs (elexela)

Academy farming guide (kami.8518)

Crafting Sheet for Main story, Lifetimes and other Workshop sets

Designer's Reflection Tierlist

Go to the Doc

This doc was last updated mid 2024, next is an adendum made on SNOD

Again, for those times when you want a second opinion deciding on what to prioritize or if a DR is better than another depending on the context, don't hesitate to ask for help on discord!

Make-up Album by crystalrainchimes

✔ Awesome archive, because you can see the make-up close-ups on all skin tones.

Gallery for past and future event sets (both limited and permanent) by Rummi

Tip: make good use of this archive to create a wishlist. This way, you'll prioritze what you absolutely want to get and plan your savings accordingly.

Recently I sent this gallery to a new player, but they weren't sure how to navigate it, so I made some basic explanations that I'll share as well. Though, on this other post so as to not clog this one

✔ Just in case you miss Rummi's note on this- this gallery uses the TW/CN server rarities, which basically they go up to SSR instead of UR. Our URs are their SSRs, our SSRs are their SRs and so on and so forth.

Event Costs (from SNOD)

✔ Every pull costs 120 diamonds

Single SSR: 70-100 pulls

Double SSR: 130-180 pulls

Single UR + SSR set: 70-100 pulls for just the SSR set, 180-240 for both, up to 360 pulls for echo

Double UR: 180-200 pulls for one set, 300-350 for both, possibly more for awakening

Collaborations: Are a special type of event where SN collaborates with another brand and make in-game sets featuring said brand. Collabs cost about the same amount as regular events of the same rarity, though they don't come with reflections. Collaborations do not return.

Arena Costs Calculator

✔ Remember to make a copy to use it

Weekly Gems Calculator and Gem sources by Ruby, doc by nununana9515

✔ Remember to make a copy to use it

✔ Adendum to set completion rewards: If the UR set doesn't come with a DR, sometimes the reward will be 300 diamonds. If the SSR set doesn't come with a DR, the reward will be 75 diamonds (so half compared to one that has a DR). If the SR set doesn't come with a DR, the reward will be 25 diamonds (so half compared to one that has a DR).

Last words: join the discord!! there are many more guides, calculators and resources there. I just listed barebones here ;) Plus other wonderful stylists you can interact with and ask questions to.

#shining nikki #new player guide

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lorata · 1 month ago

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I HAVE EXACTLY THE SAME THING ABOUT EVERYTHING HAVING TO CONNECT!!!!

Sorry just so excited to see someone else say it. For me it just ruins the immersion and suspended disbelief of everything’s too neatly packaged. I like that things are random and people are people and we forge our own paths in the world. Don’t get wrong, I love invisible strings type stuff which makes someone who knows the books really well gasp or adds context to something minor (or even like I don’t know realising a blue vase on the shelf has an origin story in a prequel) but I hate everything being too neatly packed and perfectly connection. It also sometimes just comes across - becuase it is - as retrospectively added and it just annoys me

modern star wars is also very prone to this and it also makes me extremely tired, like rey is special because she's (spins wheel, throws dart) uhhhh palpatine's ....... grand...daughter? i guess? obi-wan and leia actually knew each other when leia was a CHILD!!! oh hey you always wondered where han got those gold dice that were in one scene of a new hope right??? right????? like, please, let me REST

obviously it can be fun to tie threads together and see connections over time but when it's done as like ... an explainer, kind of, to things that didn't need explaining (like haymitch and katniss finding common understanding or even snow's antipathy/obsession with katniss) then i find it unnecessary and a bit cheap. rey didn't need to be a skywalker or a kenobi or a palpatine to be an interesting character, snow didn't need to see the second coming of lucy gray through katniss in order to know a threat when he saw one and haymitch can allow katniss past his walls without her hairstyle when she was eight years old reminding him of a dead girl 20 years past

#lorata answers #Anonymous

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frodo-with-glasses · 2 years ago

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25 Questions with Phil Dragash: YES, SERIOUSLY!

So y'all know how I was reviewing Phil Dragash's audiobook of LotR last year, but kinda fell off somewhere in the middle of Rohan?? Well, guess what! A couple weeks ago, I received a tumblr message from the man himself, saying he'd read through all my reviews, had really enjoyed the little blast from the past, and was open to answering questions if I had any!

So of course, I had LOTS of questions.

The first one being: "Are you actually the real Phil Dragash??"

But I'm delighted to say that after exchanging emails with the work email listed on his website, I can confidently say that it is the real dude, and I've had a blast chatting with him! So for those of you who urged I listen to this audiobook—especially @laurelindorenan for her glowing recommendation—and for everyone else who likes the audiobook and/or enjoyed my reviews: I am delighted to present, ladies and gentlehobbits, this peek behind the curtain!

But of course I'm putting it all below the cut, because this man rambles like I do 🤣

Obligatory disclaimer: All opinions presented by Mr. Dragash are his own, I am not necessarily condoning any of them; please do not come after me for his opinions regarding pineapple on pizza.

25 QUESTIONS, LET'S GO!

1. Tell me how you got into Lord of the Rings!

I was ten years old when my dad took me to the library, and found a VHS copy of Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated Lord of the Rings film. I was already a fan of the “Chronicles of Narnia” and my dad just handed the tape to me and said “Look, C.S. Lewis’s friend made this”. I watched it, and had no idea what was going on. It was so hard to understand.

Fast forward to the year 2002 when “Fellowship” was out on DVD, and we had a movie night at my older cousin’s place, and watched the film for the first time. My 13 year old self was enraptured by it. Dad bought the DVD first thing the next day, and I’ve been a fan ever since! I, my brother, and our dad watched “Return of the King” in theaters four times, which was saying something, considering we only ever saw a movie once in cinemas. Between “The Return of the King” opening in December ‘03, I picked up the books and read (as well as I could) through them. A lot of friends kept joking “tell us how the damn story ends!”, good times.

2. When and how did you decide to make this audiobook? What’s the story behind the entire project?

I was a very ambitious lad, and my first and biggest interest was filmmaking. I used to direct short films with my friends ever since my 11th birthday, and was the youngest in class at the filmschool I attended a few years later. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I had massive ambitions to direct “the Hobbit”, which is silly in retrospect considering I was 16 years old at the time. I even sent my portfolio and DVDs of my films to Peter Jackson’s manager (who actually got back to me with a wonderful response, despite not being able to accept my ‘completely reasonable’ offer) When I was heartbroken and torn to pieces knowing I wouldn’t be directing the movie, a few more years went by, and I decided to reread some chapters of the “Lord of the Rings” books. I remember really well that this was late at night, laying in bed, and going through “King of the Golden Hall” and seeing how close to the movies it was, but also far more expanded. I thought “my extensive home-made short movies experience with sound design and sound mixing could work here, and I could just read a few chapters and try to make the soundscape as realistic as possible. Why not try it?”

So, the next day I tried. The first two chapters I tried were “King of the Golden Hall” and “A Journey in the Dark” (which partly answers your other question about that chapter). I was so absolutely surprised by how well it was going, that I decided to upload them onto YouTube in March 2010 I think. I got a fairly good response, and I was planning on doing a few more random chapters. I never intended to do the whole thing. But this one comment on YouTube I’ll always remember, it said: “I think you should go from start to finish, because you’ll probably get used to the characters and sounds and people can also follow along in the story gradually”.

Taking that suggestion to heart, in August 2010 I went from Chapter 1 onward.

3. Were you inspired by any other audiobook versions of LotR (such as the BBC radio drama)?

I was not, I actually haven’t listened to the BBC Radio drama until far ahead into the project I was doing. I did some research on what other audio productions anyone did with LOTR, from The Mind’s Eye edition, to the ‘60s Hobbit Radio Play; so I felt pretty confident. I just fell in love with the way the films brought Middle-Earth to life and seeing their incredible dedication for authenticity (from the props department, to the music), you really couldn’t do any better than that visually or audibly - at least in my opinion. I just wanted to hear Tolkien’s text but with the realisation of the films.

However, if you listen to Chapter 1 of TTT, and hear how Legolas laments their absence from not being there to help Boromir at Amon Hen, you can clearly hear the inflection from the BBC Radio play’s version. I just lifted that because I thought it was a fantastic way to deliver the line.

4. Did you have any rituals for “getting into character” before recording?

If I were to show you the raw unedited recording sessions, you’d probably be surprised at how underdeveloped it is! I had no real rituals or warmups, I just went for it. Usually went in cold, and tried reading the entire chapter and doing all the voices at once. Then I’d be exhausted, and afterwards start cutting all the mistakes, and separating each character into different tracks – and then re-recording 50%-70% of it, as I was laying in the sounds.

I think any character just needs a few words for me to say in their voice, and that helps for the rest of their dialogue. For Aragorn it was usually: “You cannot wield it! None of us can.” for Pippin it was: “Sometimes”, just random things that make things ‘click’ in my head. If I got lost or didn’t feel like the performances were working, I’d simply just watch scenes from the films to hear the real actors again!

5. Who was your favorite character to voice? Who was your least favorite? And why?

People who know me, know I love doing the villains. Sauron, the orcs, the Nazgûl, etc. I just love the idea of personifying things that scare you. Something completely the opposite of who you are. Always a fun time! Any character I can nail extremely accurately always makes me happy, but I’m always very critical of my own work, so it’s a rare thing.

My least favorite characters to voice are: Imrahil, Denethor, Arwen, Celeborn, Galadriel, Erestor, Lindir, Haldir, Goldberry, Gildor… I think the pattern is pretty obvious if you realize that I am incapable of providing a satisfactory voice that feels unique enough. They just sound to me like “I wish I had a broader range. They weren’t done justice.” I have feelings for most of the characters in this situation, but I’m a mere mortal. I can’t do all of them as well as I wish I could. I wish Aragorn was more like Viggo Mortensen’s voice (I tried with the nasally yells you mentioned!), I wish Gandalf had a richer tone, I wish Saruman sounded more majestic, and I wish Frodo was - in retrospect- more older sounding, too. There’s so much I wish I could do better, but to hell with it, I tried.

Fun fact: my least-favorite to voice are also Orcs because they destroy my throat after a while. Which is ironic, because of my first statement.

6. I noticed that you gave the men of Rohan and Gondor slightly different dialects! Are you pulling from any real-world accents to make that happen?

I did try to listen to Anglo-Saxon, and ancient norse but I just tried to make Rohan and Gondor slightly distinct in any way I could. I never really tried to make things too obvious, but admittedly, I think I just used my intuition (smoothing the R’s for the Rohirrim, making the Gondorians more ‘proper’, etc.). I do want to emphasize that this was a one-person project and keeping things together or consistent is definitely an extraneous exercise when you’re just trying to get something finished by yourself!

7. Some characters (like Beregond and Quickbeam, to name a couple of my favorites) aren’t in the movies, so they don’t have an actor for you to imitate. How did you decide what they would sound like?

Well, in the case of Beregond, I realized he was just “your ordinary guy”, and seeing Minas Tirith through his eyes (and Pippin’s) is such an amazing and interesting opportunity. It made the city feel so real, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I think I started with a ‘generic’ voice, but when I re-recorded him knowing more and more of the context and what he was saying to Pippin, and as a result who he is, made me adjust what I felt were more his personality. But still that ‘ordinary guy’ idea was the bedrock, and it’s been years since I heard that chapter, but I hope it holds up! (I just remembered Bergil is in that too, another voice I wish I could have done better)

Another fun fact: when Pippin scares the kids in Minas Tirith, the audio was from something I videotaped when I was 10 years old with my friends, it had the perfect “kids-going-aaah!” sound.

If I had it my way, I’d have a cast of dozens in this Audiobook, so a lot of times I never felt like my voice was enough to truly capture the “We’re in Middle-Earth, we just have microphones to record it” idea. So I have to make compromises since I was the only one doing the voices. That being said, Quickbeam was a fun surprise because he felt like, as you said “young treebeard”, and these things just worked out through experimentation! I think Quickbeam turned out pretty nice. I like Quickbeam.

8. HOW—I ask with great enthusiasm—DID YOU DO TREEBEARD’S VOICE? How did you get that resonance and woody sound? Did you send your voice through a wooden box and re-record it on the other side like they did in the movies?

It’s really great that you know all the behind the scenes stories from the films! Especially what Ethan Van der Ryn, David Farmer, and the late Michael Hopkins have done with their incredible creativity. I had no such resources to produce Treebeard’s sound. What I did was a digital facsimile: a special ‘room’ reverb, with some other equalizing effects to boost the bass and (maybe, I can’t remember) another higher pitched track of the same voice faintly in there.

You won’t believe this, but I was not going to do The Two Towers audiobook unless I could do a good Treebeard voice. In 2011 after finishing “Fellowship”, I was on the fence about continuing, and only committed once I knew I could do Treebeard right. Treebeard was the key to all this. This should come to no surprise to the ones who played the game, but I used a lot of sound effects from ‘Battle for Middle-Earth’ which contained a lot of clean sounds for ents, trolls, the balrog, the ringwraiths, and other monsters from the films. I used the ent’s footsteps from the games, and recorded my own foley for some of the trees snapping and leaves rustling as well. The “fart” sounds were the low creaking of tree branches, and - as they stated in the making-of for the films - very pitched down cow moos.

9. Tell me about the foley work! Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been that nerd who watched the Behind The Scenes featurettes for fun, so I’m very interested to hear how you made the sound effects for footsteps and whistling arrows and jangling horse harnesses and such.

I’m glad you are! I’ve collected sound libraries (ripped from video games, and finding and buying sound packs) for a literal decade, because I always needed sounds for the short films I made when I was younger. I just kept learning about how to mix sounds together, and it’s very creative and very enjoyable! That being said, the foley work itself is mostly recorded by me. If I can’t find a sound in the library I have, I will record it. Clothing rustles, and touch are all recorded while I listen to the audiobook playback and ‘perform’ each character. It’s a really arduous process, but I think it adds so much life into the sound.

I went out into the woods (or backyard) with my mic to record footsteps, sometimes I would listen to the audiobook with headphones while performing the footsteps. When I would have traveled somewhere with different terrain I would be sure to record more foley (rocks being moved, or pebbles being stepped on) knowing I’ll use it for certain chapters. I do not want to reveal a huge secret about the predominant foley for the character's clothes, but an old backpack I used were 90% of the characters’ ‘movements’. Some wingflaps of the fell beasts were just my jeans. It’s a really creative process trying to find things that ‘sound’ right for an environment or action. The magic is putting them all together and hearing the result. Also, yes Sam’s pan is my grandma’s frying pan, and I know it’s sometimes annoying, but - look - Sam has a lot of stuff to carry.

I start with the background sounds (wind, tree rustles, water if there is any, etc.) lots of layers of them just to make them sound unique and not the same. Then I move to selective and nearer environmental background sounds. Then, the ‘hero’ sounds, the effects that are integral to the story (if it’s sword clashes, or an explosion, or who knows what), and finally the foley (footsteps, clothing rustles, breaths, etc.) - I had a friend record her own horses breathing and moving for a lot of closeups of the horses in the audiobooks. I think even if you can’t really hear some of their low breaths, their presence is still ‘there’. I personally think I got a lot better by the end of LOTR than when I started!

I wanted to add, the sounds for little Elanor in the very last scene of “The Return of the King” (the baby sounds), I was not happy with the stock baby sounds I had, and asked my older cousin (an audio person too!) to send me recordings he made of his then-1-year-old daughter in a studio. So, my first-cousin-once-removed is Elanor! She’s 22 now. I feel old.

10. Do you have a favorite sound effect from this project? Mine is the “pat-pat” against cloth that’s used to denote a hug.

Absolutely, do you remember the two “watchers” before the tower of Cirith Ungol? The vulture-like statues that block the hobbit’s path out? The alarm sound is a wholly original sound design I did, and I’m really happy with it. It’s just ugly sounding, and that’s the point. I always wished I had more Nazgul, and I think the worst moments I had with mixing were the battle scenes. There’s just too much to handle and make it sound good. But I really tried.

I’m very glad you heard the ‘pat-pat’s. I try my best to perform every character when recording foley, and want even some of the sounds to convey something in the telling of the story.

11. What's the thought process behind your use of the various musical motifs from Howard Shore's score? (Read: Why do you use the Shire theme so often, and why does it get me in the heart every single time?)

I want everyone to know that this is a really important and valuable question, and one I never really get to talk about: To me, Howard Shore’s music is one of the very best things to come out of the films. He truly made an opera out of the story, and all his leitmotifs and orchestrations are a stroke of genius. They work on their own, and when reading the books as well, and as a nerd for films and all that stuff, I wanted to put a lot of care into how I’m placing the score, and for what scene, emotionally and leitmotivically, if that’s a word.

The Audiobook I did is obviously a ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ situation, so I can’t credit myself for the majority of the Audiobook I did, but I wanted to use all my filmmaking intuition to properly use the music to enhance the telling of the story. So, just like the filmmakers had to change and mix lines from the book, or make changes to make it work as a film, I felt like a lot of instances happened with the music for the audiobook. Obviously, I used the score when applicable to the intended scenes, but there are very often cases where they won’t work. I read as much as I could in the past about what the motifs were and where Shore used them in the movies, so I followed that trajectory for the most part. Gondor is Gondor, Rohan is Rohan, Mordor is Mordor, etc.

Changes happen when I feel the emotions for a scene in the books do not match up to the ones in the films, and then there are brand new scenes and characters not in the movies at all, that I have to figure out! Take the pause from music between Gandalf falling into the chasm with the Balrog, and the fellowship successfully escaping. It’s perfect in the film, but I knew I couldn’t put the lamenting heartbreaking music in there yet, since the descriptions all drive the idea that escape is paramount. So I treated it as a ‘shock’ moment. No music until they’re completely out of the mountain, then the grief comes in. Things like that, a lot of fun creative thinking to get those emotions working!

I recall you mentioning the ‘Gimli / Legolas drinking game’ statement and how I used the hell out of it throughout the Audiobook, which is a good example. I pitched it up and down, for different moments, and it just has that hobbit mundane and jolly quality to it. So, in it goes to fill moments from the books.

I also edited and modified existing motifs for completely different scenes and ideas. One of my favorites is when Treebeard talks about the Entwives. I needed this melancholy yearning sound that was really essential, and found it by reversing Eowyn’s theme, and pitching it down so the violin sounds like a cello/bass. To me it just felt extremely appropriate for the sound of a long-lost relationship while portraying a larger-than-life creature.

Let’s also say Bombadil. I made up the idea that the last statement in the credits for “Return of the King”, was Bombadil’s theme. It’s actually just a reference to Der Ring des Nibelungen by Wagner, a very verbose beautiful crescendo, but I thought “I’ll pretend like it’s Bombadil, he’s last in the score even though he’s the first in Arda”. So I used that musical progression in his songs, that’s his leitmotif now (to me, anyway) He sings in that wavy up-and-down melody. Which is why you hear a lot of that in those chapters.

I also try to use recordings not from the original score: I looked far and wide for alternative recordings, predominantly the album by the Royal Prague Philharmonic, and the “LOTR Symphony”, just to make the Audiobooks feel different. I pitched down and moved and reassembled a lot of different cues for different scenes as well.

There are not a lot of instances of music from other movies, however, they do exist! I used music from “Battle for Middle-Earth”, the game “War in the North”, and for the last few chapters, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” since it just came out at the time. I used a lot of music from Howard Shore’s “Seven” and “The Game” during Shelob (I think), and for the Barrow-Downs. I used a tiny bit of underscore from the brilliant Don Davis’s “The Matrix Reloaded”, it had a really eerie choir which made me feel like it would be perfect for the fatigue and dizzying unreality of Mordor when Sam and Frodo were on their last leg, trying to get to Mt. Doom. Lastly, I used a little bit of music from Howard Shore’s “Twilight: Eclipse” for some dialogue scenes during Return of the King! And music from the independent film “Mongol” by Tuomas Kantelinen for the Woses when Theoden has to get help from Ghan-Buri-Ghan. Also the ending of ROTK has a few cues from “The Lord of the Rings musical”, lovely stuff.

It may surprise you that there is a small amount of score I actually ‘wrote’ with help from my brother (he’s a musician). It’s in the coronation of Elessar. It’s not very good but I needed something. There is also a cello version of “to the edge of night”, which I kindly asked permission to use by YouTube celloist, but I sadly don't think that video is up anymore.

Lastly, I use the Shire music so much because - just like Howard Shore said - it becomes a ‘hymn’ or an ‘anthem’ for the hobbits as they leave their comforts behind and are in a wide and unfamiliar world. Every little bit that reminds them of home, or relates to each of them, usually deserves a little ‘shire’ statement here and there. I feel if it’s in the characters’ hearts and minds, it has to be expressed in the music!

12. Out of all the chapters I’ve listened to so far on the Internet Archive, “A Journey in the Dark” is the one most plagued with editing issues; Sam’s temper tantrum over leaving Bill the Pony is cut out entirely. Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to hearing your take on that. (Is it strange to say that I wanted to hear you break down into blubbering tears? Probably. Let’s ignore that and move on.) Is there any chance that you have a cleaner edit of that chapter somewhere?

I think you’ll be very unsurprised to know that “A Journey in the Dark” is the first chapter I ever recorded. I think you’ll also need to know that I did FOTR when I was 21 years old, and my grasp on doing better sound mixing or even getting the characters right was still a work in progress. I learned so much going chapter-by-chapter and felt that each succeeding one improves from the former. As a demo-run, I did “King of the Golden Hall '' and “Journey in the Dark” in early 2010 (in fact, I did only the first half of “JITD” back then. Stopping right after they are barred inside the mines, as the Watcher destroys the gate. I did the second half once I caught up with the story going chapter-by-chapter.)

There are so many issues with it, and I haven’t listened to it since. If you have headphones you’ll also notice that none of the voices really pan from left to right, or feel like they’re ever anywhere else except the dead-center. I was lazy back then.

When I read the chapters, at the time, I was sharing an ‘office room’ with my younger brother, and as a teenaged younger brother does - continues strumming his guitar no matter what the other brother is doing. It was really fun, and funny and I was extremely sloppy with editing things out, and taking it too seriously. So, for sure you can hear ‘someone’ in the background during the early parts of FOTR, and I was too lazy to re-record or edit out the noises that weren’t supposed to be there.

Forgive me if this part is a lot longer, but now that you mention it, I want to get on my soap-box and rant about how many things I agree with about the Audiobook’s shortcomings and how many things have changed since the wee days of 2010:

I didn’t really get a grasp on the characters, and I had no idea I was going to do the entire book. I did not take enough care with sound mixing (it’s a highly technical and rigorous practice, I’ve discovered. Even now, ten plus years later - it’s too technical for me to fully understand yet), and I did not thoroughly re-listen to the chapter when I was done with an edit or a sound-effects pass. Therefore there’s always been mistakes still in there, and just unpleasantly careless placement of sounds and music. I have often thought about re-recording it to get it up to scratch, but it’s been over a decade and I haven’t properly preserved all the sound stems without having to re-sound-mix the whole chapter again, and there is that little thing called ‘burnout’ which is hard to ignore. So, I apologize to everyone who has to suffer through that huge drop in quality with “A Journey in the Dark”. It quite literally was my first attempt, and it definitely shows.

The good news is that a fan asked me the same thing about the missing piece in that chapter (the one you mentioned! With Sam and Bill!), and I’ve heard the same comments about it throughout the years. Why is it missing? I don’t know why! I recorded it, but in my loose run-and-gun past when I was a wee lad, I was careless, and just had the mp3 with that part missing. A rendering error, perhaps! Stupid 21 year old Phil just hodgepoging everything.

A Few months ago, I did get another email about that missing piece. I thought “okay, once and for all, I’m going to find that missing part.” - and I searched my old harddrives for some kind of archival copy with that part in it. Amazingly, it was a lot harder to find than I thought. Every rendered version of JITD either stopped right before that scene, or had it omitted. I actually found one half of it as a ‘demo’ piece I rendered years ago for a ‘sound trailer’, and then I finally found the original YouTube video I made - which had it intact! Now the hardest part was stitching it together with the rest. Took longer than I thought, but I finally amended this horrible incompetence. And yes, I will share the link to you! And be prepared to be disappointed at the 2010-era quality!

I don’t know if anyone knows this, but with the mp3s circling around, I have taken the liberty of re-recording and re-working some chapters from their original versions. I try my best to preserve the originals, but I also wish people to listen to the re-records. I have actually re-recorded and re-mastered “A Long-Expected Party” three times. 2011, 2013, and 2014. I re-recorded “King of the Golden Hall” in 2013, and “Shadow of the Past” in 2014. I usually try labelling the dates on the mp3 files themselves. The one I’m most proud of re-recording bits of, is “The Pyre of Denethor” as the first time I had Denethor say his last words he was mildly raising his voice, but I listened to it again one day and went “this man should be at the edge of sanity.” - so he absolutely yells now, and it’s such a night-and-day comparison.

Another addendum: I completely understand the complaints about ‘the sound/music drowning out the dialogue’. It’s been the #1 complaint over the decade. I completely understand. I never had professional sound mixing gear, nor did I have proper mixing headphones or speakers or a proper studio (most of the audiobook was recorded at my grandmother’s house!). The balance of the audio making it sound immersive, (like you are there!) and having clear dialogue to hear is - like I said - an extremely technical and complex process that I’ve never had the ability or tech to master. Let alone for a book that’s 48 hours long, and has so much sound and music to it. Nothing would bring me more joy than to work with an experienced sound mixer, and find all my audio stems, and for us to work together to clear up any and all issues. But as this project was a simple fan-made work, and I haven’t distributed it myself for a decade, who knows?

This is also why I never went on to do “The Hobbit”. Burnout is real, and I’ve never recovered from LOTR. The burnout… “it’s never really healed, Sam.”

13. What was your favorite scene to record and mix?

Mount Doom. Can’t get better than trying to make the climax as horrible and eucatastrophic as that. It all led up to this, and it was such a rush to work on. I remember how I was at the edge of my seat watching ROTK in cinemas for the first time, and how amazingly they pulled it off, and I wanted to definitely imitate that, but using Tolkien’s own writing. Just so cool.

I have two favorite chapters: The first one is “The Scouring of the Shire”. I remember well, when I was working on it, I realized this has never been ‘dramatized’ before. At least not in full. I felt so special being the first one (probably) to do it. I could imagine the entire chapter in my head like a film, and I could bring it to life with very little outside influence. Such a poignant and shocking chapter.

I don’t think I would have done it as well without the experience I gained doing the rest of the Audiobook. Showing the strength of the four hobbits, portraying the dignity and resolve of their kind, giving that pathetic yet dangerous authenticity to Sharkey, and the ruffians, illustrating the battle of bywater with sound… this was done in 2013, so we all were able to listen to new music by Howard Shore (for The Hobbit), and I would be able to transpose motifs from that, into “Scouring”, and honestly I wouldn’t know how it would have worked out if the Hobbit films didn’t come out just at the right time. I think the score fits so well with the events of “Scouring”, there is a ‘mordor’ theme but it feels ‘unfinished’, like the remnant of an old defeated foe; there’s that wily progression for Radagast in the films, that I used for the hobbit’s rebellion and the conflict, and there’s a new ‘hobbit/shire’ motif that worked so perfectly for a ‘wounded, but recovering’ Shire. I feel so silly talking about decisions I made for this, but I always wanted to share some thoughts I had!

Fun fact: I had a wonderful person ask if she would be able to play Rosie Cotton back in 2013, and I asked her to perform her lines. She was great, but I realized a very strange thing: when I put her in the audio mix, it would actually break the immersion, because you can hear a voice that wasn’t mine, and as a result - I couldn’t help but keep thinking - my voice for Rosie’s mother sounded like a Monty Python skit in comparison! And thus her lines had to be unused. It kind of just opened the fourth wall, breaking the illusion. Which is a shame, because I always dream of having a fully-cast LOTR Audiobook, maybe someday officially.

The other favorite is “The Tower of Cirith Ungol” just because I listened to it one day in 2014, and heard no errors. I was so proud. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to change substantially. No one dislikes all the errors more than I do!

14. What’s your best memory from this entire project?

My late dad drove me and my brother out into a clearing at midnight in the forest. The sky was so clear and starry. And we were here simply to just yell at the top of our lungs to record material for “Helm’s Deep”. All the clear yells: “Elendil!!!” “Gúthwinë! Gúthwinë For the Mark!”etc. Etc. - I lost my voice, it was a fun time. He held the microphone for me as I splashed around a stream (for Gollum), once again at midnight since there were fewer background sounds.

I also tell this story a lot: A friend of mine who was listening to the chapters as I finished them - she hated the sound of knuckles cracking. And hated spiders. So, obviously, Shelob would have to have knuckle-cracking sounds for her limbs. So I recorded my own knuckles cracking and tried using it as much as I could for Shelob’s legs moving about. My friend was soooo ecstatic to know this fact.

15. If you could do it all again today, what would you change?

I would consider doing a ground-up re-recording of everything. With a budget, with a cast, with a lot more understanding of the story and intentions behind them. With VR sound options. With extra original music. That’s the dream.

If we’re back to reality, I guess I’d just re-record a bunch of chapters since they could always be better, and tighten all the technical errors. But that would require a lot of assembling of the raw archived files, and re-building of sounds, and re-recording of lines. Also, as I stated before, I do not want to distribute my unofficial fan work just because I know that it’s a copyright nightmare. And burnout… “it’s never really healed, Sam.”

I like taking other people’s opinions to heart, such as the issues with Frodo’s youth or inflections and intonations for certain scenes that I didn’t quite fully grasp the first time. I would love to adjust things and make it closer to the book now.

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And now! The Silly Questions Lightning Round!

(With thoughts from Lady Glasses in parentheses and italics!)

1. In Fellowship, long stretches of dialogue would often have someone randomly cough in the background. Tell me about the Cough. Why is the Cough there?

No one hates the coughs more than me. That’s either my brother minding his own business in the other end of our ‘office room’. I think you now know I was 21, I didn’t care, so these things are just left in because I was careless. However, sometimes there are intentional coughs to make it feel more realistic. It’s been years since I listened to it, so unless I somehow do a massive commentary stream someday (thinking about it), your guess will be as good as mine! The coughs heavily subsided once I did Two Towers, since I was by myself.

2. During the dinner scene with Farmer Cotton, someone burps. Who was that?

Mine. I have no regrets with that one. Or Pippin. I guess it could be Pippin.

(Darn! And here I thought it was Farmer Cotton, LOL)

3. How did you manage to make Bill Ferny’s voice so perfectly obnoxious?

I imagined Bill as an obnoxious guy. The image in my head gives me a good idea of what he’d sound like, and I’m so glad he’s so obnoxious that you had to mention it.

(He sounds perfectly punchable. Thanks, I hate it.)

4. Did you crack yourself up at any point in the recording?

Oh yes, in fact I have a whole outtake reel just for you!

(Warning to anyone who clicks the link: the April Fool's audio had me ON THE FLOOR)

5. Voice acting aside, who is your favorite character in LotR and why?

If you asked me in 2002 it would be the Balrog, if you asked me now it would be difficult because so many of them mean so much to me, and each of their aspects have something to aspire to. Gandalf, Aragorn, Sam, Frodo, Galadriel, the list goes on and on.

(That's beautiful, and so true. The story really grows with us, doesn't it?)

6. What’s your favorite color?

Blue. Always has been.

(Blue is a good color! 💙)

7. Political question: Pineapples on pizza, yes or no?

Yes, I still don’t get what the fuss is about

(Oooh, controversial)

8. Is a hotdog a sandwich?

No, it’s a hotdog!

(Counterpoint: A hotdog is a taco.)

9. What’s your opinion on geese?

They’re racist

(Racist against the entire human race, apparently)

10. How much would I have to pay you to say “I love boats!” in Merry’s voice? (It’s an inside joke with my friends.)

Nothing, it’s on the house!

(HOLY CRAP I LOVE YOU)

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Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us! What are you working on nowadays?

I’ve actually had a few people ask me if I’ll ever do more audiobooks like this, and I seem to have tapped something. Yes, in fact! I’m working with a few creative collaborators on a small company to do the exact same sonic experience with other books! Since we’re very small, we are starting with stories in the Public Domain, and have successfully kickstarted (and finished) “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling. Which will be out (hopefully, officially) by early September! I’m really excited and hope this will lead to more projects, and - hopefully- back to Tolkien someday, in an official manner. Please follow my Instagram or Facebook for more info about it. (I also have a Twitter and Tumblr and more, but they’re all completely unrelated to LOTR and are just me drawing doodles and being a nerd, very unlike the Audiobooks I did, which is a bit confusing, I admit.)

- - - - -

And that concludes our interview! As I told Phil, it was so much fun to discuss a fellow fan's passion project like this. The more I read about it, the more I realized just how similar it was to my own experiences as a fan creator. We all start out as just a noob with a few unpolished skills, making something because we love it, and we learn and grow and hone our talents along the way. It's legitimately inspiring.

Needless to say, I am stoked to finish listening to the rest of this audiobook! Is it a bit weird knowing the creator of the thing might drop in and read my reviews?? Yes. Yes it is. But I'm gonna do it anyway. No holds barred! If I hear another cough, you're gonna know about it, Phil!

Also I may or may not do something with that audio of Merry because I'M STILL DYING OF LAUGHTER HELP

Anyway! If you made it to the end of this, you deserve a cookie! Everybody say thank you to Mr. Dragash, and go check out the other stuff he's doing nowadays! Namárië!

#phil dragash #audiobook #lotr audiobook #interview #CATCH ME SCREAMING ABOUT THIS FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS

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circledotdestroy · 1 year ago

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Retrospective - Chapter 4: Professional Conversations

Pairing: Shouta Aizawa x F! Pro-Hero! Reader (the slowest burn) Main summary: After 12 years, you, Pro-Hero Strife, has to return to Japan. Your objective: discreetly track down and capture Akari Kaneko, a.k.a. Pro-Hero Aegis— your old classmate who attacked you during her visit in America. In the aftermath of All Might losing his power, however, using UA resources has its complications. The most unexpected complication being Aizawa, someone you never expected to see again. Why does your past have to come back to haunt you now? Masterlist First Chapter Last Chapter Word Count: 5,708

A/N: So Aizawa decided to comeback finally the other day... How are we feeling? Anyway, I hope this helps the manga readers. (I'm so sorry it's been over a month, life decided to throw me at the wall a few times. Because I've been struggling with posting chapters as often as I want to, I've decided after this one I will be cutting down the size. I hope it works out for the best, but that means there will be a larger number of chapters. I hope those of you that read my story don't care too much) (Also where the hell is Mic???)

For the rest of the meeting you stood breathless. Heart gushing blood through your ears. The words of your proposal dissolved as everything after cemented arrangements flowed into nothingness. You smiled, nodded, and told your new boss you understood his terms as his words reached your ears. Yet you grasped at nothing.

Nezu left the room satisfied. Said something about signing and a new ID. On his way out he wished you the best working for Eraser’s class. You did well, you think.

When Nezu was gone, heavy thunking and a giant shadow from the corner of your eye irritated you out of your trance. It was Mic, jiggling the briefcase by the handle. Your laptop was still in there! Slightly annoyed, you swiped at the handle to snatch it back. Mic pulled it away before you could, saying something about how he knows you can grab it, and to “try harder”.

You rolled your eyes in a huff, though now wasn’t a good time to break character. Right? You looked around the bright room and almost everyone was gone. The clock on the wall ticked away as you tried to place when everyone left on a timeline. Nemuri waved on her way out, All Might gave you a thumbs up. This was maybe five to seven minutes after you volunteered your time thoughtlessly. When the vote was over, the only people who needed to be in the room was you, Nezu, and—

You turned to the right of Mic’s chair. Eraser finished gathering his folders from his table. Nezu left the details of your position to him. There were many questions you had about being an advisor, but the main one was ‘what does Eraser have in mind?’ Eraser went around the table. Before you finished thinking you’d need to stop him to clarify your new temp job, he joined you and Mic in the center of the room.

In typical fashion, Mic caught on and spoke up before you thought of how to open. “You’re working with Strife then, Eraser? You excited?”

Eraser huffed, ignoring his question. Whether he regretted agreeing to the arrangement already, or he was annoyed Mic brought it up, you weren’t sure. So much for fostering a good professional relationship. You understood though. Just because something is objectively better, like having someone help you prepare twenty kids for a grueling exam, doesn’t mean it’s what you wanted. “I need to talk to Strife. Alone.”

Mic’s grin left his face as he looked at you then back at Eraser then back at you. “Alright,” his smile came back as he shrugged. Mic flipped your briefcase over his shoulder and walked toward the door, leaving you with the friend-of-a-friend. “Try not to keep her too long!” Eraser watched Mic leave the room. In the silence, the conversation you had earlier came to your mind again. Now that you owe him, thinking of how you stormed off earlier made you want to ask Mic to stay. Not out of fear, but because he’d make this interaction less uncomfortable.

But it was too late when the door shut.

You and Eraser. Alone. In a bright, empty room. There’s no need for played up charisma—not when he was past it all and knew you were full of it. Eraser, unexpectedly, held out the folders to you. Grabbing the small stack cautiously with both hands, you thought back to your earlier theory about the folders holding information meant to cast you out. If that was the case then he wouldn’t give you these now. Not when he can hold the folders as leverage for later. Eraser didn’t say a word until you flipped open the first folder, on the top there was a school photo of a boy with red hair. “My class starts training today in Gamma at 9:30.” Toward the middle there was another picture of him in the UA gym uniform. One of his arms was rigid like the side of a cliff, while the other looked normal. “Those contain the information of a few students in my class, I’ll give you more later. I want them to work on creating Ultimate Moves for the exams.”

That’s it?

Eraser could’ve done that without you. Why would he agree to the deal, if the training was independent work?

Your finger traced the paper up to the lines next to the headshot of the boy. The first line should be his name. Squinting at the page, your eyes bounced across the paper. The page was incomprehensible, a salad of lines and squares. You closed the folder and looked at the gray capture weapon again, it was easier to see what actions he’d take if you looked around his shoulders. “It’d be best if I observe the students before I read the files.”

Eraser shifted his weight to one leg, causing a shift where his weapon overlapped. “Any reason why?” His weapon was too clean for it to be used frequently. Maybe he got it replaced recently? Yet again, with everything you heard about the school, his students fighting off villains without licenses… it’d make sense if he was sidelined from doing hero work if his teaching his class was a handful.

“I want to judge them myself,” you answered, mirroring his stance. You lowered the folders in front of your body. Eraser made no moves to take them from you. “Judges don’t read about people taking the test before the exam. It’s like how students don’t meet judges grading the exam. It plays into…” you tried to find the right word. An equivalent to “impressions”, but drawn blank. You raised a gloved hand to pick the word out of the air. Eraser just leaned back with a vacant stare making it harder to concentrate. You closed your eyes and sighed as you settled on “-first sight, if you understand.”

When you opened your eyes, Eraser gave no input of his own. He stared blankly, with nothing to suggest he knew what you meant.

Language switching wouldn’t be acceptable with him like it would be with Hizashi. If you were supposed to give advice to students, then you’d need to communicate clearly. How often would you have to play Word Find in front of teenagers? If you wanted to stay here long enough to locate Akari—hell, if you wanted to investigate in Japan, you needed to get your act together. And quick. “It would also help if they are focused on their training, not a stranger in the room.” While you figure out the mechanics of their quirks, you can have some time to think about and practice what you’ll say. It’ll be just like the first year.

“My students won’t get distracted,” Eraser crossed his arms, with an edge in his voice. Defensive? “But fine. It’s logical enough. We’ll still meet at Gamma and set something up for you to get the information needed, but the class still has to meet you today. There’s only 10 days of training, no time should be wasted.”

Fair enough. If they’re training ultimate moves, you only need a little time to get the gist of their quirks for day one. Details can come later. It should give you enough time for a language refresher. “Anything else?”

Glancing at the ground, his boots pointed toward the door. Unlike his weapon, those were scuffed and broken in. The man is as ready to leave as you are. “We have everything covered. For now. We can talk more after you observe the class. We’ll discuss more when the time comes. For now, we’re building their strengths and hammering out weak points.”

The conversation ended and he finished, about to walk out the door. Footsteps thudded against the hard floor as he made his exit. You thought you were ready to see him leave, but “Wait—!”

Eraser paused.

The hand raised toward him recoiled into a loose fist. You put it away before he turned back. When he did, your eyes trailed to his boots again. “The way I walked out…” They were pointed toward you, and not the door. Good to know you had his full attention this time around. He hummed, that type of thing would be hard to forget in less than a few hours. You tried to find the rest of your sentence and got stuck at a fork in the road.

Were you supposed to say an apology you didn’t mean?

You weren’t sorry about why you left. In fact, business and gratitude aside, you were still mad at him. Not that it matters. “I didn’t act my best,” you said, looking up from the ground. What you feel now— it means nothing.

The man blinked slowly then glanced off to the side closest to the door. Bored already… Him listening to what you had to say was only professional courtesy.

“I didn’t act my best. You’re giving me this opportunity to let me complete my mission faster, and you don’t have to.” You were going to work with him. You’ll help his class. All of them will get their license. In return, you’ll get the answers you need. When all is said and done, Eraser won’t ever see the Pro-Hero Strife again. “Thank you, Eraser.” Words fell out smooth as sand on your tongue, but you can look at his face again.

Eraser rubbed the back of his neck, dodging your gaze by glancing at the ceiling. “If you judged licensing exams before then you’re an asset. Letting you investigate here is a rational trade, I’d be an idiot to vote against it,” he explained listlessly, meeting your eyes toward the end.

You nodded. “Of course…” After a hectic few hours, this was how your conflict ended. All personal grudges all under the bridge… Just like that.

Because you two are adults. Two adults with jobs to do– professionals.

You walked past the other hero, your short-term coworker, explained how you didn’t want to keep Mic waiting. He understood, told you he’d have more information ready later. Both of you went into the hallway. Mic was trying really hard to make it look like he wasn’t listening in. Mic tried dodging the suspicion by bringing up food. Fortunately for him, with the way you’ve been using your power– on top of the healing quirk, you needed calories. Enough to fill a black hole with the way your stomach squeezed. Eraser didn’t have the same worries as you. In seconds, he was long in the opposite direction and you were fine.

Mic led you around campus talking about Lunchrush, another member of UA’s immortality club. With your past experience in the kitchen, a new respect toward the man has grown. He was in charge of preparing enough food for hundreds of people. Showing up unannounced for food felt like an invasion. Lunchrush would have little use for American currency. You really should stop at the bank to make an exchange soon. When you arrived at the cafeteria Mic gave your briefcase back, told you to wait while he worked his “magic”. He strolled backward into the kitchen door, finger guns blazing, to the orchestra of scraping metal. Not long after he came out of the kitchen holding two trays. One with a giant bowl and another with four smaller ones on them. You went to help him but he pointed his chin to a nearby table for you to sit. You hurried to the table, pulling one chair out for Mic then going around to the chair closest to the wall for you to sit.

“Lunchrush thought the request was weird for this time of day, but I figured it’d be closer to dinner for you.” Mic put the tray with smaller dishes on his side of the table. Savory steam floated from his food. His tray had savory broth and spring onion with either soft tofu or an onsen egg (it was hard to tell from your angle), plain rice, the fluffiest rolled omelet, and a strip of tender salmon. It was a feast for the eyes and you can almost taste it on your tongue.

You looked at Hizashi before you drooled over the table like a rabid animal. From your angle, it seemed as if there were no side dishes on the tray he was still carrying. His buckling elbow told you the bowl was heavy. “I tried to get your favorite, but you usually brought your own thing when you finally learned to cook for yourself.” He went to place your food on the table. When you reached to grab the tray, Mic pulled it away. You raised your eyebrow at him. The joke would’ve been more funny if your stomach wasn’t clawing inward to digest itself. Hizashi held the tray closer to you, but pulled it away when you tried grabbing it again.

“Excuse me?”

You expected him to laugh in your face then give you your meal, but his expression hadn’t changed from the slightly amused smile from earlier. The tray floated further from your reach as the man before you held the tray high like he was the cover model posing for Waiter’s Weekly. Hizashi looked down, his pose statue-esque. “You never said anything about Kaneko visiting you.”

You put your hands under the table. Once shielded under the table, your fingers interlaced firmly. “I didn’t mean to make you look bad, I’m sorry.” You really were, you’d apologize even if the beloved sustenance was in your grasp. Peering up again, the statue pose relaxed, but Hizashi made no moves to hand you the tray. “The case has been a lot, I guess,” you couldn’t truthfully tell him you forgot to say anything.

“Right—it just slipped your mind.” Mic teased with lasers scanning across your body. You stopped leaning over the table and forced yourself to sit straight. The wound became slightly itchy– a small price to pay. Was he going to ask about you calling him? “I’m gonna keep it real, you’ve been forgetting about a lot of things.”

“I’m not the only one,” you thought, focus gliding to empty tables toward your right until you heard a sigh.

“You’re talking about Aizawa?” The plastic tray thudded on the table. A treacherous scrap made you wince when Hizashi pulled his chair further out to join you at the table. “I wasn’t trying to blindside you either.”��

Steam curled into the air from the large bowl creating a veil between the two of you. Your fingers laced tighter, expecting Hizashi to say something else. Unless it was your turn to speak. You acknowledge his statement with a small nod. You moved your tray closer to your end of the table, hot vapor hit your face. You looked into the bowl. Hizashi got you a bowl of udon. The noodles were abundant with just enough rich broth, and it was topped with a crazy amount of vegetables and protein—the perfect thing for your current situation. In spite of your hunger, a lump formed in your throat. Most udon wasn’t supposed to include all these toppings, there was only one restaurant you remember including this much food without having to add on. Hizashi wasn’t playing around with what he said earlier.

“What are we waiting for,” Hizashi asked, breaking the tension. “Let’s eat!”

The two of you dug into your meals. As experience taught you, eating good food really does help move pain along. When you get the opportunity to combine the nutrients with sleep, you should feel a whole lot better the next time you wake up.

“How do you feel,” asked Hizashi.

You hummed with a slight jerk, worried he remembered your end of the call from days ago. When you processed the teasing edge to his voice, you relaxed.

“Mentor Strife coming out of retirement, didn’t think I’d live to see the day.” Mic had a cocky smile. “And after you told me you couldn’t multitask—”

“Not multitasking.” While you didn’t plan for this to be the mission, the mission is what the mission becomes. In this case the mission is finding Akari and helping Eraser’s students pass their test. The latter is secondary, but you know better than to walk around owing people. “I’m not mentoring students.” The students don’t need one–they already have teachers. “I’m helping them pass a test. That’s it.”

Mic pouted mockingly toward you and you mirrored him briefly before drinking some broth. “Not gonna stay to celebrate after? That’s cold,” Mic shook his head, pointing his chopsticks at you lightheartedly.

“By the time of the exam, there shouldn’t be a reason why I’m still at school. I need to finish work here before the hotel bill gets expensive. I want to go back to work soon.”

“Stay at the dorms then! We have all the room in the world. Unless…” Mic trails off, and you already know where this is going. “Personal feelings getting in the way of your job?”

You drop your spoon into the bowl tight-lipped. “I like my space,” you smiled.

“Space from who exactly?”

“Children,” you showed your teeth, hoping he’d get the hint.

Mic put his hands up in surrender. “I’m just saying! You don’t know who’s working at a hotel. Plus there’s more guests day in and day out than a rock festival. If someone knows what they’re doing, they can find what room you’re in. Swipe a keycard and mess with your stuff.”

“You think Akari would do that,” you asked.

“Were we looking at the right scene earlier?” You leaned back and clutched your nonexistent pearls at his sudden outburst. Mic shook his head, “what i’m trying to say is: If Kaneko finds out where you are, it’d be a huge blow to your plan. If you don’t want to stay at the dorms because of your gross personal feelings–” Mic gagged, rolling his eyes back dramatically. Which, admittedly, got a smile out of you. “Then you could stay at my place– it’s not like I’m using it.”

“No way.” You shook your head. “I don’t know what you have there!”

“My apartment’s clean! Cleaner than yours ever was– I remember your–” Mic said a term you didn’t know the meaning of followed by “Disgusting!”

“I wasn’t talking about those.”

“Because you can’t,” Mic interrupted.

You put a finger in the air, “I’m staying at the hotel. The hotel is close to the train station and I’ll have to travel around for the case anyway. If it makes you feel better, I’ll leave my research here.”

“And if Kaneko finds you?”

You leaned back from Hizashi, you grabbed your chopsticks and chose a random topping floating in the broth. Tilting your head, you pondered his question and thought about what the right answer should be. If Akari were standing in front of you, in your hotel room, after everything she did. Looking back up at Mic, you shrugged. “Let her.”

When the meal was done, you and Mic had to go your separate ways for the morning. He had no problem giving you a refresher on gamma’s location, despite your constant reassurances for him not to. As predicted, the directions confused you into taking longer to leave the building. A good general idea based on your memory, turned into a jumble of lefts and rights. Spotting for “this” symbol over “that” one. Somehow to the gym before Eraser and his class. No one was heading out of the school from where you can, either. Trying your luck you pushed the door open, leading to a hallway that seemed to be in an ‘L’ shape. Exploring further, you spotted the double doors leading inside the gym. These doors were locked, however.

You leaned on the door, not understanding why the class wouldn’t arrive earlier. Didn’t the staff want the first years to get their license as soon as possible? When the time came around for you, you’d rush to one of the training areas whenever you could. The ticking clock on the wall counted the seconds of your growing impatience. It made it hard to focus on your own thoughts. The off white tiles on the floor stretched out into a blurred vision of mind numbing boredom, then there was an aggressive prodding.

You slid to the floor– no one was near the building. The small hide away surrounding the entrance would be fantastic for cover if villains ever got into the school. The hall was nice and flat too. You could throw a baseball at a good angle, have it bounce off the wall and knock someone out like that one ti— you needed something productive. Taking your phone out of your case, you checked the notifications. Nothing. Then you looked at your laptop. No one was coming yet, you had another twenty minutes, why not check that too?

Pulling out the laptop, muscle memory took over. It came to a halt when the page wouldn’t load, no connection to the wifi it said. Checking the schools network, you were surprised to know Nezu never changed the password. Refreshing the page, you finally got into your account. The usual night crew should start their shift now. You moved the cursor to your workload and smiled seeing a red circle on your inbox link. When you clicked it you were happy to see you got a message from Gold Rush, the coworker who volunteered to work on the home-side of the case while you were away. Clicking on the message icon, you hoped he could tell you about what he found while you were in the infirmary.

Unfortunately, he just messaged you to say he just clocked in and wanted to see if you landed ok. It wasn’t what you wanted to read, you sighed, but replied about your progress. He put a thumbs up on the message. From there you had to strain your eyes to read the next block of text. Gold planned to take another look around your neighborhood, ask around to see if anyone saw Akari going into the building before your apartment was demolished— check out the damage again, if you were “okay” with it. When it’s over, he’ll send his notes on the last few days before his shift ends.

Pressing your lips together, you typed “thank you” then stuffed the laptop in your briefcase. Everything should be fine. Gold was the one who found the postcard Akari left when you were out. You worked with him at the agency for years at this point. He pulled his weight and kept up with you fine. He can hold down what little fort is left, while you’re here. Helping hero trainees.

You closed your eyes, already exhausted at the prospect of standing up again, but you pushed against the floor. Hold onto the wall. Seethe at some sharp pain in your side for a half-second.

See. Everything will be fine.

How could it not be?

You stretched your arms out and then walked in circles. After a minute or two, the pain didn’t hurt as bad. Maybe calories were all you needed.

Then there was a faint buzzing down your spine. No echoes in the halls. Just a ticking clock and your beating heart.

A jolt.

It must be a group outside. Eraserhead and his class finally showed– no doubt about it. You went for your briefcase, not taking your eyes off the hallway. When muffled voices reached your ears, you were perfectly in the center holding the case at your side. There was another jolt, then a surge hit you full swing. The pain was gone and you felt alive.

What a lively—and/or terrified— group! You forgot how strong teenagers felt about things. Yet again, the last you were around this many of them was when you were a teenager who felt just as strong. If they were told about the exam prior, they’re either rushing to get the ball rolling or having their heart explode over the deadline.

Turning the corner, the sea of students was technicolor. And louder than you prepped for. You took it all in. First impressions are integral to how citizens, and therefore judges, view a hero. What were you working with?

The boy with glasses looked like a knight with tubes coming out of his legs– a speed quirk probably? You could see civilians going to him to get them somewhere safe. If he was as strong as he looked, he could pack a punch on larger villains on the way out.

Two students reminded you of Present Mic when he was a teenager. Both of them, a boy and a girl wearing jackets that made them look like little rockstars! The boy had an electricity motif going on, so anybody can roughly guess what his power is—and the girl was wearing boots! And they had speakers? She must have a sound quirk like Mic, fantastic! If they play their cards right, they’ll never go broke.

While you can guess the quirk of those three, many students’ quirks were up in the air. One boy, with a nasty scar over his eye, wore a plain, navy blue jumpsuit. Another boy wore one with black, white, and a bit of yellow–who also had a mutation affecting his elbows, but you couldn’t guess what his quirk would be. At least he was stylish.

When it came to the girls' uniforms you were disappointed. The designers were STILL giving trainees heels! How are they supposed to run top speed in busted terrain? Unbelievable!

Noticing the girls’ inadequate footwear opened the floodgates on the design flaws on the others. Lack of armor and padding on the boy with a giant tail and the girl with pink skin. Lack of support for the tallest girl wearing a unitard exposing her vital organs. She could be like Midnight and need skin exposure, but you doubt the support company has never seen a sports bra before. The worst sin you bore witness to is a short, purple kid wearing a diaper—a self-respecting hero wouldn’t design that!

The students in front of the line stopped chatting among themselves. Some jumped at the sight of you. The rest of the class went quiet as they assessed you, this stranger, standing in the middle of their hallway where you don’t belong.

“I’m not a villain.”

No one laughed. The students’ expressions were vacant, they probably thought you were a dork. Your finger twitched as you thought of throwing your hand up and peacing out of there. Why did you volunteer for this position? You stood your ground and stared ahead. Judgemental teenagers won’t be the end of your resolve.

Eraser turned the corner, walking ahead of the silent crowd. “You showed up early.”

“I don’t show up late.”

Toward the end of the line of students Midnight waved at you as she stood with two other men. One looked like a cinder block-snowman, the other had a swanky trenchcoat and bared his teeth. You waved back at your friend, and a few students turned toward the back of the line. Eraser gestured to everyone, Midnight and the other two teachers included, to go inside the Gym. There’s something he had to take care of and he’ll be back in a minute, he said before giving the key to the boy with the knight outfit. The boy took the key with extreme duty, saying he was honored for the responsibility. Nice to know who the energetic one is.

Eraser handed you blue file folders, similar to the ones you put in your briefcase earlier then started walking ahead of you. He explained the folders had the quirks of the students you’re working with. He took you to another door he had to unlock. It was a sharp contrast to the bright hallways from before. Some cobwebs hung from the dim ceiling and the stair railing. This was the type of place a killer would drag a victim to hold them for a few days. When he turned the light switch on, it was still darker than the outside, but not the worst place you’ve been too.

Eraser approached the table against the wall holding a couple of computer monitors. He set up the tablet he tucked under his arm to the primary computer, explaining how to flip through the cameras. He said you can take notes on the tablet or in folders, but no matter what he’d need the tablet back. If you wanted anything to think over then you’d need to take notes manually, or bust out your own laptop.

“I know for the best results, you need time to study the students, but try to wrap it up in around the twenty minute mark,” he explained as he finished setting up. He rolled a chair from the right of the table for you to sit. After everything from earlier, it was hard to believe you both were being professional about this. He must really want his class to pass. “Time is short, and there’s a lot to see in-person too.”

You sat, swiveling the chair. “Got it. No loitering,” you tapped the screen experimentally and the camera shifted. Eraser didn’t react to the statement, but you knew better than to expect him too. You were just here for the job.

Eraser asked if you had anything you needed to know anything else. Scanning the room again, you settled on asking where the stairs led. Apparently, it was an observation room. He said you could watch the class up there with you and leave the equipment alone; but he knew for a fact why you wouldn’t.

You minded your manners and thanked him for setting up for you before he left for his class. You shook your head as the door shut, his class. Just as you said before, he may have been good with children, but Eraser being a teacher voluntarily was weird. Weirder being alone in a secret backroom.

The air brushed against your neck giving you chills. Where you sit, anyone can come behind you from either the stairs or the door if you weren’t mindful. You shifted the position of the chair’s seat toward the blank wall. With the stairwell’s rotation starting on your right and the table being under the “left” portion of the room, you should have better access to see everything that way.

Soon, Eraser entered Gamma. He talked to his class for a while. Safe to say, it was about the exam. Midnight stepped beside him, her finger pointing in the air, then Cinderblock did the same thing. It was a cult practice. After he spoke, he turned around and walked away from the group. The boy in the knight outfit was giving a reaction to the Smile Man. The man wasn’t opening his mouth though— were they having a psychic conversation? The knight was pleased by what the Smile Man told him. Other students were giving him weird looks, further proving the psychic theory.

Eraser spoke again and then the towers of rocks grew to the ceiling. Wait… You switch the camera view on one of the monitors and the structures reached 90% of the way to the ceiling. Back on the ground Smile Man threw up and more of himself formed, gross, but whatever gets the job done? The students were used to it at this point, because they were obviously hyped.

Starting now, you have twenty minutes to gather as much intel as possible. You clicked the screen to change the camera as fast as possible. The pink, moth girl worked with a substance oozing from her skin. A shorter boy, with a mutant quirk and a cloak, walked with Smile Man toward a farther corner of the gym to a cave structure. The boy with the tail started battling with a Smile Man and he was doing rather well. His combat skills were up-to-par, something undervalued considering not ALL villains are interested in leveling a city.

You switched the camera and nausea hit the back of your throat. The students were walking up the structures and there were no railings. OSHA would have a field day over these violations. Nausea hit you again when you remembered you’d have to join on said OSHA violations. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Eraser agreed to let you tutor his class to torment you. Like in the second you brought up the quid pro quo, he thought of the best way to make you quit and violate the agreement. Pushing the dread aside, you wrote as many notes on the students as you could before twenty minutes were over.

Fun fact: systems change all the time during American Licensing Exams. It’s part of the reason why first impressions matter so much. A good impression can add points, or prevent you from losing points in deduction-based systems. A bad impression will have the reverse effect, and frame everything someone does negatively. It’s easy to say only technical skills should matter, but you need to expect the people to have poor judgment if you want the students to succeed.

You looked at the time and saw you had four minutes before close. You rushed to finish your last thoughts on the student– the boy from the file earlier, so you can join everyone at the gym. You thought about what advice you should give to him. It was clear from how he hit he put a lot of thought into strength, but if he could work on his speed— You wrote it all down, but then you heard the most GRATING ring you can imagine coming from your side. You recoiled at the sound and saw the monitors were frozen. The tablet on your side blinded you with harsh, white light.

You squinted at the tablet, your head starting to hurt from the obnoxious, high pitch. You wanted it to stop. You shot from the chair, yanking the cords out of the device as it beeped at you for a password. On the screen, there was a crude image of two stick figures– an adult and a child.

Eraser put a parental lock on the tablet.

Taglist:

@lonelyghosts-stuff

#mha x reader #bnha x reader #aizawa x reader #shouta aizawa x reader #mha x female reader #aizawa shouta x reader #aizawa x you #retrospective by dot #aizawa x y/n #bnha aizawa

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agentgrange · 7 months ago

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Hey, I know the core Delta Green team’s politics aren’t all great, but I feel like the take that the take that their work is pro surveillance state is pretty uncharitable. I feel like a core theme of the modern setting is that the horrible actions of agents defending against the unnatural aren’t justified, and you can pretty easily draw that over to real world actions of our government “protecting” us from criminals and terrorists not being worth the human cost of the war on drugs and the war on terror.

I'm definitely a lot more cynical toward ArcDream for a few perhaps overly-specific reasons, and I've struggled to find a way to concisely articulate this vibe I've had about it. I think I'd like to do a more detailed breakdown /retrospective series on the more recent campaign and scenario guide to really get into the weeds of it.

The short of it is that you aren't wrong, but I think a lot of modern Delta Green's issues with the security state comes from this uniquely American idea of being "apolitically anti-authoritarian, anti-big government." It never makes the leap to being anti-imperialist or understanding how all these post-9/11 systems were just the mechanisms of global intervention and counter-insurgency turning inward. Having high speed low drag operators from the Program salting the Hindu Kush canoeing the Kandahar Giant in between skirmishes with the Taliban is badass, but spying on Americans or having those same teams operate domestically is bad. There are things that we do over there that we shouldn't be doing to American citizens over here.

Add to that the fact that the differences between the Outlaws and the Program, which could be fertile ground for saying something interesting, mostly comes down to "do want to play the old way like the 90s version where you have a shoestring budget or do you want to be a kitted out marauder with close air support?" It feels like there's an ideological contradiction at the heart of Delta Green that should imply nuance, but when you go looking for it you'll be hard pressed to find much substance-- hell at times it goes out of its way to distance itself from any idea of a real political conspiracy. Its a game about government conspiracies, that seems embarrassed to talk about government conspiracies. They just want to use it as an aesthetic backdrop to tell a story set in the mythos where you can blow up a Shoggoth with an AT4

Look, I don't need every piece of media to conform uniquely to my personal politics for me to enjoy it. But for me Fall of Delta Green feels like it walked away with all the more interesting ideas that made the original 90s game compelling, and demonstrates a more clear picture than modern DGs amorphous "spying is bad but so are terrorists and political extremists are also bad. The system is flawed but also you have to work within the system to save the world." Fall of Delta Green revolves around this central idea of "yeah you are a piece of shit, and all this shit catches up to you in 1970. But for 10 years you can do whatever you think you can get away with so don't even bother taking your foot off the gas." It tells you, very explicitly, how the story ends and what all this interventionism is heading towards before you even start the game. Add to that Fall of Delta Green's Grant-Morrison-esque off the rails worldbuilding about syndemes that's not afraid to get really high concept and... I don't know. I just prefer it more, personally.

#delta green #field scribbles

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popculturebuffet · 2 months ago

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Transformers: Windblade International Women's Day Special

Hello all you happy autobots and welcome to my international women's day special!

So last year as part of my ongoing retrospective of Transformers More than Meets the Eye, aka one of my faviorite comics ever, for patreon Brotoman.EXE, I took a look at it's sister series Robots in Disguise. And i'm fine.. just...

For those less familiar on paper RID was supposed to be a gritty political intrigue type series. Game of thrones with robots to More than Meets the Eye's combination of Star Trek and JLI also with robots. In practice... it's a bunch of assholes constantly squabbling while Starscream is the best. RID had a great premise, exploring a rebuilding cybertron fractured by centuries of war and the civilians who weren't exactly stoked about said war, but wasted it.

Thankfully after the dark cybertron crossover things got transformed: RID was now about Optimus and a group of autobots heading to earth for shenanigans, crossovers and a few title changes, leaving a gap open for a new cybertron set book. Enter Windblade.

Windblade was part of hasbro's "fan built bot" inittiave.. something I just found out exists. It allowed fans to help design a new character.. the team still clearly had ideas in mind, but select parts were voted on by us. It's a nice way to engage fans.

So her traits were slowly selected: An autobot with a jet alt mode, a sword, a red and black color scheme and a valiant personality. I would've prefered wild man (or wild woman in this case), but hey. A second round determined her name and gender. The last two selections would be reworked: Her home city was chosen.. but as a female transformer she was reworked to be from another planet as the bots on cybertron were all male at birth, while her generalized telepathy became a cityspeaker. Both are changes I have no issue with: the former fits into the unvierse better and the latter is just a cooler more speciality skill with a lot more intresting lore and character stuff attached. I find this whole concept fun and simple: a way to add a new character into the books but give writers and artists wiggle room. Her design was contriversal from what I can tell with a lot of fans fearing her kabuki look was another drift. Me I think it works, especially with the given context: Windblade's story is an immigrant story: she's new to cybertron, Starscream resents her alien status, so it fits she has a deisgn that's diffrent from most g1 designs, more elligant and ornate. It shows off her status as a Cityspeaker is a MASSIVE deal on their homeworld and crucial to cybertron's survival, but also her fish out of water status: she was absent for the war and now has to dive into a world that she HOPED would be helpful.. but instead is a cesspit of decption, intrigue and is barely holding on. I admitely don't know much about kabuki, but unlike drift it at least feels like the artists did their research instead of going off a 12 year old's scribblings about samurai.

Finally we unfortunatley have to talk about a transfomers Legend. Simon Furman is impossible to untangle from transformers legacy , creating Primus itself, finishign the marvel run of the book, continuing his run and ending it on his terms at idw, and launching this very continuity.

He also decided to make a massive ass of himself over this very book. See Simon has it in his head the Transformers are a genderless race. That they have no concept of it and thus are beyond it. As such he's ALWAYS hated the idea of female transformers. Can't stand them. When forced to use arcee in the uk comics he made it a stink of humans asking for a female transfomer then being offended at her design, while the autobots were confused why humanity cared about gender.

So when adding Arcee to IDW he made one of the most infamous stories in all of transformers... on the level of otptimus prime making out with a human to unlock his power, devistator's literal truk nuts or.. these guys

So in IDW continuity Arcee was forcibly switched from Male to Female and torturned into insanity by the evil scientest Jhiaxus. Just reading that sentence you the astute reader can proably see the mountain of issues: Equating being a woman with torture, being trans with a mad scientst experiment, either of the above with mental illness and ptsd. It's.. ti's bad. I've read the issue and while it has been a while it wasn't great. This wasn't the INTENTION, Furman jsut wanted to explore what would happen if a genderless race was forced into a gender.

The problem Furman ignores and later would gripe about in the comments section, is that the transformers.. are male coded. They use male pronouns and cybetron made their bots traditionally masculine. It was concived as a toyline for boys in the 80's. Of course the bulk of characters are male coded. As many a commentor tried in vain to point out to furman, they are not non binary (Andrgnys was the term used), they have a concept of gender. It's why James Roberts was able to make a cast load of gay later: If the race is all male, then of course most of the relationships would be male and thus allowed him to throw in gay characters after he realized Chromedome and Rewind were less "good buddies" and more "husbands". Hence the invention of Condjux Endura and Prowl being Chromedome's bitter ex. As Roberts shows you CAN play with this gloriously, but he accepted transformers are male coded. It's why Rebecca Sugar made the Gem race in steven universe female: in addition to making a female mostly warrior race, something rare in fiction beyond sterotypes, it allowed her to easily make most of the main cast gay or pan without the censors getting pissy at first. They did eventually but the alien thing helped slide it on by.

You CAN have aliens who are genderfluid or genderless.. but the transformers just aren't. He could've made them that way, tried having the desgins tweaked, but because he can't disgnuish between a mono gender and non binary, the transformers wound up being male and the easy fix to make more cisgender female transformers was just have other cybertronian colonies. Most of transformerdom is at most mildly puzzled at the concept of a new gender and moves on. Simple.

Now as for why all this matters to windblade for those unaware Scott had a tumblr at the time , as this platform was popular at the time, and answered questions as I do. Instead of talking about various animated series from various networks, she answered questions about the upcoming book before everyone properly debuted in dark cybertron, since these things get announced months in advance. She then was asked the question: What did she think about ARcee's idw origin. Her exact response

What are your thoughts on the IDW Arcee origin that Furman made?

Okay, this question has come up a lot and it’s time to finally answer.

In a vacuum, Furman’s story is completely legitimate. The idea that someone is fundamentally changed against their will and struggles/rages against that is a really interesting idea. In fact, I wrote a very similar thing with the Dinobots. It taps into a deep human fear that God exists and is apathetic to/causes our pain.

Also dealing with characters that are literally alien naturally leads writers to play with/explore what aspects of humanity do and do not translate: are they alive? does Primus really equate to God if they have concrete knowledge of his existance? what does it mean to be male/female in a non-reproductive species?

The issues I have with Furman’s choice is that we don’t exist in a vacuum and the suggestion that 1. women only exist in aberration 2. being a women is inherently traumatic 3. being a women has any correlation to mental illness are extremely upsetting. Do I think Furman was trying to make a statement about human women with Arcee’s origins? No. In fact, the largest share of blame lies with the tokenization of women in the brand in general. If Arcee was one of many women transformers and she became female in this manner, it would not be an issue for women writ large (although still troubling for the transgender community). It is because she is the ONLY women (and that this story ensures that she will ALWAYS BE the only woman) that Arcee’s story becomes untenable.

Hopefully John, James and I have come up with a way around this Gordian Knot that will satisfy the fan-base, but satisfying-or-no, the most immediate imperative is to ENSURE this story does not continue to keep women readers, fans and characters at arm’s length from the brand. I’ve often said that everyone should feel that they are allowed to like Transformers and it is my complete and utter privilege to take this next step to make that happen.

TLDR version: Arcee’s origin is offensive because we don’t have any other female origins to balance it. We’re working on it, stay tuned.

PS To fans that still claim Transformers are asexual: Academically, you have legitimate standing, but practically, ask yourself this: Jazz has been voice by actors from three different races over the years. If, in the next video game, Jazz was voiced by a woman, would you feel the character had been changed at all? If so, you do not perceive Transformers to be asexual. If not, you are a rare, rare bird indeed.

I quoted it in full to illustrate a few things: Scott is nothing but respectful and even in 2014 was keenly aware of the needs of the trans community. She even started using cisgender when informed it was the proper term for Windblade. It's a very small bar but given the society we live in, it's nice a writer clears it at all. She also does not directly attack furman. She gets why he made the mistake, points it out and makes the valid point that the issue is largely that transformers barely cares about it's female fans and is working to fix that. It is a rational, well thought out response and something necessary to adress given what a clusterfuck spotlight arcee is. She responded to all of this like a rational adult. Furman's response to her

Yeah Simon Furman's response to this is one of the most painful, defensive and mind boggling essays I have ever read. Furman INSISITS the transformers are genderless, cannot grasp that his work does not exist in a vaccum, and that he is not right and any mentions of the cartoon by scott or the comics irk him. He also somehow bafflingly thinks the relationships in MTMTE are metaphors

"James’ run is being rightly lauded and it had been done by using metaphors not direct correlations. Cyclonus and Tailgate’s early relationship can be viewed as a metaphor for a domestic violence situation but it is not literally that. "

... it.. it is literally that. They have romantic feelings and Cyclonus beats Tailgate at one point. It's domestic abuse. They grow past it but the way Cyclonus can treat tailgate is abusive. They.. .they can have relationships Simon. Being genderless or non binary does not = asexual or aromantic.

Mr Furman just.. genuinely DOES not get that and refuses to get that. The contrast is night and day: Scott was polite, wasn't trying to be conforntational to a colleuge, asked other communities for their imput and made a persuasive argument. Furman just cherry picks the sections of her answer that bothered him and hammers the same dumb argument again and again and onto the comments which yes I did read the bulk of.

Shockingly for early 2010's internet comments: their civil. Theirs some assholery and Furman apparently removed full on bigots. But it's a LONG stream of people telling furman he's wrong while he plugs his ears and goes THEY DON'T HAVE GENDER, OTHER MEDIA DOSEN'T MATER TO THIS VERSION EVEN THOUGH IT REFLECTS HOW PEOPLE SEE THESE CHARACTERS, I'M RIGHT JUST LET ME BE RIGHT, AT LEAST ONE WOMAN AGREED WITH ME

It's a case of a creator getting so caught up in his ego he can't see other perspectives and refuses to alter his. Furman was never my hero, but I know he was a hero to many a transformers fan and it's sad he had to tank his own reputation being a defensive asshole. It's not the worst public blowup of one's rep i've seen. He isn't parading around half assed oversexualized art of women like it's some great victory like frank cho or writing heroic comics about Q of Quanon like chuck dixon. He just kinda sucks and refused to admit he was wrong and we sadly had to spend a LOT of this review talking about that.

Thankfully sad old man time is older and we can talk about how good this book is. While Windblade apparently got an eh from most I find it to be one of the best idw transformers books out of the pile i've read. While that isnt' the highest bar the fact it even nears the quality of MTMTE is praise alone. It's an excellent book about a genuinely kind and decent person with pure motives enterting a world where such a thing has been lost in a sea of war and deception. It's a wonderful four issue series that to two sequels: a decent one and an utterly fantastic one and it's under the cut.

We begin with a narration telling us it's the dawn of the new era. It's something I skipped over with MTMTE sumarizing the three pillars of this new ear: Optimus for RID, Megatron for MTMTE and Windblade for take a wild guess.

So quick catchup for those who didn't read the previous reviews or arent' as familiar with IDW Comics: The War is Over. The Autobots won.. but got nothing out of it: Cybertron is free.. but the final fight left it in a dangerous state that left Iacon the last safe harbor and all the various neutrals blaming the autobots for something that genuinely wasn't their fault. The autobots then split: Bumblebee wanted to stay and work things out, Rodimus wanted to go on a grand quest to prove his deep seated self loathing and inferority complex wrong. Optimus opted out enteriely to help with the healing.

This left cybertron in the hands of bumblebee.. who fumbled his time as leader, spending most of it getting bitched out by what were essentailly his seconds in command: Prowl, who had turned into an authortarian shithead over the years and is only going to get worse having already manipualted the lost light's command into taking a serial killer on board as prisoner, something that went about as well as you'd expect, and was such a bad person no one noticed he got mind controlled or fully bought he was. The other was Metalhawk, a self righteous asshole who constantly blamed the Autobots for fighting a war that gave him the freedom to be a self righteous asshole.

This left Cybertron with leadership no one on it wanted who bickered constantly instead of doing things. So instead.. they got Starscream. Starscream did Trumps bit before trumps: he manipulated assholes with actual problems into aiming their anger at whatever he wanted. The only differnce is Starscream has actual style. He easily slid into leadership and after Megatrons return used that to exile most of the autbots to the wilderness to die. Not in those words, unlike trump he has subtly: it was give up being an autobot or leave. Add in a giant robot picking him as robot jesus and it was pretty easy.

Starscream's reign wasn't all sunshine lollypops and rainbow cherry drops as Dark Cybertron nearly dethroned him: the reveal the prophecy of him as a god king also meant cybertron's destruction didn't go well. But since huge horrifying disasters haven't stopped politicans before, and the apocalypse was canceled, Starscream was able to skate by. He still had the NAILS and with the Autbots having saved the world, made an uneasy peace with them. None of them LIKED him but they couldnt' just dethrone him and expect cybertron to not devolve into another war.

So the autobots reluctantly left Starscream in charge and went off to do their own thing.. with a few left behind to try and live their lives and hope he dosen't blow up the planet which sounds.. totally.. t..totally unfamilar

As for our heroine, Windblade was introduced during the crossover. She was sent by everyone's faviorite ace rimmer cosplayer Thunderclash along with her best friends Chromia and Nautica. These three come from Caminus. Long ago when it was an empire Cybertron spread out, sending out titans, transformers the size of cities. The concept of city sized transformers isn't new, Metroplex has existed for some time, but I like what these comics do with it, making them unfathomable giant beings. They think and feel like any bots.. but their thoughts are so massive, dense and complicated their hard to speak to.

Hence the cityspeakers, specialized transformers who can telepathically communicate with titans. It's why Windblade has her kabuki makeup: to pay homage to caminus and why Thunderclash called on her. Windblade managed to save metroplex during the crossover with the help of the lost light and her own skills, turning the tide against Shockwaves own titan.. but leaving him a badly damaged wreck. Nautica went with the lost light while Windblade stayed behind to be the voice of a city. Chromia stayed behind for windblade.

The series slowly fleshes out Windblade and Scott does so wonderfully: Windblade is an optimist, badly wanting the best for people and having come expecting cybertron to be this kind, wonderful new empire finally free from war that could help her own people. As we find out in an excellent swerve at the end of the first issue.. Caminus is not doing well. As we find out later their resources are so stretched they'll only last a hundred years if lucky.

As you can tell... that didn't happen. Windblade's story is of an idealist, a genuinely good person who has pure goals: heal metroplex, heal cybetron and hopefully in turn get Caminus better. In most other transformers works she'd be the protaganist, working with optimus and co to save the world no matter the cost even if things got murky.

But that's not the world she gets. She gets a cybetron badly damaged by the war and everything after, barely holding on, a titan that's barely functioning despite his best efforts, and a leader who openly threatens and accuses her twice not because she did anything wrong but because he can't share the spotlight. Starscream blames her for power outages and a series of bombings.

She's the perfect foil for starscream: both are jets, both are red, but both could not be more diffrent. Windblade only wants to help. She's kind compassionate and empathetic. She wants a better world for cybertron and caminus and will do what it takes. When hunting down waspinator for a lead later, her friend Chromia just.. chases after the poor guy after he bolts, who it turn sout only bolted because EVERYONE beats him up. Her response? Be genuinely contrite, kind yet firm. She gets exactly the info she needs and an ally, if one who will flee at the first time of danger.

Starscream.. well after some interviews Windblade herself puts it best

Starscream is at his most evil so far here. Previously I rooted for him in RiD. He was a scumbag sure.. but he was the only COMPITENT scumbag. Prowl was a facist both with and without brainwashing, Bumblebee focused more on internal politics than helping anyone, and Metalhawk was a self righteous ass. There were other characters who were likeable, Blurr, Ironhide, Wheeljack, but none of them had any power to do anything about the world around them. It's hard not to vote for the bad guy when he's the only one actually trying. Sure he wasn't really solving cybetron's issues either, but at least he was playing the game.

Here since he's largely not gesturing for the public or metalhawk... he's a cold monster. There was a CHANCE he could've changed.. but killing metalhawk, public service or not, was the tippping point: killing the only person who for some unknown reason belivied him in was it. Winblade GENUINELY hoped he wasn't as bad as his rep or his actions.. starscream could've played her... but he dosen't want to. Starscream spent so long clawing to the top, trying to overthrow megatron, trying to worm his way to the kingship, getting declared the chosen one, he finally has everything... and he can't let himself enjoy it. Because suddenly there's a charasmatic bot who he can't just kill or banish, one who makes friends easy, and has nothing but pure motives. She's another optimus.. and he can't let that exist.

He's not so hard on windblade because he couldn't play her but because he knows the longer she's around, the more power she gets. If he can pick her off NOW while she's just a naive visitor, then he wins. And that's what fucks him over: before he played the long game, slowly earning public sympathy, getting the public's support, doing what a politican, even a complete monster whose hollowed out inside, does. He played the game. But now becaues he dosen't want to play again he's just trying to break everything he wants or sees as a remote threat.

He's still a threat himself, still easily outmaneuvers our hero at first: She finds his illicit mine? He sends goons. They survive the ambush? He throws everyone in prison and plans to frame them for his crimes. What makes starscream fascinating here is even when throwing a tantrum because baby not getting enough attention.. he's still fucking terrifying. He has windblade fucking tortured, only stopping when he realizes "No she really didn't blow herself up to get points that's a you thing". He CAN maneuver things and as seen in the climax easily fights off most of the cast and nearly kills windblade till she plugs herself into the city itself. This book does a fantastic job making starscream terrifying and despite his complexity not showing as much.. he's still engaging.

He's also what helps windblade slowly develop: She starts just trying to do the right thing.. but quickly proves to be far more capable, far more badass and far more of a fighter and manipulator than Starscream could've imagined. The second she realizes he's actively trying to kill her... she stops seeing the best in him. I mean think about it.. all it took was one day of her taking him seriously as a threat and she finds out he has a mining operation to find an ore tha twould make him invincible, makes allies easy because no one like starscream and easily revolts even escaping jail. He still comes CLOSE to beating her.. but in a day she has proof off his crimes, has proven she can protect that proof. It's a throughly engaging back and forth: Windblade may be mildly outnumbered.. but she's not giving up. She may speak for the city.. but she can damn well fight for it. She still has lessons to learn like her foes can fly, but she learns them as she goes.

She also gets a hard truth in the big twist.. and it's one I have mixed feelings on. Starscream is not behind the bombings. Nor is his minion rattrap and since we're on the topic I do like IDW rattrap to a point, but I liked him more when he was more weasely and spineless, as it fit early beast wars rattrap's characterization than a torturing monster. I also questoin why IDW only trickled in two beast wars characters at all. Glad to have them but it's still just.. why. You have a massive franchise to mine why are you like this.

Back on topic this brings us to our third lead.. and our secondary Villian, Chromia. Chromia is seemingly windblade's only friend besides ironhide at first, her bodyguard, her best friend and perhaps more. I do TRY not to pair up every remotely romantic friendship I see.. but int his ecase.. Chormia tries to open a space bridge, endagering all or cybetron... to save Windblade> She also talks about seeing enough of her tail fans, aka her ass. There.. isn't a straight explination for either thing.

Chromia is a mixed bag mostly because the series bein gshort.. dosent' really have time to unpack it and I don't remember the followups really doing much to do so. Windblade's best freind betrays her in a horrific way and we just.. don't get time to process it. Maybe when I revisit the other series, as I intend to, we'll get a better arc.

I do like the position it puts windblade in for the climax. It complete's the journey she's been on.. as she plays starscream. His silence and stopping the mining shit.. and in exchange.. other worlds. Caminus isn't the ONLY colony and when theyf ind them.. he can have the credit. It's her using her good nature.. to play his game. She geninely just wants a better world. CYbetron won't last, caminus won't last... so who cares who the fuck gets the credit. It also gives her time WITHOUT him trying to murder her. She takes the blame for Chromia not to save her entirely, but because it puts her in a better positoin: Starscream THINKS he has dirt on her, and while she'd take the fall if it happens, she has dirt on him. It's sneaky, underhanded.. but it feels way more organic than the supposdely "grey" actions of the autbots last series. Windblade is doing something shady.. but it's the only way to buy herself and caminus time. She can deal with starscream later. Right now she just wants a better world. And it's a question of CAN she keep up with this kind of thing and if so what will that make her? And it's a question we'll answer eventually.

So some scatterd thoughts. The art by sarah stone is fucking gorgeous. Truly amazing stuff. Nice digital work. It's expressive and cartoony but the line work and ink make it feel raw and real: it let's the transfromers be bold nad colorful.. but the skethciness helps underline how dark the story is.

I love the idea of the titans, them being these big larger than life beings.. and of metroplex, being a kind friend who adores his speaker and in her darkest hour helps pull her out. I also like the message of this: speakers are supposed to subsume themselves, be one with the city and answer only to others.. but windblade wins by being herself and selfless. By being a person, not consumed by duty but still bound to it. Being a cityspeaker is part of her.. but she is not metroplex. She is his friend. And she will fight for him.

Windblade.. is a masterpiece. Going over it again three times, ocne to read it, once for the first draft and again when that draft mostly done got ate by tumblr, it shows off just what a fantastic book this is. The pacing probably coudl've been slowed down a tad, but I get it. This was the pilot. The series would sadly always get punched with pacing, with the next one opening on a crossover we'll get to, the one after having to bridge series fast and till all are one having to wrap up quicker because IDW impulsively decided to reboot everything. Despite all this windblade is excellent and you should go find it in some corner of the internet while we wait for IDW to republish it. I"m pulling for you, we're all in this together.

#transformers windblade #windblade #chromia #starscream #rattrap #ironhide #waspinator #comics #marghreid scott #idw #transformers idw #idw publishing #robots #transformers

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riversimmone · 7 months ago

Text

Three's A Crowd - Chapter 9

RiverOfTheSand

Summary:

SasuSaku. He didn't mean to kill that man. He had simply reacted to being attacked. And now Konoha is forced to hunt down the rogue members of Team 7, or risk open war. Eventual NaruHina.

XXX

Read from the beginning. This is a work in progress story you can find on tumblr and AO3 and completed on FF.NET.

[All tumblr posts will be tagged ‘Three’s A Crowd’ with their corresponding chapter for quick and easy access.]

Enjoy. :)

Chapter Nine: Shared Silence.

Sometimes he felt like he was someone else, like another person was living his life for him. There was a darkness inside of him that he couldn't explain, that he couldn't excuse and that he couldn't control. The stench of his mistake permeated his senses for days after Sasuke Uchiha had killed the brother of the fire daimyo.

He'd awoken from a dream-like state only to realise that he hadn't been imagining things. And no matter how he'd felt at the time, or the excuses he'd told himself in those moments of bloodlust, he hadn't meant to kill the old man. He wanted to be better than that, having left Konoha not as an act of disloyalty, but to follow the faint lead that Orochimaru had left behind.

In retrospect, three Genin who had just lost their loved ones and were barely out of the academy weren't going to be able to take down the Sannin. But really, killing Orochimaru wasn't something they often talked about. The subject was raised so rarely that there had been no actual discussion on how they would do it. They had never entertained the idea that they would be a match for the snake. But Sasuke wouldn't stay in Konoha knowing that hunting down that monster wasn't even being considered. He couldn't walk the streets of Konoha, pretend it wasn't going to happen again, and never try to do anything about it.

The final straw in his decision had been partly overhearing the elders, but also discovering that Orochimaru had stolen Uchiha relics, not to mention the Uchiha clan (or what was left of it) was the main reason for his attack.

So he had to get stronger, he had to find the snake and kill him, even if it was the last thing he ever did. But Konoha was rebuilding too slowly and everyone was needed in the reconstruction efforts. It left him feeling useless, fidgety, and frustrated. These were never good combinations in him. He wasn't normally so rash or impatient, and the shift in his perspective, his realisation that staying in Konoha was just hampering his desire for revenge, was a great motivation to leave. He'd often wondered what would've happened if Sakura hadn't realised what he was about to do and insisted on coming with him. She was more brains than brawn back in the academy, but after their numerous training sessions together, he'd seen a kind of strength in her that no-one else had bothered to look for. It might've had something to do with why he'd eventually given in to her romantic advances.

And then there was Naruto. He understood the baka's desire not to be left out, but never got how he could turn his back on his dream to one day become Hokage. If he'd stayed in Konoha, he might've one day accomplished that. It was impossible now. That blonde idiot confused him to no end.

But now, with the sun setting and the dark undergrowth of surrounding woodland as his destination for the night, Sasuke didn't know what he wanted anymore. He didn't know if there was any point in this quest for revenge. They'd been on the road for six years, found out more about Orochimaru's movements than anyone else in Konoha, but were they strong enough? His Sharingan was powerful, but he worried it wouldn't be enough when the time came. What they needed was more power.

He glanced backward discreetly as the sounds of early evening insects filled the tense silence around him. Just like they had with the caravan, Sakura and Naruto were giving Sasuke a wide berth. She'd tried to approach the Uchiha but he wasn't responsive, making her worry even more for him. They needed to get to Kumo, get this mission over and done with, and then take some time off. Maybe even splurge on paying to occupy an entire bathhouse to themselves for awhile. They definitely needed something to soak away this stench around them.

Sakura remembered the first time Sasuke had killed unnecessarily – he'd gotten his Sharingan before they left Konoha, but the first time he'd used it after going rogue, he'd killed without thinking. The pinkette had had nightmares for weeks about those screams. Since then, he'd only let his bloodlust overwhelm his rational mind a few times, and it still terrified her, what his Sharingan was capable of. But this time, it hadn't been his kekkei genkai – he'd used the sword to kill the old man. Sakura had spent the last couple of days watching him silently, occasionally brushing his arm in a gentle, comforting way, with no response.

This was definitely different from the other times. Maybe he'd finally snapped…

So she cried herself to sleep, silently of course – she'd long given up on the weak Sakura who wore her heart on her sleeve. Naruto wasn't fairing any better, having seemingly lost his voice and didn't even try to approach Sasuke. He kept close to Sakura however, only moving away when a particularly nasty glare from Sasuke (glinted red) was directed at him. He just wanted to comfort the only person in Kitsúne that wasn't possessed.

Neither Sakura nor Sasuke knew about the Kyuubi… Naruto had used its chakra occasionally, but only when pushed to. He wanted to tell them, but every time the chance presented itself, fear clutched at his chest. After all, he wouldn't be surprised if they wanted nothing to do with him afterward. Orochimaru may have engineered the attack on the leaf that ruined their lives, but the hand that had been the coup de grâce had been a jinchuriki.

X X X

They looked more sombre than she'd have thought possible. Tsunade surveyed Team Guy in the wake of their mission report, her eyes lingering on Neji, who was the only one looking slightly furious. Someone powerful had fooled his Byakugan (even though it had only succeeded because Neji had never seen that genjutsu before) and the Hokage thought immediately of Sasuke Uchiha's Sharingan. She kept this to herself however, as it was still considered top secret – rumours abound about many rogue Shinobi but some facts were easier to piece together than others. There had been a string of people with memory loss in wave country six months ago, and in the land of wind several weeks before that.

Tsunade had long believed that genjutsu was more destructive than most ninjutsu as the mind was a delicate thing – far more difficult to heal than a normal injury. It was why she took it more seriously – after all, one of the most powerful clans to ever exist excelled in genjutsu.

'Well, they used to.'

She sighed. And if Sasuke Uchiha had something to do with what was going on, there wasn't much she could do about it, especially if he'd progressed with his Sharingan enough to affect the battleground in the way Neji had describe. Fortunately, even though they hadn't heard or seen from any of the former members of Team Seven for six years, their motivations had nothing to do with harming Konohagakure.

Shizune knocked on the Hokage's door, waited for the "enter" from Tsunade and then bowed. "I have Kakashi Hatake for you ma'am, as requested."

"Thank you Shizune."

Guy greeted his eternal rival jovially, re-sparking some of his normally upbeat disposition, and Kakashi just sighed deeply. He really wasn't in the mood for one of Guy's speeches, and tuned out as the spandex clad man started on about how his youth had betrayed him and having this eternal rival around was sure to bring it back. (Okay… so the tuning out hadn't actually worked this time – he was getting old after all.)

"Kakashi," Tsunade said. "Fetch Kurenai Yuhi's team. She's taking some time off so you'll be her replacement on squad eight."

'Why couldn't Shizune have just done that?' "Yes Lady Hokage," Kakashi shunshined out and Gai frowned.

"Are you sure it's wise sending out another team?" He asked.

"The perpetrators know our faces," Tenten said, her eyes on Neji however – he was watching and listening but not making any input.

"Yes, but they'll still stand out as Konoha ninja, so in the end, what does that matter?"

"Guy," Tsunade said, "you're not being left out. I have a separate mission for you. Just wait until Kakashi returns with the others," she added as he moved to interrupt.

Tenten kept her worried eyes on Neji the entire time, but it didn't take Kakashi long to track down Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame and Hinata Hyuuga. Tsunade stood up and moved in front of her desk, leaning back on it wearily. She was older than she looked of course, and right now, she was feeling it.

"Are we to move as two teams?" Lee asked, looking very excited about that possibility.

"No. I've sent a message to Kumo," Tsunade said, "and their informants have placed the rogues somewhere between the southern border to the land of frost and lightning country. While Team Kakashi–" (Kiba growled insolently at this title) "–goes ahead to scout out the area, I want Team Guy to stay in their shadow. You are to follow them and not make yourself known unless you encounter resistance."

"Lady Hokage?" Hinata asked, bowing slightly. "What about the rumours of Kitsúne being in the land of frost? Is this connected?"

Tsunade exchanged a worried look with Shizune. "Actually, you might encounter them. I've been putting together all the information we have of them and I think I've figured out who they are."

X X X

#sasusaku #sasuke x sakura #fanfiction #my ao3 #All images are not mine #MULTICHAPTERED FANFICTION #Three's A Crowd #Chapter 9

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