#this went from concept to a whole setup post so here we go

[mothmanatemysister]

Doing the whole '31 horror films in 31 days' for October. Figured I'd double some of my posts here for the void/later on instead of clogging up my Letterboxd (mostly so I can rant about Rec and the whole Tristana Medeiros thing because IT DRIVES ME CRAZY, but that is for later).

Day 1 I rewatched the first [REC] and man this movie must have been so much better before Covid. It's still one of the best found footage films (after you get past the slow burn of the first 45 minutes), but those characters come across as such whiny assholes now. You've been in quarantine for less than 5 minutes and nothing has happened yet, quit complaining. Angela keeps talking about "We need to show people what happened here" when one guy just got bit in the neck and they don't even know about the infection. That's it by that point. 2 hours in and they act like it's been 12 years. I've sat in Six Flags lines longer than that.

Pablo y Manu are top tier horror characters. I'm always flip-flopping on Angela; some scenes she's fine, in others she's basically a screaming dinner bell and doing crazy nonsense that makes no sense unless you knew it was a horror film. The final scene elevates the whole film to absolute perfection and it is 1000% more horrifying if you know Tristana's backstory. I don't think there are any scans of the REC comic floating around (I read a copy someone had at ComicCon way back when I was a kid), but if I can find any I'll link them because it's almost mandatory reading for the series. I don't think they ever go into what really happened to her in any of the films themselves (though synopses mention it)

Day 2 was In a Violent Nature and apart from one very silly scene, it's way better than people said. I really liked the whole slasher POV setup; that first scene was horrifying when you think of how many real-life serial killers have spoken about doing that exact thing.

The toy car scene was worth the watch alone. I get the sense that the movie was made by people who wanted films like Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw to be deeper than they were (since anything for Jason like that is always just barely implied). I liked the little moments we get with Johnny, everything from the toy car to him getting surprised made him feel more real as one of these archetypes.

That yoga scene though...it went from 'I like this concept, choosing between a horrific murder or jumping to a possible death/injury is a great setup' to 'well that's just silly' way too fast. The subtle kills were way better, like that lake one. Makes me wish they kept in the original lake kill for the F13 remake.

Using a randomizer on Letterboxd to pick which films I watch each day, so fingers crossed that I get something good tomorrow.

[theboytatu]

se me olvida q nos podemos hablar en español... IGUAL, COMO ESTUVO EL CONCIERTO !!! Detalles... fotos .. videos POR FAVOR 😭😭😭 review

AHHH SI ES CIERTO! wowww que hermoso poder hablar en español también amo <3 but i'll just post this in english so everyone can understand it. honestly? it was hands down the best kpop concert i've been to hfksjdkkf (others i've seen were blackpink, nct 127 and loona) so it might not be a lot but holy shit. the crowd went APESHIT it was by far the best crowd for me and i think the best they have seen cause they said it too hfkdjfkg 😭 they sold out the venue and you could tell it was packed cause the energy was OFF THE WALLS....

so first the good things

in terms of their performance: man aespa have surely worked hard to beat the no stage presence allegations. i think you could really tell they've been on tour since the beginning of this year cause they have improved SOOO MUCH. they have developed a lot of crowd control skills and they truly interacted with us in there. giselle specially is a MASTER at interaction and i think the group benefits a lot from her

the vocals were great cause the backing track wasn't too loud and they did handheld mics for most of the setlist. ningning was working OVERTIME with the adlibs. winter did extended high notes for everything. they were so confident in their vocals it was amazing to see. there were no in-ear or sound issues as far as i could tell and the venue while not being the best acoustic wise it didn't mess with the experience. i do wanna say i'm sad there was no live band :( everything was just a recorded track

lastly PRODUCTION. oh man. OHHH MAN. this tour has a BUDGET cause the visuals were fucking lit 🔥 the whole stage setup was so good and the props were there, winter with the electric guitar is a HIGH point in this. in my experience there arent a lot of kpop groups that put so much thought into their design like this and aespa were milking tf out of the cybercore and kwangya concept cause the vcrs and screens were giving blade runner. i was mesmerized by the visuals in the screens

for the not so great things... I think their costume design was lacking so much 😭 there weren't a lot of costume changes and the outfits were pretty basic. they lacked cohesiveness and even for their solos it did feel like they just threw on whatever. SM insists on putting them in ugly ass school uniforms for like the entire last part of the set. and they use the shortest fucking skirt for ningning it makes me nauseous.

another weak point was the dancing. it simply didn't stand out as much as the rest of the stuff i mentioned but tbh the girls still put on a good show. they did full choreo for their biggest songs and the backup dancers helped elevate it a lot but a lot of the bsides didn't have or needed choreo you know? like im content with seeing them sing a great song rather than have them jump around the stage trying to do a bunch of choreo we don't even know. the moves were kinda meh and i get it cause they're bsides but yeah just stick to the full choreo for the title tracks.

but speaking of dancing, karina was SOOO good her solo was insane and she has truly improved so much as a main dancer! ningning blew us all out with her stuff too ngl that girl is the best dancer in the group after karina. bonus points for giselle as well cause she has definitely put in the work to become a better dancer and i appreciate how much she has improved her stage presence.

ok this got too long already hkdjdkkfg so i'll just leave some pics i took here! and ill go through my camera roll to see what's good enough to post later <3

[alottamoney]

Hey @perfectpoetryfest

I am that anon and I'll definitely remain anonymous coz I don't want a deranged jikkr like yourself coming anywhere near my blog.

I already said that this dumb thing doesn't matter to me at all but since you all have been coming to our blogs with these pics I thought I'll just let you know that those two aren't sitting together. Repeating this is making me feel dumb coz how is this so triggering for you that you've left 10+ comments arguing with admin??

I said that they aren't sitting together bcs jk's pic, which is clearer than that really blurry pic, where you all have pointed to a person who has a paper infront of his face as jk. The people surrounding jk are different than the ones sorrounding jm and that sheet for face person. Those were my only observations coz that's the most that you can observe from that microwave quality pic.

Didn't we get that very clear 59 and 60 pic yesterday? They are standing together in it and no one's denying it coz it's clear. They have enlisted together in a place where they know no one, it's only been 10 days, they are obviously going to stick together. I had already said this but you seem to have gotten stuck on the not sitting together part.

You didn't answer the admin's question as to why this is so important to you. Can you please answer this instead of skirting the que and asking a counter question? Why is this dumb thing so imp to you jikkrs that you are roaming around arguing with people over this? Everyone there is sitting with someone else, does that somehow prove that they are dating?

This is only the first batch of pics though. I am sure there will be more, clearer ones. You should put a hold on the gloating till then, although I will never understand what in these pics is even worth gloating about, even if they were sitting together these wouldn't even have been mid imo.

It's not like I don't know that tkkrs don't visit jikk blogs to gloat, we have our own set of shippers with similar mindset as you, we still have better things to gloat about. Speaking of pics worth gloating, did you not see that very clear tkk strip from jk's listening party? It was thankfully posted by jm first or your side would've jumped on the "tae is attention seeker" bandwagon again. Or that shirtless facetime one?

Did you not hear that jk wanted to join sdt as well? Said so himself with a very sad expression btw. Or that he sings "love songs" for tae? Or that he went out with not just tae but even his close friends? Goes on trips with tae(that pic where tae said they dressed each other) and his friends, that snowboarding one. He doesn't even need bh camera crew for those trips. You all desperately tried to paint that July sighting as a lover's retreat when we were pointing out at the clear presence of cameras and mics and it really turned out to be bh content after all.

Did you not watch that last bb? He wasn't even aware that jm still hadn't shaved his head. Now that's not very coupley of them is it?

This whole solo era has given us so many offcam (talking about bh cams here) interactions that tkkrs have made a whole calender out of them while jk and jm barely interacted for two mins outside of official setup. Your ship is nothing without bh. It was created by BH, is being relentlessly promoted by them and will def end the day they leave bh coz they were nowhere near each other without cameras the entire solo era . Jk even shared his solo with tae first.

Also, stop romanticising their military service ffs. Use some logic while thinking about this, I know it's a foreign concept to a lot of jikkrs but try for once. No queer couple in their right minds would want to go together in such an extremely homophobic place. Do you think a couple whose relationship is that old will be able to hide it for 18 months when being from BTS has already put a spotlight on them?

Wow I wrote quite a lot here huh 😳. perfectpoetryfest please do read it all. I am a 100% sure that you will not agree with anything I said here but atleast I am writing about tkk on a tkk blog, what are you jikkrs trying to do here anyways?

Oh boy. They're currently occupied but I'm sure they'll get to you, anon. You're also gonna have to take responsibility for the incoming deranged rants. lol

[goldlightwriting]

So I've gotten myself thinking about the MCU again. Ramble under the cut.

Okay, to clarify here: I have not actually watched anything in the MCU since Thor: Love and Thunder. I liked some of the Disney+ shows they put out like Moon Knight and Hawkeye, and I did find Shang Chi fairly enjoyable. Hell I even liked Wanda-Vision despite its messy ending.

But of course, the MCU as a whole has kind of fallen apart from lacking a clear direction; too many projects going all at once, not enough cohesion, etc. I don't think I could levy any criticisms that haven't already been made. The only point that I don't see brought up that often is that I think choosing to make the vague concept of the Multiverse the next big 'arc' was a massive mistake, since not only do almost none of the properties deal with that, it's also just a really vague topic to begin with. I know that was partially because Kang was supposed to be the next big bad to replace Thanos, but... I mean they apparently just killed him off in Ant-Man so that went nowhere.

But of course, that raises the question: if the MCU HAD to continue after Endgame (because of course the megacorp Disney isn't going to let their cashcow die just because the story's over), what SHOULD have been the next step? Doctor Doom? Galactus? The Beyonder? Knull? All valid answers, and none necessarily wrong. Honestly there are a lot of good options for what the next arc could have been if set up correctly.

However, for my money, I honestly think there was a lot of potential to focus in more on the mystical aspect of the MCU post-Endgame. They kind of already started down that direction by having Wanda awaken as the Scarlet Witch and, of course, giving Doctor Strange a sequel that just wound up being a botched Multiverse setup.

However, Multiverse of Madness did introduce what I think would have been a perfect macguffin for a more magic-focused arc of the franchise: the Darkhold. While they do kind of delve into it within the MCU, its significance is MASSIVELY underplayed.

Like, the Darkhold is the source of basically all evil magic created by a Lovecraftian god. In the comics, the Necronomicon was inspired by a SINGLE passage in the Darkhold. This thing CREATED vampires, contains powerful demons within its pages (as in the demons themselves actually reside IN the book), and can even allow access to unholy realms like Limbo.

Beyond Wanda and Doctor Strange, quite a few magic or magic-adjacent characters were introduced into the MCU: Moon Knight, Shang Chi (with his rings), Black Panther (with the heart-shaped herb), Loki, and they've also apparently been working on Blade for ages now. Oh and let us not forget that Ghost Rider was in Agents of SHIELD, and supposedly took the Darkhold (or a copy of it?) to Hell. But... What if that wasn't the end of it?

Basically, I think Mephisto should have been the antagonist of the MCU after Endgame, and his goal could have been acquiring the Darkhold. This would have worked wonderfully if they actually made him the true villain behind Wanda-Vision as so many people theorized, and from there we could have gotten the likes of Khonshu and Strange sensing the demon's growing threat. From there you could somehow rope in Black Panther (Shuri), Shang Chi, Loki and maybe a couple others like Blade.

To summarize: Magic-based MCU could have gone hard and the Multiverse Saga was a mistake. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[blackbloodteeth]

ah, I wonder what some of your takes about Fire force are

Y'all better strap in.

Actually, I'd like to start this off with reiterating that I did enjoy Fire Force for the most part and was largely into it for it being its own thing, so this isn't just "Soul Eater guy takes a dump on thing that isn't Soul Eater for fun" and most of my opinions come from a standpoint of my experience with Fire Force as a standalone series.

I'm also gonna try to be vague, but this will inevitably touch upon some level of spoilers, so read at your own risk.

That being said, I'd like to mention some things I liked about Fire Force to start off with: While the setup is admittedly very slow, the mystery it builds is intriguing as hell, and had me on the edge of my seat when it proceeded to somehow get even more batshit insane. There are a lot of good characters that end up really shining (to an extent, more on that in a bit) – Joker was a phenomenal antagonist and extremely entertaining. Benimaru and the twins were fun characters (hell, his whole district was probably one of the funnest settings there). Plague doctor guy is a huge piece of shit (/affectionate). I could list quite a few characters because they have an interesting way of existing in this strange, post-apocalyptic world that steadily unravels.

Also one of the biggest positives this series has is the range of abilities. You wouldn't think making every character a Fire-type would be inherently engaging, but somehow the creative ways to interpret the concept of thermodynamics just keep on giving. The human body's responses to heat causing unique and devastating effects? Literal fucking time travel via inhuman speeds and the leftover heat of the universe? How do you come up with this shit.

There's also a really fascinating concept that gets executed in a fittingly batshit manner later in the manga that has me itching to know how the fuck they're going to adapt that, but on the account of that being a later incident, I'm not going to elaborate lmao

Now. Here's where things start to go wrong.

I don't think you need me to say Ohkubo somehow got worse at writing women, because everyone and their mum is already aware of this. Bare minimum personalities, usually a tool to service the male characters, literal objectification, etc. Why is he is like this.

I think the only interesting female character was probably Haumea (and Shinra's mom to some extent, however I'm biased towards her design), but that I think had something to do with her design not really mirroring anyone in Soul Eater's and because she's a spiteful little shit, god love 'er.

And of course, it's obligatory that we have to mention Tamaki, who is probably the mascot of said writing issues at this point. Thing is, though, I actually love her design – A flaming two-tailed cat is an inherently awesome concept, which is why it sucks to see her potential completely squandered in favor of a "running gag" that genuinely no one is comfortable with. A lucky cat who brings misfortune onto itself is a very fun concept, and you went and used it for that. The attempt to write in a self-indulgent excuse of this whole thing late in the manga was not only irrelevant to the rest of the plot, it was, as the kids say, extremely cringe.

Look, I'm not here to soapbox against sexy woman, but when the character who has spent the entire series being distressed and uncomfortable about being unclothed and groped by other characters who are equally distressed and uncomfortable by the male author's fetish, suddenly decides she's going to have to accept being sexually objectified by men for "the sake of humanity", it really makes you think about Japan's view on women. Also she's canonically 17 at most, fuck off.

Anyway, with that out of the way: Joker. I could write a lengthy memorial piece for how brutally the writing murdered him by the end. I said I wasn't gonna spoil, but you just gotta know, when you give me an incredibly entertaining deranged man and then throw him in the trash and then light that trash on fire before the plot reaches its climatic big'n, I'm going to be just a little bit upset about it. It's incredibly obvious to me that Ohkubo didn't know what to do with him after a certain point on the account that his story eventually fizzled out in favor of literally anyone else, but not even showing him in the background of the epilogue was such a personal insult to injury to me. He might as well have actually died at that point.

I think part of this issue lies in that there were almost too many characters to keep track of by the end of the big climax, hence why this led to poorly juggling who actually gets screentime by the end of it. This, of course, is only a symptom of one of Fire Force's greatest downfalls: In that it had no time to actually properly work through its ending after the sheer amount of setup it was playing with.

One could potentially assume Ohkubo is just terrible at endings, however I've also heard there was an actual crunch to complete the series in the amount of chapters allotted, so take that for what you will.

See, I've said I found the mystery of the series to be fascinating and engaging in keeping me hooked to continue reading. I think that steadily building up the insanity happening within this world to the point by the time we learn the answer to the question first proposed at the beginning, it's only a footnote to what's unraveling, to be one of the most entertaining and gripping media I had the privilege of laying my eyes upon (momentary shout-out to the fan translation team for the manga, by the way, they absolutely killed it). That, unfortunately, is where it ends.

After a certain point, it keeps building up this insanity much like a train derails, lunges off a cliff, and then continues going so fast it rides across the surface of the ocean. The problem with this is that at some point it becomes so much, it's suffocating. There was a lot of action so it eventually became somewhat mind-numbing due to the lack of anything to really break up the pacing, which wouldn't have necessarily even been that much of an issue if it had actually given the audience a breather by the end. I mentioned there was an epilogue, but it was, like, one chapter at most, and a significant portion of it wasn't even dedicated to Fire Force.

One chapter to finally soak in the conclusion, and you don't even really get to spend it with the characters you've gotten invested in throughout the entire series. No time to take in what's happened to them, what's gonna happen to them, or even a sense of accomplishment as it just scoots the reader along to welp, show's over, folks. We got one panel of Shinra after the events of the series conclude. One, of the main character.

This of course dives into the delicate topic that is Ohkubo's futile escape from having been the guy who also made Soul Eater. Obviously that's probably my favourite series of all-time, and yet I am absolutely livid with the incredibly shallow connection he attempted to force into the ending, and I have several reasons for this:

It's incredibly cheap. It feels like it was done specifically to get more "attention" on Fire Force through easy means and not its own merit; less like a cute easter egg or nostalgic throwback, and more like it was just thrown in as bait for a starved fandom's wallet. Sure, maybe I can't confirm if that was really the intent, but it sure's shit feels that way when it takes up half the epilogue and the lore tie-in is as stable as the economy.

Like I mentioned, the attempt to integrate Fire Force into Soul Eater's lore leaves way more questions than it answers (and also sets itself up for failure regarding appearing like Soul Eater was going to get a sequel, however that's its own issue). There was so much I wanted to know about Fire Force's world by the end, and instead it kinda just... shoved it all under the rug, and said "alright, you figure it out" considering some of said lore doesn't necessarily mesh well with Soul Eater's world as it stands, for as little as we know about it. Sorry if this is repetitive, I'm starting to get a little loopy from how long I've been typing, haha.

Biggest one for me personally: Earlier in the series, there was an actually tasteful and interesting reference to Soul Eater through a dimensional rift that leads to Death City. This makes the later tie-in a complete slap in the face, because not only did Fire Force not do anything with this dimensional rift set-up, the ending almost retcons whatever the hell it was trying to allude to with that idea. Why must the good ideas die young.

I mean honestly, I'm not necessarily against Fire Force connecting with Soul Eater in any form, I just think it needed to be done right. Fire Force was already being stretched thin by its own plot, so throwing that in with bare minimum elaboration without expanding upon its own world just kinda feels... disrespectful, to both medias.

I won't say that the end of the manga wasn't the most hype shit known to man when the chapters were releasing (you really had to be there for it, haha), but after all the adrenaline died down, I was left drained and somewhat critical of the writing given I had genuine attachment to the series as it was. It didn't really need any fanservice to prop it up, which to me is why said connection feels shallow at best when it eats away "screentime" from Fire Force's own conclusion.

Honestly, part of why I'm intrigued to see how the anime adapts the rest of the manga (aside from certain events) is because I truthfully hope it fixes the pacing issues the climax suffered from. I'm not terribly optimistic about it given there's only a couple more seasons in the works, and the manga set it up with a loaded question regarding the Soul Eater tie-in, but can't exactly say the ensuing chaos won't at least be entertaining.

Alright, I've been at this for well over an hour, so I'm gonna go ahead and roll the credits here since I've got most of it outta my system, haha. This is the danger of asking me discussion questions / my opinion, hahahah (you think this is bad, you should see me on Discord).

[starjxsung]

haiii bbs! how are you?

may the fashion fairies bless you for all of your concerts 🧚🏼‍♀️ i think that for lolla imma just dress nice nice on friday. then probs a bit more casual the other days bc i read that it’s not thaaaaat big of a deal compared to coachella (i still like dressing up for everything i can but ik im not having the energy after standing 12+hrs on friday🤣) i read that armys CAMPED the night before so ngl im kinda scared to not be able to see skz too well.

hmmmmmm that is soooo tough😫but its probably top 5 after mononoke, howls and spirited away. buuuut i need to rewatch it because i also rank them due to them being my comfort films so maybe the boy and the heron is objectively a better film or may become one of my super faves as a comfort film. honorable mention movies that i never hear anyone talk about that are tiered for me: pom poko and when marnie was there (i cried so bad while watching both of them)

i saw that skz are attending the met dressed in tommy 😶‍🌫️ i kinda hate the concept of the met gala, the fundraiser part is okay; but it’s the whole exclusively rich people exhibition that i absolutely don’t like yk? and there’s no real talk about the necessity of the fundraiser in the event so it’s kinda not too slay for me. (i love skz though so i’ll probs watch them walk and then stop🤣. and even it’s not too significant for me, im so aware that it is an objectively super important event so i am very proud of them for that!). i hope this doesn’t turn you off about me😪

on another note i got the funniest little pc holder! terrible pic bc we went out to eat at night. i also noticed i barely have any hyune pcs😭

anyways ily bb! i hope you’ve been having a great weekend <3 take care

-🐈‍⬛

HI MY BABYYYYYYYYYY I’m sorry this took to long to answer !!!! I was going THRUUU IT with the Met Gala yesterday and I was simultaneously on my phone looking at every single post that was published and trying to avoid all media bc the paparazzi were making me so mad and I was stressed 😭

I KNOWWWWW I remember armys (and moas!) camping before hobipalooza & when txt performed and I’m stressed that I’m not going to get a good spot 🤕 for Global Citizen a lot of people camped too and I got there kinda late bc I slept in but the spots we got were still pretty decent! My only issue was the PHONESSSS in the air oh my god you could not get a single pic of 3racha without a phone blocking your view… I had to stand on my tippy toes and block everyone’s view behind me to get ONE good pic and even then I never ended up getting a pic of Jungkook without phones in the way 😔 hoping the screens at Lolla are good so we don’t have to deal w the same shit

I love when Marnie Was There!!!!!!! Oh my god it’s so underrated!!!!!!!!! I cried so hard the first time I watched it ☹️🫶 I need to watch the boy & the heron and I will tell you all my thoughts !!

I have so many thoughts about the met gala but honestly I am just SOOO GLAD it’s over lmfkdkskdkdkskkdjfj I was beyond stressed waiting for them to arrive and seeing what they were going to wear 😭 obviously ended up a shit show of a night thanks to problematic American photographers but what’s new at a western event like the met gala 🤕

YOUR PC HOLDER PLEWASKKKCKKFKEKE THAT IS SO CUTE the Hyune pc is very fitting 😭😭

I love you bbg I hope you’re having the absolute best week !!!!!!!!!! 💗💕💓💘💖🫶

Here are my Felix & Renjun bag setups from the past 2 days (also Minho on my sister’s bag) one of my friends replied to my story and asked why my bag is “always cunted up” and I will be referring to decorating my bag like that all the time now LMAO

[dallasewing]

Weeks 1-2 Post

Hello everybody! How've you been? 

It's been a few weeks since we last spoke, so I wanted to provide a bit of an update on my progress over the last two weeks, and then start to look forward onto the next two! 

So... it's been busy! I wasn't entirely prepared for just how much I've given myself to do. Week 1 went slow and was really tough. It took me some time to understand exactly how I wanted to work and then apply this to my workflow for the future weeks. With that in mind, I'll explain exactly how I'm working these weeks and how you'll have info and guidance delivered to you:  

The biggest, most time-consuming part of this whole process is researching and taking notes on my findings. I'm only using trustworthy, reliable sources for my information, so I know that I'm (and therefore you are) getting only the best, most up-to-date knowledge from the industry. I'm taking these notes in an app called Obsidian, where I'm using project folders to separate each section of this 'course'. 

Once I've gathered the necessary resources for that week's tasks, I'm then looking at applying this knowledge to the practical goals for that week. These goals are defined in the "What have I got to do?" section of my Weekly Plan document, which I am providing an updated copy of in each bi-weekly post.  

With these practical goals in mind, I'll create action notes on what I've done during the week for that specific section, and provide evidence of this, which will be found in a section-specific folder that I'll provide a link to at the bottom of each post.  

I'll format both the action notes and research notes into a word document, that I'll also place into section-specific folders containing both of these; from now they'll be referred to as 'handouts'. Each week will contain 2 handouts for each section, a Notes Summary handout, and an Action List handout. Notes Summaries will contain all of the information that I've researched through the week, as well as links to a resources folder, where all of the information sources I've used can be found.  

Okay, now you understand how this will work!  

How did these weeks go? Well, I managed to make some great progress on my drum and guitar recording techniques. I learned new ways to record individual drums that allow for you to compliment the natural sounds of the kit, and looked at what methods and microphones are needed for individual drums, as well as how to create specific tones. I've explored how to mic up an amp effectively, exploring which mics are ideal for certain purposes, as well as the different factors of a guitar's setup that can lead to creating desired sounds. All of these will be incredibly useful for a career as a producer, live sound engineer or a studio engineer.  

I’ve used the drum stems I recorded with those new techniques as resources for my mixing in these two weeks, successfully understanding how to apply compression and a noise gate to drum stems, and I now have a solid grasp of drum positions within a stereo field and their respective volumes; drum balancing! 

I've managed to practice and improve my understanding of both drum rudiments and bass techniques, both for fretting and for 'playing' (picking-hand techniques). In a realistic scenario, I'd prefer to have more time to dedicate to learning these individual skills, however I feel a week was long enough to put some solid research together and give myself time to practice and study these concepts, grasping the main goals and reasons behind their use and popularity.  

Moving forwards from here, I'll be looking into recording FX pedals and bass guitar, the essential techniques and info necessary for these, as well as how to create some desired tones with recording techniques alone. I'm also looking at using EQ in a mix, applying this to drum and guitar stems, as well as exploring some ear training techniques so that I can identify frequencies by ear better. Also, I'm exploring how to balance a guitar and bass mix, similar to what I did with the drums in week 2, using the stems recorded within the Recording Techniques section. Finally, I'll be developing a daily practice routine for the piano that I can apply in my free time that will target the skills and areas key to making a successful pianist, and then I'll also look into how to use a tambourine to create certain percussive 'ad-libs' within a track.  

Oh, yeah - one last thing: I've made the decision to omit the Songwriting section from Next Level, which has been something I didn't want to do, but found necessary. I found that during Weeks 1 and 2, I was making minimal progress on anything planned within the Songwriting section, and it was distracting and delaying me from making better progress in the other three sections. What does this mean for you folks? Well, you won't have any updates on Songwriting from me. By all means, you can continue to follow my plan and use the planned goals and ideas as starting points for your own projects, but just be aware that you won't get any further guidance from Next Level. Ultimately, I feel that the Recording Techniques, Mixing and Mastering, and Instrumental Techniques all fit into each other and share knowledge, resources and weekly requirements, and then the Songwriting section struggles to fit into that group.  

I hope you'll all have a great next few weeks!

See you there, Slick. 

Caleb 

PS: Here are all the folder links for each section! 

PPS: Here is the link to the newest revision of the Weekly Plan! 

Week 1 

- Recording Techniques 

- Mixing & Mastering 

- Instrumental Techniques 

Week 2 

- Recording Techniques 

- Mixing & Mastering 

- Instrumental Techniques 

[buzzheadchick]

I’ve been thinking about a Samurai Jack / Steven Universe crossover for some time, and it really makes me think.

So, there’s not a lot of clear confirmation on exact dates of certain events in BOTH shows, but looking at wikis and trying to get a grasp on the timelines, (as well as some creative liberties because it’s a fanfic) I think I’ve found an idea I like.

The universe was created, and The Great Evil with it. 3 gods destroyed most of it, but a small piece remained and crash landed on Earth, destroying the dinosaurs and thus dating it to around 65 million years ago. At some point after this, in a different part of the universe, Gems were made.

So, gems tried to colonize earth, rebellion happened, pink diamond was gotten rid off, the diamonds sent a corrupting blast, and the cluster was planted. All of that happened over 5,000 years ago. Over 4,000 years ago Amethyst emerged and joined the CGs, and the temple was built. Canonically, the next stuff we know of them was in the 1800s, but that doesn’t get to happen in this crossover because of the issues with Aku.

Time is very nebulous in SJ, and not just because of time travel reasons. Even in the first episode, the areas around the world Jack trains in as he grows up are all from different time periods. Still, he cannot be from anytime earlier than 0 CE. Fans have concluded that Jack’s home is “an era greatly resembling Japan's Edo Period in appearance, albeit with culture closer to the Nara and Heian periods.” If it were Edo, it could theoretically coincide with the 1800s gems, but I highly doubt it as that is the tail end of the era and I think we are supposed to believe it happened earlier.

So, Crystal Gems have been living mostly alone on earth for a few thousand years, trying to stay out of human affairs but keeping an ear to the ground lest they hear tell of any “monsters” are can take care of the corrupted gems. They are aware of black, spiky system of roots that grow somewhere in Japan (although not all of them know it’s something Rose learned about when receiving her first scout reports back for colonization) and like anything else the Crystal Gems haven’t figured out how to deal with, they just sectioned it off and forbid humans from going. But it was alive, and spread, and is devoured things. It made them afraid, because the land it ravaged couldn’t be restored to life by Rose’s powers, and the only things they’d seen with that amount of power to leech the earth were the kindergartens.

As the spiky mass spreads towards civilization, an emperor prepares to attack it himself, to save his people. The Gems warn him off of the task, tell him to get his people to safety until they can deal with the problem, but he is adamants. In a quiet moment where the other gems are distracted, Rose says, “If you must insist on doing this for your people, I know nothing we say can stop you. But your human weapons alone will not do much. Take this, and coat your weapon in it before you attempt to kill it.”

Basically Rose had been learning about human poisons versus medicine, and how a small dose of a harmful thing can destroy a bad bacteria or parasite, saving the host. The “poison” in the glass she gave to the emperor was in fact some of her Diamond essence. (I headcanon that the pink Kindergarten injectors and Spinel’s poison were so destructive because they were Pink Diamond’s destructive powers made fluid, like her healing tears but instead manifesting the types of powers that hurt Pink Pearl.)

Afterwords, it goes as in the SJ show: the Emperor’s poison-dipped arrow accidentally gives the dark mass life, birthing Aku. The gems freak out, and Rose is wracked with guilt and is unable to tell any of the gems that she gave the Emperor the poison. The gems try to fight Aku off, but even Obsidian struggles against him. They may be made of pure light, but the guilt Rose is holding onto prevents their fusion from really harming the “evil” aspect of Aku. The Emperor is brought to the gods, as in canon, and is given a magical katana from his “pure spirit.” He returns, surprising both Aku and Obsidian at his ability to harm the evil figure. But Obsidian helps him, and unfuses to help keep the hoard at bay when Aku possesses the fallen armor while the Emperor whittled down the numbers. He is the one who deals the final blow, trapping Aku in the blade.

The Crystal Gems thank him, though they also have many questions. (The Emperor’s explanation that it “represents the strength and power of the human spirit” intrigues Rose especially.) However, when one of them goes to take his sword to bubble Aku away, he jerks the sword back.

“What are you doing?”

“We have experience sealing away creatures like this. Everyone will be safest if it comes with us.” Says Pearl.

“I can’t let you do that. With this sword, I will forever banish this evil abomination.”

Then he plunges the katana into the ground, and after a few moments where the only sound is the rain, the jagged black tree erupts from the ground. The rain immediately disperses.

“Well, that’s not gonna be a problem again for at least a few years,” says Garnet, walking up to the rest of the group. They didn’t even realize she had left.

“Wait, where were you?” asked Amethyst.

“About midway through the battle, I foresaw the Empress needing some help, and you guys were handling things just fine here. By the way, Tennō, I think there’s someone you’ll want to meet.” Just as Garnet finished uttering these words, the cry of a newborn baby rang out, and the emperor ran to meet his son.

[gingersnappish]

Hi! I just want to say I absolutely adore your art, and I'm so excited to see your new stuff! Particularly anything Kylo Amidala related, it's my favourite au/concept of mine and I love seeing different artists takes on it!

I was just wondering if you had any advice for new artists? I want to be good at drawing but I get so discouraged when things don't come out how I envisioned.

Also, could I ask what you use to draw your art? Is it a digital setup you have? Would you have any recommendations on things to get?

Sorry to ask you so many questions, so please feel free to ignore this! I hope you have a lovely day, and thank you so much for all your wonderful contributions to the kylux fandom ❤

Thank you so much, Anon, for this lovely missive! It was such a warm feeling to find it in my inbox and brought a smile to my face! I love Kylo Amidala more and more the longer I'm in kylux fandom-honestly I wasn't sure if he was my 'thing' or not at first, years back, and then the more I saw takes on him in art and writing and fandom in general, the more he grew on me :) He allows for so much fashion fun and character creativity-like you said, it's really fun to see everyone's 'take' on him! Part of the reason it's taken me this long to respond is that I read what you asked about starting out with art and related hardcore! The thing where you got the vision but it can feel discouraging when stuff doesn't come out finished like it looked in your head? That was me for like- a couple decades. Still me on certain days. Like, MOOD, my friend! The good news is: every artists struggles with the above problem. So you are not alone! I guess in a sense, the bad news is also: 'everyone from beginners to seasoned professionals ' struggle with this....so yeah, it doesn't ever *entirely* go away? BUT! Better news: There have been a lot of 'takes' written and a lot of good advice given about how to mentally manage the 'it doesn't come out how I wanted' phenomenon! It's not so much 'make it go away' as it is 'learn to manage that phenomenon in a healthy, painless, productive way'. And that is a learnable skill that gets *a lot* easier with practice!

Also: I hoard tutorials/drawing resources for all levels/YT channels/'how to think about and approach art meta'/etc like a dragon hoards gems, so I'm putting together a post of resource links that might help or give you some starting points--that is taking a hot minute to craft though, so I figured I should just go ahead and respond here today and then post the resources list as soon as I get it finished (so you don't feel like your ask just went into the void)! Re: What I use to draw....time was, that would have been a whole post to itself on traditional materials and comparing computer programs and such. These days it's real straightforward: Procreate on an iPad :) I'm entirely digital these days but my honest opinion is that everyone is drawn to different materials and media and you should feel free to try out working in whatever interests you, whether that is digital art tools, or traditional media like acrylic or ink or something else! Also: making lots of drawings and practicing with what is cheap and available will get you farther,faster than any expensive supplies when you are starting out. Ballpoint pens and a pad from the Dollar Store (or equivalent where you are) are perfectly serviceable for practicing-plus sometimes I personally find I relax and have more fun experimenting and less angst if things don't come out how I wanted if I'm not working with something 'precious'. Case in point: I have custom-leather-worked sketchbook made by a friend sitting up in the office, being exquisitely beautiful and gathering dust. It is empty but for a single drawing, that I became unsatisfied with the day after I finished it. I got that sketchbook 7 years or more ago and I'm still trying to convince myself to use it properly. In contrast, last summer we went to the beach near our house and while we were there I ended up with access to cheap kiddie art supplies from a summer 'communal stash'-a blank sketchbook of the lowest quality paper and 10 colors of crayola pencils, half sharpened. It was a 'throw away', didn't matter what was done in that book-there were 10 more like it in the pile. I ended up doing a bunch of messy stuff born of people-watching and seagull-antics-observation. Filled 5 pages, both sides, and felt incredible joy in the making of shitty scribbles! And then I just put the book back in the 'communal stash' at the end of the day, since there were still a bunch of blank pages left. It was low-pressure and extremely freeing. (side note: when we went back a week later, the other sketchbooks were gone but that one I'd messed around in had more doodles from artists of all ages and beginning skill levels. And more the week after that. I think it turned out to be pretty freeing for a lot of people.) OK, this turned into a way longer response than I intended-boy, can I 'talk'! I hope you have a good day! Wishing you lots of positive creative vibes!

[iamnmbr3]

I saw the ask about having the person feeling like that the Loki show is objectively bad. I liked the show, here is why.

I love Loki, and I love the MCU, but I don’t go into any of it expecting consistency. Tony and Loki are my favourite.

Tony goes through character development in his own movies, IM3 especially that main canon just kinda ignores. So I didn’t go into work he Loki show expecting them to get him consistent or right. I just went in prepared to enjoy the show for what it is in isolation. I also know that no one looks at the stories they write for the MCU critically, so I try and turn off that for a first time watch.

I really like the show, that doesn’t mean I think they made it consistent or in character for Loki. I get why people don’t like it.

I really like the TVA and all the concepts it introduced. I really liked seeing Tom acting his heart out. And I really like Loki/Sylvie because I find something very compelling about a character who hates themselves, meeting another version of themselves and being able to love them. It is not a ship I’m going to write fic about but I like them within the show.

Basically what I am saying is that I go into MCU media with the expectation they will mess up at least one character or plot point badly every time. I like the media for what it is, and I appreciate whatever it brings to the table that I can then cannibalise into da works.

Yeah that's fair. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. Fandom is better when there are a diversity of opinions and we can all respect each other and engage in open and good faith discussion rather than attacking people for having the "wrong" views or trying to harass them out of fandom.

For me personally I feel like the show fails on 3 fronts.

1) To me it fails as a Loki show. I really enjoy Loki as a character and I wanted a show about him. And I didn't personally see him in the show at all. I saw a completely different character who does not behave, speak, act, respond, react, stand, emote, or make choices like Loki does. He doesn't even LOOK like Loki because they did his hair and makeup wrong. And that's really what I wanted. I didn't want Larry (as I call the show character). I wanted Loki. That was what was advertised and to me he was so ooc that he was unrecognizable. If I just saw a clip out of context and didn't know what it was from I would have assumed I was seeing Tom in a totally different role.

Thor Ragnarok felt like a different take on Loki that definitely retconned some of his personality and history, but still felt like an alternate interpretation of the same character in the sense that I could recognize the character as Loki (albeit a different version of him); some people liked that, other didn't. But here it wasn't that. It just felt like a completely new (and to me far less interesting and compelling) character. And beyond that it felt like the show went out of its way to make a mockery of the character played by Tom and by extension anyone who ever cared about Loki's character. Like it felt like a mean spirited caricatured parody. Loki is also extremely sidelined in what is supposed to be his own show. And it most certainly didn't feel like a show about Loki, which is what I wanted. So for me the show didn't provide what I was looking for.

2) To me it also fails on its own merits. If I view it in isolation without comparing it to previous canon and just view it as its own thing it also fails. The quality of the dialogue felt very poor. None of the humor made me laugh and it all felt very juvenile and forced. The plotting and characterization seemed nonsensical and all over the place. Like Sylvie sets off those charges and the episode ends on a cliffhanger with that but then it's never addressed later.

The reason that Loki and Syvie allegedly falling in love breaks the timeline didn't really make sense. Sylvie is going around murdering timekeepers and yet Mobius somehow immediately like and trusts her and says he prefers her to Loki. Loki and Sylvie are simultaneously presented as the same person and also totally different people. Loki allegedly learns self love but we never see that - we see him call himself degrading things like pathetic. And we see him think that Sylvie is better than him. That doesn't seem like self love. The romance feels extremely rushed and unrealistic and awkward and we aren't given a compelling reason for why they are in love or what they even have in common. Sylvie doesn't really have much of a character. Mobius and Loki don't interact much and Mobius consistently mistreats him but Loki somehow thinks of him as a friend. Mobius is portrayed as a good guy for cheerfully carrying out the TVA's ends but Kang is a villain for creating the TVA. The TVA seems to be all made up of humans even though it's in charge of all reality.

If Loki did bad things, then the TVA did worse things and thus are not moral authorities. If the TVA’s actions are acceptable then so are Loki’s. If Loki was wrong to violently impose his will on a planet (let’s forget about the context with Thanos for a minute) then the TVA is wrong to violently impose its will on all of reality in order to eliminate free will. If Loki was wrong to kill a few people, then the TVA was certainly wrong to kill trillions. And thus neither Mobius nor the TVA are moral authorities when it comes to Loki because they are infinitely worse. If the actions that Mobius and the TVA took are acceptable, then there is no reason to criticize Loki because he did far less than them. Etc etc etc.

The cinematography is also very poor and unprofessional and the costumes look extremely cheap and unprofessional. The whole story feels confused and disjointed. The directing is bad because the actors are all very capable but the performances often feel wooden and forced and fake. And the pacing is terrible. A lot of it drags and then plot twists come out of nowhere with no setup so it just makes them feel jarring rather than earned or entertaining. 

3) To me it also fails on a moral front. The show contains a lot of problematic depictions and messages and promotes messages that are offensive or even downright harmful.

Mobius gleefully subjects Loki to physical torture by leaving him to be repeatedly beaten in the genital area. This is a very clearcut and straight forward example of physical torture. And Mobius feels no compassion for Loki or remorse over what he has done to him. If anything he seems to find it amusing. And certainly the audience is supposed to find it amusing (which is gross and harmful messaging on Disney’s part). He also subjects Loki to psychological torture. This is a fact. There are multiple instances in the show where the TVA and Mobius subject Loki to treatment that would meet the legal definition of torture under both US law and international law. Furthermore, Mobius and the TVA are holding Loki against his will and forcing him to labor without compensation or any hope of release because they view him as belonging to a group of people (Variants) that they view as inferior and not really people. That’s a pretty textbook case of slavery. So objectively Mobius is Loki’s jailer, torturer, captor, and enslaver. And yet Mobius is presented as justified in what he does to Loki. The writer and director have even called it therapy. And a result many people have parroted this which is very harmful.

The queer “representation” feels straight out of bigoted propaganda. Loki’s personality traits have been retconned to map onto harmful stereotypes about queer men. He is overly expressive, makes grand gestures, is flamboyant, cowardly, dishonest, weak, bad at fighting, lazy, spineless, meek, unused to exercise etc. Now a person could be all these things and also happen to be queer. However, Loki was never like this before. His character was retconned to be this way only in this series where he is confirmed to be queer.

Furthermore, the entire premise of the series seems to be that it is funny and entertaining and justified when Loki is dehumanized, mocked, humiliated, hurt, tortured, beaten, assaulted, and/or robbed of his dignity. That’s the premise. That’s the whole show.

In addition to pro torture and pro authoritarianism and pro victim blaming messaging the show also has problematic depictions of black characters  (see here and here), Asian people (see here) and also has a lot of fludphobia and transphobia issues. And much more.

@nikkoliferous has put together a great compendium here of various posts explaining the various issues with the show if you're curious about why some people disliked it.

[astaroth1357]

The Obey Me Cast on a Camping Trip (Part Two: The Undateables)

This post is split in two due to length (I had too much fun again…) For the Brothers, please click HERE!

Intro:

Another day, another team building activity between the demons and the exchange students. It was Diavolo’s idea to go on a camping trip to the human world (because of course it was), and there were very… mixed responses. That sentiment wasn’t helped when he refused Lucifer’s insistent pleas to just purchase cabins for everyone to stay in. Oh no, the Demon Lord wanted to rough it out in the wilderness, and now everyone else was getting dragged along with him…

Wonder how that turned out?

Diavolo

He was soooo excited to get to experience camping! He had been asking the MC about human camping trips for about a week before making the announcement and he was pumped!!

Barbatos chauffeured him to the campsite in his own car (of course) but he insisted on taking every roadside, touristy stop they came across which doubled the drive time considerably…

He wanted to help everybody set up the camp but Barbatos and Lucifer were having none of it… So he took pictures and offered moral support instead! Good work everyone! 😁

He had his own tent about the size of a small house (ngl it took Barbs and Lucifer about a half hour to set the whole thing up). Barbs even somehow managed to pack a collapsible desk in there for him so he could still work… greeeat…. 🙄

Diavolo wanted to try everything. Literally everything. The man even traded his uniform out for full on outdoors gear, right down to one of those floppy fishing hats with the tackle stuck to it.

Politely insistently asks that Lucifer does things with him. The MC could come along as well (and in many cases Luci begs them to do so) but he wants to get some bonding time in with his best friend!

Unfortunately for Lucifer, Diavolo would get sidetracked quite a lot… Which is how he ended up having to physically steer his Lord out of harm's way more than once…

At one point while hiking, Diavolo was so distracted by taking pictures that he nearly walked right into the path of a passing bear and her cubs. Lucifer had to tackle him down into some bushes until they went away... His brothers teased him mercilessly when they heard about...

Dia also loved the camping food quite a bit. He's never gotten the chance to cook his own food before, even if it's just marshmallows over a fire, so it was all a brand new experience for him! S'mores are now declared a human world delicacy.

Man had the time of his life! He'd love to do it again, hell, maybe even make it a yearly event! (Few of the brothers share his sentiment, but hey, it pays to be King 😏)

Barbatos

If his Lord orders it, then he follows. He'll just have to double check that everyone is prepared for the occasion…

Drove Diavolo there with the patience of a saint (while also, like, being the exact opposite of that). Had it been anyone else in the car, they might have told him, "No, we can't stop for pictures of every moose you see," but Barbs is as accommodating as he is loyal.

It was pretty much all on his shoulders to direct the others when setting up camp. Lucifer would claim it was his, but let’s be completely honest here, Lucifer can't order Barbs to do shit. 

Naturally, he had his own tent close to his Lord, more modest in comparison, but big enough to hold a majority of the belongings and gear Diavolo had requested.

He also managed to bring a almost fully functioning kitchen setup for him using magic, minus a working oven by Diavolo's instruction. If he wanted a heat source, he had to use the campfire and he found the challenge intriguing…

For once in his extended life, Barbs had to do some trial and error in the kitchen. As it would turn out, fireside cooking can be a little difficult to master, but by the end of the trip he could still somehow dish out four course meals without so much as a sweat (according to the MC the secret was tinfoil and cast-iron cookware… who knew?)

When he isn’t prepping their next meal (which let’s be honest, with Beel on the trip that’s a constant activity) he’s guarding the food from Beel and Solomon…

The sorcerer wanted to help, but Barbs has already learned the hard way that if he so much as pokes a dish its flavor is ruined… It’s enough to make him wonder if it was a curse laid on him at some point…

Watching Barbatos deny Solomon becomes a pretty funny routine in and of itself. He’s not above just smacking the man’s hand away with a wooden spoon if it gets too close. Barbs doesn’t play in his kitchen. Back off. 😠

Barbatos is happy with the trip so long as the young Lord enjoyed himself. If that’s the case, and it was, then he’d happily do it again if asked… not that he’d have much of a choice anyway.

Simeon

Simeon was familiar with the concept of camping, he’d written about it in his stories, but he’d never actually done it himself… He had hoped it'd be an interesting experience! And uh… it was that from the very start… 

Purgatory Hall got its own car and Solomon was put in charge of driving… But no one mentioned that he drives like a complete maniac. Speed limits, stoplights, even the ROAD ITSELF be damned. Solomon drives in a straight line from point A to point B and if there’s anything in the way he’ll just use magic to get around it…

It’s safe to say that by the time he and the others got to the campsite (which was significantly quicker than the rest) the angels weren’t in the emotional state to pitch tents… He and Luke just waited for the others to catch up while praying and praising the solid ground beneath their feet…

He shared his tent with Luke and didn’t mind at all. It was probably for the best anyway because the little angel was scared of human world predators like bears and wolves coming for him in the night… Poor boy…

Simeon took to hiking quite a bit. Going out and exploring the area around the campsite made him feel invigorated! The forests were beautiful and it gave him ideas for a bit of a guilty pleasure he's been debating on writing, "The Tale of the Lonely Prince." 🤭

It was on one of those trips that Simeon discovered human world creatures love him. Pretty much all of the wildlife gravitates towards him like he's a Disney Princess.

At one point he came back to camp riding on a moose with birds chirping on his new friend's antlers. He offered to take the MC out for a ride, but the brothers threw a fit about it…

He WAS able to get a couple more wrangled for Diavolo, who naturally dragged Lucifer along (though he clearly didn't want to touch the thing). 

The three ended up getting into a mooseback race because Diavolo wouldn't let Lucifer take the lead. He was glad to see Luci enjoy himself for a change! (It helped a lot that he won of course 🙄😏)

All and all, Simeon had a great time. Maybe he should ask the MC to show him more human places… But he's never getting in a car again. Pardon his language, but fuck those things!!!

Luke

He doesn't know what's worse… being out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of demons or the absolute insanity that was the "drive" down… 😣

He spent the entirety of Solomon's Magical Ride of Nightmares clinging to Simeon or the armrests for dear life. He swore his entire life flashed before his eyes, can angels even have heart attacks???

Stayed right next to Simeon when they finally pulled themselves together enough to leave the car. He was so happy that Michael didn't see any of that… Who knew human transportation was so horrifying…???

His saving grace (literally) was getting to share his tent with Simeon… After Solomon told him that bears sometimes get curious and ransacked campsites, he clung onto the older angel like a protective charm.

...Whiiiich he wasn't too off about actually after he saw Simeon playing (yes PLAYING) with the human wildlife… Simeon had to introduce him to some of the nicer animals for him to eventually get over his fear and venture out past the campsite.

Luke loved to swim in the lake or river with MC and the others. The MC found a sturdy branch where they set up a rope swing and the little guy amused himself for hours!

Sometimes he'd watch Barbatos prep and cook using the campfire… He didn't even know you could make lasagna in a Dutch oven…

At one point the MC convinced him to go with them and the twins on a particularly long hike…

He got tired halfway through and Beel offered him a piggyback ride, but of course he'd NEVER let himself be that close to a demon!! (Just kidding, poor boy was so tired he climbed onto Beel's back and held on the a kola until they got back. Then he jumped off to save face)

He had a better time than he thought he would, but still doesn't want to go camping with demons ever again. (He and Simeon also begged Lucifer to drive them back instead of Solomon so the brothers' van was pretty much a clown car on the return trip).

Solomon

Solomon hasn't been camping (for enjoyment) in quite a while, so when the prospect came up to do it with the MC and the other students he was intrigued...

When Simeon asked he knew how to drive, he said yes. He knows how to start a car, put it into motion, steer, and then come to a stop. That's all driving is really. 🤷‍♀️ You can't blame him for not memorizing all the rules, he's been traveling by portal for decades!

Was pretty confused why his angel friends fled the car so quickly... He got them there in one piece, after all. 😕🤷‍♀️ He put up their tents himself since they were too busy thanking their father then made a magic barrier around the site for protection purposes.

He and the MC both have their own tents, of course his is enchanted to be a lot bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, but he's only let the MC in on that little secret in case they want to visit… 😏

When everyone else finally arrived, Solomon was happy to help the MC introduce the wonders of the human wilderness to their companions! Including the breathtaking vistas, beautiful flora, bitter temperatures, man-eating predators, waters filled with disease… Hm? Oh, Luke won't leave the tent now…? Whoopsie.

Solomon kept himself occupied on the trip the best way he knew how… relentless trolling (particularly of Asmo and Barbs because they're used to his shit).

He'd alternate between poking fun at Asmo for the almost ritual length routines he was going through to try and save his looks to genuinely trying to encourage him and downplay the severity of the downgrade...

Meanwhile he was bound and determined to serve at least one of his own dishes during the trip (but Barbatos had banned him from the "kitchen," the food tent, and even the spoons...)

Diavolo, nice guy that he is, eventually made Barbs relent and let Solomon cook for ONE night… It went as well as to be expected. (They sent Solomon to grab more supplies then everybody took turns washing their mouths out with lake water... Diavolo apologized profusely, he had no idea...).

Solomon was confused why the angels would rather squeeze themselves in with the brothers than ride with him back but he wasn’t upset about it. That meant he could make a few extra stops without anyone complaining! He knows a guy in New Orleans he’s been meaning to see again… Luke and Simeon can wait a little for their stuff, right?

Click HERE for Part One. Check out my Masterlist for more!

[felassan]

DA4 Lead Producer Scylla Costa’s BIG Festival talk, “Challenges of Dragon Age production during the pandemic”, can currently be rewatched on YouTube here starting roughly at timestamp 8:57:02 after a lil presenter blurb/intro. It’s 1 hour long. When it was streamed live, there was an English translation ‘voiceover’. There isn’t in this vid, however I want to post the link for Portuguese speakers, and also it’s neat for everyone to be able to see all the slides he presented with for themselves in context.

I don’t know if an English-language version will get put up so I’m sharing the notes I took during the talk below, in case anyone’s interested and because I might as well since I wrote them. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

Edit: Found a place to re-watch the English version of the talk

(Quick note: I didn’t note down everything, mostly things that caught my interest, so this isn’t exhaustive, and when I was watching I was real tired, so pls bear that in mind and don’t take these notes as bullet-proof 100% accurate gospel or direct quotes. If you watched it and think I’ve written down something wrong/misunderstood, let me know and I’ll fix. Also if you’re a Portuguese speaker and I’ve gotten something incorrect or missed something important etc, again just let me know.) **

** Edit: I’ve now gone through my notes while watching the talk again. I’ve filled in some of the gaps (although they still don’t cover everything said) and so forth, and now I’m no longer worried about there being possible errors in this post.

-----

For some context, this slide contained the breakdown of the talk’s structure. Bear in mind there are other slides present in the talk than the ones I’ve posted here, I didn’t include caps of all of them, just ones which were of note to me.

In the talk, chief Producer Scylla goes over challenges of DA4 production during the pandemic. He discusses the adaptations - necessary skills and learning from remote work - and he ponders on the future of teamwork.

After the launch of ME3 he became a producer, all his MMO and other experience helped a lot. He was on DAI for 3 years and MEA for 9 months, then Anthem. Today, on DA4, Scylla and another Lead Producer were the heads of the whole project, and there is his boss is the Executive Producer Christian Dailey. 

^ the usual AAA game development cycle (brief introduction)

AAA games are games that are launched for several platforms simultaneously. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase of the game development cycle can have from 5 - 30 people, and up to almost 60 people when they’re just about to go through the gate to production. 

In the pre-production phase, they go through the game’s concepts and prototypes and start developing systems. They seek the game’s concept and focus, and its key features. They do lots of market research. In the case of BioWare, all their games are strong in narrative, so they have lots of tools related to game narratives and supporting the development of a narrative (cinematic design, dialogue system etc) that get focused on in this phase. Other parts of the team such as writers and cinematic design need these systems to do their own roles. 

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase through to launch can take 4 - 6 years, but it does depend on the size of the team during development.

With regards to Dragon Age 4, they were coming close to the time when they would shift from pre-production to the production stage when the pandemic hit.

During the production phase is when the development of content and features takes place, with the systems mostly already existing from the pre-production phase. A few new systems may be developed in this phase. In the production phase is when things start escalating, and the team really starts growing, to like 2- or 3-fold the prior pre-production phase size. 

(DA4 is currently in the production phase.)

In the alpha phase, features have to be fully implemented and systems all have to be running / working. All the game features should already be in the game by now. They test from pre-production onwards, but this phase is when they run heavy technical tests with lots of players trying to play at the same time. In the beta phase, the idea is that you should now have full content and that now you’re balancing it and running more and lots of different tests with players before launch. There are final tweaks and then the final launch, when in the weeks prior to launch, all the different business units and areas e.g. marketing team, technology team, publishing team, get together once a day and all of the game’s issues are reported and brought to the table to be prioritized. Then they decide the next steps re: these issues (this is known as ‘the war room’).

After the launch there are usually patches like day zero patches and other patches, this being standard industry practise. The last stage is the new content stage where there are DLCs and a game with more content.

On March 12th 2020, the team gathered to review the DA4 story in the new office. Everyone was very excited. (They had spent over 10 years in their last building and had noticed that with the team growing they needed more space. In August 2019 they found the new studio in the city center.)

Anyway that evening, they got an email from the CEO which contained instructions and said that due to the pandemic, they should from now all start working remotely. They had known that this happening was a possibility so they had been planning on how to have all the devs working from home, but initially less than 50% of the devs were able to work from home successfully/efficiently due to various issues e.g. you need a VPN to be able to log in remotely to do your job normally, varying home office setups. The day after this, the office was basically deserted, except for Scylla, the IT infrastructure people and one or two odd devs.

Scylla was part of the team that was working on allowing the devs to work from home. They first started looking at the short-term changes they needed to make to allow this.

“First, take care of our developers”. 

When the pandemic first hit, their and Scylla’s [as Lead Producer] first priority was to look after the devs. Many of them are parents (schools and day-cares were shut, children were studying from home), others have relatives living with them, others have other personal circumstances which of course need to be taken into account when it comes to assessing what needs to be taken into consideration for this new scenario. So, they looked at each dev on a case-by-case basis in order to evaluate, speaking to each one and asking them what they could do to support them.

One of the first changes/adaptations they could implement was flexible working hours and flexibility around deadlines. Generally speaking the devs got a lot of support, EA was really good and really supported the devs especially in the first months of the pandemic (and they are still supporting them). Initially not all devs had suitable office spaces at home, some were working from the living room from laptops or at the kitchen table. The whole covid situation basically just happened over night and nobody was really ready to deal with that change. So their first step was to enable their devs to work remotely. As a producer, Scylla’s main task is to communicate with the team such as via a number of daily meetings. He doesn’t depend so much on powerful hardware.

“Enable developers to work remotely”.

This slide shows some of a BioWare audio team. Different teams have varying and specific needs in order to do their jobs and therefore in order to do them remotely. For example, the audio team need good-quality speakers and amplifiers, while the lighting and art teams need other specific equipment such as tablets and large screens. So there was a lot of work they had to do to go through each dev to understand their individual needs and what needed to be done for them. ‘Could they download the builds? Did they have the right performance [tech-wise]? Could they submit their changelists, their codes to the server?’

Some devs needed a more powerful internet connection as it would take 6-8 hours to download a build (some devs live rurally). Some needed a lot of cable, as they were working far away from their routers (sometimes up to 50m). As time went by things got better and better. 

The chair devs work from is also important; a kitchen able chair etc is not suitable to sit in for long-term desk work, possibly leading to health issues like back ache and blood circulation problems in the legs.

Every 3 months they had money given to help devs buy new mice, keyboards, monitors - anything they needed really in order for their office setting at home to be improved. For a while, because lots of people [generally, in society] were needing and buying them, it was quite hard to buy things like webcams and microphones.

On mid- and long-term changes:

In terms of DA, we have to look at this from 2 perspectives, the change in the personal and the professional environments. 

As a consequence of working from home, people tend to be less active during the day (even in an office, you go between meeting rooms, up and down stairs etc). Physical activity supports life quality and therefore work quality. Scylla noticed that he began to feel listless and such, and found that he needed to change his routine that he had initially developed when he started working from home, for example; having a normal start time (as in, have a semblance of structure in your day as if you were still working in the office site), get dressed at the normal time, not having meetings over lunch etc. This wasn’t just him, lots of other devs encountered this and had this experience too. Devs which adapted faster had better productivity and became more productive faster.

Scylla bought a stand-up desk which he can raise up and down, and at meetings he would be delivering a talk while standing or even while walking on a treadmill. Other devs also got stand-up desks. He tracked his body’s data on a Fitbit. These sorts of things helped improve physical and mental wellbeing. Other devs did similar things, like starting going out for jogs or began practising yoga. Essentially, everyone needed to make changes to their daily routine in comparison to what they had been doing prior to the pandemic. 

The pandemic has been a thing for over a year now. In their location, every couple of weeks a new restriction is put into place or a rule is changed, and every two weeks there’s a new thing that you can and can’t do. Scylla also started moving around his property. He worked on his desk, fixed it up and painted - taking up a new hobby. Other devs picked up new hobbies too. These are good ways to be active and also to be somewhere else, i.e. to break up the working day and not be spending it all in one home office-type location. Scylla found that when he made these sorts of changes to his routine to improve his lifestyle, the data output by his Fitbit as indicators of his health/wellbeing etc improved, e.g. number of steps taken in a day, heartbeats per minute while at rest. As stated many of the other devs went through a similar process.

On the professional side of things:

They had to improve remote delivery of builds. Accessing things from home as a dev requires a VPN. They need to download a build every day and then upload it to the server after making their changes to the game. They had to work with infrastructure and research other tech, such as streaming tech to allow remote console access, in order to better facilitate this process. For remote access, they also had to work on adapting communications channels.

“Adapting channels of communication.”

In this slide, the team are working on the storyboards. Before you can implement motion capture & performance capture, you have to ‘run the storyboards’ like this. These are small illustrating drawings which reflect the drafts and are meant to quickly reflect the intention of the scenes that are to be built. Before the pandemic, the team would go to meeting rooms like this, sit down, talk and interact in person. After the pandemic, the question became ‘How do you do this over Zoom?’ You can, but it’s not quite the same; it’s harder to see peoples’ expressions, some people are embarrassed speaking over Zoom etc. Therefore they had to adapt their communications systems, and unlearn the ways in which they developed before in order to relearn and learn new ways of communicating.

Slack was a tool that they adopted on this front. Communications channels can be confusing on Slack, so there was a need to develop structure. For example, how quickly should someone reply (as a recommended convention for the purposes of work)? They had to define the process/procedures for the channels so it was clear for the team as a whole how it would all flow (this is important especially if you have a team with say 30 people or as a whole hundreds of people). Before the pandemic, they had stand-up meetings where they’d go around in a circle every morning and talk about their activities - what they’re going to be working on, any roadblocks they had encountered etc. The question arose ‘How do you replace these?’ They ended up doing Slack messages at a certain time of day and updating their statuses with some details on what they’re working on and color-coding (green - fine, yellow - need help, red - busy/blocked out).

Another issue that they faced was unforeseen - the number of meetings that devs were having really shot through the roof. When there wasn’t a good structure of communications channels, any conversation would become a meeting. Everybody began scheduling meetings left and right, and at the end of the day they would have little time left in which to actually work on their to-do lists. Hence, they had to work with the team to really analyze and be very pragmatic. ‘Which meetings needed to happen? Which didn’t? Is a specific meeting really necessary? Which meetings should be recurring? What can be done over Slack?’ This guideline had to be given to the team to help, and it improved things a lot. The number of meetings decreased a lot and they got more effective. For example, by making sure to set an agenda for meetings beforehand, and by having meeting notes (then a dev who didn’t really need to be at a meeting could skip attending and just quickly review the notes output after instead). They also decreased the standard length of meeting times from the default Outlook blocks of 1 hour and 30 mins to 55 mins and 25 mins respectively. This 5 minute change gave devs time for things like bio breaks (also 4 hours in a row at a computer in a home office with one meeting after another just isn’t good for a person).

“Adapting p-cap and mocap”.

On content:

From a content point of view, the most difficult thing in terms of the pandemic was adapting p-cap and mocap (performance capture and motion capture). They hire actors and it’s a large studio. The pandemic meant big limits to what they could and couldn’t do. The actors had to be masked and 5 meters apart in distance (although it doesn’t look like it in some of these shots due to angles). Also there could be no other person around in the studio - only the actors. The directors instead would ‘patch’ in remotely on big screens (you can see this in the second photo in the top right). 

Before the pandemic, they felt that they wouldn’t be able to do p-cap or mocap properly remotely, as the directors would usually stand right next to actors giving guidance on their performance. The techs would also usually be near. But they adapted! The keyword is adapting, changing process. It’s harder and it’s different, but it is possible, and people start rethinking what is possible. What was said to be impossible before now is possible.

P-cap differs to mocap in that it also captures voice and facial expressions.

On the future of work after covid:

There will probably be more working from home and more flexibility for workers e.g. being able to work say 3 out of 5 days from home. It does depend on what a dev’s specific job is however. For example, the audio engineers require lots of specialist equipment and said equipment is of higher quality and quantity in the office. So, depending on role, devs might be working more often or less often from home.

Another development is that lots of devs are moving house. In lockdown etc people started reassessing what’s most important in life. Some are moving further away from the studio to get a cheaper rent or for example couples who both needed an office space to work from home from but their current place only had one area. Others are moving closer to nature for a better quality of life, and still others have other different reasons for doing so. Over 10 devs that he knows in fact have recently moved, including Scylla himself.

The pandemic changed certain skills being used by people on a daily basis. Scylla used as an example of this one of his soft skills, being able to tell from looking/interacting in-person with someone if they are stressed out. Obviously it’s less easy to tell if someone is stressed out when you’re remote, so you adapt different ways of checking in with people in the new situation. To continue carrying out his role as Lead Producer, he began checking in with his team pro-actively on the new comms channels and asking how they were doing.

Also, now that companies are more open to working remotely, there is going to be increased competition for hiring devs. They saw both sides of this coin at BioWare. They were able to hire devs from many places that they couldn’t hire from before e.g. Montreal, Vancouver, the US, as there’s less need for devs to relocate to Edmonton or Austin. This opens up opportunities to hire really intelligent and skilled people that they would not have had access to before.

Question and answer segment:

The pre-production phase has been concluded. They’re in the production phase.

They are not giving out a lot of details yet but Scylla is really excited as a big fan of the whole series. He thinks that with DA4, they will have the opportunity/possibility to launch the best story out of all DA games. He feels that the characters they’re making are amazing. He’s dying to say more but can’t. 

When you work from home you need to keep your team as productive as possible. During the pandemic, when people started working from home, they noticed that some people became more productive and some people became less productive. They were analyzing it on a case-by-case basis so as not to make assumptions. They were interested in seeing what they could do to help. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were looking at the devs as people and seeing what they needed.

Production of DA4 still needed to continue during the pandemic because they want to be able to launch the game.

This slide shows a writer. Writing is an example of a role which is more able to work from home easily.

Their productivity did go down in the first month of the pandemic. After adaptations, some people then became more productive than they were before (this was role and personal situation-dependent, examples of this being artists and coders who were able to art and code at home without being interrupted, thereby being able to produce more). Covid has affected productivity in general, but this is part of our new reality. They have adapted and adjusted some deadlines. They have enough data (Scylla LOVES data) now to understand how long it will take them/how long they’ll need to launch the game. They have always had historical data for this purpose, but they’re doing more of this sort of thing now to ensure that they are doing things at the right time.

Remote hiring opens up the door to more talent joining, so if someone has talent geography will hold them back less. Some companies though may choose not to hire people from other countries due to labor issues, cumbersome legal aspects, time zones. But even in such cases there are activities for example that can be carried out while the rest of the team is asleep such as testing or working on the build, or there are cases where those companies still will want to hire a specifically/highly talented person even in spite of the potential legal aspects and so on.

On mental health: People were affected. There is the mental, physical and social impacts of the pandemic situation on people. EA supported them during the pandemic in terms of their mental wellbeing, there are specific companies (services offered, speaking to a therapist) that they can contact if they need something or help. EA had always been good at supporting them with this sort of thing but this has improved further during the pandemic. Another change was that they could/can take a couple of days off if they needed/need to because of the pandemic e.g. to take care of children, who were obviously not at school at the time. As a producer he had to be very mindful of all of this. How much they were monitoring peoples’ wellbeing really went up during the pandemic.

A question that was asked - in terms of DA4′s storybeats, is there anything in there that they decided to change due to the pandemic as it wouldn’t be sensitive or appropriate to include anymore, for example a plague plotline or something? Scylla’s answer is that DA and ME are games in which they try to have narratives that are relatable, which include things which people will identify with, so that players understand what characters are going through etc. Nothing in DA4′s plotline/storybeats has been changed (in the frame of this question, relating to the pandemic), as it didn’t have anything in it that could be specifically or a directly connected to a pandemic-type situation or anything. Of course the DA story has Blights and the Taint, but these are different & fantastical things and existed long before the pandemic situation. So this wasn’t the case with DA4 and there was no need to change anything, but this has happened to other games where they decided to change a storyline due to a strong correlation with something in the real world.

There were then concluding/closing remarks. The message he wants to send is that a crisis will always spark opportunities. Look at a crisis and try to see how you can grow.

-----

[☕ found this post interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[ladyblogger-margie]

Motel Adventure - Chapter 1

Pairings: Will “Ironhead” Miller x F!Reader, Frankie “Catfish” Morales x F!Reader, Santiago “Pope” Garcias x F!Reader, Benny Miller x F!Reader

Summary: A “Choose Your Own Smutty Adventure” story. Chapter 1 follows F!Reader and the Triple Frontier boys (post-movie) on a roadtrip where you’re forced to pull over for the night unexpectedly, and there aren’t enough beds. Who will you choose to bunk with? Or will you sleep alone? (hint, all decisions end in sex). Your choice will determine Chapter 2. 

Word Count: 1343

Warnings: 18+ ONLY because this is a setup for PURE SMUT to come in the multiple Chapter 2s. 

a/n: I love the “Only One Bed” trope, and I love ALL the TF Boys (not Tom) and wanted to practice writing smut for all of them, so I had an idea for this little concept. I hope you have as much fun with it as I did. 

MY MASTERLIST

You had known the guys for years, but in the time since Tom’s death, you’d become especially close with them. You had noticed them struggling after whatever the hell happened in South America, and while you never learned the exact details, you knew enough to know they needed each other. So you took it upon yourself to hold them together. And in turn, they kept you happy, kept you whole. They had all become your closest and dearest friends. 

That’s how you found yourself on this weekend away road trip with the guys, all piled into Frankie’s truck. Benny had a fight tournament out of state so you all decided to make a weekend out of it. Benny had won his Saturday night Championship fight and the celebrations ran all night. While fun, it set you way behind schedule for your Sunday return home. 

And then the rain started. The sky was a dangerous, threatening grey all day and when the sun went down, the sky fell hard. The rain was torrential and Frankie was white knuckling the steering wheel while everyone else was silent. 

You were in the back sandwiched between Will and Pope as you gripped the back of Benny’s passenger seat nervously. You trusted that Frankie was an excellent driver, but you’ve never seen conditions like this. 

You didn’t want anything to happen to any of these guys. They were your family and you loved them. But you also were in love with one of them, and none of them had any idea. You hadn’t wanted anything to change in your group, you didn’t want to ruin this stable dynamic all of you were so dependent on these days. Admitting your feelings could jeopardize everything. 

You had realized your feelings a few months back when you were all out at the bar one night. You had all taken Frankie out for a drink when his divorce finalized. The divorce had been civil and Frankie was a proper co-parent, it’s just that sometimes people don’t end up together. Despite the fact that Frankie said he was totally fine with it all, you and the boys insisted he needed to blow off some steam at your favourite dive bar. 

“I really am fine,” Frankie said, “But it is nice to get out with you all.” And he clinked his glass to all of yours. 

You all hooted and hollered for him in response. Then you took turns sharing your worst breakup stories. 

“Well I’ve never been one for relationships,” Pope said, “But that shit in Australia hurt.”

“At least you tried,” Will said, “I never tried to make it work with my girl when she ran out.”

“To be fair,” Benny interrupted,” She was a bitch.”

Will shook his head but didn’t fight his smile, “Still, trying’s got to count for something.”

“Well I still think I win,” Benny said.

“You haven’t heard mine though,” you pointed out. 

Benny scoffed, “Mine ended with half my closet being set on fire.”

“I ended up homeless sleeping on my cousin Molly’s couch,” you explained, “Don’t you remember I was living with her and Tom when I met you guys?”

Benny thought about it, “Yeah but then you got to meet us, so I’d call that a win.”

Everyone laughed and you noticed the pitcher was empty at the center of the table.

“Next round’s on me,” you said standing and heading to the bar. 

While you waited your turn, you looked back at the table with your boys and smiled. 

A large frat boy looking guy stepped in front of your view of your table. 

“Hey, sexy, can I buy you a drink?” He asked.

“I’m good,” you said as the bartender passed over your pitcher. 

“That all for you?” The frat boy asked

“Nope, me and my friends,” you pointed behind him and when he turned to look you saw the boys watching you carefully. You pulled a “save me” face in their direction, hoping they saw it before the frat guy blocked your view again. 

“Ditch them,” he slurred at you, “I’ll give you a night to remember.”

You forced a smile, “No thanks.”

“Come on, you’re hot and I’m sure I could rock your world,” he offered as he backed you up against the bar, leaving you without an escape. 

“Please let me go back to my friends,” you asked, bracing yourself. 

“Why are you being a bitch?” his voice was threatening. 

“There a problem here?” Benny asked from behind the guy. He was flanked by Pope, Frankie, and Will.

“I think it’s time to go,” Will suggested, his arms crossed and jaw locked. 

“I was just talking to her,” the guy said, his arms up.

“Do you want to keep talking to him,” Pope asked you, but his eyes were locked on the frat guy. 

“Nope,” you said, your voice stronger now with the arrival of your backup.

Frankie took the pitcher from you in one hand and grasped your wrist with his other hand, “Come on, let’s go sit down,” and he led you away. 

“I think you should call it a night,” Will told the guy.

The guy went to argue when Benny stopped him by saying, “That wasn’t a suggestion.”

“I’d listen to him,” Pope finished and the guy sulked away out of the bar. 

You sat with Frankie at the table smiling when the other three rejoined you. 

Pope touched your arm gently, “You okay?”

Will and Benny watched you so softly, and Frankie still held your wrist. It was all so sincere, so genuine. 

You laughed. You laughed and they were stunned so you explained, “You guys are like my own personal security detail. Never has it been easier to give a creep the slip.”

They all smiled themselves, just glad you were alright. 

“I was really fine, that happens all the time,” you explained, pouring the next round for the table from the fresh pitcher. 

“You shouldn’t have to deal with that,” Will said.

“It’s life,” you shrugged. 

“Not with us,” Frankie promised. 

The guys nodded and you felt the skin of your face grow warm. 

“Okay, this is getting sappy,” you joked, “Who wants to play quarters?

Later that night alone in your apartment you replayed the evening and realized while you were touched they all had your back, you had a different feeling about one of your defenders. You lulled yourself to sleep imagining that he felt about you the way you felt about him. 

The memory of that night flashed in your mind in time with a vibrant bolt of lightning that lit up the whole front window of the truck. 

“Maybe we should pull over and find a motel for the night,” you suggested.

“She might be right,” Will said. 

“How are you feeling, Frankie?” Pope asked. 

“I’d be okay with a motel,” Frankie answered with his eyes glued to the road. 

“I think there’s one at the next exit,” Benny said, pointing at the exit sign ahead. 

Frankie carefully exited the highway and the motel appeared not far down the road. It wasn’t anything flashy but it would do the trick so Frankie parked the truck in the parking lot. 

“I have to call work and leave a message I won’t be in tomorrow,” you explained, “I’ll catch up.”

The boys nodded and promised to get you a room as you pulled out your cell under the protection of the front awning. 

When you hung up, you headed back inside to see the four men standing there, a little sheepish, each holding a room key. 

“What’s up?” you asked. 

“Apparently lots of people decided to get off the road for the night,” Frankie started. 

“So there aren’t many rooms left,” Will continued. 

“We got the last four vacancies,” Pope said. 

“You’ll have to share with one of us,” finished Benny. 

Your breath hitched and you realized you could spend the night, alone, with the man you were in love with. You just had to have the courage to choose. 

Choose Will “Ironhead” Miller*

Choose Santiago “Pope” Garcias*

Choose Frankie “Catfish” Morales*

Choose Benny Miller*

Choose Alone*

[itsclydebitches]

Hey Clyde! I'm not sure if you've been asked this before but why do you think the writers chose to have Cinder... cry? One one hand, I thought that scene was supposed to be a breaking point but on the other (and looking at the following episodes), did she cry to guilt Watts into helping her? I was already a little confused with that choice before but now I'm even more so.

Hey there, anon!

Yeah, it’s a messy scene, more because of what happens after it than because of the scene itself. No, I personally don’t think this was a calculated move to get Watts to help her. We could delve into whether Cinder is currently the kind of character to pull off a manipulation like that  — I’d say not  — but the main takeaway is that she doesn’t need to do that. Watts is ready and willing to get back to work, together. 

Well, the others may or may not be dead, but Salem will definitely be back and until she returns we need to figure out what to do. Cinder has no motivation for convincing Watts to work with her because Watts is already willing. It’s only when she starts suggesting more idiotic, ill-thought out “plans” that he tells her precisely why she’s failed in the past, but even post-death threat he doesn’t express any reluctance about working with her. Watts doesn’t say a thing between getting dropped back on the roof and Cinder shedding that tear.  

We admittedly do get some kind of emotion from Watts after he’s brought back onto the roof, but I read that more as a, “Holy shit I nearly died” reaction and not a “Oh no I’ve hurt Cinder’s feelings” one. If he was at all moved by her crying, he doesn’t show it. Watts doesn’t care. He said what he said and he stands by it. 

Rather, I lean more towards that first reading: “I thought that scene was supposed to be a breaking point.” Other critics were right to point out that Watts’ general accusations of her never having a plan/working with others are ridiculous —  we watched whole seasons of Cinder weaving intricate (by RWBY’s standards) plans with the White Fang and Roman —  but he’s right that she’s a mess now. Between throwing herself at Raven and then throwing herself at Penny, her “plan” of “Just be more powerful and win” is garbage. It’s not enough to be strong, you have to be smart too, and for the first time since Volume 3, Cinder seems to get that. This is also the volume where we get her backstory, a flashback to a time when she was powerless, and if we’re seeing those memories now, it stands to reason it’s because Cinder is thinking about them now. That was her past and, wouldn’t you know, it looks a lot like her present. She’s tortured by Salem, failing to seize the power she wants, and now Watts lays it all out in one neat, vicious package. He’s right. I’m a failure. Cue collapsing on the roof and having that dam break a bit in the form of a single tear. 

I, personally, was really intrigued by this development, simply because Cinder lacks development. The concept of her re-acquiring the patience and intellect she had in earlier volumes after regressing was a good one. Here’s a woman who craves power, finally achieved some (Amber’s Maiden powers), and in doing so expected everything else in her life to fall into place. When it didn’t  — when she was still losing fights and remained under Salem’s thumb  — she devolved into an impatient, crazed villain, creating a cycle where she was bound to continue losing so long as she acted this way. Watts’ accusations finally snap her out of that, with the added bonus of this “friendship is power” theme. RWBY strongly pushes that only those who work together can hope to succeed (Salem wants to divide, the Ace Ops supposedly couldn’t work as a team well enough to beat Team RWBY, etc.) and now here was Cinder re-learning how to rely on her allies. No more trying to shake Emerald when she wants to help attack Penny, no more ignoring Watts’ “we need a plan” to run off after the powers on her own, Cinder is finally ready to play smart again and that’s achieved largely though having a team she can also rely on, just like she did back in Volumes 1-3. That time when she won. If Team RWBY wins because they support and love one another, what’s going to happen if the villains start, well, not loving one another, but becoming evil friends? Why, they should become quite the force to reckoned with! And that’s presumably what we saw in Atlas’ HQs: Neo, Cinder, and Watts enjoying being evil together. They’re trading compliments, Neo is skipping through dead bodies... the villains that work together win together. 

The problem is... absolutely nothing comes of this. Cinder doesn’t actually get smarter, everyone else just gets dumber. This entire plan hinges on snagging the Relic and the Relic, in turn, hinges on Neo. Does Cinder do anything to trick or convince Neo that she’s truly reliable this time? No, Neo just goes stupid and hands over the Relic. Again. So Jinn gives Cinder all the information she needs and after things actually go well via teamwork  — Cinder distracts Team RWBY while Neo sneaks up  — she destroys that advantage by kicking Neo off the edge and burning Watts. Cinder’s success doesn’t even last a whole episode. Sure, she gets away with the Relics, but what she actually wanted, the Maiden power, is lost to her because it ended up being a 3v1 battle. If only Neo was around to fight Weiss while Cinder went after Penny! Funny how you self-sabotaged yourself. Again. 

This scene, like so much in RWBY, is fine on its own, but falls apart as the story progresses. Cinder’s revelation didn’t actually change her character, so fans are right to ask, “What was the point?” Well, the answer is that the point was lost, what the scene set up was quickly dropped, but the other way to approach this is to assume there must be a different point to the scene. Enter the “Cinder is sympathetic” reading. I’m not going to deny that this exists regardless of what else we might take away from the moment  — it’s hard to have any villain cry on screen and not question how much we’re supposed to feel for them. That’s something I’ve criticized regarding Raven  — but some fans have come to the conclusion that this is the scene’s only purpose. Which, when the story drops the other purpose, makes a certain amount of sense. This volume we watched Hazel suddenly sacrifice himself for the boy he was torturing, Emerald get buddy with the girl she was just trying to murder, and Ironwood go full, evil spotlight villain. Volume 8 made HUGE missteps when it came to flipping the moral divide, with the villains suddenly meant to be friends and the friends (including the Ace Ops) meant to be villains. It’s understandable that fans would wonder if Cinder is meant to be a part of that flip. Did you include her crying solely to try and convince me she’s not that bad? At least, not as bad as the evil Ironwood? And many fans are, rightly, upset about this attempt to pull on their heartstrings. Regardless of what else that scene might have been attempting to do  — whether this really was setup for Cinder’s development that the show failed to follow through on  — we can’t ignore the inherent problems in spending this much time (crying + backstory) making an unambiguous villain look all woobie, while simultaneously avoiding that work in the previously morally gray/heroic characters. Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t have sympathetic villains, that you shouldn’t introduce that nuance, but rather that RWBY is developing an awful habit of putting that work towards the wrong characters. Everything in a story is interconnected, so it’s frustrating to watch Cinder cry and go, “Wait, am I supposed to feel bad for her when she is, essentially, crying over her failure to kill the heroes?” while simultaneously watching a show that, when a former hero was maimed, betrayed, and facing an impossible decision went, “Nah. You shouldn’t feel bad for this asshole at all. He’s evil.” Which is it, RWBY? Why am I encouraged to feel for the Definitely Bad characters, but discouraged from feeling for the Morally Ambiguous ones? There’s a disconnect here which encourages fans to approach the scene with a less than charitable eye. Cinder’s scene appears to be doing at least two different things, both as a means of developing her character, but between what happens later in the volume and how other characters are handled in comparison to her, both attempts fall flat. 

[coldtomyflash]

Thank you for answering ! I did finish the fic and chapter 3 does a great job of establishing Snart's history with his soulmark, but it's also specific to that fic ? Like it's an explanation for how he came to feel that way about his soulmate in the context on that particular fic, I was wondering more about what it was about their canon characterization that made you decide this was how they both would react to finding out they were soulmates in the first place.

hmmm i didn’t come at it that way and i think therein lies the disconnect with what you’re asking and how i’m able to answer.

i didn’t start with “what would barry be like if he met his soulmate” or “what would len do if he met his soulmate” in a way that started from canon and then extended to a new setting.

i mean i sort of did, in that i went “what if they were soulmates” then went “len is a dramatic ho who would think that bank robberies and heists are the right way to woo his beloved and barry would be progressively more annoyed with this bullshit” then went “oh nevermind let’s take that idea but make it angst” 

but in many ways i couldn’t start perfectly linearly from canon because i was started in a world that exists just to the left of canon. the way soulmates are setup in that world makes everything just sightly different, and i had to take that into consideration.

so while i started with “haha what if len was a total brat” (much like i always start with tbh), the crux of the story’s starting point was the shape of the soulmate bond, the bleed. i’m a hopeless romantic who loves the idea of soulmates but i get stuck on worldbuilding details. soulmate AUs with the “first words” or “see in colour when you meet your mate” really leave me wanting more because -- what the heck would society even look like if that were the case and what are the millions of ways it would be different? 

so the bleed was baked in from the beginning, from before the beginning, half because there was a post that went around about “what if barry and len accidentally got psychically bonded thanks to a meta”. so psychic bonds and soulmates, that’s the setup.

then i dropped barry and len into that setup -- into that alternate universe i’d made with all its societal backdrop. and i knew i was writing for angst, and i knew i wanted it to be messy and complicated. i wish i could say that i sat down and was like “okay so if barry were soulmates with len here’s how he’d react” but i didn’t. instead i sat down and said “i’m making a story where barry and len are going to be bonded with an emotional bleed and they’re going to be soulmates and it’s going to cause problems.” and i implicitly knew i wanted to explore themes related to separation, expectation, and identity navigation.

so why was barry the one who pulled away, and len the one who wanted to bond? in part because it just seemed a lot more interesting to me, and i’d already written stories where barry is the one who is “all in” and len is the one who is reluctant to commit. 

i also felt it very true to len’s character from a “i’m a thief” standpoint that he’d be a bit greedy/possessive over someone who the universe has literally said is supposed to be his, in part due to his past and how much he keeps people at arm’s length (but how obviously he thaws for the people he does let close). len might not want to open up or commit or be emotionally vulnerable under normal circumstances, but this is a sort of ‘sure thing’ in his mind, at least at the outset before that faith is shaken. 

barry though - barry was tricky, actually. i did have to figure out that if the central romantic conflict was going to be him pulling away -- why? 

if he was on board with it quite then it would be a much shorter story. i knew he would plausibly balk at being soulmates with len at the outset, but barry is a forgiving and kind person, so realistically how/why might he pull away?

so of course they bonded in/under terrible circumstances. that was like - step 1. otherwise, if len had been like “oh should we bond” and barry agreed, then there would be a lot of cognitive dissonance involved that would make barry retroactively justify his agreement to bond by interpreting it as being because he wants to be close to len. so i had to take barry’s choice away, and then realistically i think he’d react negatively because that’s overwhelming and the whole thing was a mess and very confronting.

but i also -

there’s this line from season 1 when he first asks Len for help, right before he goes to the bar. the thing that gives barry the idea to ask len, when he’s talking to joe at the precinct. “we only break the rules to help people”

it tells you so much about how barry sees the world. so. much. i could unpack that for days. and it’s wild that he immediately thinks about len as a result of breaking the rules for somewhat noble reasons???? just - what???

but barry sees himself as the good guy. it’s fundamental to his worldview in this really really huge way. and what we know about self-concept is that very close others become enmeshed/embedded into our self-concept: our partners literally become included in how we see ourselves.

if you see yourself as the good guy, and that is fundamental to your identity and worldview and necessary for you to be psychologically healthy because you’ve made it a cornerstone of your self-concept.... how the hell do you respond when a giant fucking grenade lands right in the middle of that self-perception and says “actually part of your self-concept now involves kidnapping, tormenting, and torturing your friends, also killing a dude just to test the cold-gun, also a lifetime of theft and murder, also betrayal can’t forget that sweet sting of betrayal.”

barry coming to len over time in his own way is one thing. barry having len bond with him as a soulmate out of the blue is about the biggest psychological threat possible. it’s threatening his sense of self, his worldview, the structure of his self-concept, his expectations for himself (which are too damn high, he has to save everyone, he ‘has to try’) and leads him to believe that others he loves will be disappointed in him or reject him for this because len has hurt them, and because barry is disappointed in himself for wanted to connect with len, with his soulmate, despite all the harm he’s caused.

as soon as that clicked for me, as soon as i put it in context of barry’s self-concept, everything kind of flowed from there really really easily.

i was overly ambitious in writing that out though i think because most people, barry included, don’t introspect a lot about the structure of their self-concept, and don’t have the language related to social psychology to articulate what it means to be psychologically threatened. so he doesn’t really understand his own reactions and why they’re so visceral, and when he does he’s lying to himself about how much of it is coming from the fact that he wants len and wants to be with len but he’s upset with himself for how deep he wants that because the absolutely massive guilt he experiences because of it.

aaaand all that brings me to pointing out that the obvious resolution there is having barry’s loved ones find out about len and accept len as part of barry’s life and show that these people aren’t rejecting barry for being with len. if/when that’s the case, barry is able to more authentically work through all this shit. but because of how they bonded and how goddamn secretive his is (canonically) about personal shit, he decided to hide his bond with len, which meant he wasn’t able to deal with literally any of this during the first several chapters and all of it compounded and magnified until it reached it’s first breaking point.

whew - okay that was a wall of text sorry not sorry i hope this helps answer your question but it probably just complicated things a lot.

[dragon-grunkle]

star wars and flight rising are in the same universe and here’s why, a ted talk by stanley

in an effort to both 1. talk about my lore more often like i’ve been meaning to and 2. explain what i meant when i went off about it in the tags of my last post, i’m gonna attempt to explain my rationale for deciding star wars and flight rising can totally coexist in the same universe.

there’s a tldr at the very bottom! i do use rebels as a basis for some of this lore, since it basically just confirms concepts i was already thinking of before i even watched the show, but it IS a little spoilery sometimes.

SO. what do we know about sornieth? here’s a summary: it’s the fourth planet from its sun. it has at least one but possibly two or more moons. powerful beings of pure elemental energy sprung up in the early days of the planet’s formation. a darkness from beyond attacks the planet, and the gods build a pillar to keep it out. after this, humanoid races flourish and they learn to combine magic with technology, but eventually someone gets too arrogant and builds a big machine that blows up all of civilization. from this, the arcanist is born. he grows curious and encounters the shade, which breaks the pillar. the other gods see this and decide to go their separate ways. they create dragons.

this new society has reached a point roughly equivalent to the 1920s, and that’s as far as we’ve gotten. that’s it, that’s flight rising. no aliens mentioned, except for the shade (and possibly the forbidden portal enemies if you count those, but that’s for another time).

what about star wars? as we all know, it’s set ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’. there is a lot of history here that isn’t really relevant, so i’m just going to talk briefly about the layout of the galaxy: it isn’t named, but there are different sections to it that are, and they’re grouped according to how far away a planet is from the center of the galaxy. you have: the core worlds, the inner rim, the mid rim, the outer rim, and wild space. generally, planets are more densely populated towards the center of the galaxy and less as you go out. compare coruscant, a core world entirely covered by a city and inhabited by trillions of people, to tatooine, an outer rim planet that wookieepedia states has 200,000 inhabitants total. 

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where does sornieth fit in this map? the answer is simple: wild space. this region lies beyond the outer rim, where not many bother to travel because it’s just not worth it, and it’s where i’ve placed sornieth in this scenario. wookieepedia says:

Unlike other regions of the galaxy, Wild Space existed along the entire circumference of the galactic disk and on the borderlands of the Unknown Regions. It was inhabited by sentient species but not fully charted, explored, and civilized.

star wars: rebels touches on wild space a bit: one of its main characters is a lasat, a species thought to be wiped out by the empire. lasats come from lasan, but they have a legendary ancestral homeworld called lira san. except it turns out that lira san isn’t a myth: it’s real, it’s populated, and it’s in wild space.

the fact that an entire species believed their original homeworld was a myth means we can easily set sornieth there without ever having to worry about political groups such as the republic, the empire, and the rebellion coming across the planet and mucking up our established rule of No Aliens Besides Shade (And Maybe Arcanist). it’s conveniently out of the way AND protects the lore of both continuities very well, ensuring that they don’t interfere with each other by introducing a previously-unheard-of super-powerful flying magical race to the galaxy, or having stormtroopers invade the southern icefields, or something else fucky like that.

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now that we’ve got location covered, we have to talk about the force, magic, and the gods. i’m gonna get a little handwavey here, but it’s also, i think, the most interesting part of this whole thing, so here we go.

first off, the force. what is it? here’s how obi-wan describes it in a new hope:

It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.

with that description in mind, i want to draw attention to one little throwaway line from the flight rising lorebook chapter 1: the first age: 

From this bedlam, the magical energies themselves began to concentrate and change. Similar particles receded into four great beings, each overwhelmingly dense with a different element. As if eager to proudly display their emergence to some unseen divinity, these beings took on the shapes of great wyrms.

that ‘unseen divinity’? yeah, that’s the force. you could even take the ‘similar particles’ bit to mean midi-chlorians, if you want to acknowledge the prequels’ interpretation of the force.

as we know, some people are stronger with the force than others. these people usually become jedi or sometimes sith, depending on whether they use the light or the dark side. but the jedi and sith aren’t the only force users out there: there are plenty of civilizations who have different names and explanations for it and how it manifests itself varies from person to person. in fact, the lasat people i mentioned earlier recognized the force as something called ‘the ashla’. so different concepts for the force exist across the galaxy, and it’s very possible that what we know as ‘elemental magic’ on sornieth is simply how dragons see different aspects of the force. as if that wasn’t enough, we also know some force users can use the force to manipulate the elements themselves, like how palpatine can use the dark side to create lightning.

so really: i don’t think it’s a stretch to say some intensely powerful creatures born of the universe itself could specialize in a specific aspect of the force and manifest entirely that way.

[billy mays voice] But Wait, There’s More! i’m gonna reference rebels again. yeah, i know. on the planet of atollon lives the bendu, a being of the force who is neither light nor dark. he’s powerful, and at one point, turns himself into a giant storm and strikes down ships with lightning to defend his planet. loth-wolves are a similar concept. they’re animals which are shown to have a deep connection to the force, but only as it relates to the planet they call home, lothal. at one point a character asks if the loth-wolves are on their side and the answer is "they're on lothal's side.” this is how i see the gods as existing in the greater star wars universe: powerful beings intrinsically linked to the planet they originate from. they’re capable of great feats on their own, but can guide others (like humans or dragons) to use the force / magic in their stead.

the gods are real inasmuch as the force is real, and act as extensions of one another. if we wanna go a step further, the deities could all be light-side users and the shade is their dark counterpart, which is a REALLY fun concept to explore.

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phew, that’s it. i’ve covered most of it except for how dragons get off sornieth and into the wider galaxy, which is...somewhat less essential than the stuff i talked about above, but i still want to address it, especially since we’ve established they have no outside contact and are limited to 1920s tech. to keep it brief, the easiest answer is...magic.

i don’t want to get tooooo deep into rebels stuff again, but space-time portals do exist in star wars, which is really exciting for me personally, and also a nice setup for dragons to get out into the galaxy - if they have access to them, that is; in rebels they only appear in a jedi temple, but i think it’s possible other access points exist, given that other force-societies also exist. the point is, being handwavey and saying ‘eh, portals’ is a valid excuse that doesn’t totally break either universe because they are canon to both universes. you could also go the route of magic experiments gone wrong, the deities picking off a few special individuals and sending them out, or crazy lighning-arcane tech mergers shooting dragons off into space, never to be heard from again.

there’s any number of possibilities here, ranging from crazy space wizard shenanigans to early spaceflight gone very very wrong.

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tldr: sornieth is located in the far reaches of the galaxy, away from major events, and has remained undiscovered. the deities are manifestations of the force channeled through the planet itself; the gods and the force are extensions of one another. sometimes dragons can get off sornieth, but not often, so dragons are rare in the wider galaxy. there is no conflict of lore that says these two things CAN’T exist in the same universe, and in fact, the lore sometimes even supports them coexisting.

or in other words: star wars and flight rising coexist because i want them to, but also because i have legitimate justification for it. i’m too powerful and nobody can stop me from making star wars dragons now.