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quipadeedoodaa · 4 years

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I Had a Wits End

Had this dream shortly after discovering Good Omens. I thought I might use it for something, but honestly it’s great as is, directly from my brain as I typed it after waking up. It makes me giggle still XD they’re such dorks.

Putting it under the cut because it is LONG!

Contains: Fluff, Adam, Dream nonsense logic, bad photoshopping, genetic experimentation, and both of them being stupid. Also, Aziraphale probably smites someone.

Ineffable Husbands Dream August.01.19

Aziraphale is meandering town just thinking and remembering the insults from Gabriel and begins to wonder if Crowley thinks he's soft to. In the midst of fretting if his literal demon soulmate he saved the world with thinks he's physically attractive, he notices a new business, not realizing he's wandered into a shadier part of town. Its a gym! Well, really that would solve everything, wouldn't it?! Excited he goes in just to see the people inside are like HYPERmuscular.

"Oh! Oh uh, oh dear, um..."

Evil eyes catch sight of him and the only person with natural proportions comes along, the shop owner, a skeezy looking business man.

"Can I help you with something?"

"Ah, well, maybe, you see, I was hoping to try working out."

Skeezy dude eyes this smol soft cinnamon roll and grins wider. "You came to the right place. Why don't you let us set you up a routine." escorts a less nervous, and now babbling incessantly about his worry/desire to try bettering himself, Aziraphale further into the building.

Meanwhile, Crowley's been tracking down the source of some very illegal and highly dangerous genetic experimentation. Which just so happens to be based at the same Gym. He has no idea Aziraphale is going there to work out and is gone from home often enough to not notice Aziraphale is too.

The experiments aren’t just on people, but animals too. Just making things bigger, more dangerous and destructive. Crowley gets caught snooping so he finds out the hard way when he's being chased and almost loses his car again. "Not the Bentley!! Anything but that!"

Crowley is a literal noodle, and discovers exactly how prone to bruises he is, so many so he's exhausted from miracling them away.

Scene cut to home, apparently Adam and Dog visit often enough because they were there. And Adam shows Crowley that skeezy gym being advertised in a magazine b/c Crowley had told Adam about what was happening, but not Aziraphale. He didn't want to tell the angel the horrors he'd found out. Crowley never reads the article, which is a shame because if he did, he'd know Aziraphale had already been involved in all this and telling him could've helped.

‘Cause all the example pictures in the article include Aziraphale. Which I’ll spoil now is HILARIOUS b/c it's actually just Zira’s head photoshopped on a buff body because, as the masterminds have discovered (and thus think Zira is the perfect experiment) is that Aziraphale's body does not react at all to their chemicals. I mean it’s only a corporation after all. It was built as it is now and has never changed for 6000 years. Aziraphale is literally just going there to work out like at a leisure gym (ex: planet fitness if y’all have em) and socialize b/c despite being intimidating, these people are quite nice!

So while Crowley is freaking out, Adam had stepped out of the room to search for Aziraphale for food. Aziraphale enters in one of those wrestling spandex numbers, and starts flexing and Crowley just completely forgets what he was just thinking about for a moment when he turns around and sees Aziraphale being an enormous dweeb in clothes uglier than usual. "...What on earth are you wearing?"

"I've been working out!"

".........." Aziraphale looks exactly the same except the very ugly outfit if you could even call it that. "right. well..."

And then Crowley freaks out because a moth had flown in and oh shitohshitojsgit!!! because one of the attacks had been via a giant moth monster. And now Aziraphale is worried about him. Miracles his normal clothes back on and decides maybe some food would help, he HAD been gone a lot lately. He sees Adam in the kitchen and shoos him back to Crowley "I’m worried about him, be a dear and make sure he's alright while I fix dinner."

Adam and dog return to the room to find super paranoid Crowley holding a massive egg like it's a time bomb, several holes are in the ceiling, but the moth is gone. Aziraphale realizes he's too worried to cook so just miracles some food and returns with it.

Crowley goes off on a long tangent about what's happening and what that Gym has been doing, which Aziraphale stands behind Crowley by the door holding a dish of noodles the whole time in shock, occasionally getting Crowley’s full attention for a section while he paces around. I forgot the exact words of his rant but he covered the human experimentation, the fact the egg was a moth egg and very dangerous and WOULD be exploding at some point most likely, almost losing the car again, ACTUALLY losing or at least sustaining massive damage to his home.

And Aziraphale is just filling with righteous fury for his husband and that he had so easily been tricked not that Crowley knows it yet. So Aziraphale makes eye contact with Adam and conveys he's going to take care of this, sets the noodles on the bed and leaves. But Crowley doesn't notice this, he just keeps talking fears of what these humans were truly capable of and accidentally knocks over the noodles. Dog rushes to eat them the movement catching Crowley’s attention and no! OH NO! "AZIRAPHALE!!" He falls to the noodles hands trying to gather them all up. "AZIRAPHALE!! What have they DONE to you!! Dog no! DON'T EAT HIM! AZIRAPHALE!!!"

He scoops all the noodles back into the dish and holds it like a baby, you can notice very dark circles under his eyes as his glasses having fallen off, or askew during his meltdown. He’s shaking and in panic and Adam is quite worried about this fool. Why would he think the noodles were Aziraphale? but doesn't question yet, just lets Crowley drag him into a fear cling with the noodles.

Ending with a hysterically sobbed "I used to have a Wits End and now it's GONE!" referring to the apparent name of this house Wits End, that’s been destroyed in several places and his husband gone! And Adam just pats him on the back. There there Crowley...

This is the point I woke up, but I retained knowledge of what happens next despite not seeing it.

Aziraphale storms the gym with the full brunt of God's wrath and not only destroys the building but all the research data AND miracles the information out of their minds. Just hits the place like a missile undoing everything. And the boss is done last so he KNOWS he fucked up using this nerd for a test subject. "What ARE you?"

"Fear not, I'm nothing you will ever remember." and then he doesn't.

It's not perfect like if Adam had willed it away but it was still satisfying to destroy things that had caused Crowley such harm.

And it's been awhile since he got to do a BIG miracle

Later. Once Crowley is calmed down, Adam’s gone home, and Aziraphale is there to ground his demon. Crowley calls him out on going to a gym at all. Aziraphale blushes and is all "I feared you would grow bored of me. I am soft, as you know... Not much of an angel either."

"But you're my angel." Crowley says blunt and 'duh' as possibly

Aziraphale gives a big ole smile and hugs him more. "I'm sorry I'd forgotten."

"Well... Don't do it again!"

"I promise."

End

#Good Omens #Ineffable Husbands #Crowley #Aziraphale #Fic plot #fanfic #it happened in a dream #ineffable dream #Fluff #i forgot how darn cute this dream was oh my god #please read it!

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lechevaliermalfet · 5 years

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Vae Victis! – A Look Back at Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

It was the mid-1990s. We were in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and gaming as a medium was eager to prove that it had grown up.

This had been going on before the fifth generation, of course. The Sega Genesis sold itself on its contrast to the status quo. “Sega does what Nintendon’t,” and all that. Sega’s whole image was bound up in being the cool kid, the one who’d outgrown all those pokey “kiddie” games like Super Mario Bros. or Kid Icarus or Mega Man. Sega fans played games like Mortal Kombat and Eternal Champions. Even a mascot game like Sonic the Hedgehog had a kind of snide adolescent streak to it; leaner, meaner, and less patient. Nintendo themselves had to butch up a little, even. When their bloodless version of the first Mortal Kombat got outsold by Sega’s, which kept all the gore – despite otherwise being technically superior in every measurable way – they relaxed their standards and left all the blood and fatalities intact for the second and third games, and saw a jump in sales accordingly.

The 90s were in part a decade of cynicism and ironic detachment. Sincerity tended to be frowned upon as being kind of silly and naive, or else a cover for motives less savory. Strong skepticism was the default mode, and in fiction, anti-heroes were all the rage.

Which brings us to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, described by its developers as a Legend of Zelda “for adults”.

Of course, any self-described adult who can’t bear to play a Legend of Zelda game because they feel it’s not grown-up enough needs to sit down and re-assess their idea of adulthood, and how secure they are in it. If a tolerance for violence (if not a craving) is all it takes, then I was an adult at about eleven, when I was single-handedly mowing down whole armies of Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D.

But those were the times, and that’s how Blood Omen got pushed. Which is unfortunate, because it misses the more thoughtful parts of the game’s story that actually did make it material mostly for adults.

“...the first act in my theatre of Grand Guignol!”

We begin in the world of Nosgoth, and if there’s a made-up fantasy word that screams “dark supernatural fantasy” more than that, I haven’t heard it. Our main character is Kain, a nobleman caught out at night in a town where he can’t find an inn or tavern to stay for the night. He is cornered by assassins and murdered, whereupon he goes to hell. Or at least, we can assume it’s hell; I don’t think even a death metal band’s idea of heaven involves being cuffed to twin posts overlooking a literal lake of fire with a sword stuck through you. Anyway, that’s where Kain is, cursing the fact that he can’t get revenge. Which seems a little warped, on the surface of things. You’d think if you were stuck in hell, then getting out, however impossible, might seem more important than getting back at the people who killed you. But if you’re the kind of person who winds up in hell after being murdered, I suppose it stands to reason that your priorities may not be in order.

While Kain is in hell, lamenting his impotent rage and generally ignoring all the fine mid-90s CG scenery, he is approached by a necromancer named Mortanius.

The necromancer offers him a way back to the world of the living, and thus a chance at revenge. Eager to oblige his overdeveloped sense of wrath, Kain takes him up on the offer, and fails to consider that there are only a few different ways, traditionally, that a dead person can cross back through the veil. And none of them really involve returning to life exactly as you were.

Kain rises from his grave as a vampire, stronger than he ever was in life, and only too happy to hack up his assassins when he encounters them not far from the site of his crypt. However, as he comes down from his vengeance-high, he hears a voice in the back of his mind – Mortanius’s voice, in fact – suggesting that his assassins were “the instruments of your murder, not the cause”. Mortanius then urges him to seek out the Pillars to find the real reason for his murder, and its true culprits.

We need to rewind a bit.

IN THE BEGINNING, there were the Pillars of Nosgoth (in fact, “Pillars of Nosgoth” was the game’s working title for a while). Rooted who knows how deep in the earth below, and reaching up to the clouds, the Pillars are a structure that should be physically impossible. They are somehow both integral to the natural order of the world, and also the embodiment of certain elemental principles. There are nine of them, embodying – in no particular order – conflict, energy, states (of being, not political), dimensions, death, nature, time, the mind, and balance. Each Pillar has its guardian, a human endowed with powers according to the Pillar’s defining principle, and tasked with overseeing that Pillar’s particular province.

A good while back in the past (how long is not detailed in this game, but probably centuries) there was a genocidal crusade of sorts against vampires, who were evidently a serious scourge of some kind. In fact, the game opens on a view of a field – practically a forest – of stakes, with a vampire impaled on each. Vlad Tepes would be proud. This crusade was ordered by the Circle of Nine (the collective group of Pillar guardians), and carried out by the fanatical religious order known as the Sarafan Brotherhood.

Monsters that they are, the vampires did not take this well. One of their number, an elder vampire named Vorador, decided to strike back. Vorador was by this point in his unlife no longer quite human looking, with mottled grey skin (later series installments would make this varying shades of green), odd three-clawed hands, and giant bat-like ears. Blood Omen never elaborates on the reason for this difference. At any rate, he singlehandedly stormed the citadel of the Pillar guardians while most of the Sarafan brotherhood were away (presumably looking for more vampires to stake), and wound up killing several of them (one of the sequels gives the number as six). In the process, he even managed to beat down Malek on his way out, perhaps the greatest warrior among the Sarafan, and the one specifically tasked with safeguarding the Circle.

For screwing up his one job, Malek was punished by being made to do that job for eternity. It might seem inadvisable to take the guy who failed to guard you and then make him your guard forever, but it helps if you rip his soul out of his body and bind it to his armor, thus making him a sleepless, tireless, unfeeling, and ever vigilant warrior fueled by pure wrath. Which is what they (or rather, Mortanius) ultimately did. At some point between this time and the present day of Blood Omen, Malek became the guardian of the Pillar of Conflict, so evidently he was fit for his role in the end.

Now we fast-forward a bit, to a point just moments before Kain’s birth. In fact, later games place this at the exact moment of that birth.

Somewhere around thirty years before Kain’s murder outside a nameless tavern in a random town, Ariel, the guardian of the Pillar of Balance, is murdered. This is bad news for all the usual reasons, and also one or two unusual ones. It turns out that her lover is the guardian of the Pillar of the Mind, the mentalist Nupraptor. Her murder drives him insane, and being a telepath (among other things), his insanity infects the guardians of the other Pillars as well. This turns them from their usual purpose of upholding the natural balance, and instead sets them to destroying it. This in turn corrupts the Pillars, symbiotically connected to their guardians, turning them from pristine white to a pitted and cracking grey. With both the Pillars and their guardians respectively corrupted and insane, the natural order of things begins to fall apart. Bad news all around.

Blood Omen is somewhat unusual in that it’s one of the few probably rare instances in fiction where a woman is stuffed into the fridge at the beginning of the story, and in order to drive the villain to extremes of behavior.

So.

Now we have Kain, in the present of our story, given to understand that his death was in some way connected with the Pillars and their corruption. He makes his way to the Pillars, where he meets Ariel’s restless spirit. She’s the one who lays out for him part of the business about her murder and Nupraptor’s madness, and the threat posed to the world by it all. Kain is only interested in a cure for his vampirism (now that he’s had his vengeance, he wants no part of this undeath business), but Ariel persuades him that his best bet is to deal with the corruption of the Pillars. So Kain storms off to go take care of Nupraptor, and ultimately to cleanse the Pillars by severing their connection to their now-insane guardians, solving the problem of their corruption by reference to his sword. Go with what you know.

It’s at this point that Kain’s personal arc begins to unfold, as he becomes increasingly alienated from humanity, both the species and the concept. While initially at odds with his vampirism, Kain spends the story coming to grips with the hypocrisy and corruption of human civilization, all the while becoming more and more comfortable with the seeming monstrosity of his new existence. This is a matter of some necessity. He has things he needs to do, he has to stay alive to do them, and so a certain amount of blood-drinking and slaughter seems inevitable.

In his travels, he comes across Vorador’s manor, situated deep in a swamp teeming with monsters. Kain seeks his help to destroy Malek. Vorador, for his part, spends the encounter being lordly and largely dismissive of Kain’s quest. He advises the fledgling vampire that meddling in mortal affairs is nothing but bad news. Better to sit back and sate one’s hunger – or thirst, in this case – and let the mortal world turn as it will. Humans are to be preyed on, not helped or manipulated or otherwise gotten involved with. Best to stay above such passing concerns. Nevertheless, he takes a liking to Kain, and gives him his ring to summon him at need.

Say a word often enough, and it starts to lose its sense of meaning. Actions likewise lose significance with repetition. They become rote. And as time wears on, Kain seems to begin making a turn. There’s a certain honesty in being a monster. You always know what you are, and you always know how other people see you. Kain may sneer at Vorador’s decadence when they meet, but at least the elder vampire is never less than one hundred percent honest about what he is.

And as Kain goes on, it begins to seem that Vorador was right. So much of Kain’s and the world’s difficulties seem to stem from the selfishness, greed, shortsightedness, self-absorption, and general malice of the people he runs up against. Eventually, he winds up accidentally sparking a second genocidal crusade against his own kind. This has mostly to do with him traveling back in time to kill a man in the past who would grow to become a tyrant in his current era. This mistake no doubt has its roots in his not having not grown up in a world with a whole sub-genre of fiction concerned with the merits or otherwise of traveling back in time to kill Hitler.

We will have such fun with time travel as the series goes on, let me tell you.

The game ends by offering the player a choice. Kain’s efforts to cleanse the Pillars and restore balance to the world have made him the new guardian of the Pillar of Balance. Yet, like all other Pillar Guardians slain at his hand, he himself is corrupt, and must die to complete the task. So the player is asked: Will Kain willingly sacrifice himself for the greater good of Nosgoth, or will he refuse the sacrifice and choose to live in an increasingly broken and corrupt world.

The sequels take the second ending as canon, and honestly, it’s hard to argue. This isn’t a story about hope springing eternal, after all. The few people in it who are unambiguously good are either killed (Ariel) or largely ineffectual (King Ottmar, who comes to prominence briefly toward the end of the story). The player may feel differently, but there’s little reason to believe that Kain would. Proud, haughty, vindictive, wrathful, and growing ever more cynical and mistrustful of the motives of those around him, tired of being used as a tool for other’s schemes... Why would he choose to sacrifice himself?

And so, canonically, we close on a shot of Kain sitting on a throne at the base of the Pillar of Balance, with it and all the other Pillars lying in a broken ruin around him. He drinks from a goblet, and muses that Vorador was right after all: “Vampires are gods – dark gods – and it is our duty to thin the herd.”

The End.

“Nothing is free. Not even revenge.”

So that’s Blood Omen as a story. What about as a game?

On the balance it’s kind of uneven.

On a technical level, it’s fairly impressive. In its time, it stood as a testament to the potential quality of two-dimensional graphics in gaming, even as the entire medium was leaping into the third dimension, ready to ditch and decry anything made in 2D as inferior. The result from a technical standpoint is that Blood Omen has in some ways aged better than a lot of other games of its vintage, including its first sequel.

But then you actually play the thing, and see where it sort of falls apart.

Let’s get the easy part over with, shall we? The load times in Blood Omen are godawful, just the worst possible combination of long and frequent. It seems almost like a joke at times: “Really? We’re loading again? It was one fucking room!” Were it not for the fact that it began development as a totally unrelated game, I would strongly suspect that the sequel, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, used its data-streaming technology to avoid loading times altogether purely as a response to this criticism. I still think that may be the case.

Once we dig past the issue of loading times, though, the game reveals other issues.

There are good ideas on display here. Let’s start with that. The game has a day-and-night cycle, and while you can walk around during the day, you deal less damage (and take more) while the sun is up. Water is like the touch of acid to a vampire, and any time you’re in it, you’ll take constant damage. Rain and snow will likewise damage you, and while there are power-ups that are supposed to eliminate this problem, I’m not sure they actually work. At least, not on the PC version of the game, which is what I’ve mostly played.

The game also requires that Kain drink blood periodically. His health naturally drains very slowly, but constantly, so you always have to be on the lookout for a way to top yourself off. There are some more abstract health restoration items, as well as a consumable item you can use, called the Heart of Darkness (this item will become obscenely important in later installments). However, the game is structured such that most of Kain’s health restoration will have to come from either enemies or, more often, helpless innocents. This ties nicely into the game’s theme of alienation from humanity, though the way the game often presents these situations –random strangers chained to walls all over the world, for no apparent reason – seems a little odd at times. And it has interesting ideas about different creatures having blood that might actually be harmful to Kain, or inflict him with a long-term poison.

In addition to the graphics looking nice (the CG cutscenes are definitely of their time, but the in-game sprite work and lighting effects are quite nice), the game has a great soundtrack, dark and moody and ominous. And the voice work is superb. All character interactions are handled with voiceover rather than on-screen text, and the cast knocks it out of the park. Not just “good for the mid-90s video game voice acting”, but great, period.

The puzzle-solving is a little lackluster, though. For something pitched as a “grown-up Legend of Zelda”, its puzzles largely consist of pulling levers and pushing buttons, and navigating mazes. Which is fine, but again, any game that’s going to self-consciously compare itself to The Legend of Zelda needs to bring its A game, especially with its puzzle-solving.

The game does offer you a lot of tools to use, in the form of different weapons, spells, and magical items. But a lot of these boil down to more inventive yet questionably practical ways to kill enemies. And considering that setting up a selection of these items for immediate access involves going back and forth to the inventory menu (requiring a load time both ways), it’s easier to just stick with your weapon and a handful of the most commonly used spells and items and call it a day.

Weapons themselves are another problem. You’ll find that your iron sword from the very beginning of the game is the most generally useful. The mace will let you stun human enemies to drink their blood after just two hits, but it lacks the crowd-control effect of the sword, and also lacks the stunning effect on the non-human enemies that make up the bulk of your later-game foes. It’s also useful for knocking down certain stone barriers, but these are few and far between, and necessary for progress only very rarely. The twin axes let Kain cut down trees barring his path, and also let him cut down enemies by spinning like a saw blade… but this means you’ll frequently kill enemies before you have a chance to drain them. The flaming sword burns enemies alive and leaves only ashes, preventing you from drinking blood that way. And then the final weapon, the Soul Reaver (also an item of incalculable importance later in the series), deals massive damage as long as you have magic power to fuel it. But while thus empowered, it detonates the enemies it kills, making them impossible to drain. And when not empowered, it’s only as damaging as the iron sword, but slower and more awkward.

Combat in general gets frustrating at times, thanks to the iffy hit detection. One enemy might walk right through your sword swing, while another you could swear was out of range will register a hit. It never becomes a total deal-breaker, but it’s a point of frequent irritation as you go.

Let’s have another positive: Kain also gains the ability to transform into various other states as the game goes by. In his wolf form, he can leap over certain obstacles, but his attack in this form has no combo ability and a long wind-up, making him vulnerable. He can use his bat form to fast-travel between beacons and certain landmark locations, while his mist form allows him to walk on water without taking damage, as well as cross certain barriers without opening the door. There are also two disguises he can use. One transforms him into a peasant, while the other turns him into a human-looking version of himself so that he can pass as a nobleman. The use of both of these is largely situational, required in a very small number of situations and then mostly pointless outside of them.

But perhaps the thing that stands out the most is its linearity.

This is to some extent mandated by the story. Unlike The Legend of Zelda, to which this game invites much comparison, Blood Omen’s story is very much at all times front and center. A Zelda game will leave you with bits of story here and there, and largely leave you to explore or puzzle your way forward or dick around in town or otherwise do your own thing for long stretches of time. The story in one of those games is the starting point of the experience, a backdrop against which you play out the adventure. Hyrule is to some extent defined by that openness, with its plains and deserts and vast forests and so on.

Blood Omen lacks this. Its story is the entire point and purpose of the game. The path forward is always clear and rarely has room for deviation or discovery. There may be things hidden off to the side, but these tend ultimately to be cul-de-sacs, connecting to nothing else. This is even subtly expressed in the game’s environments: lots of indoor areas, caves, narrow trails, canyons, and so on. There’s little opportunity to go off the beaten path. Blood Omen’s pathways not only discourage exploration, they often disable it. This is not your experience to own; it is Kain’s story for you to be told.

I feel like in story terms, that’s ultimately the difference. Legend of Zelda’s story always exists to serve the game that Nintendo crafts. Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain’s game exists to serve the story.

And just to be clear, none of this is bad at all. It’s every bit as valid in terms of game design and mechanics as any given Zelda. But if you’re going to compare your game to The Legend of Zelda and then fail to do the most essentially Zelda things in it – not just do them poorly, but not do them at all, missing the point entirely of what a Zelda game is about – then it’s worth commenting on. I like Blood Omen, but I had to get used to thinking of it on its own terms. The Zelda comparisons are easy to make. Even without the developers making them, the look and structure of the game seems to invite them.

Like a good book, Blood Omen is a (mostly) straight shot from start to finish. Its linearity is what allows it to control the story, to unfold its plot and explore its themes at a pace of its choosing. The game to some extent revels in its edginess, but to be honest, it was perfect for me at the time. I was sixteen when I first played the game. Sixteen, and a bit of a loner with an odd and private (but intense) interest in vampires. It was probably the perfect game for me at the time. And it’s still ultimately enjoyable today, if you take it as what it is. Not as a Legend of Zelda game for adults, but as a decent action-adventure game with a good story and top-notch presentation. If you don’t mind the linearity and the relentlessly dark and sometimes disturbing story, it’s just about perfect.

Post-script the First: Likelihood of Re-release, and Current Availability

Eeeehhhhhhhhhh...

Here’s the problem: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain was originally dreamed up and created by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics (who also had a hand in the development, late in the process), with distribution to be handled by Activision. Crystal Dynamics eventually got full ownership of the Legacy of Kain brand, and used it to make the first sequel to Blood Omen, titled Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Silicon Knights was against this, but had less deep pockets than Crystal Dynamics, so they were ultimately the losers of the resulting court battle over the affair. The lone bone thrown to them was that Crystal Dynamics had to acknowledge in the game that Soul Reaver was based on characters and ideas created by Silicon Knights.

By the time Soul Reaver rolled around, Crystal Dynamics belonged to Eidos. Then, in 2005 (not long after the last Legacy of Kain game was published), Eidos was completely bought out by Square Enix, and was mostly refocused on creating western-style games under the Square Enix umbrella. Crystal Dynamics still exists as a division within Square, where they’ve been making various Tomb Raider games almost exclusively ever since the acquisition.

The problem with any hypothetical remaster or re-release of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is that, for several years, it would have required some three-way legal wrangling to determine who really owned the thing, and what they could do with it (if anything), and under what conditions.

As of about 2014, Silicon Knights ceased to exist (about which more later, because it’s a fun story), but that still leaves the rights an open issue. Square Enix seems to own the larger Legacy of Kain intellectual property, but there’s the question of ownership regarding Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain specifically, and I’m not sure that question has ever been answered. Silicon Knights doesn’t exist, but many of its personnel are still around in some capacity, and would presumably have something to say about anything involving it.

Venues like Steam and Good Old Games have released the every other installment in the series digitally (even Blood Omen 2), but nobody’s touched the original game. Probably CD Projekt Red and Valve don’t have much desire to try unsnarling the ownership and licensing issues themselves, and none of the owners seem all that keen on it, either.

And it will probably stay that way. The Legacy of Kain series in general has always been pretty solidly in the B tier of video games, from back when there still even was much of a B tier in the first place. The fanbase for that kind of deliberately overwrought gothic supernatural fantasy was loyal, but never very big, and I’m not sure how much that’s changed. Moreover, I’m not sure either Square is willing to bank on it having grown in the interim enough to do anything about this first game in the series. The more time goes by, the less inclination any party has to make anything of the series, especially an early entry whose ownership may be contested. An indirect sequel, and also some kind of MMO, were both in the works at various points. The MMO vanished after not very long at all on the market, and the indirect sequel never made it out of development.

Legal options for playing Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain are limited. You can play the original PlayStation version on the PlayStation 1, 2, or 3. It’s also digitally available on the PS3, although not for the PSP or Vita. Infuriatingly, it’s one of a small handful of games that can’t even be side-loaded (a process that involves downloading a digital PS1 game onto your PS3, then copying it uninstalled to the Vita). The PC version, meanwhile, can still be played, though there’s a special program custom-made for it that you’ll have to get in order to install it and run it on modern systems. And this tends to run a little slow. Music and sound are fine, it’s just the game actually moves slower than normal. Or you could install a virtual desktop and play it that way.

Post-script the Second: The Death of Chivalry

So whatever happened with Silicon Knights?

Well, the story is… not complicated, exactly, but not entirely straightforward, either.

Development of Blood Omen was troubled. As we would later learn, this was not an especially novel situation for Silicon Knights to be in. Two of their other big projects later on underwent some turbulence in production. Blood Omen was originally to be created by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics. Later on, after Crystal Dynamics became part of British publisher Eidos, they were able to somehow leverage this connection to strongarm their way into ownership of the overall Legacy of Kain intellectual property. They used it to make the first sequel to Blood Omen, titled Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. This had begun life as a brand-new IP (originally titled Shifter), which helps explain some of the tremendous thematic, aesthetic, and design differences between the two games.

Silicon Knights later maintained that they’d had their own ideas for a potential Blood Omen sequel, but never got around to it, and after Crystal Dynamics started making their own sequels, Silicon Knights lost interst. I’m not sure how much of that is real and how much is just so much sour grapes. Anyway, they went off and did their own thing for a while. They published the survival horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the GameCube, after having signed an exclusivity deal with Nintendo around that time. It had originally been in development for the N64, but was ultimately moved up to the newer hardware after development delays. For anyone who’s wondering, Eternal Darkness an excellent game, on the shortlist of must-own GameCube titles, even if you’re not necessarily a fan of survival horror. It’s not perfect (among other things, you have to beat the game three times to see the true ending), but it does a lot of interesting things.

They also developed the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid (likely under heavy scrutiny and supervision form Konami), dubbed Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Much as I tend to prefer the original version of the game for its restraint (Twin Snakes has a lot of ridiculous high-flying wire-fu maneuvering in its action cutscenes), the remake is worth any Metal Gear fan’s time. Among other things, series creator Hideo Kojima has apparently declared it the canon version of events. It also saw a re-dubbing of the entire script, since apparently when the original audio was played back at a higher sampling rate, you could hear the traffic in the background, which the ramshackle soundproofing used in the original hadn’t been able to entirely shut out. The re-dubbed script also has the benefit of having allowing Jennifer Hale and Kim Mai Guest to ditch their put-on accents – Guest’s being particularly irritating, and borderline racist (maybe actually racist; I’m a white dude, and not totally clear on these things).

After this, they moved on to the Xbox 360 with their passion project Too Human, which had been troubled from the beginning. Its on-again, off-again development cycle spanned a decade and three console generations. It began development for the original PlayStation, then shifted to the GameCube when the developer did in the early 2000s. It went quiet for a few years, then resurfaced as an Xbox 360 project that was ultimately delivered in 2008, two years after its projected release on that console.

Too Human was a notorious, news-making flop, and Silicon Knights responded to this failure not simply by pinning the blame on someone else, but by doing that and then actually suing them. Specifically, they sued Epic Games, from whom they had licensed the Unreal Engine 3 to make the final version of Too Human. The accusation was that Epic deliberately sabotaged developers who licensed their engine by providing an incomplete product, and that the difficulties stemming from this had caused development delays. These delays, and the compromises they brought about, were supposedly ultimately responsible for the failure and the financial losses of Too Human.

Epic responded by then counter-suing, which was the beginning of the end for Silicon Knights.

Epic’s counter-suit stated that Unreal Engine 3 was a work in progress, and that they were making it essentially on the fly as they developed the first Gears of War. The counter-suit further stated that it was readily and openly acknowledged that the engine was unfinished, and that when it was done, it might ultimately not turn out to be useful for the licensees. Epic’s suit further indicated that these facts were all known and laid out in the licensing contract, and so like all licensees, Silicon Knights knew this when they signed for it.

But it gets better (which is to say, worse, at least for Silicon Knights). Epic’s counter-suit also included the allegation that Silicon Knights had knowingly and wrongfully copied code wholesale from Unreal Engine 3 and incorporated it into their own engine without permission from Epic. They had then gone on to use this hybrid engine on other internal projects without the permission of the people they’d cannibalized it from.

Now, I’m not one to root for a big corporation, even (especially) a game developer. But Silicon Knights had the misfortune of being run by Denis Dyack, a known con-man, grifter, shady bullshitter, and general ambulatory phallus. He maybe wasn’t in the same category as a Randy Pitchford or a Bobby Kotick, but that’s less a matter of capacity and more a matter of opportunity. Given the chance to operate on their scale, I don’t doubt he’d have fit right in with that crowd.

As far as the court case went, the evidence was overwhelmingly in Epic’s favor. In addition to their own court costs and damages awarded to Epic, Silicon Knights was forced to recall all unsold copies of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny (another game they’d developed with their Unreal Engine 3 hybrid), as well as scrap all projects using the engine, which seems to have been literally everything they had in the works at that point.

So what happened, essentially, is that Silicon Knights sued Epic Games in an effort to offset their losses by making money out of the Too Human debacle somehow, and it backfired so comically that they broke themselves against their opponent.

But their end, one way or another, was probably inevitable in that console generation. Looking at their release history, there’s really nothing that stands out as a hit or an absolute classic. Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes were both fine games, this much is true. But Eternal Darkness was a GameCube exclusive, and the GameCube didn’t sell the way Nintendo hoped. Meanwhile, The Twin Snakes is certainly nice, but as a remake of a different developer’s game, it has little in the way of originality, and very little of the material can really be said to “belong” to Silicon Knights, since it was someone else’s brainchild right from the start.

They were never a hugely prolific publisher, with eight games published before they folded, and according to Wikipedia, seven known titles cancelled at various points during their existence. These cancelled projects included two sequels to Too Human (which had always been planned as a trilogy). Given the cold reception received by the original, both from critics and consumers alike, that seems questionable. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. But however you look at it, they didn’t have what you’d call a good ratio of finished to unfinished projects. And while it’s worth mentioning that many of those unfinished projects were upcoming games they were forced to cancel because they’d been made (or begun) with their illegal Unreal Engine 3 hybrid, the fact is that when your business plan hinges on stealing another developer’s game engine to make your own games, you’re already in a bad place.

Silicon Knights pretty firmly slotted into the middle tier of video games. For my money, the middle tier is in some ways the sweet spot. It’s more high-tech and technically involved than the indie set, yet not so high-budget that developers in it can’t feel free to experiment. But that middle tier has all but vanished these days. It’s questionable whether Silicon Knights would have hung on long enough to find a spot in it today, even if they hadn’t destroyed themselves going after Epic, just based on the iffy reception of their games. That’s without considering the general skullduggery it took to keep them going in the first place. And I also tend to think of X-Men: Destiny as a bad sign. There’s no shame in work-for-hire; it’s how a lot of major development studios (like Blizzard) started out. But that’s the key: you start out doing work-for-hire projects to make the money to strike out on your own. Silicon Knights was moving in the opposite direction, and that’s a bad sign.

Vae Victis, indeed.

#legacy of kain #blood omen #blood omen legacy of kain #kain #video games #video gaming #games #gaming #silicon knights #vae victis #halloween

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existentialburden · 4 years

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poltergeist: do you watch television? what's your favourite show?frankenstein: have you ever felt rejected by your peers? do you think you 'fit in' with other people?night of the living dead: if you could, would you bring people back from the dead? who?the omen: how do you feel about children? would you want any of your own?split: is there more than one side to you? do you hide parts of yourself from people?pan's labyrinth: do you have any siblings? are you the favourite?

poltergeist: do you watch television? what’s your favorite show?

I stream tv shows sometimes but I don’t really watch all that much. One Punch Man is probably my current fav since it’s lightheartedish and gives me writing inspiration. Miraculous Ladybug is a guilty pleasure though even if it gives me MASSIVE second-hand embarrassment.

frankenstein: have you ever felt rejected by your peers? do you think you ‘fit in’ with other people?

I feel rejected any time I interact with anyone outside my friendgroup who doesn’t have The Same Brain Issues as me tbh. people don’t tend to approach me and apparently people see me as a know-it-all whenever I try to help in a group? so I overshare online to make up for it. I don’t really feel like I fit in with any group setting. in friend groups I always sort of feel out of place because I don’t know how to interact in a group. in one of them I’m the youngest and the newest addition so I always worry that it’s an “sorry guys I had to bring my lil brother along” kinda thing even though I know it’s not and that at least one of them likes hanging with me. I never speak in Discord servers with more than 4 people without prompting because I get scared that I’m “that guy” who doesn’t actually have anything to add. I never got super involved in fandom spaces either so :/. just... don’t feel wanted around often ig. I spend the majority of my time alone.

night of the living dead: if you could, would you bring people back from the dead? who?

if I did, it wouldn’t be anyone I personally know all that well. I think I’d just have to go with no in general because I’d want to bring back people who shouldn’t have died and that would get out of control quickly. there’s a lot :(

the omen: how do you feel about children? would you want any of your own?

children are cool and good and sometimes a blast to hang out with but I don’t think I’d make a good parent. I have a tendency to get overwhelmed, irritable, and to lash out and I wouldn’t want to put a kid through that. I also don’t really want to ever deal with a kid full-time because a lot of kids are so noisy and sound really bothers me. I can’t control my bad days and I wouldn’t want to make a kid deal with that because of how I personally get and how my mom tended to use me to vent.

split: is there more than one side to you? do you hide parts of yourself from people?

I wouldn’t say there’s more than one side, but there’s definitely parts of myself I don’t tend to make public. I’m way more open here and even right now there’s gonna be some things I don’t mention, but that’s mostly for y’all’s sake because I don’t think any of us could take a thirst post from me rn lmao. but I don’t tell most people that I’m absolutely fascinated with how emotions can be manipulated and that’s why I like writing so much. I don’t tell people that I love to see people lose their shit from a distance. I don’t tell people that sometimes when I’m alone I refer to myself as “us” and “we” and I don’t tell people how tired I feel all the time. I don’t tell people that my first thoughts when someone does something that’s a minor annoyance to me are “I wish they would fucking die”. sometimes those things are just things that would likely make me more of an outcast and sometimes it’s because those things are impulse thoughts and there’s no reason to bring them up when my second thought is “okay, yikes, calm down bud”. it’s just. there’s a lot of me I don’t like other people to see because either I’m scared of their reaction or it doesn’t feel like ME me. impulses aren’t me. cringe culture did make me scared of showing a lot of me that’s excitable too. I don’t tend to get up and walk around when things excite me in a public place. I don’t smack my fists against my legs to burn off energy in a public place. I really really want to but. y’know.

pan’s labyrinth: do you have any siblings? are you the favorite?

I have one older brother! he’s like... 11 years older than me? probably 11 years older than me. we get along well and I like hearing about his coding and whatever game he’s playing. I’m... very much certain that I am the favorite. for reasons that are mostly “I’m quiet and younger” and “my mom has a very skewed view on their relationship”. my brother’s super cool though and he deserves the world.

#ask #egby says shit #AAA TY ANON!!!!!#I love my brother so much... he's SUPER COOL #he's making a game for one of his classes and I'm really excited to see how that turns out!#he rambles to me and lets me ramble back and it's super cool when he's around

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oumakokichi · 7 years

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So I apologize that this might get a bit too lengthy. 1 Mimikyu: partially because of fanart but also because both Ouma and Mimikyu look innocent but when you see them in action it's a bit like “You thought"! XD 2 Cubone: This one might seem a little strange but pre-game Ouma looks lonely and I think that makes it easy for him to connect with Cubone because he understands loneliness and finding a place to belong. 3/4 Ditto and Zorua: Let's admit it right now. These two are practically

This is a really fun team set-up! I’ll share my thoughts under a read more a little bit, so that this doesn’t get too long!

I think Mimikkyu is perhaps one of the most perfect fits for Ouma–I’ve actually seen quite a few pieces of fanart showing him with one. Both are cute, both can be absolutely terrifying, and there’s definitely a sense of “I’m not too sure about my own identity” with the both of them.

Ouma, especially pre-game Ouma with Cubone, makes a lot of sense! Ouma has quite a few lines even in-game about how it’s important to tell the people important to you that you care about them “while they’re still alive,” implying pretty heavily that he knows what it is to lose people. Tie that in with all the orphan-coded imagery in his character and, well.

Ditto and Zorua are both great fits, too! Both tie in quite well with Ouma’s idea that a “lie can become the truth if it’s accepted as such,” as well as his belief that lies are in no way inferior to the truth just because they’re “not real.” In the Pokemon anime especially, both Ditto and Zorua are really mischievous, so he’d have a real blast with them on his team.

Smoochum and Lapras make for really cute picks, in my opinion! I definitely agree that Ouma is the type of trainer who’d spoil his Pokemon rotten–all while acting like the “big bad rival trainer,” probably. Smoochum in particular reminds me of a mask one of the DICE members was wearing, so I bet he’d like it for that reason too! And Lapras would be a great reference to Momota’s whole “pure” comment about Ouma in Chapter 3.

I also really like the idea that Ouma would have quite a few ghost and dark type Pokemon–ghost types because they’re the most mischievous type there is, and dark because the name for dark type is literally “evil” in Japanese, which is right up his alley of putting on a “big bad villain” act even though he’s actually a very childish prank-loving brat.

Gengar is one of my favorite picks for him, personally, given the whole color scheme and the expressions Ouma makes in some of his sprites. I really love the idea of him having a Murkrow too, since they’re often seen as a “bad omen” despite being relatively childish. They also like to steal shiny things to take back to their nests, which mimics Ouma’s room being a mess of stolen crime scene evidence. Even picturing a lot of DICE having Murkrows and Ouma having a Honchkrow would be really adorable.

These were super cute headcanons, thank you so much for sharing them! Ouma would be one of those trainers who was super competitive about battling (it’s a game, after all, and he loves a challenge), but he’d also treat them very lovingly. Like DICE, I don’t doubt any Pokemon team of his would be “closer than family” to him, since he’s the type of person at heart who gets attached pretty easily. It’s really fun to picture him trying to act like some huge rival character who’s actually just looking to have fun and pull pranks.

#ask #opinions #ndrv3 spoilers //#okay to reblog #anonymous

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sage-nebula · 7 years

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Ah thank you the first one (Genesis was actually what I was looking for) but it'd be super cool if you did write headcanons about it too! (If you don't mind that is)

No problem. :) Although, I do really hope you read Genesis, because I worked pretty hard on it and it’s the fic that I’m most proud of writing for the Pokémon fandom. It would be super cool if you read it. ^^ As for general headcanons (that, again, take place before Genesis does, given that Alan leaves the village in Genesis):

As mentioned in Genesis, Alan was discovered in the woods as an infant by the village’s florist, a young woman named Felicia. Felicia was in her early twenties; she had been going through the woods looking for wildflowers (she is, after all, a florist) when she found Alan abandoned on a rock. He was dressed and swaddled in a blanket, but she didn’t see anyone else nearby, and didn’t have it in her to just leave him there, so she took him back to Isolé right away. (It should be noted that he was abandoned purposefully close to the village. His biological mother was hoping that someone would find him.)The thing is, Isolé Village is a very small little village. Everyone knows everyone, and so everyone knew Felicia, knew that she didn’t even have a boyfriend (much less a husband), and so the sight of her walking through the village with a baby was not too well received. She attracted attention, and a small crowd trailing her as she went straight to Mayor Gosselin’s house, because even though she felt that she couldn’t just leave the baby in the woods, that doesn’t mean that she knew what to do with him. It was obvious that she hadn’t given birth to the baby herself, of course (everyone knew her and knew that she hadn’t been pregnant), but some of the more superstitious members of the village wondered if there was some kind of magic involved. As mentioned in Genesis, even five years later Maurice still thinks Alan is probably a changeling.Either way, once the mayor was notified, they had to make a decision on what to do. Everyone agreed (well, most people agreed) that they couldn’t chuck the infant back into the woods. However, there was also no one there who wanted to adopt him (including Felicia, who felt that she was too young and this was too sudden, even as Maurice said that she shouldn’t have brought the little changeling back with her then, now should she have?). Mayor Gosselin made an executive decision then and there that everyone would raise him, then, everyone taking a turn with each new month. No one was happy about this, but what else could she do? It was the only fair choice to make.Since Felicia was the one who found him, she was the one who named him (since she had no idea what name he was originally given by his biological parents). The name Alan can have several different meanings, among them “harmony,” “little rock,” “noble,” or “fair; handsome.” Felicia chose it because she hoped that he would not disrupt the harmony of the village, but also because she found him on a rock in the woods, and therefore felt it fitting.

As mentioned, none of the villagers had wanted to take Alan in. They either already had children of their own, didn’t want to have children of their own, or otherwise were just not open to the idea of raising a child. Nonetheless, they had to, and for this reason Alan was seen as a burden. Some of the villagers, such as Maurice, had some superstition or prejudice to back their dislike. But even without that, Alan was still seen as an extra burden none of them had asked for, and so it really didn’t matter what he did or didn’t do as he grew up; every little thing he did that was “wrong” was perceived as a major slight that caused them grief, whereas the things he did “right” were expected of him and nothing to be really praised or congratulated. (In other words: “You cause enough trouble just by being here, you better be on your best behavior.”)He was an unwanted child from the start, and he quickly came to realize it.

As you know, Maurice often referred to Alan as a changeling and, at least to some degree, genuinely believed that. As a whole (and as mentioned in Genesis), the village disparagingly compared Alan to an absol, feeling that he was a bad omen and brought disaster upon them time and again.

As mentioned, there were other children in the village---children who were born into families that, to put it bluntly, actually wanted them. Children don’t have inherent prejudices from the start and Alan didn’t really do anything to earn their ire (any more than any other children would), but children do learn the prejudices of their parents, can pick up on when their parents do or don’t like someone, and can at times be cruel and find fun in bullying. Alan was a convenient target, and a very alluring bully magnet as far as the other children in the village were concerned, because:- He didn’t have parents, and wasn’t a part of anyone’s family, so it wasn’t like he had anyone to go tattle on them to.- None of the adults liked him. Since none of the adults liked him, if the kids pushed or hit him, the adults would often act like they didn’t notice (or else half-heartedly tell them to stop). On the other hand, if he pushed or hit them back, he would be punished pretty much immediately, since none of the adults liked it when their kids were bullied.- Since none of the adults liked Alan, and felt that he did nothing but cause trouble and bring disaster (“little absol”), it made Alan a convenient scapegoat for the other children. Particularly if Alan was around, if the other kids did something wrong, they could just blame it on Alan, and he would be punished for it nine times out of ten. It didn’t matter if he was actually involved or not; the adults were far more likely to believe he did something wrong, especially if it was someone’s own child telling them that Alan was the one who did the bad thing. And as a specific example, there’s a point in Genesis when the mayor tells Augustine that she walked in on Alan and her son eating cookies from a broken cookie jar on the floor. Alan, in his first (and last) instance of speaking openly, told her honestly that a bunnelby had knocked the jar on the floor. She didn’t believe him, and he was punished. And I want to emphasize that: He got in trouble for breaking the cookie jar. The mayor’s son? He was just told “don’t eat cookies before dinner, you know that’s not right” and let off the hook. It was pretty disproportionate, but the mayor would feel justified and say that Alan had clearly lied, had roped her son into it, and all sorts of other nonsense. The kids of the village picked up on this, recognized him for the scapegoat he was, and took advantage.(And note: In canon we see that Alan has a tendency to take the blame for literally everything on his shoulders, even if someone else is clearly at fault. While canonically we only have the abuse he suffered under Lysandre to look to as a reason for this---and while I wholeheartedly believe that Lysandre’s abuse absolutely compounded the C-PTSD we see Alan exhibit in canon---I also look to the headcanons I have about his early childhood to explain it as well. Things like this---being blamed time and again for things that were either accidents or not his fault at all---certainly helped contribute to the guilt / shame complex we see in canon, where he earnestly believes that everything is his fault even if it isn’t. If nothing else, look at it this way: Early childhood laid the foundation. Sycamore helped ease a lot of that and helped Alan heal . . . only for Lysandre to bring everything surging back to the forefront so that it could crash down all over again.)As a final note on the other kids, there were times (when the adults weren’t around) that some of them might have tried to play a little bit with him, if they had no one else to play with, or were bored. But for the most part they just saw him as a fun bullying target, believed that he was just as bad and unlikable as all the adults showed them, and if asked about him in present day times, would probably remember him as “that freak” because that’s how they always thought of him. They might have been kids, but they weren’t kind. They weren’t taught to be. (And while you could ask, “Shouldn’t they change their opinion as they grow?” what reason do they have to do that? He left when he was five. They only know what they remember, and perhaps what others say when he’s brought up. If anything, he’s a joke to them. A memory to laugh at. They have no reason to think of him as the person he grows to be; he only exists as the boy in their memories, and those memories aren’t good.)

Physical contact wasn’t something positive for Alan. Once he learned to walk, he was never picked up and carried around---and before that, he was only carried when they explicitly needed to move him somewhere. No hugs, no hair ruffles, no kisses---none of that. Positive physical contact was something he wanted, because he gathered from watching other kids that it was something that signified love and family, but it wasn’t something he ever got.Not until the day Augustine found him in the mountains, anyway.

Much of the abuse Alan suffered during this time period was in the form of neglect. As can be gathered by how Alan meets Sycamore in Genesis, the villagers often ignored him unless he needed to be punished for something. This is what gave him the mindset that he could wander off whenever and wherever he wanted, something he often did because being alone was more pleasant than being around the others (however much he tried his best to be good enough for someone to want to keep). But that said, there was plenty of verbal and emotional abuse to go around as well---many reminders that he was a bad child who did bad things and caused trouble for everyone. Many reminders that he wasn’t good like the other children. Many reminders that he was a nuisance at best and a curse at worst. Many blatant reminders that he was not wanted nor needed where he was. The opposite, really.There was some physical abuse, too, depending on who he was staying with that month and what it was that it was perceived he did. Maurice very often threw him into the hall closet for “Time Out” (i.e. to get him out of the way for a while). Usually Maurice would let him out after an hour or so, but sometimes he’d forget and Alan would be in there all night (except for when he sneaked out after Maurice and his wife went to bed to try and get some food from the kitchen, or use the bathroom or something). More than once it was only discovered when the closet door was opened the next morning because Maurice or his wife needed something, and there was at least one time when Maurice was actually angry that Alan was in the way again before his wife had reminded him, “You did put him there.” Alan at least wasn’t punished for that, but he was told to get the hell out of the closet and out of the way, at which point he scampered off to go stand awkwardly in the kitchen because he didn’t know what else to do. (Maurice’s wife gave him an orange---a whole orange, for four-year-old---and told him to go outside and have breakfast. Alan ended up puncturing it on a rock in the mountains. He still got some of the fruit out of it, but it was messy and sticky and got everywhere, which neither Maurice nor his wife were very pleased about when he came home later.)I should note that, had Augustine listened to Fulbert and left Alan there, Maurice most definitely would have tossed Alan in the closet when they got home, especially since (as witnessed in the fic) he very quickly jumped to the conclusion that Alan was at fault for the houndour incident, which infuriated him on top of already being upset that it was his month to look after Alan to begin with.

All the children in the village were home-schooled, but Alan’s education was largely ignored, save for what he picked up on himself. He would join the lessons of whatever house he was staying at that month (with varying degrees of success; sometimes the adults let him sit in and learn, other times they treated him like he was disturbing the lesson), but mostly he patched together things on his own. For instance, Alan taught himself how to write; he picked up pencils in a tight fist and tried to figure out the best way to draw letters from workbooks entirely on his own. This is one reason why he has a very loose grasp on capitals when Augustine finds him, as well as why some of his letters look weird. He didn’t know the right way to write them, he just tried his best based on what they looked like. His spelling was also bad, and while he could sound out words to try and read them, his reading was still shaky even if he could read some things.

Out of everyone, Felicia was probably the nicest to him, given that she felt some degree of responsibility because she was the one who brought him back in the first place. But even then, she would sometimes ask him things like, “Why did you have to be in the forest that day?” and “Why did I have to find you?” Alan, being a child, had no answer for her. Neither of them were happy about this.

#my valiant dragon son #fic: genesis #they were so horrid to him #but Papa Sycamore saved him #bless Papa Sycamore #decadeoldtiger

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just-sort-of-happened · 7 years

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The Final Problem: Fear of The Devil, Your Feelings

Yesterday I was saying that maybe this episode is like a horror version of Sherlock in that it’s meant to be a nightmare for fans, it’s the anti-episode, it’s everything it shouldn’t be and we’re supposed to notice. Today @marta-bee was talking about Uncle Rudy possibly being a reference to an anti-portrait.

This whole series has made a steady stream of references to the devil. Notably in TST John and Mary discuss twice and through a mirror the difference between the devil and its spawn. They also discuss movies The Omen and The Exorcist.

Anyway, there’s a funny little moment when John, Sherlock and Mycroft are discussing what to do about their uhm bomb problem when we cut to Mrs Hudson, vacuuming to, ‘the number of the beast’, by Iron Maiden,

Now... Sure this is a funny little moment. We already saw that she is a badass in TLD so this fits: she does unexpectedly cool things, right? Except. Except this is a very unusual song choice for Mrs Hudson.

Now, technically Mrs Hudson can be into any song she wants to but. The Number of the Beast came out in 1982 when she was 45. (We open the show with a reference to 1982 and arguably this is around the time when Sherlock’s childhood flashbacks are occurring in TFP). Now maybe she was a 45 year old metal head back then but there’s something odd about this song choice. That’s why we laugh, it’s strange and we didn’t know she liked this type of music so we are amused.

But, what was even the point of blowing up Baker Street? To up the stakes, to start the game, to be the maguffin that gets it all going, sure, but also, maybe, to throw in this weird reference. TST featured Margaret Thatcher, aka The Iron Lady, as someone who could provide some clues to Sherlock about Mary. Villain-coded and devil-coded Mary.

“At one point in TST Sherlock is stopped in front of a shrine of pictures of a very bad woman: Thatcher. He feels something is off but he’s not sure what. He has extreme foreboding here, the camera work, the lighting, the way the other people disappear. This shrine of Thatcher is about Mary. Mary is a very bad woman about whom he has a very bad feeling. And something is missing from the shrine: the bust containing the AGRA flash drive. So, Sherlock’s instincts tell him Mary is terrible and that he’s missing a piece of information about her: her secret agent past.”

(italics added later) from this post.

Now, if you thought that the Moriarty element in TFP was silly well, it was. We saw a flashback and then, apparently, Eures had gotten him to film a series of uhm video clips for her to taunt Sherlock with 5 years later? Okay. The thing is Moriarty has been coded as satan I think since their conversation at Baker Street after the court case in TRF. He has an apple, he owes him a fall, this is symbolism about Sherlock being like Eve and eating the apple of the tree of knowledge and being ejected from Eden. In TAB Sherlock explicitly states that he’s waiting for the devil when he’s awaiting for Moriarty. But, no, in fact, Mrs Hudson tells that to Lestrade about why Sherlock is just sitting in his flat for days on end.

Magnussen also has been called the devil in HLV by Sherlock. He tells John he made, ‘a deal with the devil’.

All of the villains of Sherlock are connected to water (see @thepineapplering‘s meta here.) Water is connected to, among other things, emotions via four elements symbolism.

We see Sherlock running from his emotions as early as TGG when he talks about not knowing the solar system. (He's ironically trying to actually talk about his feelings to John when the latter storms out. Ironically, he saves a child later on via his obscure astronomical knowledge). Well, no, we see this retroactively via ASiB when he seems to emotionally skewer the woman for having feelings, however slight. The solar system and sentiment are both things that others see as basic knowledge (”primary school stuff” associates it to early childhood, even) and that Sherlock has told himself he, ‘deleted’, because he has no use for them.

So Sherlock’s personal villains, his demons, his devils lurking beneath are emotions. That’s why all villains are associated to water.

In TFP Eures is literally on a island, she’s isolated and yet trapped by water, surrounded by water. Isolated and surrounded by feelings, trapped by feelings.

Now, let’s look at the lyrics to Iron Maiden’s, ‘the number of the beast’,

“Left alone, my mind was blank. I needed time to think to get the memories from my mind.

What did I see, can I believe, That what I saw that night was real And not just fantasy.

Just what I saw, in my old dreams, Were they reflections of my warped mind Staring back at me.

Cause in my dreams, it's always there, The evil face that twists my mind and brings Me to despair.

Six-six-six the number of the beast. Hell and fire was spawned to be released.

Torches blazed and sacred chants were praised, As they start to cry, hands held to the sky. In the night, the fires burning bright, The ritual has begun, Satan's work is done.

Six-six-six the number of the beast. Sacrifice is going on tonight.

I'm coming back, I will return, And I'll possess your body and I'll make you burn. I have the fire, I have the force.”

So, here we can see that this song that Mrs Hudson so innocently and hilariously is listing to is about a man’s visions and nightmares. From his own deepest fears, from his own psyche. He questions what he sees, what he sees is the face of the devil and the mark 666.

We’ve seen that TFP doesn’t make a lot of sense plot-wise and that everyone seems out of character. I mean The EMP warriors have been hammering out meta about this series being fake from day one, so I got nothing special to add to the idea that, ‘it was all a dream’, or, ‘it was all in his head’. But I do want to say that the devil imagery, the references to the devil, to a nightmare of the devil, that’s of your own making, to water/villians/emotions, all of this does go back to the idea that we’re in Sherlock’s psyche.

There is no sister but rather this is Sherlock’s most isolated essence. An essence that is lonely and wants to have a friend. But also one who’s, ‘killed’, said friends before. Meaning he’s both evil Eures and vulnerable, sad Eures. He’s a contradiction. He wants to get close to people and he wants to also bury his feelings in a well. He’s specifically afraid to get as close to John as he wants to be. But, he’s now even more afraid that if he pushes him away he will drive him away like he has already done in the past.

This is his emotional turning point, this is why the theme of, ‘emotional context’, is brought up again and again by Eures in seemingly disjointed ways. If you don’t face your fears, and face your emotions The Three Garridebs will die. The romance will die if you don’t dare face it. The friend in the well cannot wait forever. You can push your feelings down but eventually they will die. That person will stop loving you.. Your chance to love like John so adamantly insists at the end of TLD maybe be gone before you realise it.

Sherlock loved someone before and then he buried that. (I think that’s Sebastian from TBB). Now he sees himself doing the same thing to John. He needs to rescue his feelings for John from the well. The well of his own fear and indifference. The well full of feelings. His horror is emotions. This is his nightmare where nothing is more frightening than emotions.

Now Eures is a woman. Sherlock’s deepest emotional aspect is a woman. Now my friends cringed after TAB when I said that the women in that episode represented Sherlock’s feelings but I really do think that’s one of the meanings of TAB. Sherlock has always feared his emotions and preferred logic, the mind. The mind, the logical side, etc, has always been associated to the male aspect and to the east. Feelings, intuition, water, circles, has always been associated to women and to the west. Now, we have this contrast because Eures is, ‘the East Wind’, associated to being super intelligent, rational to a fault, to the point of being a full-on psycopath. But, but, there’s also little-girl-lost Eures who will be magically cured by a single hug from Sherlock (see the hug from TLD). His deepest self, his feelings, are armoured by this extreme reason, a cold calculating machine, a high-fucitininng sociopath. But, under some very fragile walls lies a very lonely vulnerable, deeply emotional child. (Remember his realising that the room he is trapped in his fake? Those are the flimsy walls of his cold exterior, inside is a weeping child who doesn’t know how to be integrate their strong feelings of love and fear). Remember how little Eures appears at Baker Street and implies she can’t differenciate beween her emotions after cutting herself? This is meant to show us that she’s disturbed and like inhumanly cold, right? Except that she’s not cutting up an animal (or other behaviours associated to childhood psychopathy) she’s hurting herself and trying to understand her many feelings. She is confused by them but not lacking them.

Sherlock is Eures: lonely and trapped by her emotions and yet she can leave at any time. Sherlock can be free at any time. (Remember, ‘I want to break free’, by Queen playing as Moriarty got out of the helicopter and made a sexual joke?) Moriarty represents Sherlock’s sex drive (remember he says he’s Mr Sex in TRF and is Sherlock’s id, in chains, in the basement, in HLV). His sex drive/Moriarty wants to a) break free and b) visit Eures island of emotional isolation. He needs to integrate his sexual and his emotional feelings, that’s why Moriarty and Eures must meet. At Christmas. A time when Sherlock and John try to talk about their emotions, year after year, it seems.

During 5 minutes at Christmas Sherlock’s sexual attraction and his feelings met for the first and only time, maybe. Maybe it’s in ASiB? Maybe it’s in HLV? We can speculate as to which 5 minutes were most poignant and why but I think we can see that every once in a while, maybe on a special occasion like Christmas or a birthday (TLD hug) we can have a break through where emotion and attraction meet and you know, break free.

PS we saw a sort of villainous version of John in TLD via Culverton (with tons of deeply sexual overtones) from @warmth-and-constancy. And then we see John go into the balcony at Sherrinford and just plain old look at the water. We see him in relation to water just as we first see Culverton. John, again, is being subtly coded as a villain. But, why? Because John is the person that Sherlock’s in love with. He is the villain because he is making Sherlock face his deepest fear. Sherlock is literally horrified of being in love, hence John and the water imagery.

Eures literally is Samara Morgan from the Ring and from Appointment with Samarra. Sherlock must inevitably face her, his inner fears, his deepest demons. And Samara from the Ring becomes a supernatural monster because she was abused, neglected, left alone. She died in a well. This is Sherlock’s monstrous side (remember, ‘he’s our monster’, from TLD?). A little child who just needed love but instead was isolated and alone. This is Sherlock. Literally being Samara and having an appointment with himself. (Here I was talking about Appointment with Samarra vs Samara Morgan but with John as the little girl)

When he said he needed to go, ‘deeper into himself’, in TAB, well, he wasn’t kidding.

Oh, one more thing, the reason that Mrs Hudson’s song struck me was because that scene is followed by one where a guy says he doesn’t know where Sherlock is and then we see those two fisherman on a boat. The camera angle is very low and instead of cutting back and forth we get a (seemingly) continuous shot. The effect is nauseating and discombobulating (suggestive of being a dream). We also see this odd object on the wall that looks like a simplified devil logo: a face and horns,

But also I just realised it’s also a circle. And a mirror. So this is Sherlock’s greatest fear, greatest horror: feelings and introspection with regards to said feelings. That’s the true devil, here, the true villain.

#sherlock meta #nothing's gonna change my world #TFP meta #the devil #nightmare #EMP #Mrs Hudson #Moriarty #Eures #sentiment #water #oh fuck #everything #the ring #tw the ring

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faeyethe · 7 years

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OC CHALLENGE - DAY 5/30 My English teacher was right all along: What are some symbols that follow your OC throughout their journey/story? Do they have any emblems they identify with? If not, what’s an object that has meaning to them?

OCs: Félix Lenoir and Brigette Lenoir Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Brigette has two very prominent symbols following her throughout the story. Butterflies adorn her outfits (the logo for the Gabriel ladies’ line of clothing), and these outfits were picked out by Bri herself solely due to the butterflies and her love of them. The walls of her room are covered in butterfly wallpaper.

“Butterflies are deep and powerful representations of life. [...] Around the world, people view the butterfly as representing endurance, change, hope, and life. [...] we have heard butterflies symbolizing the passing of a loved one, or life struggles that people have endured to emerge as a better person. [...] Butterflies have also been a symbol for celebrations, weddings, life, and our journeys.”

Brigette’s other symbol is ladybugs, symbols of good luck, love, and protection. In story, it is noticed early on that she wears a pair of earrings strikingly similar to the ones worn by the super-heroine Ladybug. Her grandmother also refers to Bri as “coccinette” (a portmanteau of coccinelle, meaning “ladybug” and -nette, a term of endearment for girls. An English equivalent would be “littlebug”). Brigette’s phone case is red with black polka-dots, she owns a dress with the ladybug pattern, she has quite a few ladybug trinkets and stuffed animals... but it should be noted that all her ladybug related belongings were gifts from her grandmother.

Félix is most often associated with black cats. Western society views black cats as omens of bad luck and misfortune, and Félix has also internalized these superstitions. For his 10th birthday he was given a black ring with a cat’s head on it adorned with jewels from his grandmother, which he sees as the beginning of his so-called “curse”. His grandmother and sister both insist on calling him “minoir” (a portmanteau of minou (kitten) and noir (black). An English equivalent would be “kitty-black”). He ends up adopting a black cat during the course of the story as well.

A/N: Yeah, I based Félix on that Felix, and Brigette on the PV!Marinette, usually referred to as Bridgette by the fandom. On the one hand, I guess they are AUs of actual characters, but I consider them OCs because beyond some very basic information they were never really fleshed out and I’m making quite a few changes to fit them into the current CGI verse. Also, no art today folks!

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#oc challenge #miraculous ladybug #felix #brigette

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foxgloves-fox-love · 5 years

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Self-shipping AU

Just wanted to do these questions hehe ;w;

1. What kind of blog does your f/o have? Do they selfship on main? Do they look like a regular fan? Quiet reblogs or lots of gushing? Lots of analyses of your character and your source or incoherent blabbering? Do they have a headcanon blog? Do they try to roleplay as you?

Ren is shameless and only has like one sideblog that he reserves for creative stuff. He posts everything else onto his main blog. He also gushes a lot just lots of keysmashing and talking about how cute I am, and not a lot of analyses just tons of blabbering. He posts all his headcanons on his main blog and frequently tags pictures with our ship name if they remind him of us.

2. Do they prefer selfshipping by inserting themselves into your source, or by daydreaming about you in their own little / personal world, or by imagining you by their side during their daily life?

He definitely daydreams about me in his own little world especially before bed and also imagines me by his side during his daily life. He would probably insert himself into my source as well bc he's not satisfied with where he is in his life. He just wants to do everything.

3. What’s their self insert like? Is their s/i literally them? Is it basically them but with just a few changes - to be more like the person they’d like to be, or to “fit in” your source better? Is their s/i totally OP or extra or more realistic? Is it an OC that’s totally different from them?

His s/i is literally him. He doesn't change parts of himself to fit into my source or to be more like he wants to be because he uses self-shipping as coping and wants me to love him for him.

4. Do they spend more time on wikipedia, on your fandom wiki, on your TV tropes page? Looking for official content they might’ve missed, like fun trivia? Looking for fanart, for fics? Looking for information and details and references for fics or art or other fancontent they’re making because they want to make sure they get everything right?

He's definitely a fandom wiki kind of guy and scours the internet for content. He doesn't need to look at references that much because he has me memorized pretty easily. There are multiple looks I've gone through in "canon" and while he loves all of them and it's hard to remember all of them, he tends to stick with the one that's most currently out in canon because it makes him feel like he's living beside me.

5. Do they create anything inspired by you and/or their ship with you? Fanart? Fanfics? Gifsets? Moodboards? Edits? Songs? Dances? Crafts? Playlists? Cosplays? Do they post them (or pictures of them) online? Do they sell any merch (online, at cons, etc)? Do they make pics of their selfship in dollmakers? Do they spend hours on otp prompt generators? Do they commission art of their selfship?

He creates fanart but doesn't draw much anymore and is kind of sad about it because he misses how much he used to draw. Instead he tends to write fic and create songs and playlists. He posts his music and stuff online on his sideblog for creative stuff and doesn't sell merch when he goes to cons. Because he doesn't draw as much anymore he LOVES making us in dollmakers and picrews. He also commissions a shit ton of art for his selfship and is completely shameless about it.

6. Does your f/o have a selfship wedding with you? Do they celebrate it on their blog or more privately, with their fellow selfshipper friends? Do they make any content (like art, fics, etc) to celebrate?

He wrote a song to propose with and is waiting for anime canon to catch up to his favorite part from the manga before posting it and making a huge deal about it. When he does have the wedding he commissions a really extravagant wedding picture and has it framed and put in his room.

7. Does your f/o have fankids with you? If not, maybe pets?

We own a dog and he wants to have kids when we get married so he can cope with his anxieties of being a bad father.

8. Do your f/o and your friend’s f/o plan for double dates since their f/os (you and your friend) are from the same source? How would that go?

lmao :') idk? >w> Maybe Farz and Ren would do that...

9. If you have multiple f/os (romantic, platonic, anything), imagine them making or joining a Discord server or a group chat about you or your source. Who gushes, who shares art and fics, who analyses everything, who sends memes?

Oh god lmao. So like I was doing this for Ren, but imagining everyone in a discord server is killing me!!! Vincent would do nothing but post porn gifs and be an absolute butt and laugh at people all the time and Jack would like never talk in it except to post the occasional psychological profile of me and talk about how interesting I am every once in a blue moon. Gengar would just cry type all the time. Craig would shitpost with memes and laugh at people because he’s a dick and not actually into self-shipping and Shino would analyze EVERYTHING from the show. The people who would gush and talk the most would be Ren and Omen ;w; Ren would share his music and Omen would think it's all very interesting. Omen might even develop a crush because Ren is so interesting and Ren would be completely oblivious bc he’s guzzling that self-ship juice lmao.

10. Does your f/o have very creative ship names, or are they bad with finding tags / ship names, or do they just use regular fandom tags?

Ren likes the ship name Rae and uses that irl, but he likes to do the fun creative ones in order to tag stuff. He uses "Little Star" for it.

11. What’s your f/o like when they read / watch / play your source? Do they reread / rewatch / replay their favorite parts over and over? Do they make comments aloud? Which parts of your story made them laugh? Made them cry?

Ren gets really happy when he watches the anime because it's very relaxing. He watches his favorite parts over and over and over again until he can say the dialogue by heart. He doesn't make comments aloud but he gets super emotionally invested. His favorite parts that make him laugh are when I say goofy or dumb things and then comment on the irony and break the 4th wall. The parts that make him cry the most are any time I get hurt and start crying. When I got bullied or felt bad with my classmates or was hurt when I was very young. All of those hurt him a lot and he cried about it.

12. Do they post any videos related to your source? Like AMVs? Or reaction vids (with them reacting to your source as they read / watch / play / etc)? If your source is a game, do they make a walkthrough? Is it a perfect walkthrough, a more casual one?

He would like to make AMVs but doesn't really have editing software for it, but wants to learn! He wants to post reaction vids but is nervous about posting his face online for...reasons. lmao

13. Which of your f/os has “y/n’s husband / wife / partner” as a username online?

Ren would definitely call himself my biggest fan. He wouldn't use husband but he'd definitely use fanboy.

14. Do they have merch of you? What kind of merch? Posters? Keychains? Stickers? Stuffed toys? (And if they have a plush of you, do they kiss it and sleep with it?)

He has a plush that he cuddles and sleeps with and sometimes makes out with lmao. He also has so much merch!!! He is the type to make ita content. On Christmas he decorates the tree with stuff and has posters all over the walls. His favorites tho are figures. He looooooooves figures the most. He's constantly shelling out the big bucks for the biggest and most detailed ones because he can look at them and feel like I exist in a 3d space.

15. What kind of content do they like / make the most? Is it fluff? Angst? Hurt / comfort? (btw: imagine your f/os going to you when they need comfort, because they love you and you’re comforting to them.) Do they respect canon or do they make lots of AUs? What kind of AUs do they like?

-rubs hands together- His favorite content is hurt/comfort both with me being hurt and me hurting the other party, depending on his mood. When he gets unstable and lonely he plays out angsty situations to further his spirals. He knows it's unhealthy, but it comforts him at the same time. His favorite when he's feeling like being healthier is making irl AUs where he can play out his trauma with me as a caretaker figure or alongside him and comforting me.

16. Which of your f/os has 1341 pics of you saved on their phone / laptop? What kind of pic did they choose as their phone / laptop background? Is it a canon pic of you, or fanart, or art of their selfship with you?

Ren definitely hoards a lot of shit on his phone, he has so much content of me on it it's ridiculous. Omen kind of does the same but not nearly as much because he has multiple f/os and has to share space with them lmao. Vincent's phone is just filled with porn ok just lots of rule 34 shit but he also like doesn't have a lot of content on it because like he's just a horndog and only really gives a shit about the dirty content. Jack has pictures but not a lot because he prefers to fantasize.

#fo: ren #fo: vincent #fo: omen #fo: jack #fo: shino #fo: craig #fo: gengar

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muggle-writes · 5 years

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10 Questions Tag

I genuinely don’t recall seeing this tag game come in, but either I missed it or I didn’t tag my responses. Either way, I found it again today, so @elizabethsyson thanks for the tag, here’s my answers

1. What book/s made you want to write?

I don’t think it was a book necessarily. Fanfiction inspired me to write and publish fanfiction of my own, but previously, I would just concoct something equivalent to fanfiction even though I didn’t know it had a name, entertain myself with it without ever writing it down, and then eventually forget and move on to something else. But I’ve always used those same unwritten (though still primarily verbal) creative endeavors as a way to process emotions. Later, writing (original fiction that was more individual scenes with no plot resolution) served the same purpose, and now fanfiction serves the dual purpose of being an emotional outlet (those don’t necessarily ever get published) and being a fun and social thing to share with other fans.

On the other hand, I’ve got so many memories of having written stories above and beyond what a school assignment would call for, going at least as far back as second or third grade, so who knows, maybe one book in particular did inspire me to write. But if so, I don’t remember what that original inspiration was.

Also there’s one book in particular that’s just... Awful. I bought it at a dollar store and honestly no wonder it was only selling there. Worst book I’ve ever read. And sometimes I’m writing out of spite because if something with that many plot holes and “plot twists” that ignore any foreshadowing the author set up and come out of literally nowhere can get published, then I’m also definitely good enough to get published if I ever wanted to.

2. What is your favourite genre to write in?

Fanfiction is totally its own genre, right? Besides that, the gray area where fantasy, urban fantasy, and realistic contemporary fiction all meet. I tend towards realism, even when I write magic, but I love to write in universes where mythical creatures can be real, too. It’s my favorite genre to write in because it’s where I’m comfortable writing, and also because those tend to be the stories I enjoy reading and therefore know how my own contributions compare. Also because I love worldbuilding, and being in a fantasy universe not so different from our own gives me plenty of space to explore exactly what’s the same or different and why.

3. What is your favourite genre to read?

Fanfiction again, because I can explore an arbitrary character through hundreds of different lenses and poke at all the facets of their identity almost indefinitely, and it’s not restricted to what happens to be plot relevant, or even to scenarios that are all compatible with a single timeline, and it’s so character driven. It’s by far my favorite thing. Fantasy, primarily in two different flavors. On one hand, fuzzy rules of magic where everything goes as long as the magic user is powerful or creative enough, as a backdrop to an allegorical, easily divided black and white morality story is a category I almost always love. Magic can do basically anything, and it’s easy to know what’s right and wrong, and who to root for. On the other hand, I love what Brandon Sanderson would call “hard magic” fantasy, where magic is just as structured, and nearly as understood, as science, which I enjoy combined with a plot in which the characters have as much nuance and shades of gray as in the real world. I tend to prefer things at one of those extremes, but I’ll read almost any fantasy story.

4. How do you think your reading habits have influenced your writing style?

I mean it's just like verbal language: whatever I surround myself is going to shape the ideas and phrases and slang that come back out of my brain. Likewise, if I’m creating a magic system “from scratch” it’s inevitably shaped by things I read or watched young(ish), including but not limited to the Belgariad, and Star Wars and Pern (so basically, strongly connected to the mind and limited mainly by what you can imagine) (the Dresden Files and Good Omens seem to have pretty similar ideas about magic, but I ingested those much later)

on the other hand I think that my habit of primarily reading, even over watching shows or movies, has contributed to how little I ever actually think about what a character looks like, except occasionally when introductions get delayed for some reason and I can't use names in narration. So characters I only know from reading, I have zero idea what they look like. For example, I only remember that Sabriel is deathly pale as her default state because I reread the beginning of the book recently on Libby (a library app) while debating whether to check it out and reread the whole series in order to potentially write a crossover fanfiction. Her appearance was mentioned once or twice in the first few chapters and then never again, and it wasn’t something other characters often remarked upon, so I promptly forgot. Even though it’s absolutely fitting. Idk I’m just really not a visual thinker apparently, and always having character names to reference only reinforces that because why do I need to know what someone looks like if I know who they are?

5. What is your go-to cure when you get writer’s block or can’t focus?

Focus is easier. I make sure I’ve eaten, and I put on music so I’m not distracted by the silence or by the sound of my own typing. Plus I'll keep something cold and caffeinated in arms reach to sip on when I'm tempted to relinquish focus.

Writer’s block is harder to overcome and usually ties in with depression, so I’ll sometimes go months without writing and come back when I have energy for anything again... But in terms of actual strategies, sometimes rereading what I’ve already written will kickstart my unblocked writing, which is why I try very hard to only stop writing at “stopping points” if it’s genuinely the end of the story. Because when I come back later, it’s so much easier to read a partial chapter, get into the swing of it, and remember where it was going, than to start carving a new chapter out of nothing. Another thing that helps chip away at writer’s block is to talk to someone who is enthusiastic about my stories, or who is willing to let me infodump. Those are the only two things I can really control that have helped. Occasionally other things will help, like getting the book review style comments on fics (when I also have time to sit down and write while the comment is still new enough to make me surprised-and-happy over it), or if I can find the right balance of “obligation to someone else” and “not so much pressure I implode” (like, for example, I submitted a half-baked WIP to the recent WIP Blind Date event, and the afternoon after we got our assignments I started getting motivated to add to what I’ve posted about it to have something “worth” sharing for the event, and even though I didn’t get the momentum going enough to make progress until after I’d already been reviewed, I made a large amount of progress on that fic just because there was some amount of external pressure.... But that only works if I only do it to myself occasionally. Too often and I’m just annoying everyone by asking them to expect something from me and never following through.)

6. Why did you decide to start writing?

I think I got the right amount of compliments and encouragement when I was in elementary school, on writing assignments and challenges, then I was proud of the original stories I was writing in middle school, and then in high school I figured out that I could create barely-not-me characters and put them through things I wished (or feared) would happen to me and explore the consequences... My depression started getting bad around then, and with it came executive dysfunction and I started having to focus only on schoolwork and still barely finished everything I needed to. I might have stopped writing for longer but then I started publishing fanfiction. initially because my brain was generating it anyway, and I was in a shitty living situation with nothing else to do with my free time that I spent hidden away in my room besides actually type it up, but I kept at it because I was proud of my stories again, and because of the social aspect. And now I continue writing because I love the excuse to explore characters, or just because I can put characters I already love into new and interesting situations.

I might eventually write my own original novel, just because being on writeblr and seeing everyone else writing original works is super motivating, but that requires I have ideas for a setting and a plot and for characters all at once and I’m trying not to force it.

7. Pick a character you’ve written/are writing. What personality trait of theirs defines them most?

I’m going to cheat and peek a bit in the future to when I’m actually writing that fic featuring Julie Kwan, because I ought to have a better handle on her before I get too much further. She’s got a very sharp mind, very good at logical deductions (even if they involve magic before she really knows magic is real) and she’s also fairly good at reading other people. She’s also not afraid to confront people, whether they’re people who are literally threatening her and her friends, or whether they’re her friends and they’re not taking care of themselves sufficiently, or anything in between.

8. What is their primary language? Do they speak it natively? Do they speak any other languages?

...I'm not actually sure. English is her primary language, as she has grown up in the USA. If Julie speaks other languages, Mandarin would be fitting (because that’s Wei’s primary language, and I know Kate also speaks it, so that could add to team unity if over half of them all speak the same non-English language), or maybe Korean depending on her family (since Kwan is usually a Korean name.) Regardless, if she speaks any other languages, then I suspect she also speaks Klingon. @davetheshady can you confirm?

9. What does the character value the most in their life?

Julie is very focused on academia, she’s accomplished and rightfully proud of herself. She wants to be respected, (she’s so tired of being disrespected in academic circles just because she’s neither white nor a man), but she also very much values her friends.

10. If they met you, what would they have to say to you?

I think she would make fun of me for quoting her so often but she makes so many pop culture references, I don’t think she has room to complain. She would probably also encourage me to pursue graduate degrees no matter how “impractical” other people find the subject.

#tag games #writeblr 10 questions #anyway @dave thanks for letting me borrow your characters :)#i was determined not to tag you again until I had more progress on that fic but uh? I almost mostly have a plot so I guess that counts #it's ridiculous - basically saying house elves have relatives in one of the fae courts (haven't decided which one)#but i've never said this wouldn't be a crackfic so I think it's exactly on brand for the tone I've been aiming for #spew gets briefly revived until julie suggests a better name for it #because honestly? be more aware of your acronyms no wonder no one was interested in your society #i'm really skeptical of the ''oh house elves LIKE serving humans'' explanation #so instead the same humans that tricked the house elves into perpetual/generational slavery #also wrote into the contract that if a house elf was ''freed'' they'd surrender all their worldly possessions to the human family #and some other nasty clauses #so basically most have to be as desperate and mistreated as Dobby was before they're willing to try #but it's not because they're happy where they are just that the process of leaving is designed to screw them over and discourage it #also probably a prohibition about talking to unbound relatives about the contract but that doesn't say 'never mention it to a human' so...

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