lawbreaker13 · 2 years ago
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OOPSIES I GUESS I HAVE A TYPE
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damienns · 2 months ago
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My GIF Making process: Screen capturing using MPV player, Organizing files, 3 Sharpening settings, Basic Coloring PSD + Actions set
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This is a very long post so heads up.
I’ll try to be as thorough and true as much as possible to the way I make my gifs (I already use Photoshop Actions which I’ve long since set up but now for this tutorial I’m reviewing them to show you the exact steps I’ve learned to create my gifs 😃) and present them to you in a semi-coherent way. Also, please bear with me since English is my second language.
First things first. Below are the things and tools we need to do this:
Downloaded 4K or 1080p quality videos (let’s all assume we know where to get these—especially for high definition movies and tv series—so this post doesn’t get removed, okay? 😛)
Adobe Photoshop CC or the CS versions can work as well, but full disclosure I haven’t created gifs using the CS versions since 2020. I’m currently using Adobe Photoshop 2024.
mpv player. Use mpv player to get those frames/screenshots or any other video player that has a screen grabber feature. I’ve used adapter for the longest time but I’ve switched to mpv because the press to screenshot feature while the video is playing has been a game changer not to mention ultimate time saver for me. For adapter you need to play it in another video player (like VLC player), to get the start and end timestamps of the scene you want to gif which takes me ages before I can even open Photoshop.
Anyway! Please stop reading this post for a moment and head over to this amazing tutorial by kylos. She perfectly tells you how to install and use mpv player, both for Mac and Windows users.
One thing I have to share though, I had a tough time when I updated my MacOS to Sonoma since MPV is suddenly either duplicating frames or when I delete the duplicates the player seems to be skipping frames :/ I searched and found a solution here, though it didn’t work for me lol. My workaround for this in the meantime is decreasing the speed down to 0.70 then start screenshotting—it’s not the same pre Sonoma update but it works so I’ll have to accept it rather than have jumpy looking gifs.
Now, after this part of kylos’ tutorial:
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you can continue reading the following sections of my gif tutorial below.
I want to share this little tip (sorry, this will only cater to Mac users) that I hope will be helpful for organizing the screenshots that MPV saved to the folder you have selected. Because believe me you don’t want to go through 1k+ of screenshots to select just 42-50 frames for your gif.
The Control + Command + N shortcut
This shortcut allows you to create a new folder from files you have pre-selected. As you can see below I have already created a couple of folders, and inside each folder I have selected screenshots that I want to include in one single gif. It's up to you how you want to divide yours, assuming you intend to create and post a Tumblr gifset rather than just one gif.
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Another tip is making use of tags. Most of, if not all the time, I make supercorp gifs so I tag blue for Kara and red (or green) for Lena—just being ridiculously on brand and all that.
Before we finally open Photoshop, there's one more thing I want to say—I know, please bear with me for the third? fourth? time 😅
It's helpful to organize everything into their respective folders so you know the total number of items/frames you have. This way, you can add or delete excess or unnecessary shots before uploading them in Photoshop.
For example below there are 80 screenshots of Kara inside this folder and for a 1:1 (540 x 540 px) Tumblr gif, Photoshop can just work around with 42-50 max number of frames with color adjustments applied before it exceeds the 10 MB file size limit of Tumblr.
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Sometimes I skip this step because it can be exhausting (haha) and include everything so I can decide visually which frames to keep later on. You'll understand what I mean later on. But it's important to keep the Tumblr 10 MB file size limit in mind. Fewer frames, or just the right amount of frames, is better.
So, with the screenshot organization out of the way, let's finally head over to Photoshop.
Giffing in Photoshop, yay!
Let’s begin by navigating to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack…
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The Load Layers window will appear. Click the Browse button next.
Find your chosen screenshots folder, press Command + A to select all files from that folder then click Open. Then click OK.
After importing and stacking your files, Photoshop should display the following view:
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By the way, I'll be providing the clip I've used in this tutorial so if want to use them to follow along be my guest :)
If you haven't already opened your Timeline panel, navigate to Windows > Timeline.
Now, let's focus on the Timeline panel for the next couple of steps.
Click Create Video Timeline, then you’ll have this:
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Now click the menu icon on the top right corner then go to Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips
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Still working on the Timeline panel, click the bottom left icon this time—the icon with the three tiny boxes—to Convert to Frame Animation
Select Make Frames From Layers from the top right corner menu button.
So now you have this:
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Go and click the top right menu icon again to Select All Frames
Then click the small dropdown icon to set another value for Frame Delay. Select Other…
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The best for me and for most is 0.05 but you can always play around and see what you think works for you.
Click the top right menu icon again to Reverse Frames.
I think Photoshop has long since fixed this issue but usually the first animation frame is empty so I just delete it but now going through all these steps there seems to be none of that but anyways, the delete icon is the last one among the line of feature buttons at the bottom part of the Timeline panel.
Yay, now we can have our first proper GIF preview of a thirsty Lena 😜
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Press spacebar to watch your gif play for the very first time! After an hour and half of selecting and cutting off screenshots! 😛 Play it some more. No really, I’m serious. I do this so even as early (lol) as this part in the gif making process, I can see which frames I can/should delete to be within the 10 MB file size limit. You can also do it at the end of course 🙂
Now, let’s go to the next important steps of this tutorial post which I’ve numbered below.
Crop and resize to meet Tumblr's required dimensions. The width value should be either 540px, 268px, or 177px.
Convert the gif to a Smart Object for sharpening.
Apply lighting and basic color adjustments before the heavy coloring. I will be sharing the base adjustments layers I use for my gifs 😃.
1. Crop and Resize
Click on the Crop tool (shortcut: the C key)
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I like my GIFs big so I always set this to 1:1 ratio if the scene allows it. Press the Enter key after selecting the area of the frame that you want to keep.
Side note: If you find that after cropping, you want to adjust the image to the left or another direction, simply unselect the Delete Cropped Pixels option. This way, you will still have the whole frame area available to crop again as needed and as you prefer.
Now we need to resize our gif and the shortcut for that is Command + Opt + I. Type in 540 as the width measurement, then the height will automatically change to follow the ratio you’ve set while cropping.
540 x 540 px for 1:1
540 x 405 px for 4:3
540 x 304 px for 16:9
For the Resample value I prefer Bilinear—but you can always select the other options to see what you like best.
Click OK. Then Command + 0 and Command + - to properly view the those 540 pixels.
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Now we get to the exciting part :) the sharpen settings!
2. Sharpen
First we need to have all these layers “compressed” intro a single smart object from which we can apply filters to.
Select this little button on the the bottom left corner of the Timeline panel.
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Select > All Layers
Then go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters
Just click OK when a pop-up shows up.
Now you should have this view on the Layers panel:
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Now I have 3 sharpen settings to share but I’ll have download links to the Action packs at the end of this long ass tutorial so if you want to skip ahead, feel free to do so.
Sharpen v1
Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen…
Below are my settings. I don’t adjust anything under Shadows/Highlights.
Amount: 500
Radius: 0.4
Click OK then do another Smart Sharpen but this time with the below adjustments.
Amount: 12
Radius: 10.0
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As you can see Lena’s beautiful eyes are “popping out” now with these filters applied. Click OK.
Now we need to Convert to Frame Animation. Follow the steps below.
Click on the menu icon at the top right corner of the Timeline panel, then click Convert Frames > Flatten Frames into Clips
Then Convert Frames > Convert to Frame Animation
One more click to Make Frames From Layers
Delete the first frame then Select All then Set Frame Delay to 0.05
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and there you have it! Play your GIF and make sure it’s just around 42-50 frames. This is the time to select and delete.
To preview and save your GIF go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)…
Below are my Export settings. Make sure to have the file size around 9.2 MB to 9.4 MB max and not exactly 10 MB.
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This time I got away with 55 frames but this is because I haven’t applied lighting and color adjustments yet and not to mention the smart sharpen settings aren't to heavy so let’s take that into consideration.
Sharpen v1 preview:
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Sharpen v2
Go back to this part of the tutorial and apply the v2 settings.
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Smart Sharpen 1:
Amount: 500
Radius: 0.3
Smart Sharpen 2:
Amount: 20
Radius: 0.5
We’re adding a new type of Filter which is Reduce Noise (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise...) with the below settings.
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Then one last Smart Sharpen:
Amount: 500
Radius: 0.3
Your Layers panel should look like this:
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Then do the Convert to Frames Animation section again and see below preview.
Sharpen v2 preview:
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Sharpen v3:
Smart Sharpen 1:
Amount: 500
Radius: 0.4
Smart Sharpen 2:
Amount: 12
Radius: 10.0
Reduce Noise:
Strength: 5
Preserve Details: 50%
Reduce Color Noise: 0%
Sharpen Details: 50%
Sharpen v3 preview:
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And here they are next to each other with coloring applied:
v1
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v2
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v3
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Congratulations, you've made it to the end of the post 😂
As promised, here is the download link to all the files I used in this tutorial which include:
supercorp 2.05 Crossfire clip
3 PSD files with sharpen settings and basic coloring PSD
Actions set
As always, if you're feeling generous here's my Ko-fi link :) Thank you guys and I hope this tutorial will help you and make you love gif making.
P.S. In the next post I'll be sharing more references I found helpful especially with coloring. I just have to search and gather them all.
-Jill
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realbeijinger · 10 months ago
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Another semi-coherent rant on climate change, the value of idealism, and TGCF (I finally finished!)
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Well, I finished Tian Guan Ci Fu. And, oh man, if you read my last post, you’ll know that I was terrified that the entire novel would be a criticism of blind idealism. But I am SO glad I was wrong!!! Looking back on what I wrote before… it’s kind of hilarious how worried I was. I was so sure that I knew where it was going, was so busy preparing myself to be offended/emotionally crushed, that I wouldn’t even entertain the idea that maybe MXTX had a similar worldview to me all along.
In my defense, aside from the line, “Something like saving the common people… although foolish, it is brave,” everything seemed to point toward the idea that trying to do good is pointless. I mean, up until the moment when Xie Lian was lying with a sword in his chest on the streets of Yong’an, all of his efforts to do good had essentially been in vain. He hadn’t been able to help anyone.
And then, when the one guy stopped and gave Xie Lian his hat, I dunno, I just cried. It was so perfect! Like, ugh, damn you, MXTX! So sneaky… destroying us, just to bring us back later!! It was such a small, insignificant win, but it was exactly what Xie Lian (and I) needed. I love the line, “Just one person was enough!” Just one person doing something selfless. It’s enough to give us hope.   
It really resonates with me because I think a lot about how to maintain hope. In terms of the climate crisis, I feel like Xie Lian—completely powerless. I want to stop eating meat, use less plastic, spend more time on environmental activism, but honestly, what do any of these things matter? The meat industry is not going to change because I choose to stop consuming. Even my activism has a completely negligible effect—whether or not I join a protest or write a letter to my congressman will almost certainly not be the deciding factor for any climate legislation, no matter how much effort I put in.  
And yet, I still want to. I love the moment when Xie Lian chooses to get stabbed over and over rather than create a second plague of Human Face Disease, and White No-Face asks him in shock, “Why??”—as in, why would you ever do that? And Xie Lian responds: “I don’t have a reason—just because I want to! Even if I explained it to you… Useless trash like you wouldn’t understand.” This line is so great. Xie Lian can’t explain it to White No-Face, because, in truth, it isn’t entirely logical. It can’t be explained by reason. I want to do my measly, unimportant part to help the world… because I want to. Because it feels right. Because it’s my way of keeping my heart, of maintaining faith that there is some good in this world worth upholding. (As an aside, I love how the English title of the live action drama—which we may never get to see, God damn censorship!!!!—is called “Eternal Faith.” Of course it refers to Hua Cheng and Xie Lian’s faith in each other, but I think it also means having eternal faith in the value of doing good, despite centuries of experience that seem to show its pointlessness.)
As I talked about in my last post, if you zoom out far enough, nothing really seems to matter. Everything we love and care about will one day be gone. And yet, I believe we still have to act like it matters. This is the basic tenant of existentialism, and I think MXTX portrays this philosophical paradox really beautifully.
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It’s funny, because I think MXTX has a lot of profound things to say, but in an interview I read, she warned against viewing her work too deeply, saying, “I am not a guru.” I get that she may not want the responsibility of giving people spiritual advice, but I do think she presents some really fascinating, really novel, philosophical ideas. So, sorry MXTX, but I’m about to analyze TGCF like it’s a piece of freakin scripture. Soo here we go…
The main theme she comes back to again and again is that fortune is limited, so the only way you can do good for others is by taking fortune from somebody else. Which leads the characters to a bunch of ethically impossible choices: the people of Yong’an and the people of Xianle can’t all be saved (Xie Lian must choose who to help), neither can the people of Wuyong and the surrounding kingdoms (Prince of Wuyong must choose), and Shi Wudu can’t save his brother from a tragic fate without taking fortune from an innocent person. When the characters try to avoid choosing, and try to “play God” by creating a “third path,” it just invites disaster.
But is this really true? Is fortune actually limited? It’s an idea that reminds me of Buddhism and Daoism, but also seems kind of revolutionary… (I like to think I know something about Chinese philosophy but it could certainly be a thing and I don’t know). I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in limited resources, and the idea that nature tends toward balance. I think conceiving of it this way, as a pool of fortune, is really interesting.   
It reminds me of this Meme:
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In other words, who is the protagonist and who is the villain is entirely based on perspective. And, according to the laws of nature, we all must survive by eating others, or causing others to starve (i.e. avoiding being eaten).
I tried to think if this is really true in all areas of life. I’m a teacher, and one of the ways I convince myself that I am doing good in the world is by helping my students—preparing them well for college so that they can get into good schools and follow their dreams. But then, is this just taking fortune from others? If I do prepare my students well, and as a result they all get into top universities, does that mean they are taking spots away from other students? Am I simply just helping “my own,” at the expense of others?
One place where I see this concept play out very clearly is with our modern, industrialized society. As I mentioned in my last post, we live in a world of abundance. Most of us have enough food to eat, live in houses with electricity and running water, and don’t worry about a whole host of diseases endured by our ancestors. It seems we have done what Xie Lian couldn’t—we have expanded the well of fortune for most of humanity.
But this fortune wasn’t spontaneously created. It was taken from other species. It was borrowed against our own future, when climate change will likely destroy this world of abundance we have created, causing untold suffering. In truth, when it comes to prosperity, there is no such thing as a free lunch.   
Even now, when we ought to be enjoying our fortune, most of us are not happy. We want other things. We take food, clothing, and shelter for granted, creating even bigger, more lofty demands—a bigger car, a better house, a machine that’s sole purpose is to make bread. In fact, it seems like whenever we make things “better,” the goalposts just move. I recently read a book called Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, which mentioned that with the advent of washing machines and vacuum cleaners, everyone assumed there would be more free time. Yet, the real outcome was that standards of cleanliness just changed. Suddenly, people expected you to wear fresh clothes every day and have a perfectly dust-free home, which meant spending just as much time cleaning as in the past.     
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And according to psychologists, getting what we want doesn’t really make us happier. Instead, something like getting a promotion causes our happiness to spike, before it quickly returns to baseline. The psychologist Dan Gilbert writes that the purpose of our emotions is to act like a compass—to tell us which direction to go in. If you feel good, you can continue the way you are going. If you feel bad, you should probably turn—make a change. But if you get what you want and become permanently happy, your compass is now broken. It’s stuck in one direction and becomes useless.
All of this is very Buddhist, of course. Suffering is not caused by our external circumstances, but our desire to change them.
Like I said, I don’t necessarily believe in “fate” or “fortune.” But I believe this all points to something deeper that MXTX is getting at: which is that we cannot fundamentally make a better world, for the common people, or for anyone. This idea of “better” doesn’t really exist. The world is as it is. Trying to alter that is like playing God. And like Xie Lian says, “In this world, there are no true gods…”  
So, what do we do? How can we survive this absurdist tragedy of life? I don’t think we can just throw up our hands and not give a shit—that way lies depression and Jun Wu-style cruelty. We cannot lose our heart. But we also can’t try to fix everything.
One thing I find a bit difficult about MXTX is she is very clear about the impossible situations our characters find themselves in, but not really clear about the solution. She seems critical of the characters’ actions (I’m thinking also of Wei Wuxian here), but what exactly does she think they should have done? In other words, what is the point?
I spent a long time thinking about this. And I realized that Xie Lian was able to get back on his feet, find happiness and make peace with himself. How did he do this? Ultimately, I see Xie Lian’s solution as having three parts: self-sacrifice, gratitude, and purpose. Which all sounds very academic and maybe not that profound on an emotional level. But hear me out. Because, in the end, I think these choices are incredibly beautiful. They are the kind of thing that make me feel like reading TGCF was actually a spiritual experience, no matter what MXTX says. That makes me admire Xie Lian and want to follow him (like the God he is).
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Okay so first: self-sacrifice. If fortune is limited, and the only way to make others’ lives better is to take fortune from someplace else, then there is really only one place you can take it from without hurting others—yourself.
So, part of Xie Lian’s solution is to take fortune from himself and give it to others. It’s why he asks for a cursed shackle that disperses his fortune, so that his fortune will naturally flow to those around him. It’s, of course, a very small thing. He is no longer playing God, or trying to “fix” the world on a grand scale. He is simply, in his own, quiet way, serving the common people.
My desire to give up meat and to spend more time on activism—these things feel like big sacrifices for me. And yet, they will have a very small impact on the greater situation in the world. They’re a drop in the ocean. I still want to do it, but it’s hard. It’s hard to care, or think that these things matter. Yet, this is the trade-off Xie Lian was willing to make. I really admire him for it.   
I believe self-sacrifice is actually a really important, beautiful thing, that our society has forgotten the value of. We are individualistic—obsessed with our own wants. As I mentioned previously, our expectations have risen, so we buy and buy and buy. We are unwilling to rein in our consumption. I know a lot of people baulk at lifestyle changes as a solution to the climate crisis, and I agree that putting pressure on individuals instead of governments or corporations is misguided. But, first of all, there simply aren’t enough resources on earth to sustain our current levels of consumption. And, second… I don’t think we can completely let individuals off the hook. What is society anyway, but a collection of individuals? If we are going to address this thing, it’s going to take a massive movement—bigger than the civil rights movement or the works’ rights movement or the women’s movement. It’s going to take millions of people worldwide getting out of their own heads, their own lives, and concerning themselves with the greater good. That requires immense sacrifice.
Which takes me to gratitude. In order to be willing to sacrifice, you have to appreciate what you already have.
People often talk about gratitude these days as a path to mental health. Instinctively, it sounds like an uplifting, positive thing. And it is… but it also entails having a relatively negative worldview. It means remembering all the horrible things that exist in this world which we are lucky enough to avoid on a daily basis. You stepped in some dog shit? Well, that sucks, but you could have stepped into an open manhole and broken your neck! So! That’s something to be grateful for.  
We are all so lucky. I’m sure everyone reading this has pains and traumas and challenges. This isn’t to diminish those, but, I hope, at least we all have at least one person to love. That’s all Hua Cheng had, and it’s what kept him going. Just one person was enough. And most of us, I hope, get to eat food every day, get to sleep in a bed, get to play video games or read novels or write poetry when we are sad. Not everyone gets those things.  
Xie Lian, of course, was the king of low expectations, because he knew his future was going to be bad. He had intentionally accepted bad luck for a lifetime. So, there was no point in hoping for things to get better.
I think this attitude is best shown by his interaction with the Venerable of Empty words. The Venerable of Empty Words feeds off people’s fears. But Xie Lian didn’t really have any. When the Venerable of Empty Words warned him that his hut will collapse in two months, his response is, “Two months? If it’s still standing in seven days, then it’ll be a real miracle.” Because his expectations are so low, he’s essentially immune to fear. I can’t help but think that if you could really think this way, it would be a kind of superpower. It reminds me of the famous quote by spiritual teacher Krishnamurti, “Do you know what my secret is? You see, I don’t mind what happens.”
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And so Xie Lian is okay with everything. He can sleep anywhere, crash boulders on his chest for money, not eat for three days, regularly suffer corpse poisoning, and still be okay.
Which leads to my third point: purpose. Xie Lian is able to endure such hardship because his expectations are low, but also he knows all his suffering has a purpose. “If I am to become a God of misfortune, then so be it,” he says. “As long as I know deep down that I am not.” He is okay with being laughed at or avoided for his bad luck, because deep down he knows he is doing the right thing. People can withstand a great deal if they feel their suffering has meaning. In Man’s Search for Meaning, the psychiatrist Victor Frankl’s writes about the horrors of living through a concentration camp, and how over and over, it was creating purpose that allowed him, and others, to find motivation to survive. Which I think has an important lesson for self-sacrifice. People are willing to sacrifice a lot, if they feel their sacrifice has purpose.
I get it when MXTX says that she is not a guru, and maybe it’s a lot to ask of a danmei novel to take spiritual advice from it. The book wasn’t necessarily perfect, and I do have some critiques (which I was gonna add here, but this thing is already wayyy too long). But… I do think I found something really meaningful in this story—some inspiration. I want to follow Xie Lian’s example, and live with gratitude and acceptance, while keeping my faith in doing the right thing. In other words, WWXLD! (What Would Xie Lian Do?)
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the-lonely-crow · 3 months ago
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Celia Ripley Thoughts
ok these are some observations/theories/headcanons i have about Ms. Ripley and seeing as things have started to get Crazy on podcast i figured this was a good time to write them all down in a semi organized and coherent collection.
From her first appearance i was struck by the fact that her personality is vastly different than either Lynne Hammond or Archives!Celia. At first i thought this was because she was the Celia from the Protocol universe but as Things have happened I’m thinking actually her super perky friendly personality is not really genuine.
She knows far more than she’s letting on and has no interest in telling anyone, even Sam. She actually seems like she’s trying to keep information from Sam or at least control what information he gets and when.
In the meeting with Gerry Celia kept distracting Gerry from the questions Sam was trying to ask. She interrupted Sam twice just as he was about to ask a question to ask about first his house and then the painting. Ill get more into this in a second when i talk about my theory as to what is going on with her but mostly she just seemed excited to have met Gerry Keay and to have gotten a painting out of it.
Celia recognized Jon’s voice the first time she heard Chester read a case but just now decided to mention Jon and Martin to Sam. This goes back into me thinking that she seems to be wanting to keep information from Sam.
I think Sam really likes Celia but I don’t think Celia’s feelings are nearly as genuine for him. It is possible that I’m biased but all of her flirty interactions with him have felt stilted and a bit fake in the same way that her general bubbly personality does. Personally i think she is trying to get as much information from him before she shows any of her own cards.
I saw someone else mention this as well but Celia seems to be like the audience insert for people listening to Protocol who also listened to TMA. Not just with the information she knows but with how excited she was to meet Gerry.
Couple of theories:
I think that if you travel to at least the Protocol universe you have to kill your counterpart if you want to remain stable in the new universe. Conservation of mass and all that. We see that with Darrien he’s bene fine and taken over the other Darriens life with most people none the wiser. I think Celia didn’t kill her counterpart and that’s why she keeps getting teleported in front of cars and trains and things. We know from Anya Villette’s statement that when you travel to the Archives universe you sort of merge with your counterpart (her friends still recognized her and its not mentioned that there were two of her but her friends were “distant”) so i think the kill your double thing is specific to the Protocol universe. It’s possible that this is why she couldn’t take Jack with her if she went back because he wouldn’t have a counterpart to merge with. He just fully doesn’t exist in the other world.
I think Celia intentionally dimension hopped as a favor (as much as someone does favors for their former cult leaders) to Georgie and Melanie. This is gonna touch on my general theory for what the Archives universe looked like post 200 that i wont explain further here for sake of time. Suffice to say i think it was Bad for pretty much everyone even after everything went back to “normal”. I think the hilltop road rift was still active after everything but Georgie Melanie and Basira were too busy trying to help out as the only three people alive who didn’t just spend several months in their worst nightmares to do anything about it. This is when i think Celia, as someone with no memories of any friends or family to reconnect with, volunteered to go see what was on the other side of the rift. Before she left i think Melanie and Basira (and Georgie to a lesser extent) gave her all the information they could on the supernatural including their history with the archives and important people that might be able to help (people like Gerry Keay). I think they told her mostly to gather information and maybe look for jon and martin if she could and come back. Having jack obviously would have complicated that but i do think that’s why she’s knows this universe’s Georgie.
I think one of two things probably happened to lead her to apply at the OIAR. Either 1) she was doing her own research and got to a point where a random unconnected civilian gets to the end of their resources so went to find a place where she could have more access to information or 2) after getting to the new universe she settled down and got comfortable. Like i said I don’t think things were good in the Archives universe, I’m sure a whole new world probably would have felt like a fresh start. She had a fling, had jack, had a normal job. And then ran into something that forced her to get involved again.
Anyway am very excited to see where they go with her i think she’s neat :]
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altruistic-meme · 7 months ago
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Okay i was originally going to try to make a nice and neat little post about heartstopper and some of my thoughts, as well as a separate post about what i like about the comics vs. the tv show. 
Uh. So. I can’t actually corral my thoughts to be coherent enough for that, so here are some various assorted thoughts about it all instead <3 put under a cut bc it is long and rambley and a mess
[spoiler warning for the comics if you haven't read them]
Idk what it is, but I love comic Charlie a LOT. Like. A LOT a lot. There is just something about his character in the comics, his banter, the way he behaves that I love so much more in the comics than the show. I feel almost like the characters aren’t quite the same person, though I do love them both. I just connected so much more with comic Charlie.
Semi-related but I also feel like we get a much more clear picture of his OCD and the attached anxieties in the comics. 
HMMM okay or maybe not. Idk. I think maybe we can see more of Charlie’s OCD in the show through his desire to make everything easy and perfect for Nick, even when it hurts him too. 
He’s popular in the comics!!! It’s mentioned multiple times by other characters that Charlie is popular at school!!! And I think that’s actually a really interesting look at his character. He was bullied for most of y9 and yet the rugby lads think he’s a popular kid in y10. Despite this, we don’t actually see Charlie interacting with basically anyone but the other main characters, and I think that kind of reflects how Charlie views himself. On the way back from Paris, he asks Nick “does this mean I’m a cool kid now?” he doesn’t think people see him as cool but like I said, other characters have said he’s popular. They must have gotten that idea from SOMEWHERE right? But Charlie’s own poor self-esteem means he still doesn’t actually believe he’s cool or that people like him. I don’t know if there was a point to this rant but. Charlie is a popular boy.
I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE KIDS WHO STOPPED THE BULLYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also, in the comics Charlie really is a nerd in a way he isn’t in the show. He helps Nick with his math and yells at him for distracting him from his homework. I get why this change happened in the show–it gives us a better idea of the strained relationship that Charlie has with his mom while also showing us that his dad tries to support him but often fails–but I really like it in the comics because Nick calls him a nerd but it’s less obvious in the show how nerdy he really is. 
That said obviously I also ADORE getting to explore the other characters and their lives and everything in the show. I love getting to see more of them. (But I also love how we DON’T always get all the information in the comics, but that’s just because I love when there are background stories happening that we don’t see through the main storyline. This event/love is not unique to Heartstopper) 
I love Imogen!!! I really like that it’s showing her as someone who is sort trying to become friends with the group and that isn’t always a fast or easy process. She goes to the sleepover with them and she hangs out with them in Paris, but she’s doesn’t leave Prom with them or anything. Also, I love the possibility that she is discovering that she’s queer too!! And that her halfway joining of their friend group leads to her discovering herself bc i feel like that’s so true to real life.
I am so curious about the Isaac vs. Aled thing and I wonder if Aled will appear in one of the later seasons, or if he is just not in the show at all. And Isaac! I assume he’s in some extra content I haven’t seen? Don’t get me wrong ofc, I love Isaac and his storyline is SO SO IMPORTANT as someone who is asexual myself. I am so glad that there is the representation of someone discovering that they’re aroace. I do assume that’s part of the reason for him being the 4th friend as opposed to Aled? Idk. 
I’M SO SAD ABOUT OLIVER BEING COMPLETELY OMITTED FROM THE SHOW!!! I assume there is an interview or something where Alice Oseman explains why Oliver wasn’t in the show, but I haven’t seen it and rn I will simply cry about it. I love him and I wish he had been included. 
I am also SO CURIOUS how the rest of the show will look!! I know that I read somewhere that s3 should be the contents of book 4, and that s4/s5 if they get them would be books 5/6 respectively. And I’m so intrigued. Because book 4 is the heaviest of them all so far, and I wonder how it will be translated to the screen. Especially the Sept-Dec timeskip! Will we see that time, especially considering the other character’s storylines??? This wasn’t an issue in the comics since they focus solely on Nick/Charlie, but with all of the other characters it would be more difficult to just skip that whole time. Will it just be a summary of events like in the comics, with flashes to what has happened? Or will we get a more explicit idea of everything?? (probably not including Charlie’s sh relapses or the night in October, but maybe the This Winter content???) i am SO excited for October though so all my questions can be answered :’)
OH something that was super interesting to me was a very small change in dialogue during the scene where Charlie first tells Nick about his sh. In the show, when Nick asks if he still does it Charlie just says “No.” but in the comics he says “No! I mean- hardly ever” and it’s such a small change but it speaks volumes too in the difference between the comic and the show. I’m not really sure what it’s saying though. Was show Charlie just more consistently in a better place where he feels like it’s stopped and won’t happen again? Was comic Charlie just more honest in this moment in acknowledging that it has still happened since? I’m not sure!!! But i’ve spent WAYYY too much time thinking about this one tiny change in dialogue!!!
Another thing is like, I really liked how the comics handled Nick’s dad. Them not meeting in Paris and then him missing Nick’s birthday. It really hits hard exactly how negligent he is, and it gives space for Charlie to be there for Nick when he’s upset. I do like how it went in the show as well, because it does still get everything across beautifully, but idk. I think mostly I’m just remembering the shot of Nick opening the door to greet Charlie on his birthday looking heartbroken and upset about his dad canceling and how hard that hit when i first read it. (keep in mind that i watched the show before reading the comics, so i was surprised at first to learn that they didn’t meet up in Paris! Let alone that he missed Nick’s birthday TOO!!)
Okay I think that’s it for right now. I have largely been spinning comic Charlie in the microwave in my mind bc OUGH i relate to him too much. I will probably come back at some point with more thoughts, but until then. Hope you enjoyed my brief insanity.
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thetreeshavenotongues · 2 years ago
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Spy x Family Mission 75 Spoilers-ish (But mostly just a dissertation on Melinda Desmond) :
Alright, I’ve finally calmed down enough to have actual semi-coherent thoughts about Melinda. So here we go, this is gonna be a long one.
I’ve seen a few posts calling her terrible and that she’s a bad parent but I really, deeply believe that’s not the case at all. I don’t think she’s a character that Endo put there for us to hate. I think she’s a character that’s there to be pitied.
She is clearly a severely broken woman. We got a hint of it in her reveal with Yor, we saw glimpses of the duality -her saying she didn’t care about the punch or really anything in Damien’s life at the table with her friends, then asking in the car when she and Yor were alone if Damien and Anya were friends - and then she gave us that expression.
I think we were all supposed to have our own opinions about what that face meant at the time because it was just so hard to pin down (and we have no Anya to give us insight) but now that we know a little more about her, it’s starting to make more sense. It’s warped and fractured and a caricature of what a happy smile should be. I think it shows that she has two very distinct, opposing mind sets about her life and the lives of her family and because of that she’s a very conflicted and complicated woman.
The fact that she raced over to see Damien shows us that she loves her child. She ran to that boy with tears in her eyes and dropped to her knees to hug him, that was a mother who was distraught. No one expected her to do that. Damien himself definitely didn’t. Anya even likened her thoughts about her son to a Yuri level of obsessive compassionate. But the second Damien mentioned his father a switch flipped. She fractured.
Donovan seems like a very cut and dry asshole, I’m sure he has some different facets but they’re probably all just variations of shithead. He was pretty blatant with his ideas, beliefs and ideologies when we met him, (for now) he’s an easy character to understand. Melinda, on the other hand, seems to be the opposite. I’m sure we all have our theories on her background, she’s most likely from a wealthy family and whether her marriage to Donovan was an arranged one or they actually did at some point love each other (or some truly wild Third thing that probably is the case given this manga’s propensity for curveballs), it’s clear that at this point they’re not on good terms. It’s obvious that Melinda hates Donovan, I have a theory that Demetrius may be the root of that hatred.
I believe that after he was born and she witnessed Donovan’s indifference towards their child aside from indoctrinating him with his twisted views something in her shifted. Donovan probably even made sure her interactions with her first born would be limited as he was grooming him to be his heir. I’m going to guess that not only will we find out that Demetrius looks like Donovan but he will act like him too. My theory is that she wanted a second child, not Donovan, (especially since it seems like Damien is the only one of these rich kids with a sibling) Melinda wanted a child to teach to be good and to love and dote on since she saw that Demetrius was too far for her to ever actually reach. But I think that even that didn’t work out the way she wanted and it probably became evident to her pretty quickly that even though Damien as the second child would never get as much attention from Donovan as the first, she still wouldn’t be able to completely remove his influence from their shared child’s life. And every time that she saw him, her precious second attempt, search for approval from a man who she hates some of that hate transferred over to her feelings for Damien, (because to her, why would he love a man who clearly has no love for him when she’s right there showering him with it? Why does he care about that man’s approval when she’s right there giving him hers?) I think Damien’s desire to be loved by both parents, and her witnessing that she can’t change that slowly chipped away at her until she became this heavily fractured, incredibly wounded woman who probably had no healthy coping mechanism and it developed into this severe dissociation when it comes to her thoughts on her children.
It’s heavily implied that Damien and Demetrius have very different personalities and I’m assuming that as much as Damien looks like his mother, Demetrius will be a copy of his father as a way of showing us which parent they take after. Demetrius was his fathers project and Damien was his mother’s (failed) attempt at combatting that influence. And I think that’s why her thoughts about Damien that first time are so…let’s say enthusiastic (obsessive), and why when she hears him talk about his father - a man who couldn’t even be bothered to show up after his child was in a bus hijacking - we see her thoughts jumble. We get both sides, the incredible love and the bone deep loathing and unfortunately both are directed at this softest, sweetest of beans.
TLDR: she’s complicated and needs much therapy.
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j2zara · 3 months ago
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YAAAAAAY EHEH I GET TO SEND YOU A BUNCH OF ASKS 💖💖💖💖💖(<- these ones are just me being excited)
💖📥👀📊🍰🌝💻🧠
HIIIII SORRY THIS TOOK ALL DAY im so exhausted which is why i feel like my answers are not the best but here u go
💖 What do you like most about your own writing?
Argh…. Ngl i sent this one to more than one person in the circle of perverts bc I want to force ppl to say nice things abt themselves and now i gotta do the same thing. I feel like my answer before this year would’ve been my dialogue!!!!!!! Like. I do think i’m good at that. It’s hard to even say that because I feel like when I do enjoy a good quip and i feel like whenever i reread my original stuff im like “oh. I’m so marvel brained”. I don’t think dialogue is my strength in cloneverse tho.  At least. I don’t think it stands out. But otherwise that’s what i would land on.
Maybe it’s bc i’ve been in a very sorry for myself slump lately bc my current wip is giving me such a struggle but i don’t even know. Before now and my latest wip driving me crazy I would’ve said. Maybe coherence or theming? Like i don’t even know if thats a thing i CAN say like is it possible to be good at themes? Sorry im being so hard on myself rn I think if i were to look at my writing i would say i think it’s halfway decent but i don’t know the answer to the question…
📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?
Oh this is an interesting one. For such a long time the answer would’ve been my old Talentswap fic for DR, tbh it always was like. Surprising and honestly kinda nice to get like a random comment of someone being like ‘hey i just discovered this! Sad its not updating but i really enjoyed it!” something like that. And I think b/c it was multichap it was very interesting and different when ppl were reading Almost for sure.
My secret weird answer is IYWD. Like. I’m at peace with the fact that its practically dead and nobody is gonna find it again i guess but a small part of me still considers it my favorite thing i’ve done in a long time so nobody does comment anymore but. That would be the thing i secretly kinda want. I’ll take literally anything tho obviously i love anybody that ever comments on anything.
👀 Do you have any WIPs that you would never let see the light of day? If yes, what are they about?
I have a Love is Blind au for a fandom I’m not gonna mention. Idk i might’ve mentioned it somewhere but eh. Its like ten chapters but only the first 5-ish are done i’m kinda 
And i’ve talked abt this this isn’t really a. Like. Oh I’m hiding this forever thing but. I have a DR Togakure hookup fic that’s written like. To take place during a naegiri wedding like in the post first game canon. And it is one of my favorite things i’ve ever written even tho it is smut, ngl my friends have been trying to convince me to post it and i might but im genuinely terrified nobody is gonna read it and im gonna be. Sad about it
📊 Current number of WIPs
Lol um… lj3porter fic. I’m two sentences into twelfth night coded j2 wooing Jace for Porter fic. Unfinished creeper Jace + j2porter fic…  a Jace topping Zara zarajaceporter fic. A fic that is in the IYWD verse that’s like a prequel that’s normal SB related. And if we could old fandoms I have semi abandoned talent swap (the ch 3.3 doc is like 10k lmao). Love is blind au.
If we’re counting original projects. My fantasy pseudo taming retelling. Horror comedy / locked room mystery called Date / Die. I have a. Sports romance (don’t look at me). And my weird lofty rom com thing that is this decade spanning story and used to be abt a “platonic” romance but idk I was like. They’re best friends they’re the most important ppl in the world to each other and they like having sex does that make this a normal romance. Maybe. Maybe not.
So ten. Yikes.
🍰 Name one of your fave comfort fics (doesn’t have to be your all time fave).
This is such a weird pull b/c i haven’t read it in years but Wing Man is a Bokuaka fic thats one of my fav of all time that makes me so happy idk its so like. Sweet and tbh i feel bad i never commented on it i really should bc they deserve to know i still think about it. but i just don’t reread fic all that often even my favs.
Actually that’s a lie i just remembered! I’ll cite something recent and i’m a little shy to cite something from the circle of perverts but also this is completely sincere i know i jokingly call @innskeep bambi’s LJ3 fic the perfect piece of fiction all the time but i do reread it… I just like them. I think it’s really cute and i like my little guys…  I love getting J3’s pov so much like i genuinely think its so comforting and special…
🌝 Who is one character you haven’t yet written for that you would like to?
I won’t lie I have a total DurDawn soft spot so like. I do think it wouldn’t fun to write something small for them. Also fucking hilarious as zukkacore that I’ve never written zukka and like. In my heart I would like too but they’re almost too precious for that? It’s hard to explain. Actually another answer might be for Mailee I actually think Mailee is soooooo underrated as a ship bc they have so much potential to be good for each other that wasn’t able to foster under azula’s thumb so I like that slightly toxic edge 
💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?
I do a little bit of research but honestly not at much as i should. Last super deep dive i did was on the different filipino mythologies and history throughout the different regions bc ithink that subject is so interesting. but that has nothing to do with the sb circle that was for my own stuff. Lately I had to look up a little bit of elvish for something sb related lol. im such a fake fan of LOTR i love it but i’ve never actually read the books
🧠 What’s an idea you have that you can’t quite call a WIP yet?
A few! I’ve talked abt Jace hireling au I think that would be fun. And I joke abt Clone gamechanger au all the time and I SAID I wanted to try and make it work so like. Maybe. I’d love to try clone gamechanger au i think its funny and cute and i wanna do something indulgent.I feel like i’m forgetting something. Jess has real estate in j2porter vegas roleplay so i kinda wanna try maybe doing J2porter 50s housewife roleplay as a sort of sequel? I still like the idea of doing a You’ve Got Mail Shop Around the Corning fic. And. I feel so so so so indulgent wanting to write LJ3 stuff but like i just like them. I don’t know what i would wann write for them but i just like them
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artknifeandglue · 6 months ago
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as shattered stars shine: DVD commentary (part 1/12)
Home, sick, and desperately need to do something other than write, so I'm going to yell semi-coherently about as shattered stars shine, a story that seized my brain in end-April last year and refused to leave until I wrote the whole damn thing.
Will do it chapter by chapter, but post might be long, so cut.
“I’ll risk my life, I’ll give my life to you. After all, you gave me time, didn’t you? If all my desires could come true, if I could attain them, I want to see you I make my wish upon the stars” … If life would only return to you, if it could reach you, I don’t care what happens to me” -Mephisto by Queen Bee
I describe this fic as a Gift of the Magi meets Faust, which it pretty much is. Many thanks to Queen Bee for an emotionally devastating song. Now on to the writing process and commentary! (Note: I’m not going to put the whole fic here because that’d defeat the purpose of uploading it, and also because I feel really weird about posting the full 60k words here. Instead, I’ve taken quotes from it and put them here.)
Meteor showers, Eggsy knows, aren’t actually as rare as people think. Thirty of them in a year works out to one meteor shower somewhere every five weeks.
Quite literally the first line - this was the very first thing I wrote, and it stayed in all the way until the final draft (with some tiny revisions!). Originally, the second line had a throwaway comment about a primary school teacher having given him this bit of information. Also, this damn line alone kicked off a whole lot of reading about meteor showers. Many thanks to the International Meteor Organisation for their assistance.
Deep brown eyes flicker up towards Eggsy, and for a moment he feels as though they might in their intensity reveal his every secret, every corner of his soul. It should be intimidating, Eggsy knows. It should be frightening. Yet a shiver of excitement starts at the back of his neck and darts down his spine, leaves his hands tingling with something almost like the thrill of his escape, but better. How much richer, Eggsy thinks, how much warmer this feeling is, this business of feeling alive.
Kingsman’s story is that of Eggsy starting a new life as an agent, but his new life doesn’t start the moment he enters Kingsman – it starts when he goes to meet Harry Hart. Also relevant: this particular story’s themes of a second chance at life, at being alive.
“About two weeks and many hopeful glimpses up at the Galahad office window later, Eggsy takes a look in the mirror and accepts that yeah, okay, he might be just a little bit in love with Harry Hart…
Which, you know, writing on the wall and all that. Eggsy’s bi, not stupid.”
He’s a clever one, and he’s got his priorities in order. What else is there to say? They’re in looooove.
“…and yet all Eggsy finds himself needing is that rare fleeting moment in which Harry passes by, a stray comet crossing his path.”
Sticking the shooting-star metaphor (though comets aren’t meteors) in various places because I can. Also, though, Harry is the vehicle through which Eggsy’s hope for a better life comes true.
“Everything else, Eggsy thinks, can wait until after then. Later, he tells himself as he lies awake at night, the curve of Harry’s lips on his mind, the leap of his heart in his chest unaddressed. There will be time later…
Then a grenade goes off in a lecture hall, and then Eggsy finds himself right back at the beginning, out of time and alone.”
As seen in the lyrics, time is a recurring theme in this fic: Eggsy runs out of time to confess, Harry runs out of time to apologise, and then Eggsy runs out of his soul-traded time when he gets shot. The Deal with the Devil comes in precisely because of this – Eggsy isn’t willing to accept that he’s run out of time, and later, neither is Harry.
“Two-thirds into a twenty-kilometre night run, Eggsy glares at the stars sparkling in the night and reminds them you don’t do shit…
Until they do.”
Cosmic coincidence or intentional tempting of Eggsy? A little from Column A, a little from Column B. He’s still holding on to the last vestiges of the idealistic notion of wishing upon a star, and having the stars actually grant one (1) wish would push him a little more in that direction, while also setting him up for greater disappointment and resentment later!
“Above him, as though in answer, the flickering light of the stars winks back, hopeful and glimmering, like a promise from a benevolent universe.”
Personification! There’s an excellent reason why the stars seem almost alive and sentient, at least in this fic.
Bring him back, he demands, the words part spite and part despair. Above him, brilliant and blazing, meteors rocket to their deaths and fizzle out one by one, taking with them the emptiness of his rage. I’ll trade you anything if you bring him back.
So my favourite work is The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the corruption/perversion of beauty is something I personally enjoy exploring. How can we take a bunch of beautiful things (the night sky, a meteor shower, the stars) and attribute to them a sort of tragedy/terror in their beauty? Dunno. I like to think I’ve done it somewhat well over this fic.  
In the armchair where Chester King had sat and handed him a gun, someone sits nursing a glass of scotch. “Hello, Eggsy. Care for a drink?”
Why is Arthur’s office also the Devil’s office? Jokes about Chester King being the literal Devil aside, I think having Eggsy constantly revisit the place where it all started going wrong – dare I say his own personal hell? – is fitting. What better way to convince a man to sell his soul than to bring him back to the beginning of the end and show him you can fix this for a small, small price?
But there is one truth achingly, excruciatingly familiar to him, one thing he knows not by training but by a lifetime of hanging in there by the skin of his teeth: second chances don’t come often, not to people like him. Second chances don’t ever come back, and some of them don’t come at all unless bought for with blood the way Dad did seventeen years ago. Seventeen years of snatching tomorrows from the hands of an uncaring universe, and now a second chance — both his and Harry’s — sits in front of him in that stupid armchair, empty crystal glass in hand, waiting.
A central motivation for Eggsy in this fic is seizing an opportunity when it presents itself. His canon backstory makes it clear that opportunities have been in short supply all his life, and I think he’d be acutely aware of this fact. Coupled with grief and love, it makes him all the more likely to accept Mephistopheles’ deal.
It’s like being dunked into ice water, like being turned inside out and torn apart, scattered in a million pieces across space and time unending.
The stranger throws his empty glass onto the hearth, where it shatters into sparkling fragments upon the logs that shimmer and gleam like stars. The flame hisses, roars and leaps out of the fireplace, licking at Eggsy’s calves like a promise, a premonition, burning—
Star references! But also, flames of hell foreshadowing.
Eggsy jolts awake to find sunrays spilling through the window into a house he has no memory of going home to, sunlight warm against his legs where he must have kicked the covers off in restless sleep. It is morning. He is in his bed, alone.
If the stars at night are a dark and terrifying force in the story, surely morning is a positive one? Except the sun is a star too. Hehe.
…an effort that Roxy lays waste to when she bursts into his office at half past noon and slaps his laptop shut just to tell him about Merlin’s latest phone call. A frazzled lady calling in to the Kingsman main line with only the words Oxfords, not brogues to identify her, begging to speak to literally anybody. A previously unidentified person has just woken up in the mortuary of a hospital and demanded that they call this number, but he won’t say anything about who he is or what’s happened to him, and can someone please come get him?
Roxy doesn’t appear all that much in the fic, chiefly because this is meant to revolve around Hartwin and how we get to a point where they’d both sell their souls for the other person, but I love her and want to write more of her. The phone call line was second to be written (after the first line of the fic) and has stayed exactly as it was in previous drafts.
In the half-hour of pre-takeoff preparations, mind trapped between an English manor he has already left behind and a Kentucky hospital he won’t arrive at for eighteen more hours, he wastes the minutes away mindlessly flicking through several social media apps, their content a passing torrent of information that slips past his consciousness and away into the unknown. Celebrity is pregnant. Jamal’s got a new jacket. Bitcoin. Celebrity is dating other celebrity. Meteor shower peaks tomorrow. Ryan’s found a hundred quid on the pavement. Something about cryptocurrency. Personality test about a horse or a lightbulb. Celebrity affair. Celebrity divorce. AI. Bitcoin, again.
Research I didn’t think I’d need to do but ended up exploring: flight times from place to place, but also social media trends and topics in 2015-2016.
Before Eggsy leaves, he fishes out the worn Kingsman medal from his pocket and presses it into Harry’s palm. It sits like a talisman in his grip, fingers curled loosely around it. On some level, Eggsy thinks, it is. It did save him at least once, so what’s a second time?
Lee’s medal! I like to think it signifies different things to Harry and Eggsy – for Eggsy, it’s his second chance, a symbol of hope; for Harry, it’s the sign of one of his greatest failures, a symbol of guilt. Therein lies the duality of this fic and of Harry and Eggsy’s motivations for selling their souls. (More on Harry’s in the commentary on later chapters.)
That night, he dreams of the rooftop again, of sitting under an ink-black sky full of stars. They flicker and wink at him, parties to a secret between him and the universe.
At the end of the chapter, all is well! Sort of. Not entirely.
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which-hospital · 11 months ago
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About Time - Casualty Hiatus Thoughts - Part 1/?
I used to include real life updates in my episode reviews. I think I’m ill and it’s really bad timing for like a bunch of stuff I need to get done over the next two weeks so I’m mainly writing this to try and make myself feel less like a deflated balloon. I guess I miss Casualty now? But also I don’t really want it back because I really don’t trust that I’ll like where it goes next. I have things I really should be doing but instead I'm typing this up and finding a way to look at AO3 on my Switch Lite.
I feel like I’ve been putting off typing this up for two reasons. One, it’s a lot of energy to put my Casualty thoughts into semi-coherent words, especially in between writing stuff for uni, because in my head my Casualty thoughts are mostly just “I’m so nauseous about the pretend paramedics”. Two, my thoughts are almost exclusively about the paramedics, specifically mostly about Teddy, and for some reason I’m worried about coming across obsessive? BREAKING NEWS: Autistic Person Is Obsessive About Special Interest, More At Ten! Like, yeah, I do sound like Teddy is all I think about, because he kind of is all I think about lately. I’ve been feeling more self conscious about it lately, I guess, but I trust that anyone also still hanging around in the Casualty fandom this far into the hiatus can’t be all that different from me and therefore won’t judge me.
Also, there's no connecting theme in this post. The theme is 'things that have been on my mind during the hiatus' and that's quite varied and random so I might seem like I'm jumping between topics a lot.
Having written this post now, I worry parts of it come across very critical of Teddy who is my beloved favourite character. If I like a character, they’re gonna get picked apart and they’re rarely gonna come out of it 100% positive. I love him and I think he’s such a great character who has been a very kind and sweet person throughout his existence in Casualty that’s kind of being forgotten a bit right now. I also think he has done objectively bad things recently but he’s also going through a lot and I’m very sympathetic about that. So if this post comes across negative about him: I love and feel very :( for him, I just also love hating on my faves.
The BBC actually personally attacked me by making Sah and Teddy go through weird-queer-friendship breakup while I was using them to cope with my own weird-queer-friendship breakup. Now, Spotify is continuing the personal attack by playing Night Shift and The Frost whenever I'm on my commute. I cannot start crying over the pretend paramedics on this train, but also you've got a 9-to-5, so I'll take the night shift and I'll never see you again if I can help it and you're not here to see, it's just witness-less me. The overall polyfailure songs are I Bet On Losing Dogs and Cool About It, I do have a playlist but I did not plan to start going on about it in this post. Sah and Teddy are on my mind as they have been since I got back into Casualty (and kinda before then), I don't really ship them in the typical sense except for when it's also with Paige but their canon relationship is so interesting. They act like they're just mates or whatever, and then act about and towards each other in a way that they don't with any other person. My go-to way of describing it is that they're a little weird about each other. I appreciate that, at least until the end of Driving Force, they're still a little weird about each other. Proposing to your girlfriend out of immense jealousy towards your best friend who you basically won't talk to anymore is kinda weird, quitting your job over your best friend doing that is maybe less weird but they're both still making major decisions based on each other. I also really love how certain parts of their series 36 storylines are written as these paired opposites but that's another post. Big thing on my mind is the idea that Teddy can't really pretend he never cared about Sah, he can't forget about them because he got shot for them and (for all that Casualty will absolutely forget it happened) that's gonna leave a scar, he can't ever get away from them and he won't forget their birthday ever again! Like, I can't get a Greggs without thinking of my weird friendship, can he exist without thinking of Sah? I'm! miserable! about! them! They're so incredibly Planet of Love and Wishbone by Richard Siken, except the guy getting shot in those poems is actually also called Theodore.
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[The particularly them parts. Let's not talk about it!! Let's just not talk!!!]
On the topic of Teddy getting shot, I said I was gonna rewatch the start of Welcome to the Warzone so I can post episode reviews for all of that miniseries and then I did not do that. I’ve mostly been rewatching random series 36 episodes. I’ve been thinking a lot about With a Bullet, though. It’s the episode that dragged me properly back into Casualty but I always forget how busy it is? There’s so much happening that it kinda annoys me. At the core of the episode you’ve got a lot of great stuff with the paramedics that helps to establish stuff for later on in WTTW and Driving Force but then there’s all this other stuff also happening around it that is just not relevant. I honestly think the episode would be exponentially better if they just let it be a paramedic centric episode in the style of Is The Patient Breathing?. Cut back all the non-paramedic stuff (and anything in that episode about Iain and Faith, we got enough of that stuff in every other episode) and just have a couple of storylines happening around Teddy getting shot. Specifically, just focus on Teddy and Jan (and Gethin) to set up everything that has happened with Gethin, Teddy and Sah to set up everything that has happened with Paige, and Jacob and Iain to properly establish where Jacob is at in the team and like generally. Shove the other stuff into other episodes. Anyway, my point is that With a Bullet is on my mind cause it technically does a good job at setting these things up but is held back by everything else going on.
Switzerland has got me thinking a lot about the Jan-Teddy Wider Family Tree™ on so many levels:
I think it fits into this theme of Teddy not really being taken seriously or being perceived as having maturity by his family. Not being taken seriously is such a consistent thing with Teddy that it's actually very hard to concisely talk about it, there's so many tangents and even like his name is a diminutive. I think it's been something that's built up to this point where he's trying to prove people wrong and make them take him seriously. That's kind of where I think the proposal comes from. But with his family, his anger in Switzerland, to me, is about being kept out of stuff because they don't really think he is mature enough to get it. And I do think Teddy would have come to accept Gethin's decision like Jan did if he had been included. Teddy being seen as immature is dragged back up by Jan when she tells him to grow up after he wants to give Gethin the benefit of the doubt in With a Bullet, and it's interesting to me that it's this like kindness and forgiveness that is perceived as being immature. Honestly, when you get that family together they do kind of struggle to be consistently nice to each other for very long, except for maybe Teddy who has actually been the one trying mediate a lot before. So when he's saying all this pretty horrible stuff in the argument in Switzerland, isn't that kind of maturity by these standards? He's jumping between saying very actually childish things and saying stuff that is comparable to the stuff Gaynor says to Jan. Honestly, ignore this section, I really feel like I can't effectively express what I'm thinking but there was an attempt.
I've got 'Teddy as Son 2.0' on my mind but it makes me nauseous to try and talk about it. Replacement son and replacement mother but in way that is as concerning as it is sweet. I started to think about it in Aftermath but it really came out full force in the final episodes of Driving Force. Specifically, Jan’s “What am I going to tell Ross?… And Teddy?” moment in Switzerland and the differences in how Gethin responds to those questions. Just bringing the two of them up in the same context like that. But looking back, this has been developing for a while. In With a Bullet, you’ve got Jan saying almost exactly what Gaynor said to Teddy in Break Your Heart and then cutting herself off and saying what she had said to him in that episode instead. (Actually, she even said in Break Your Heart that she loves Teddy as if he’s her own and then Gaynor gives us the only direct comparison ever made between Teddy and Ross: “Well he’s not, thank goodness. Look how well your’s turned out…”.) All the way back at the start of series 36, you have Teddy showing up and trying to get Jan and Ffion back together when they had separated over Ross stuff. Their stuff in Is The Patient Breathing? is explicitly about Jan being harsh on Teddy because she doesn’t want to lose him like she lost Lev and Fenisha, but also literally everything they get called to in that episode is to do with drugs in some way. Honestly, a couple years from now, I wouldn’t mind another storyline with Ross if it also involved Teddy. I am interested in what they might do there. Sure, they have like a 10 year age difference but my cousin is 11 years older than me and we still spent time together when I was a kid - the fact that Gethin immediately recognises Teddy when he sees him makes me think there must have been a period of relative okay-ness for the family when Teddy was very young. I think I just want to get all of them in a room and do Jeremy Kyle on them.
I've also been thinking about the Chekhov's Gun moment that is "you know what it was like when my parents were divorcing" from Broken. Maybe Jan does, but we don't. Teddy's parents' seemingly not-amicable divorce feels relevant to him rushing into marrying Paige. Also, I just enjoy the vaguely-still-alive-and-out-there-ness of Teddy's dad. What's he up to? Has he not been at all interested in all the times Teddy has nearly died in the past couple years? I expect that eventually the writers will pull him out for a storyline and I am interested in what they might do there too but I'm honestly too attached to my headcanons in that area now.
I’ve edited this in but I wanted it in here. I was looking at Teddy’s birthday on onthisday.com and Bring It All Back was number 1 in the UK charts that day. I’ve got this ridiculous headcanon that Sah and Teddy both really enjoy S Club so I am very pleased with that.
Let's end controversially, my Casualty hot takes. This one I think is reasonable; I don't like how certain parts of the fandom (...Twitter) act about their favourite characters. There's this sort of outright refusal to acknowledge that your favourite character can ever be in the wrong and it annoys me for two reasons. First, every other character ends up being judged on the basis of how they treat your favourite character which is a very interesting way to watch the show. Second, a lot of the time it leads to that favourite character being oversimplified. Good people can do bad things sometimes. Good characters usually do bad things sometimes. I love Teddy but I can acknowledge that he's been a prick lately while also considering the reasons behind his behaviour. I love Sah but maybe kissing Paige wasn't brilliant of them and maybe that's okay. I think my annoyance about this might be more to do with the fact that I'm not really as interested in a lot of the characters that seem to be fan-favourites over there. This one I think makes me a bad Casualty fan; I would not watch it if it was just about treating patients. Everytime they make an episode about them just being professionals and treating patients (like How To Save A Life), I see people saying they wish Casualty was always like that and... I don't! I love those episodes and I think they're important and really well made and actually fit into the series very well. And I do think those episodes can contribute to the characters as professionals, I often wish the show made it feel like their jobs were more relevant to who they are as people. But if it was always just about that, I would just watch one of those ambulance documentary shows instead. I'm here for the characters, I'm here for the drama, I'm here for Hamlet in a hospital and I feel like every episode being about them actually doing their jobs might get in the way of that. Similarly, I don't get when people complain about the characters doing stuff that "would never happen in a real hospital" because it isn't a real hospital. Suspend your disbelief.
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the-evil-authoress · 1 year ago
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Finally got over the sheer indecision of seeing so many wips (lots of interesting one you got there), so!
RE:CREATE and/or Hero Mask?
*CACKLES MANIACALLY* THANK YOU LOVELY
Re:CREATE (wip title honestly this thing is brain soup and idk what to title it anymore, original title when the story ends) is actually a fic for the anime the aforementioned character I might shove in the Twist fic is from, Re:CREATORS. In which I decided to throw Kanoya Rui back into the 'real world' and gave him a boyfriend. :3 (There is also sex but uh we're not gonna talk about that here. ^^;)
And I just realized that this is all semi coherent nonsense without a single fully fleshed out scene so lemme just find something that isn't too illegible
Re:CREATE
Kanoya out on the town one day, still getting used to this new life of his and trying to find a place.
“Excuse me.”
Kanoya looks up at a young woman, probably around his or Meteora’s age, [insert description]. Everyone here looks so plain compared to the bright colors Kanoya’s used to from his home world. 
“This might sound a bit strange but can I get a picture of you?” Just over the woman’s shoulder, he catches sight of a somewhat frantic looking young man, ‘No, wait, what are you-’ “You look exactly like my best friend’s favorite anime character.”
“Aya!” the boy comes running up and grabs his friend’s shoulder, frantically spewing words “I’m so sorry about her, it’s really nothing- you can’t just go asking strangers for their picture-”
Kanoya’s confusion turns to a grin and a laugh. “Sure! I don’t mind!”
“Eh?”
“Great!” Aya claps her hands together “And since you’re here, you two should take it together!”
“EH?” The other boy stumbles and flails as Aya eagerly shoves him into Kanoya’s space.
The boy awkwardly stands next to a grinning Kanoya as Aya gets her phone out - “Closer!”
“So, your favorite character - is it Kanoya Rui?”
The boy startles “Eh? Ye-yeah. How did you know?”
Kanoya just beams and casually throws his arm around the boy’s shoulder as Aya calls for them to stop talking and smile at the camera. The boy squawks, embarrassed as fuck.
“Did you get a good one?”
“The best!” Aya laughing at Kazuhiko’s face in the photo. Kazuhiko.exe has stopped functioning. “Thank you!”
Kazuhiko probably comes back online to start wailing at Aya again, or Aya just prompts him to start moving.
“Oh, by the way, do you know how to get to place?”
“Yeah, it’s just over __.”
“Cool. Thanks. Later!”
Silence
“He even sounds exactly like him!” stunned. Aya laughs. “I cannot believe you just did that.”
“Well you weren’t going to.”
“Of course I’m not going to ask a complete stranger for a photo! We’re not even at a con! … You better send me that.”
“Ohhh? What if I don’t?”
“Aya!”
“You didn’t even want me to take the picture and now you want to keep it!”
“Of course I do! He looked like freaking Kanoya come to life!”
“Haha, you should have gotten his number. Or at least his name.”
“For what? It’s not like I’m ever going to see him again.”
~~~
Hero Mask is actually my giant GX rewrite ft OC(s) that I keep posting snidbits of for prompt events and never actually writing. ^^; ONE DAY! I AM DETERMINED. Lemme see if I can pull up something that hasn't been posted before.
UNDER CUT BECAUSE THIS IS GETTING LONG.
Hero Mask
Jaden moves in her peripheral and Christina looks up to see him wandering down a hall as if drawn by something. An armored spirit he can't see disappears around a corner ahead of him.
"Uh, Jaden? Where are you going?" Syrus peers nervously after him.
"There's something going on this way! I can tell!"
Ohhh Jaden's dueling senses are kicking in. Still scary how accurately he can pinpoint that. Or maybe a part of him can still sense duel spirits? No, stop that, that kind of wishful thinking is setting herself up for disappointment. 
"What kind of something?" Syrus whines as he scampers after. Pocketing her PDA, Christina follows. She knows better than to get between Jaden and his current hyperfixation.
"A duel! Can't you just smell it, Syrus?" Jaden breathes in deeply and marches forward. The duel spirit hovers ahead of them, seemingly oblivious to the humans following it.
Syrus pauses to sniff the air curiously. "Um...no?" 
Jaden leads them into a large open room lined with stadium style seats and a raised dueling platform that looks like something straight out of the Kaiba Dome. Christina can't help but feel impressed, if a tad cynical. You can tell Seto Kaiba went all out on the budget for this school.
"Get a look at this!" Jaden's eyes practically sparkle.
Their presence draws the attention of a couple of boys in blue standing on the dueling platform, and the way they sneer down at the four of them has Christina's hackles rising. "What are you doing here? Scram." The one with pointy hair has the gall to make a shooing motion at them with his hand.
"And why should I?" Jaden protests.
The other blue perks at the sight of Jaden. "Hey wait, that's the guy who beat Dr. Crowler." He leans back to call over his shoulder, "Chazz, the kid who beat Dr. Crowler is here!"
A third blue appears above them with spiky emo hair that could almost put Yugi's to shame. He looks down his nose at Jaden as if appraising the other boy and Christina does not like his expression one bit. "Huh. Doesn't look like much. Told you it must have been a fluke. Anyway, scram before we call security on you trespassing." He waves a dismissive hand as he turns away.
"Trespassing?" Jaden sputters as Syrus very meekly tries to pull him back to the door. "I'm a student like you. I have every right to be here."
"Nuh-uh." Spiky hair number one points above their heads and Christina twists to see a giant Obelisk crest hanging over the entrance. "This is the Obelisk Blue arena."
"Then he gets a free pass," Christina says coldly, arms crossed. "Cuz I'm an Obelisk Blue and I say he can be here."
The guy balks at her. "You're a gir-"
"Ya wanna go, porcupine head?" Christina bares her teeth, stamping a foot on the first step up the area. Jaden casually steps back as the other boy jerks.
Chazz only smirks. "Feisty, I like that."
"Gag me," Christina scoffs.
“Maybe later if you’re offering.” EXCUSE ME, did this little turd just- “But how about a duel first?”
"Hell yeah! Now you're talking my language!" Jaden eagerly steps up.
"Not you!" Chazz snaps. "Why would I waste my time on a worthless slacker like you?"
Oh, Christina is going to enjoy mopping the floor with this sleaze. 
"Give it a rest Chazz," a new voice cuts in with an ample amount of tired annoyance, and Christina jerks at not having realized her presence sooner. Hey, wait, that's her roommate. "Just ignore him," Alexis says, walking into their midst and bares a few teeth as she stares Chazz and his cronies down. "Chazz is a bully."
Chazz straightens his back, glaring his nose down at the girl, but his demeanor shifts as if he actually cares what Alexis thinks of him. Too flipping bad. Maybe he should have thought about that before picking fights with 'slackers'. "Alexis. What brings you here?"
"I'm here to remind you that the Obelisk welcome dinner starts soon." Oh, Christina knows that tone. Alexis sounds like an exasperated babysitter. Probably should just let this guy crash and burn though. Doesn't seem worth it.
Chazz scoffs and turns away with his cronies. Jaden pouts at the loss of an opponent.
"The Slifer welcome dinner should be starting soon too." Alexis addresses the Slifer boys with a smile.
"Oh, so we eat at the dorms then," Jaden musses aloud. "Thanks, we'll catch you later!" With a wave, he books it out of the arena, Syrus hot on his heels; then abruptly stops and calls over his shoulder as he jogs in place, "Christina! Come by the dorm tomorrow! I want ya to meet Chumley!" He barely waits for her response before he's jogging down the hall.
Spazz.
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tiredassmage · 2 years ago
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semi-coherent 7.2 thoughts roundup/screenshot dump/’fuck this was fun, look at my boy!!!!!’ (short of the dailies because I had to dart off to work, so that’s a later in the week event for me) below the cut (and in a wacky order because ????? lmao what’s chronology fuck it we ball (in what order can i find my screenshots)
(I love reading everyone’s reviews, it feels like comparing notes xD)
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honest to goodness think there’s some real competition for most satisfying kill option here. i deadass almost thought they weren’t going to give me the utter pleasure and i was going to be SO pissed, tyr was NOT takin’ more shit. my friend could confirm i was ready to jump this option the second it popped up, lmao.
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genuinely some of my favorite cutscene action in a hot minute. not just because i got to watch my favorite bestest boy kick ass, take names, and maybe get his ass kicked a bit in return along the way (yeah, I’m predictable, sue me), but because it was genuinely some fuckin cinematics. showdown on ruhnuk for sure! genuinely impressed with the amount of action condensed into this patch’s cutscenes.
the atmosphere of the arena. hundreds, maybe thousands of mandalorians preparing to watch shae and heta duke it out. watching shae with bated breath. someone mentioned prequels-level epicness in their post and i wholeheartedly agree. this felt like watching an epic star wars showdown unfold, complete with heroic star wars action music, lol.
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felt incredibly indulgently good to go scouting with shae. assess, infiltrate, eliminate, damn it’s almost like we’re back in intelligence for a change (tyr relishes it almost as much as shae relishes the hunt).
i’m also incredibly interested in their borderline opposition over objectives.
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just when he’s maybe getting somewhere in de-escalating the situation, shae gets impatient and they both lose whatever they were hoping to gain. shae gets snappy, tyr understandably doesn’t quite appreciate it, but they move on. he respects her authority on dealing with heta, but he isn’t excited about losing leads on the bigger picture issue - especially on one that’s probably cost him a few good nights of sleep like malgus, lmao.
sir ur eyes are very pretty nd i love u anyway
i was incredibly interested in the amount of path decisions to be made along the way. heta mentions a round-up of your methods which i was all for.
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dot.exe has encountered an error. tyr, thankfully, doesn’t share my “issue” for powerful women xD. he’s happily married, thank you.
overall? i honestly feel SO FED. very seen, lmao. this was a LOT of fun to play through. glad to see everything sort of tying together by sa’har and ri’kan being here, makes its introduction feel a bit less jarring. i’m here for the ~vibes of something bigger playing out for these characters, pushing them together, putting them in opposition. no new big reveals about the whys or the hows, perhaps, but i feel like the insights into these other characters was worth it. and, again, the absolute cinematics of it all was REALLY damn good. ruhnuk looks beautiful, there was a lot more to it than i had been expecting, i am so far a big fan of the ui changes and map update that was VERY nice.
runs back to the front of the line my other characters, i’ll be looking forward to going through this ride all over again, lol.
and also maybe i just missed my boy a lot. i will always be happy to have a reason to see my boy. xD
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this was also fucking golden i fucking love this as a running thing i fucking LOVE that rass was SO DAMN EXCITED and also that the shuttle crashes are a running gag and tyr and shae were both equally (un)amused i literally just. i loved this. this was great for me, lol.
glad to not have another patch of endless alliance meetings summarizing information, basically, too. i can’t entirely blame shae for wanting away from all the mandalore clan running, can i? xD
also shoutout to the very real fear i felt for a good five minutes that they’d given us torian and akavvi back only for me to IMMEDIATELY fuck that up with comm silence don’t FUCK WITH ME LIKE THAT that’s my BOY (it was, in fact, fine in the end, but HOOOO). i don’t trust them to not let me pull something like that, okay, that seemed completely possible at the time. but they didn’t. so it’s okay.
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belovedblabber · 2 years ago
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Ok time to make my hopefully coherent adjacent post about the whole ‘John made Alecto look like Barbie’ thing. Also this goes out to @opticor and @2impostors​ for the interest in my semi-coherent thoughts on this topic. 
I’ve seen people reading it as like ‘wow John took the soul of the earth and made her look like Barbie what a typical dude thing to do’ and personally I don’t at all vibe with that reading of it so now I am turning some rambly tags I made into a proper post. 
I’m going to start by posting a crappily highlighted passage, as is my wont:
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I think one aspect of this that people misconstrue is “I wanted to make you the most beautiful body I could think of.” I think a lot of people are taking this as  beautiful=sexy=John is super gross and wanted to make the earth a sexy hot Barbie body. 
However, I very much read this as John, who loved the earth so much, wanting to make a beautiful vessel for the earth’s soul. I don’t think ‘sexy’ is the right way to interpret this one. There’s a big ol’ gulf between that ‘beautiful’ and the way people seem to be reading it as ‘sexy.’ Now is there a lot to unpack and think about in all of this? Yes. Is it ‘John is gross and made Alecto sexy because he’s gross and gave her the classic sexy lady body of Barbie?’ No. 
And also very key here is “Most of what had made me John had gone somewhere else. There were a few little thoughts left...a handful of things that made me me...”
I think it’s really worth keeping in mind here that in this moment John was barely holding onto anything of himself and thus turned to one of the few things he had left to grab at, aka a childhood memory of playing at his grandma’s house. And more specifically of playing with his mom’s old Barbie:
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He was eating the soul of the earth and barely holding onto his own identity and personhood and turned to one of the few scraps of himself that remained. His memory of playing with his mom’s old Barbie as a kid was one of the few things he had left in that moment, and that was what his fragmented mind reached out to and grabbed onto as something beautiful. The way he talks about the Hollywood Hair Barbie is also very deeply not in the realm of like, ‘wow Barbie is so sexy and I wanted to make the earth sexy’ sdfghjk. He talks about her “little gold outfit and her long yellow hair.” He thinks she was “the best,” and “got to have all the adventures.” Sorry but this really doesn’t read as ‘ah yes Barbie, the sexiest of women. A doll I lusted over’ asdfghj. 
In a moment of almost completely losing his personhood and identity, John reached out to that memory and that very childlike love for something he’d found beautiful, and that was what his mind held onto. 
John is also very notably defensive about the fact that this was what he chose for Alecto. He seems to view this as something embarrassing. He’s not bragging about making a sexy body, he’s sort of self-consciously trying to explain why his torn to shreds mind grabbed at that form. 
When he made Alecto he wasn’t thinking in any coherent fashion. His broken mind was grabbing at his most basic, simple memories to find something beautiful. He wanted to give her a vessel that could have pretty yellow hair and have all the adventures. 
Also ngl I really don’t see ‘I loved playing with my mom’s old Barbie and having her go on adventures and I loved her pretty hair and her golden outfit’ as a typical dude thing. 
Like there is certainly a lot to think about vis a vis John’s view of himself as creator, and in how he also compares her to a Christmas tree fairy, a Renaissance angel, Adam and Eve, and Galatea. He evokes all of these when describing her, not just Barbie (and he also calls her “Frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair.”) I think there is a TON to think over and discuss with all of that. (The relevant passage for those comparisons is on pg. 409 of NtN for the record). But yeah, there is a lot to analyze in the things he evokes in describing his act of creation (for one I find it interesting that  not all of them are ‘female,’ so to speak). There’s a lot to think about in terms of how he gave parts of himself to make her ( “I ripped half of my ribs from my body and made you from dirt, my blood, my vomit, my bone.” (pg. 408), and in him choosing to frame himself as creator, and as creator in a distinctly biblical way (the ribs being an obvious call to this). The reference to Galatea is also its own interesting thing. But anyway, John made her body from himself and oh boy is there a lot there but okay this paragraph is threatening to become too long, so I need to leave this topic for now and come back to it later in its own post sdfghj. 
ANYWAY, all of this is to say that I really think interpreting John’s creation of Alecto’s physical form as a ‘typical dude thing, he wanted to make her sexy and picked Barbie, the most basic ideal of womanhood’ is a reading that really misses the mark. 
Annnnd that’s all from me tonight, time to go to bed.
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lilalbatross · 3 years ago
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Right okay so I yelled about it a couple days ago but here’s some actual semi-coherent thoughts about AFC Richmond’s roster, positions, formations, etc.
I just want to say off the jump that the show is definitely playing fast and loose with the actual football, which makes sense cause it’s at the heart of the show but it’s definitely not the point of it. A lot of this info is cobbled together from background details like the whiteboards, lockers for certain names and numbers, and me just pausing and squinting at whoever seems to actually be on the field. A lot of this is open to interpretation, and I’m sure others will interpret differently
Having said all that, let’s get into it. Rest of the post is under the cut cause this will not be concise.
Let’s start with our roster. This includes every name I’ve caught from both seasons, hence why Roy and Jan Maas are both listed. 18 and 23 have also had multiple names with those numbers.
For roster purposes, pro teams list players as goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, and forwards. I’ll do the same and add a fifth category I’m calling IDFK cause I haven’t been able to match a position to some of the background guys.
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So here’s our starting point. I would expect the IDFK guys to be fairly evenly split among the positions (most rosters have about 4 GKs because the position is both crucial and dangerous, f in the chat for O’Brien’s butt).
You’ll notice that a lot of our prominent players are mids. This doesn’t really mean anything. I just think it’s neat. I’ll get into centre mids vs wings in a second, but for the most part those guys (Colin, Sam, Richard, Moe, Roy) are Richmond’s starting line in the midfield.
Now then. Let’s look at an actual formation. We’ll start with the first one I could find, which is 1x07’s formation.
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The names being cut off are Canterbury next to Isaac, C. Hughes on left wing next to Rosenfeldt, and S. Obisanya perfectly hidden by Beard’s arm.
When describing a formation, you list it from defense to forward and don’t include the keeper cause they’re a given. Therefore, this formation is known as a 4-5-1. Alternatively, you can read the midfield a little differently to differentiate that Roy’s the lone defensive mid, and call this a 4-1-4-1. There’s nothing too out-there about this formation. Watford FC’s run a variation of it in the Premier League this season (scroll down a bit and hit the line-ups tab). You’ll see a formation like this at all levels, from kids to national teams, though it has fallen out of fashion in recent years.
This just a solid, balanced formation. The point of a formation like this is to control the midfield and cut off the other team’s passing lines, to make it harder for them to move the ball up to their strikers. Four defenders for a solid back line, with two centre backs to lock down the area in front of your box and cover for each other while supporting their fullbacks on the outside. One defensive mid (Roy) and two attacking mids to control the centre and build attacking opportunities, without leaving the defense totally in the lurch on a counterattack.
You’ll notice that Rojas is all by his lonesome as a solo striker. The risk with a formation like this is that the striker gets isolated if people aren’t pushing up on the attack, leaving the forward with nobody to create chances with or nobody to pull the other team’s defense away.
That’s why Sam and Colin are crucial in a formation like this. Those boys are gonna fucking run. In a 4-5-1, the wingers need to be making runs to support their striker, put pressure on the defense, and try to create openings to score. They also need to make sure they’re coming back to help defend, otherwise the other team’s going to walk right up their open wing. Colin and Sam’s game would be 90 minutes of wind sprints. I’ve played a little bit of wing in a formation like this. Your legs are jelly by the end.
Now then, next one. This is from 1x10 vs Man City, and we actually get both teams’ formations this time. (Brendan Hunt I swear to god I need you to give me a board like this every time please I’m begging)
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This will look pretty similar to the 4-5-1. This is a 4-2-3-1, and it’s a very popular formation. Here’s Man United running it this season, and if you flip through other games you’ll find a lot more examples.
A 4-2-3-1 runs two defensive mids and one attacking mid, opposite of the 4-5-1. The wingers play a little higher to support the striker, and the attacking mid (Bumbercatch here) is intended to be a bit of a playmaker. The defensive mids reinforce the D. You play this formation when you need a solid defense and expect to get most of your chances on counterattacks. Because you have 3 mids playing a little higher, the transition to offense can be quick if you can get the ball out of your end. One of the weaknesses can be the gap that develops in the midfield, so you need your defensive mids to push up and close this space. I see that as a potential reason why they’ve moved Colin in from the wing.
In terms of the actual roster, Dixon’s off the injured list from 1x07 and in for Goodman, and Winchester’s in for Reynolds. Richard’s on the left wing for Colin, who becomes one of our two defensive mids along with Shannon, and then Moe as attacking mid. Rosenfeldt and of course Roy are sitting (Roy subs in for Shannon at half).
I think they’re running a 4-2-3-1 both as an answer to what they expect from Man City, but also to compensate for sitting Roy. In 1x01, Beard calls Roy a box-to-box midfielder. What he means is that Roy is a solid all-arounder. He’s a force on the attack alongside the strikers, but he also comes back deep to support the D and make things difficult for the other team. He’s a workhorse of a player, so pulling him might require a more defensive shift to compensate.
As an aside, this is the match where Ted asks the linesman to explain the offside rules after a Richmond player gets called offside. It’s specifically Winchester who gets called offside. Look at the formation. My man is a centre back with Isaac. What the cinnamon toast fuck was he doing all the way up there. This is what I mean when I say they’re playing fast and loose with some of the football aspects. For Winchester to be offside, he must be so absurdly out of position that it would make more sense for him to be playing defense for the other team. (I think this is mostly a writing oversight and they should have just used another name in the line but still very funny to me)
I also just want to quickly point out Man City’s formation. They’re running a 4-3-3. Jamie has a few lines where he mentions a manager named “Pep” at Man City. He’s talking about Pep Guardiola, the real-life manager of Man City. The 4-3-3 is a go-to for him. If you catch a Man City game this season, this is most likely what you’re gonna see. This formation is versatile and aggressive (particularly on counterattacks). It’s about holding possession, with the mids moving as a unit to set up series of short passes that open holes in the other team’s defense. If the mids are coordinated, this becomes a very defensively solid formation with lots of attacking power. Don’t think of a 4-3-3 as two wings and a centre mid, because that isn’t what it is at all.
Now then, on to season 2. First, I can’t find any FUCKING WHITEBOARDS. First one I found is in 2x08 (hey again Man City), and even then, it’s a play diagram rather than an actual roster. Anyway, here you go.
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Now that we’ve reunited the two aces, we’re switching things up a bit. This looks like another 4-2-3-1 but it’s actually a messily drawn 4-4-2. They run the exact same formation for the False Nine in 2x12 (you get glimpses at halftime) but every screenshot I could get was ass so we’re gonna use this one instead. Colin and Richard have swapped again (Colin’s on the left in every formation this is why I say he’s left-footed), and Jamie’s up front with Dani. We have a pair of centre mids, rather than a trio of attacking/defensive mids like the other formations. I also finally got my confirmation that Jan Maas is a centre back! Couldn’t figure out if he was that or centre mid cause the game scenes are shot cinematographically rather than for any sort of…football comprehension.
This is specifically a flat 4-4-2 (vs the 4-4-2 diamond Roy wants to run with his girls team). It’s a versatile formation that trades a bit of defensive power for a stronger attack (Southampton’s running it this season if you wanna see it in action). Compared to a 4-2-3-1 they ran in 1x10, the 4-4-2 puts more pressure on the centre backs because they don’t have that pair of defensive mids supporting them. Jan and Isaac have to be physical and on it at all times to call out holes and get their teammates to fill the gaps. But you have the advantage of a pair of strikers who can play off each other and work in tandem, with Sam and Colin forcing defenders to come wide to cover them on the wings.
I think this is a spectacularly bad choice against Man City’s 4-3-3. Because the mids in a 4-3-3 work as a unit, Moe and Richard are always going to be outnumbered 3-2 in the middle of the field. Man City will have an easier time controlling the centre and holding possession because a Richmond player will have to come out of position to mark the extra man. Obviously Richmond primarily got their asses kicked for story reasons but uh…yeah I think they got their asses kicked for coaching reasons too.
Okay I’m coming up on 2000 words so I should probably stop now. I didn’t really get into the specifics of individual players. I can try to come up with something coherent for some of them, but there isn’t much to go on even more prominent players like Moe and Richard.
Anyways, I hope this was helpful and not endlessly boring. And please for the love of god let me know if you’re able to snag a clear look at a whiteboard I didn’t catch. I’m dying out here, man.
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mistralonyx · 3 years ago
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Recent personal story time.
Preamble: New in person play partner. Very submissive. Inexperienced but eager. Is curious and wants to try erotic hypnosis but we didn't start there. Not for this session.
Not our first time meeting, but the first time we're doing Kink. I have to be super slow and super careful here. Lots of explanation. Lots of conversation about proper D/S, boundaries, expectations, safe words, etc. I do mention that my "ordinary" play talk is sometimes conversationally pseudo-hypnotic. She's all thumbs up. She has so much nervous energy that she's vibrating.
It's a good time. We both learn a lot about each other. Convo is great. We click. Vibe is good, if a bit nervous.
By the time we reach towards the end of our play session, she's about spent. We've slid more from D/S into something just comfortable and natural and my guards are down. Still going, still embraced, and I think she's just in a post orgasm haze. But then I notice... Her eyes are lidded. They are rolling around. When I gently lift them to check, they cross. She's only semi-coherent and just repeating what I whisper. Her whole body is shivering. I observe now, she's showing a whole lot of trance signs.
Ooops! Well fuck... So, maybe just subspace. Maybe a little accidental induction. This is our first big d/s session. Maybe overload? Maybe normal for her? Time to slowly stop, wake her up, make her safe. She comes around. She's giddy and tired. I apologize and I explain what happened. She had no idea. Never happened before. Totally new. But she likes it. A lot. She likes it but is still nervous. "I like it and I trust you..." 🥰 "It's a little scary but not scary with you..." Oh...
We discuss what happened. We talk about what she wants to happen next time. We talk then and then talk more about it over the next few days to make sure everything is okay. Things are okay.
So kinksters and friends, what's the moral of the story today? I'm not really sure. Can you be doing this for a long time and this still happens: apparently. Did I have a great session with a new play partner and want to brag: yes. Is this a somewhat cautionary tale to ensure that in a dominant role you are always paying VERY close attention to queues and signs: yes, probably. Should consent always be a fucking constant: YES. Did I fuck up: perhaps, you tell me. Am I looking forward to seeing her again: absolutely.
So ends the tale. Thoughts and questions always welcome. Have fun and play safe out there, folks.
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spockandawe · 3 years ago
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Hmm. What if. An mdzs au (definitely the book, not the show) where timelines diverge when a small, angry street kid with a missing finger and a desire to watch the world burn makes his way over to the burial mounds, because fuck it, he’s going to learn from the yiling laozu or die trying.
I have put no consideration into this whatsoever, and I know coherent timelines are the hardest part of involving Xue Yang in anything, but I think that if Xue Yang is like, a preteen, the other parts of the timeline may still fit into place? Honestly, I don’t really care if they don’t, I’m just also too lazy to check this very long book for the specific empathy flashback with the details of Xue Yang’s jinlintai cameo. If he has to be a few years younger than canon allows, it’s all good, baybee, cql fucked the timeline so I wouldn’t have to!
But anyways, consider a young Xue Yang, who’s not really old enough to be making his way in the world as a rogue pseudo-semi-cultivator, but is old enough to survive the attempt and learn more cultivation as he goes. And he doesn’t have family or money to back him up (not that those would have made an impact on Wei Wuxian), but I think he’s aware that he has extremely grand ambitions for someone in his position, and is very cheerfully willing to take risks to achieve them, even knowing that his odds of success are low and his odds of dying are high.
I’m thinking that he reaches Yiling, however he gets there. He sees the knockoff Yiling Laozu apprentices (and is Full of scorn), he sees the wards Wei Wuxian has raised around the Burial Mounds, and he’s not all that trained and is mostly self-taught, but has just enough raw talent that he manages to bust in through the wards himself.
I don’t want to try sorting out the exact details of how he convinces Wei Wuxian to let him stay, because this idea popped into my head like, legitimately thirty seconds before I started writing the post. But I don’t think it would hurt the Wens to have another pair of helping hands, I think Wei Wuxian is weak against children in general (especially children who are trying to learn a thing), and I think he’s also weak against a street kid struggling on his own in the world (and Xue Yang is smart enough to lean into the look-pitiful-to-gain-sympathy-points angle)
Additional point one: Wen Qing can look at his hand and his health in general, and I think Xue Yang could benefit a LOT from having a big sister in his life
Additional point two: Xue Yang would think that Wen Ning is the coolest thing, and it would benefit me emotionally if he sees Wen Ning as his super cool older brother and not as a fascinating science project he wants to copy on Song Lan later ;u;
Exact events would vary based on when Xue Yang made his arrival (before or after Wen Ning wakes up? before or after Lan Wangji visits Yiling? etc), and I would have to consider that carefully because I do want canon to diverge, and Xue Yang dying with the Wens would be so fucking tragic (kind of in a fascinating way? we the readers know that it prevents future atrocities, but here, he’s a different person than the one who committed those atrocities, and it’s like giving him a family only to have it yanked away (so, canon), but this is a tangent because I have to emphasize I have not plotted out anything)
I don’t know how I would want canon to diverge is part of the trouble. But like... one of my first details on the book that really, really got me good is the way that Wei Wuxian is superficially cheerful but is also poised on the edge of having a really rough time early in the book. After he casually tells Jin Ling ‘lmao, what, you didn’t have parents to teach you manners?’ he goes off on his own to have Regrets. What really starts pulling him out of his funk is when the kids need protection and education. And he thrives! Even when he’s roleplaying Mo Xuanyu, he’s in his element as an experienced cultivator helping guide the juniors to a solution so that they learn for themselves, but also ready to be a safety net so they don’t die in the process!
A-Yuan plays a little bit of this role for him in the Burial Mounds, but like... he’s a toddler, and is both too young to be taught at the level and depth that Wei Wuxian adores, and is yes an adorable sweet kid, but also exhausting and demanding in the way that all small children are. You can’t just put away a toddler and lay face-down on the floor for a week, even if you want to. Yes there are other people around to help, but everyone is working really, really hard just to survive in the Burial Mounds.
So. Give Wei Wuxian a preteen! Give him a kid who is saying ‘take me as your apprentice, gege, i’m gonna keep studying demonic cultivation whether you help me or not uwu’ and let Wei Wuxian convince himself that okay, stupid adults are free to do stupid shit and he isn’t responsible for them, but maybe he ought to keep an eye on this kid to make sure he doesn’t accidentally die trying to learn Wei Wuxian’s methods. Xue Yang is smart, quick, and demanding, but also capable of independence. It’s ideal. Give Wei Wuxian a kid to teach, give me them passionately arguing about theory, give me Xue Yang reading all of Wei Wuxian’s manuscripts, and forcing Wei Wuxian to engage a little more with the world around him instead of sinking down into himself. Give me Xue Yang still young enough that he can be convinced to trust the idea of a family. Give me Lan Wangji accompanying Wei Wuxian back to the burial mounds and Xue Yang trying to be all ‘hey, you’d better step off if you know what’s good for you’ and being ‘!!! >:O’ when he finds out Wei Wuxian let this stranger hold A-Yuan and it being the cutest thing ever. It would be so good for my heart, but my god, am i unequipped to write it.
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eponymous-rose · 4 years ago
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A Critical Role Campaign 2 Mechanics Primer
Got a request from a new Critical Role viewer for some clarification re: rules and characters, and dang, yes, there’s so much stuff to deal with as a new viewer at the moment. So here’s an attempt at clarifying some stuff!
How does D&D work?
Fundamentally, one person (the DM) sets the scene and the players riff off that scene by acting out what their characters would do in response. Whenever a player’s actions would lead to an uncertain result, the DM can call for them to roll a die and try to hit a predetermined target number to see if they succeed. The players’ individual characters have abilities that boost certain categories of rolls and penalize others; a very strong character is more likely than a scrawny one to be able to open a jammed door, but they could still have an unlucky roll. It’s the DM’s job to incorporate the sometimes-absurd results of those die rolls into a coherent story.
Combat is the most “gamey” D&D gets, where everyone has a turn set aside to act (with an order determined by the “initiative” roll that starts combat). This is where character classes come in handy: magic-users cast spells, fighters jump in with their weapons of choice, and so forth. Each character has a set of hit points, and once those reach zero, the character is unconscious and possibly dying. But combat ain’t just hack-and-slash: there can be conversation, strategy, manipulation, collaboration, and all sorts of weird subtleties going on. Fundamentally, players’ actions are limited only by their imaginations.
It can be super weird getting into a D&D show even if you have played a bit because everyone plays the game a bit differently. Critical Role’s gameplay leans hard into roleplaying and character beats (there are episodes with basically no dice rolls) but also leans hard enough into the rules that a random bad or good roll can completely derail the story; rolls aren’t fudged or handwaved for the sake of a predetermined narrative, which means nobody playing (including the DM) knows how things are going to end up. This makes for a viewing experience that is a cross between dramedy improv and live sports; the cast plays out long scenes of conversation, but their characters could also permanently die at any time, adding to the high stakes. It’s also totally unedited, which accounts for the absurdly long runtime. 
If any of that isn’t for you, there are a lot of great D&D podcasts out there (often labeled “actual play”) that run the gamut from silly with minimal rules to mechanically involved but edited down. It’s a cool time to get into D&D!
Okay, so how exactly do these characters do their thing?
One of the more confusing aspects for new viewers of the second campaign of Critical Role is that they’re using a fair amount of content that’s not in the baseline ruleset - some character races and classes are coming from expansion content, and some are from Matt Mercer (the DM’s) homebrew. Here’s a quick summary of what each character has going on at the start of the campaign, moving from left to right in the first episode’s seating arrangement.
Fjord (played by Travis Willingham)
If you’re watching the show in video form, Travis is the big guy who looks like he could throw a football real far. If you’re listening to the podcast, his character voice has a Texas twang.
Fjord is a half-orc warlock. A half-orc typically has green skin and tusks but otherwise looks fairly close to a garden-variety human. Warlocks are magic-users who gained their abilities from a bargain with a mysterious (generally somewhat malevolent) being of great power. Mechanically, they rely a lot on what are called cantrips (spells that can be cast an unlimited number of times a day) since the number of more powerful spells at their disposal is very limited. However, unlike most other casters that have to get a full night’s sleep to regain their stronger spells, warlocks just have to rest for an hour or so and they’re good to go. More specifically, Fjord is a hexblade warlock. Hexblades are warlocks who have a particularly strong bond with their weapon of choice and can summon it from nothing.
Beauregard (played by Marisha Ray)
If you’re watching the show in video form, Marisha is the woman who often perches on her chair like she’s about to take flight. If you’re listening to the podcast, her character voice is a bit gruff with a sarcastic drawl.
Beau is a human monk. Both humans in this campaign use a variant version of human that allows them to pick a feat at the start of the campaign: Beau has some extra expertise in investigative and athletic abilities. Monks are preternaturally powerful martial artists; what some classes do with magic, they do with unarmed combat. Mechanically, they rely on an ability called ki points, which are a stockpile of points that can be used for extra-powerful abilities such as being able to hit extra times on an attack or being able to stun an enemy. More specifically, Beau is a Way of the Cobalt Soul monk, which is a homebrew from Matt and means she’s essentially a warrior-monk-librarian whose key abilities center around rooting out useful information.
Caleb (played by Liam O’Brien)
If you’re watching the show in video form, Liam is the guy who perpetually looks like he’s about to launch into a Shakespearean monologue. If you’re listening to the podcast, his character voice is soft with a German accent.
Caleb is a human wizard. His variant human feat gives him an eidetic memory and the ability to always know what time it is. Wizards are magic-users who got to where they are with careful study; Caleb has to keep track of his spells by transcribing them into a spellbook. He also has a familiar in the form of the cat Frumpkin, although Frumpkin can also change forms. Mechanically, wizards can pick up spells from a lot of different sources to learn them, but again, the cost in time and materials of transcribing them into a spellbook can be substantial. More specifically, Caleb is a transmutation wizard, which means his wizardry focuses around the act of transforming one thing into another.
Nott (played by Sam Riegel)
If you’re watching the show in video form, Sam is the guy with an alarmingly big smile and a comically oversized flask. If you’re listening to the podcast, his character voice is high-pitched with varying levels of Cockney accent.
Nott is a goblin rogue. Goblins are small and quick, and may or may not be well-received depending on the location. Rogues are sneaky individuals who do best when striking from the shadows or scouting ahead to investigate potential traps and unlock doors. Mechanically, they get a huge bonus in combat if they attack when unseen or when an opponent is distracted by an ally. They’re also very good at avoiding attacks and at hiding from view. More specifically, Nott is an arcane trickster rogue, which means she also dabbles in magic related to illusions and enchantment.
Jester (played by Laura Bailey)
If you’re watching the show in video form, Laura is the one who may or may not be instigating every round of giggles at accidental innuendo. If you’re listening to the podcast, her character voice is bubbly with an Eastern European accent.
Jester is a tiefling cleric. Tieflings essentially look like brightly-colored humans (Jester has blue skin) with horns and a tail; they’re the result of infernal ancestry and also may or may not be well-received. Clerics are magic-users who derive their power from the blessing of a deity or other extremely powerful entity. Jester’s divine patron is the Traveler, a mysterious trickster with an affinity for phallic graffiti. Mechanically, clerics have a massive stable of spells from which they can choose a subset every morning; their abilities range from healing wounds to causing devastating harm. More specifically, Jester is a trickery domain cleric, which means her spells have a strong focus on illusions and pranks.
Mollymauk (played by Taliesin Jaffe)
If you’re watching the show in video form, Taliesin is the one who looks like he may be some sort of ancient fey creature who’s come to our realm to play D&D. If you’re listening to the podcast, his character voice has an Irish accent of varying intensity.
Molly is a tiefling blood hunter with purple skin. Blood hunters are a custom class Matt created that can use their own blood (in a process called hemocraft) to augment their combat abilities. Mechanically, blood hunters are high-risk high-reward; they can perform devastatingly brutal attacks, but often only at the cost of shedding some of their own blood to do so. More specifically, Molly is an Order of the Ghostslayer blood hunter, which means he’s got an affinity for things relating to the moment of death.
Yasha (played by Ashley Johnson)
If you’re watching the show in video form, Ashley is the one who isn’t around for a little bit (she was splitting her time with a TV show on the opposite coast) and then SHE’S BACK AND I’M STILL SO HAPPY ABOUT THAT. If you’re listening to the podcast, her character voice is soft with a faint Scandinavian accent.
Yasha is an aasimar barbarian. Aasimar are the semi-divine counterpart to tieflings, although Yasha is a fallen aasimar with a fairly different aesthetic. Barbarians use their rage to enhance their already fierce battle prowess. Mechanically, barbarians in a rage take less damage and deal more damage, and also embrace a high-risk high-reward playstyle as tanks in the middle of the fray. More specifically, Yasha is a Path of the Zealot barbarian, which means her battle rages are fueled by the influence of a divine being.
Interested in watching from the start of campaign 2? The show has a YouTube channel with each episode posted in its entirety, and all episodes are also available in podcast form (they did jump channels partway through, but you can usually find a playlist that has them all). If you want to delve into campaign 1, I highly recommend it, but be aware that they’re still figuring out tech stuff and you’re also jumping in partway through the game they started years earlier at home. Campaign 2 starts 20 years after campaign 1 on a different continent of the same world, and is intended to be an appropriate jumping-on point for new viewers.
Interested in catching up faster so you can watch live with friends? Search Critical Recap for a series of recap videos on YouTube, which then becomes a series of written summaries on the CritRole website after episode 88. There are also great summaries on the Wiki, and many people have put together catch-up guides for new viewers. 
There’s A LOT of content out there. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for skimming the early stuff if you want to get in on the new episodes sooner. <3
Episodes air at 7 PM Pacific every Thursday on Critical Role’s Twitch and YouTube channels; the VOD goes up for free on YouTube the Monday after. In the last few months, the cast has been distanced at the studio (all on separate cameras) and episodes have been pre-recorded several weeks in advance; normally, the show is streamed live and everyone is around the same table.
Hope that helps! If you have any questions, let me know. This is a fun show to get into, and a great all-consuming massive body of entertainment if you have the time for it.
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