#cut things up and rejiggered them

[stiwfssr]

[weavercobra]

The Burden of Divinity

This story follows up events that happened in one of our games. And if you're familiar with Pathfinder lore, then it probably requires a bit of explaining about some of the changes in our settings.

So first off, Maya is a snake goddess we've invented for the setting. She's the mother of Ydersius.

Speaking of Ydersius, there's been some adjustments there for a number of reasons. Evil gods in Pathfinder(And other similar settings) often suffer from a problem I like to sum up as: "Who the fuck would worship this guy?" Setting aside any personal opinions, I can't think of any deity considered evil by their followers outside of some extreme edgelord cases. In fact, the idea of an evil religion worshipped by evil idea has more often been an attempt at discrediting others. So we've been going through the pantheons with a surgeon's kit and a saw to rejigger things.

And as for Ydersius being evil, well, hard to find any information on the fan wikis of what he's done that's so evil or which of his creeds that are so bad. Really, I guess he's evil because he's the patron deity of the sekmin, aka the serpentfolk.

So let's talk sekmin. They are evil. Their wiki pages contains sentences like : "it is unknown how many races the serpentfolk exterminated for pure pleasure.", "view all non-telepathic creatures as slaves or food," "They feel no love or attachment towards other serpentfolk, even their own mates or children." I mean wow, laying it on thick here aren't we?

Now, I'm not saying the sekmin empire wasn't problematic. Empires tend to be problematic. No doubt the sekmin, even removing their inherent evil alignment, would have a sordid history. But if they aren't inherently evil, well...

Here's a line from the wiki I find relevant. "The destruction of Azlant caused by Earthfall saved the remaining serpentfolk from complete elimination."

And if the serpentfolk aren't inherently evil, then you might have to call this what it actually is.

An attempt at genocide.

Which brings us to Azlant and Aroden. And I'll be honest, our read on both of those don't paint either as good guys. Azlant had Xin banished for daring to suggest they had anything to learn from non-humans and we have no reason to doubt it was an isolated case. The fact their descendants turned into space Nazis in Starfinder seem like a natural conclusion.

And Aroden, beloved hero of humanity. The list of things he's fucked up, both before and after divinity is quite long. There's the stuff he did in Arcadia with the Veins of Creation. Stole the aeon orbs from the xulgaths because humanity would use them better, condemning the land of Vask to death by radiation. And his patronage of humanity is probably why you can't throw a rock on Golarion without it landing in a human country. So our conclusion is simple.

Aroden was a racist, imperialist douchebag who favored humanity at the cost of all other sentient beings and the universe is better off without him. And Azlant was a empire morally no better than the one it sought to eradicate from existence. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

If you managed to make your way through all that opinionated rambling, thank you and here's the story. Oh, and if you happen to notice any similarities to plot points from Paizo's Serpent's Skull campaign, then that's because I borrowed liberally from it to set up our own campaign in Saventh-Yhi.

Unconsciousness had been a mercifully numb experience. Her mind had just floated through the void, briefly unburdened by memory, by sorrow, by duty and by anger. For the first time in a long while, she was at peace, cut off from anything that could hurt her. But then reality slipped painfully into her mind, like a white-hot dagger between her ribs. Awareness of how her body ached bedevilled her, from the tip of her tail to the fork of her tongue, every muscle pulsating with an unpleasant aching. And as her pain dragged her mind kicking and screaming out of the numbing depths, thoughts started to flow in. And with them, the ceaseless memories. The memories of the invasion, seeing wounded after wounded be dragged in from the frontline, watching five of her countrymen bleed out in the time a healer could mend the wounds of one. She remembered offering words of encouragement to those going to and arriving from the battlefields, but towards the end, her sermons had sounded hollow and deceitful even to herself. And she remembered the fall, the devastation and the evacuation. Helping seal her fellow sekmin in stasis chambers, promising they would be safe, promising they wouldn't be found. All lies, of course. It was a desperate gambit and there was no certainty. She had half expected never to see the light of day again as the magic of the pod took hold, sealing her in dreamless preservation. She remembered her awakening alongside others of her kind, their confused staggering into a new, alien world, so different from the one she had left behind. She remembered the mission, to resurrect their empire now that their hated enemies had vanished from the surface of the planet. And how she had been sent out to gather information about their lost capital. It had been a harrowing journey. Everything had been so different and she had to apply all her skills and powers to pass herself off as a human scholar. She knew the future of her kind hinged on the success of her work. It had gone well, until the island. She had managed to get off the accursed rock, but her mission had depended on the kindness of a human. And they had let her go. She felt that was only the case because they didn't know the truth, but still, she had remembered it. And she had tried to warn the human's fellows, that only death would await them in the jungle and the lost city hidden therein. They had ignored her warnings. She had been anxious. And angry. For with them had travelled a being, a serpent, an avatar. An avatar of her. The one who had abandoned them in their hour of greatest need. And then they had finally met face to face. And Aethaxise had unleashed all her frustration, pain and feelings of betrayal in once venomous tirade aimed at the divine figure.

And Maya had smote her in response.

That was the second time she slipped in the dark expecting never to wake up. So the return of her consciousness was as surprising as it was unwelcome. Slowly, her eyes began registering the sunlight shining down on her. She hissed weakly and turned her head to avoid the direct glare of the overhead light. It took her a moment to ponder the oddity of the sunlight, before realising that the roof was missing. She groaned and tried to move, her body protesting the action. Her neck slowly bent, giving her a chance to observe what was left of her surroundings. Most of the walls and the roof had been blown clear out, even taking with it some of the adjacent outer masonry, exposing much of the inside of the structure to the outside. Her inner ear began registering the distant sounds of birds and bugs, alongside other noises of the jungle. She rolled over on her belly, splaying out her limbs to soak up the warm rays, feeling its heat sink into her body, slowly helping her wake up. Her tongue darted out of her mouth, catching nearby scents and delivering them into her mouth, letting her register them. She could smell that Krathus was nearby, though she was uncertain of his condition. Mingled with it was the smell of his companion Xantheithes. They were really close, by her estimate. She hoped they had survived. But mixed in was another scent. One she had only gotten familiar with very recently, but that none the less immediately filled her with rage. Her anger fuelled her strength, allowing her to plant the palms of her hands against the stone floor, pushing her upper body upwards, straining her neck to lift her head up and slowly turn it, while uttering a hoarse and exceedingly venomous: “You.”

The person she was speaking to looked like a giant cobra, her scales a pure, alabaster white, her eyes a vibrant purple save for the black slit in the middle. The pale serpent had been eyeing something in the distance, but upon hearing the utterance, had turned her attention to the speaker. Maya took a moment to note the sekmin's appearance, that of an emerald-scaled snake with arms and legs, before addressing her with: “So you're awake, little one. I trust that you will have learnt to behave, at least enough to have a civil conversation. Otherwise, I am more than capable of banishing you into unconsciousness again as many times as I need to make my point clear.”

Aethaxise responded with a growl, as she slowly rolled over on her back, trying to eye the other two in the demolished room.

She noted Krathus nearby. A sekmin like herself, though his scales were a combination of red and black. He was lying up against the only remaining wall in the room, one containing a detailed genealogy of the invading humans, which he had found amusingly interesting. Still protectively wrapped around him was the massive ophidian Xantheithes, a great white cobra. One that in many ways resembled Maya's current form. Not too surprising, as Xantheithes' species had been sacred to her faith, empowered over many generations by the divine waters of her temples. They were a clever species, with more than a few developing full-on sapience, Xantheithes being one of them.

Maya followed her gaze. “Your companions are both alive, little one, that I can assure you. Though painful, that attack could not have killed a fly, much less any of you.” She paused, her tongue flickering in and out. “And it seems they are waking up too.”

The prone form of Krathus stirred slightly. Reflexively, his tongue darted out of his mouth and his limbs twitched. He managed to roll the back of his head along the scales of his serpentine companion, giving him a chance to inspect the room. There was a moment of quiet, before he with a dry voice stated: “We're alive I see.”

“That you are,” the divine serpent confirmed. “And I have no intentions of killing you. All I want to do is talk.” Her voice took on a sharper edge, as she added: “However, as I informed your friend, I am more than willing to demonstrate what the wrath of a deity feels like if a polite conversation is too much to ask for.”

Krathus weakly held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I'll vastly prefer that we have a polite conversation.”

Aethaxise hissed angrily, but said nothing.

The red-and-black scaled sekmin leaned to the side to inspect his ophidian companion. With the inability to close his eyes, it would have been hard for a human to see whether Xantheithes was awake or not, but for one who shared many physical similarities like Krathus, it was easy enough to detect the tell-tale signs that the massive cobra was slowly beginning to register his surroundings. The entire length of the ophidian's body jerked slightly and with some effort, he managed to lift his massive head slightly. “You hurt?” he managed to croak, still dazed.

“No. The pain is merely superficial.” Krathus twitched slightly as he moved his tail. “But ever present. I suspect it shall pass very soon though.” He turned his gaze to observe the avatar. “So, you wanted a talk.” “In a moment, little one. My own companions will be with us shortly,” Maya said, looking to a nearby set of stairs going down. “I'll advice that you gather your strength in the meantime.”

“Oh, and what exactly would we be gathering our strength for?” Aethaxise pointedly inquired.

“Mostly sitting up. But if you prefer to lie on the floor as you do now, far be it from me to tell you to do otherwise, little one,” Maya replied. She turned away again. “And there he is.”

Yet another oversized white cobra slithered up the stairs. To one unfamiliar with dealing with serpents, he might have seemed identical to Xantheithes, but for everyone present, the exact pattern of his scales was different enough to mark him as a completely unique individual. As he slithered across the ground, the back of his hood became visible, upon which the colouration of his scales formed an insignia of a snake holding an arrow in its mouth, encircling a bow. He made his way over next to Maya and curled up in what among snakes passed for a sitting position. “I've checked up with everyone else in the building. Nothing serious for most of them. Though Random has taken some considerable damage, including massive cracks in her exoskeleton. It'll take some time to heal.”

“I gather she also managed to dish out some considerable damage,” Maya commented. “I was concerned Yaras might develop spheksophobia. But I digress. Good job, Lechaim.” She refocused on the others. “Now then, I guess saying you have a bone to pick with me would be an understatement.”

“You... You...” Aethexise managed with no small amount of venom, as she struggled to push herself off the ground. “You abandoned us. We were slaughtered by the hundreds and you were nowhere to be seen. Even when your own son died you... You weren't there. Am I supposed to be grateful because your priests ran around trying to fix things? AM I SUPPOSED...!” “AETHEXISE!” Krathus managed. “Calm... Calm down. I do not want to be blasted again and if I have to get Xantheithes to gag you, I will. I've already been punched by a deity once today, I do not care to repeat that experience.” The other sekmin growled, her claws scraping across the stone floor. Silence reigned for a while. “Where were you when we needed you?” she finally managed to ask, her voice barely a whisper.

Maya sighed. “Little one, I did everything I could. But if I had stepped in more than I had, what would the results be? You think their gods would have sat on the sideline? No. Had I stepped in, I would have ignited a divine war. It would have been a catastrophe.”

“Some would say it already was,” Xantheithes commented grumpily.

“True. It was grim,” Maya agreed. “The fact that things could be worse is, I understand, little comfort for all of you.”

“And what about your son?” Aethexise managed venomously, slowly getting up on her feet. “Even if all our suffering meant nothing, shouldn't his death have meant something?”

Krathus winced, almost prepared to eat another bolt of divine retribution from Maya.

Indeed, the ophidian avatar's tail swayed dangerously and her hood flared slightly at the provocation. But she took a deep breath and continued with: “Despite what you think, the harm done to my son has been a painful memory beyond description for all these passing aeons. It would be arrogant of me to claim that my pain was greater than what was felt by any of you, but it was there. And while I wanted nothing more than to bathe them all in poisonous vapours until their meat dripped from their bones, I am subject to responsibilities far beyond your reckoning. For one thing, we deities have an agreement among us that limits our ability to directly influence the mortal world. Even this avatar, which I created to circumvent that, is pushing against what is considered acceptable. Had I interfered more than I did, and I did everything I could, I would have started a divine war with the Azlanti pantheon, which would have benefited no one, not even you. And no, little one, I do not expect that to suddenly make the attempted genocide of your people seem less severe. I am merely trying to get you to understand the position I was in and to some degree, still am.” “But the Azlanti Empire fell,” Krathus stated inquisitionally. “According to the history books, they're gone. Not that I ever believed you owed us anything, but why not aid us in the aftermath? It cannot have passed you by that we barely managed to survive.”

“Again, it comes back to divine politics. Any attempt by me to help you would be opposed by... The Last Azlanti,” Maya managed grimly. “By the time there was a world worth coming back to, he was a deity. He did not dare move on you because I would visit retribution, but the same was also true the other way around. And even after he died, there was still limits to what I could do. In fact, I've searched for an opportunity such as this for a long time.” She paused. “I think Ydersius has given you the wrong impression of the burden of divinity. You were his creation, his children. He cared only for you and was with you through thick and thin. You might have come to expect similar levels of attention from the rest of us. But my concerns go far beyond you. If I had acted out of hand, even if I had shielded you with all my divine power from retribution, others might have suffered. For example, by targeting my followers among the skittermanders.” “The... What?” Xantheithes managed to ask, utterly perplexed.

“They're not even native to this solar system,” Lechaim replied. “Cute fellows. If silly.” Aethaxise just stared.

“I have followers across the entire universe,” Maya continued. “I must always consider how my actions will affect all of them. I am not saying this to diminish your suffering. Only to enlighten you to the burden I carry. My followers number more than you could count in a lifetime and every single action I take can have consequences for them. That is the true cost of divinity. And that was why I couldn't throw everything away to help you. That is why it has taken me so long to find a way to help at all. Didn't matter what I wanted to do, because I had the responsibility to care for all who worship me. And even for the world beyond my faith, for surely a divine war could have rend the planet in two and that is at the small end of the scale. You think you know what devastation looks like, little one? I have witnessed what happens when gods and titans make war, when entire clusters of stars are vaporised by stray shots and the very fabric of time and space buckles under the blows of warring combatants. I would not wish that on anyone. Not even the Azlanti.” She went quiet, her head lowering slightly. “But I am trying to make things better and that is why I am here. I truly just wish to help.”

Everyone was quiet for a while.

“Well... I guess... Maybe I understand,” Aethexise managed, her voice hollow and drained. “But we don't need your help.” Maya shook her head. “No, little one, you do. I know what you and yours are planning, and if it would work, I would be more than happy to stay out of your way. But you are about to make a grave mistake that could very well create the type of disaster I was trying to avoid.”

“So you know of the operation we've started then,” Krathus surmised running his claws along his lower jaw in a contemplative gesture. “Fascinating. And you're saying there is some sort of flaw in this plan then?” “Indeed. But before we get to that, I know someone you ought to meet.” Maya returned her attention to Lechaim. “Is she ready?” “She is,” the other white cobra confirmed.

“Alright then.” She turned towards the stairs. “You can make your entrance now.”

Silence reigned in the ruined room, as the sounds of someone ascending the stairs was heard. A figure made their way into the light of the distantly setting sun, a human woman. Her head was framed by short-cropped brown hair, her body clad in dull coppery plates of metal that looked like they had seen their fair share of wear and tear. A torn leathery cloak enveloped her and a massive sword was sheathed on her back. Bandages were wrapped tightly around the left part of her head, obscuring one of her eyes, and her left arm hung limply in a sling.

The patient quiet in the ruined room immediately changed character, taking on a grim and cold mood.

Krathus tried to jump up with a hiss, only stopped by Xantheithes protectively curling around him, the serpent's hood flaring open.

Aethexise was not so hindered. Instead, motivated by a burst of adrenaline and unyielding rage, she leapt from the floor and galloped forward, claws outstretched and fangs unfolding in her mouth, deadly venom dripping from their tips. She leapt, ready to tear the woman's face off, only to find herself caught in mid-air by Maya's tail, which quickly wrapped around the struggling sekmin. “Let me go,” the green-scaled cleric hissed furiously. “Why is she here? WHY IS SHE HERE!? WHY ARE YOU NOT DEAD!?”

“Well, that went about as well as expected,” Lechaim muttered.

The woman, for her part, stood unfazed, though with a forlorn expression.

“I must concur,” Krathus hissed, finally untangling himself from his aide. “Don't tell me you brought her of all people back.” “Oh no, little one, this came as quite the surprise to me too,” Maya said, shifting her tail to maintain her grip on the furiously screaming Aethexise. “But I brought her here because she has something important to say.”

“So, what, we hear her out and then kill her?” Xantheithes venomously commented, bundling up behind the red-and-black scaled sekmin.

“If that would fix anything, I'd tell you to go ahead,” the woman said. “But as it is, I suspect it would make things much worse.”

“Indeed. So, are you willing to hear her out?” Maya inquired.

Krathus eyed his fellow sekmin. Aethaxise was now little more than a pair of serpentine eyes glaring murderously from atop the rim of the avatar's pale coils. “We're not getting much choice here, are we?” “No.” “So be it.” The sekmin wizard sat back down, leaning against the piled body of Xantheithes. “This is not a case of mistaken identity, right? You are Savith, the very same one who lead the campaign against our people. The one who murdered our deity.” “Guilty as charged,” she said in a tone of voice indicating that she indeed thought it something to be guilty of. “As for how I survived, I'd say barely. After my fight with Ydersius, the divine backlash left me on the brink of death. Your people found me before my fellow Azlanti did. Dragged me away from the site of battle and stuffed me in one of your stasis pods. I figure it was to interrogate me later. Or punish me. Probably both. Either way, they never came back for me. And I was never found by my comrades.” She went quiet, as she began to pace. “Once I was freed from the pod by happen-stance I began wandering this new world. That's how I ran into the Mystical Peacekeeping Society and through them, Maya.” She paused again, looking contemplative. “Well, first of all, I feel I owe you an explanation for what happened. From your perspective, our campaign must have seemed quite unfounded.” “What? No apology?” Xantheithes sourly inquired.

“Could any apology I could come up with ever truly suffice?” Savith asked. “I am sorry, but I can't imagine that means much to you.”

The serpent didn't respond, instead just lowering his head as he kept observing her.

“So as I was saying, Azlanti seers predicted that enemies of our people were gathering to unleash a devastating weapon upon us. Our leaders determined that those enemies had to be your people. I was asked to lead the campaign. And I did. Because I was convinced I was protecting my people from a grave threat by doing so.” She shook her head. “I've had many centuries now to contemplate how foolish that was. Me and my squad were, well, for us the goal was strictly military. To take out any part of your empire that could be used against us. But for most of my fellow Azlanti, that translated into making sure none of you were left alive. And I claim no innocence here, because I paved the way for those that burnt your cities and butchered your people. And I let it happen, because ultimately, I valued Azlant more than anything else. That's as bad as if I had done those deeds myself. And to make things even worse, turns out the whole campaign was founded on animosity. Our leaders had picked you as the target, not because there was any actual evidence of you preparing to attack us, but because our nations had had... Issues getting along.”

Maya heard a murmuring from her coils. She shifted them slightly, allowing Aethexise to get her entire head out. “It was the aboleths, yes? I've read all about it,” she hissed venomously. “They uplifted you and then decided to cast you down again.”

“Can't say I blame them,” Savith admitted. “But yes, that was the case.”

“So why are you here?” Krathus pointedly asked. “Think you can somehow make up for your actions?” “No. I can't imagine what I would have to do to accomplish that,” the Azlanti general replied. “I could do good deeds from now until the end of time and I don't think it would make up for the blood I have on my hands. But that is not going to stop me from doing the right thing. And the right thing to do is helping you people not unleash a disaster upon yourself.” “Really? The Azlanti general wouldn't want to see the sekmin self-destruct,” Aethaxise commented. “Why do I find that hard to believe? Even if what you said is true, which I doubt.” “As I said, I've had a lot of time to think.”

“What do you mean by that?” Xantheithes inquired.

“The stasis pod was flawed. It stilled my body, but not my mind. I've had the passing of many centuries to think and I've come to realise that, as different as we are, a lot of the things I looked down upon the Sekmin Empire for were the same sins that the Azlanti committed,” Savith explained. “Azlant is never coming back. And that's for the best. But your kind has a chance and your current plan risks snuffing that out.” “Enough with the vagueness,” Krathus demanded. “What is it you claim to know?”

Savith sighed. “Alright. Sorry. You're planning to resurrect Ydersius by reconnecting his skull with his body, which you lot managed to preserve in one of your hidden vaults. But it's not going to work. At least, not in the way you think it will. The thing is, you have his body and you might find his head, but what you don't realise is that a piece is still missing. His soul. The Ydersius you'd resurrect would be a divine being without thought, without memory, a soulless wild husk. Barely a wild beast, but with the power of a god. Such a being could wreck a horrendous amount of havoc.” “That's nonsense,” Aethexise hissed. “His soul is still among us. My connection may have faded, but I can still call upon his power.” “As could Tovkuc and he was a recent initiate,” Krathus added.

“The charau-ka?” Maya added, her hood vibrating slightly. “Yes, you sure taught him well. Between the attempted human sacrifices and generally unpleasant demeanour.”

Aethexise harrumphed indignantly.

“To get back to the subject,” the human added, trying to disarm the brewing conflict. “You are right, but his soul did not lock itself away in his skull or his body. It instead fled into a nearby vessel, one that was not dying. It...” She paused and sighed. She grabbed the bandages around her head and began unwrapping them. As the bandages gave way, stunned silence filled the ruined room. Underneath, her hairline had receded and much of her skin had changed into brown scales, her left eye a softy glowing orange orb, the pupil slightly misshapen. Taking the opportunity to continue, she unwrapped her arm, revealing more scales and that her nails had twisted into semi-sharp claws. “The nearest vessel,” she stated with finality. “Was me.”

Krathus looked like he was trying to say something, but he only succeeded in moving his jaws.

Maya looked to Aethaxise and slowly let the stunned sekmin loose. The green-scaled cleric slowly stumbled over towards the human, seeing in her alterations fragments of her deity. Carefully, almost as if she was afraid to break a pleasant dream, she reached out and laid a hand on Savith's scaled arm. Immediately, she retracted the appendage, as if she had gotten an electric shock. She stared, first at Savith, then her hand.

“Well?” Xantheithes asked. “You have the closest connection to him. Is it true?” “I... Yes. I could sense him,” Aethaxise said slowly, utterly befuddled. “But... How?” “As I said, I was closest. I am not chosen or favoured by Ydersius if that's what you're worrying about,” Savith said. “It's sheer coincidence. But we've had the passing of millennia to get to know each other. And Ydersius would very much like you to not resurrect his body without his soul present. So I need you to contact your fellows and tell them the news.” “Well, that is amazing,” Krathus said. “Ehm, slight problem. We can't.” “You can't? Of course you can't, that would be way too easy,” Lechaim sighed. “So what is it?”

“We have no way of contacting our leader in the depths of Ilmurea,” the red-and-black scaled wizard explained. “We were to set up an outpost and gather local resources and subjects in order to dissuade intruders into Ilmurea. But for safety's sake, we have no way to contact them, to minimize risks of them being tracked if, say, we were to be killed.” “And even if we were to get into contact with them, what do you think they'll believe? Your ridiculously improbably story, or that you're there to finish the job and has managed to brainwash us?” Aethexise asked. “Or, what, you gonna let every single priest we've got feel you up to confirm our Lord of Coiling Poison's presence?”

“I would have preferred that over having to storm your sacred sanctuary. Again,” Savith sighed exasperated. “Sicva must be blessing my journey, because you're making it sound like I'll have to storm in there and jam Ydersius' soul back into him myself and that every single one of your people will throw themselves at me to stop me. Again.” “That is an accurate summary of this stupidity,” Xantheithes commented. “Of course, you're also forgetting that you have no way to actually getting to Ilmurea. And even if you got there, you alone would not be enough.” “That is true, little one,” Maya agreed. “However, I am sure we can gather allies to help us, with a little luck. And as for a way down, we'll just have to keep an eye out for opportunities.” “Great. Seems like it's gonna be war all over again,” Savith noted in a tired voice, as she sat down on a piece of the wall. “I came here to help, not to fight you.” “Sadly, you Azlanti managed to impart on us the importance of not trusting humans,” Aethexise noted. “So, what now?”

“We need a plan. First, we must canvas the city. No doubt the Azlanti made many changes during their occupation,” Krathus noted, looking back to the wall with the genealogy.

“You do that, little ones. For now, I have someone else I'll need to talk with,” Maya said, as she moved towards the stairs, Lechaim following her. “I trust that I can leave you be without you all attempting to kill each other.” Aethaxise emitted an annoyed low hiss, as the two serpents slithered downstairs.

The avatar and her companion made their way through the repurposed ruin, finding in the middle of it a massive structure like an oversized wasp-hive. Maya observed it for a moment, turning to her companion and asking: “She's in there?” “I presume as much. I tended to her wounds out here, but I wasn't going to shove her into the hive,” Lechaim replied.

“I see.” The divine cobra turned back to the hive. She noted a faint buzzing sound. “You can come out, little one. I merely wish to talk.”

From the dark depths of the hive, several crimson hexagons lit up, outlining two massive compound eyes. “Forgive me if I don't feel in the mood to entertain any more intruders.”

“My apologies. But I had little other way of talking with you,” Maya noted. “I gathered from the others you put up quite the fight. I saw the wounds you inflicted. You're skilled. And I respect skill. To keep things short and sweet, I wish to for us to cooperate.” “Cooperate?” came the doubtful, thrumming reply. “You invade my home, strike down my children and now you want to cooperate?” “Well, you made a deal with the sekmin. Surely you understand the benefit of working together?” Maya explained. “And your children are alive, if dazed. I dare say we did our best not to cause them undue harm. But I get you. You want something more from me. And I'm willing to provide. After all, this ruin must impose certain... Limits. What if I offered to help secure you a better nesting ground?”

There was a pause, followed by a clacking sound as a massive wasp crawled out of the hive, her cracked exoskeleton wrapped in gauze. “You have my attention.” “The Mystical Peacekeeping Society, the ones who I'm helping and whom you fought, could use the assistance of a powerful predator like you. And they in turn possess a lot of territory, a lot of which is unsettled and which I can guarantee you they'd be willing to hand over to you in exchange for assistance,” Maya explained. “How does that sound, Random?”

The mutated wasp queen named Random paused as she mulled it over, her wings twitching occasionally. “I can see little reason why you'd lie,” she admitted. “You'd all just have killed me when you had the chance if this was to get me out of the ruin. And I admit, it is getting kinda cramped. I could do with a bigger nest for me and my brood.” “Sounds like a yes to me,” Lechaim commented.

“Yeah. But if I find out you lied to me, the last thing you'll see before I puncture your eyes will be my stinger,” Random asserted. “So, when do we start?” “When can you start?” Maya asked.

“In a while. Some of my brood has been out hunting and I'd like to do a full head count before going anywhere.” “Good,” Maya noted, coiling up slightly. “Should give us time to go over some of the finer details.”

[huntunderironskies]

Any chance we'll see more of your writings on the Forsaken tribes? I thought they were an enjoyable way to learn about Werewolf's setting, in addition to being a satisfyingly in-depth look at the playable factions.

Hey, thanks for the ask! It genuinely makes me feel better that people are reading the original stuff I throw out,especially since it's been a rough week.

A lot of the reason I haven't been writing much here is because, well, I'm a philosophy major too now so almost all I do is write now, when I'm not reading texts so dense they might as well be white dwarf stars. Those are pretty high effort posts and I have a general idea of what I want to say but organizing it into something coherent and well-organized, even with a template, is...tough. Writing about mechanics is a lot easier for me so ironically the bits I do with Gifts and how I think a Tribe would use them/how they reinforce the group's identity is the easy part, which I think is the opposite of true for most people.

The second thing is up until a few weeks ago (ish) I was doing my final drafts for Requiem for Rome 2e. I would need to doublecheck what I wrote for Bloodlines: the Ageless but I believe RfR2e is the longest section I've ever written and even if it's not, it's easily been the most effort-intensive. Even factoring in having to hack Mergès into pieces to make it functional, interesting and distinct from every other poisoned-themed Bloodline power. I'm not entirely sure what my NDA allows me to disclose but it's prooooobably safe to say that the sections I wrote are the least surprising thing you could imagine if you know me at all.

Last factor: I don't want to guilt trip people into liking/reblogging posts but I will admit that a dip in interest/engagement is part of what made me take a pause on it and Mythology Mondays. I also still have the houserules posts to make which....yeah, that's still in the works especially since there's some games where it's extensive (trying to explain how I rejiggered The Pack's rules into Geist/Mummy/Deviant's organization rules. Pain. Suffering. Et cetera. I'll probably just have to scrap what I'm doing and just explain things in very general terms.)

If people want to see more of those I can try to brainstorm a more tenable way of doing things that means I'll post more than once every three months, likely breaking it up into multiple sections over a few weeks and focusing more on the mechanical aspects of how to play. I do still think this is a helpful niche because I know there's not a whole lot of Werewolf writers out there and the books have....I think left people wanting in some regards (which is fair, it's hard to fit in entire complex sociological constructs into a corebook.) I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Werewolf 2e got cruelly cut short and there's so much left to explore and talk about.

I'm morally obligated to pitch Chris Allen's Patreon in the meantime if you want more Werewolf content, he's probably my single biggest inspiration. I've never worked for or with him so I promise this isn't sponsored lmao. I've been subscribed at the 1$ tier for like three years or something now, and I can tell you it's easily paid off and then some.

The tl;dr is...yes, but it might not be until after exams are done and I'm on break and it might show up in a different form. I don't want to make any specific promises until then, because while there's going to be a lull for the next two weeks it's going to ramp up again a lot in April because of how my class schedule works.

[leam1983]

Nostalgia

Our Nissan connect gets back to me. "You know how the Old Place used to give us a Google Sheets document with all the calls made and their results? Could we get back to that? The sales reps are anxious about not being able to consult readouts."

I sigh. "Do they know they have a shared login for access to our backend? Sarah and I managed to rejigger the system so a fresh XML file is generated after closing time."

There's an uneasy silence. "They... just really like Google Sheets better."

My stomach ties itself in a knot and bile rises in my throat. "Sure, let's go back to widespread service outages and just crossing our fingers for Google not to flag Master List accounts as piracy."

They scoff. "Come on, it only happened once!"

I steel my voice. "We lived through it. Walt, Sarah and myself can attest to it, the three weeks that followed were miserable. We are not going back simply to appease a few tech-averse salespersons who can't even bother to keep their logins on Post-It notes."

There's more silence. "It was bad, wasn't it?"

I grimace. "Try giving my predecessor a nervous breakdown levels of bad. No Google Sheets in this house, period. It's a Web app, they can save the credentials in their browser and never think about them again - they'll survive. Guaranteed."

The guy waffles. "They won't understand why, though."

Walt saves me from having to strangle them and picks up on his end, asking for a quick sit-rep before answering in his faux-chipper and actually authoritative tone.

"It's simple, honestly: new business, new rules! Our system works, it streamlines things and cuts out middleware. If they don't like it, they don't have to use it. They'll just miss out on customer stats, though."

It'll be a cold day in Hell before I ever trust corpo data to fucking Google...

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales: Jaw$! or How Lena Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Webby (Lena Retrospective Commissioned by WeirdKev27)

Trigger Warning: Part of this review contains discussions of abuse which can’t be avoided but I still want to be senstive to my audience and any trauma they’ve gone through.  Welcome back weblena world to Shadow Into Light: My Lena Sabrewing Retrospective. And Jaw$ is here, long live Jaw$. Tiffany was a shark who bites the law she was in an episode i’m reviewing called Jaw$. 

And it’s the money shark before the storm as next month i’ll be going from two Ducktales reviews a week with the Lena retrospective and the last few episodes.. to three, as i’ll ALSO be covering the Della arc from season 1 in the build up to shadow war. And if your wondering if I expertly planned this to coincide with the finale, to the point the shadow war review and those leading up to it will be on the same week as the finale.... nope. I just got REALLLLY lucky as I already had all of that planned out, and the schedule for the  new episodes happened to synch up perfectly, ending just in time for me to revisit the series start and having Magica’s big in person appearance reviewed a week after we get her backstory in Life and Crimes. Though I am VERY happy it worked out this way as I get to properly celebrate the series end with more ducks than ever, and get to cover the pilot the same month as the finale, all things i’d of loved to do anyway and probably would’ve rejiggered my schedule to do. Point is lot of Ducktales content coming for this blog if you like that so stay tuned, but for now join me won’t you under the cut as we dive into a money bin of gay ducks, shadowy machinations, and Bad PR. 

We open as Lena and Donald awkwardly sit on the couch, waiting for Scrooge and the Kids to get home. Understandably it’s just.. dead silence.Given their a cynical teenager secretly working for and forced to obey a horrifying shadow monster and a 35 year old man who dosen’t like living in this house due to painful memories of his presumed dead sister.. and painful memories of pain in general, you have a huge awkward bowl of chips and “I really don’t want to be here right now”. 

Our heroes return though, and Louie tries to take some of their haul for himself but Scrooge stops that “It goes in the bin not to next of kin. “... Man in a Hurry if you would please. 

Thank you. Man in a Hurry everybody. He has to go now, he’s in a hurry. 

 As you can probably guess I do not like this, as it reminds me WAY too much of Scrooge’s worst “quirk” in the comics: how he’d barely pay his nephews, who are often hard up for cash mind you and one of whom is supporting three children ALONE, take them around the world and reap all the benefit for their hard work. It’s not like he did nothing, he did, but it’s way to exploitive for my tastes and can often sink a story if taken too far. It’s not AS bad... but they all went on the mission they all deserve at least something. I DO get keeping the rarest and most dangerous stuff for himself, as he is bankrolling things and does have two bins and a massive garage to safetly store them. But this just comes off as douchey for this version, who while liable to make mistakes with them, is far more nurturing towards his boys and girls. 

Thankfully this was course corrected next season. While Scrooge’s greed was properly restored.. this sort of treatment wasn’t. “Treasure of the Found Lamp” had him undergo character development and realize simply hoarding his treasures isn’t right or fair, and set up a musuem wing so both duckburg and his descendants can see them and get the stories behind them. And on not getting to take things clearly he’s eithe relaxed or stopped the policy as our heroes do have souveneers from time to time. Not a LOT mind, but little things like Dewey having a giant sword or Scrooge outright giving Louie one of his things show he did soften up. Though Della’s return and likely lack of tolerance for this stupid policy in the first place probably helped a lot, I also like to think he did change a bit and realize it was deeply unfair they didn’t get more than a few treasures of their own. So the writers did realize they kind of went overboard here.  I suspect this was more to setup for the episode’s subplot and to make Scrooge’s karma at the end feel justified. Speaking of which we get the start of said Subplot as Beakley comes in with a money cart and the news the board called. Why they called his house instead of his phone I don’t know, some things slip through the cracks when you running both a billion dollar company an da trillion dollar fiendish organization  for world larceny. I mean they clearly worked themselves so hard the other two apparently died between seasons. That or it was the diet of whiskey, orphan tears and grease in a wine glass both had. Bradford always told them it’d kill them though to his credit he only said I told you so twice at their funeral. 

For once no their not mad Scrooge is spending all the money they use to buy fowl jetskis, but because the Company’s having a bit of a PR nightmare now that Scrooge is back in the adventuring game. And we cut to the beanstalk they just adventured on having tore up a good chunk of the town and destroyed large swaths of it just to sell the point this isn’t their normal old man yells at other old man for spending all me money schitck, but a serious problem. As such they’ve booked him an interview with Roxanne Fetherly to improve his image and the companies. 

Scrooge scoffs at this, baffled why he has bad pr as his adventuring is GOOD for the city in the long run: He pays for any damages it causes, and likely at a cost no less which is a LOT coming from scrooge, and puts most of the money he makes on these adventures back into the city and his company, creating more jobs and better living conditions. He does get a wakeup call via  truly hilarous gag as Launchpad pops his head up to say “Good news mr. mcdee, it missed the orphange!” before getting ready to chainsaw the stalk for him. He quickly realizes MAYBE he needs some PR and agress to the interview. 

 This whole subplot really plays into one of the series main themes, one Frank brought up a few months back: Risk vs Reward. Adventuring is entirely about this, that adventure is dangerous, can cost you a lot as we see with Della and the aftermath of her terrible decision making, and can hurt people.. but it can also help people, bring money to those who need it, free those who are being oppressed and open new worlds to everyone. This subplot distills it down great: Scrooge is right that his adventures do bring in money, and as seen with the first episode brought in clean water and power with no drawbacks and only asked to be paid for it, which is fair given he still has to run machines and likely help relocate any workers whose jobs are now redundant to other parts of the company and retrain them. But it costs people their homes and jobs, not forever but still as long as it takes to construct, tears up roads and puts people in danger. It’s plots like this that make Bradford the perfect final boss for the series: He’s someone who blinds himself to the reward of all this and only sees the risk, and raises valid points even if he himself is deeply wrong. He’s right Scrooge causes a lot of danger and threat to the world.. but wrong in that he dosen’t see it’s all worth it for the good of everyone. 

But enough about future story arcs let’s get back to this one, as Webby excitedly greets Lena and hugs her, realizes she’s not hugging her back then gives her another squeeze anyway after claming to hate hugs when just a LOOK at Webby would tell you that’s false. The two are having a sleepover, Webby’s first ever.. and given Lena’s essentially an Emo Hobo and the closest thing she has to home is that starlight ancient amptheater that’s never properly explained. Seriously ancient ruins near Duckburg dosen’t suprise me, but at least tell me what they are and why Magica chose them. And why Louie hasn’t tried to sell tickets to Dewey boxing a gorilla in them. Or probably a possum I mean their on a budget and gorillas snap necks, but still i’d pay to see that as would we all. 

Point is it’s their first sleepover and naturally Webby’s first bit of smalltalk.. is how tucking in can be used for interogation techniques. I’d be more suprised if earlier this season it hadn’t already been shown Beakly regularly enrolls her daughter in the no murder, unless you really want to, hunger games every year. The fact Webby hasn’t become the bat is only because she hasn’t found a costume that’s the right combintion of pinks and purples to instill pantswetting terror yet. That shit takes time. 

Lena goes to the bathroom.. to talk to Magica who we properly get to meet. She did speak last time, but this ep is the one that properly establishes her personality for the reboot: she has clever plans, tons of power, if sealed currently, and is a genuine threat.. but she’s also a bit of a ham, in love with the old ultra violence and really short sighted in her plans, something we got hints of last time as her best solution to the Beakly Problem was  to just leave her to die and hope scrooge and webby, two people who love solving mysteries and unlocking puzzles, don’t investigate the horrifying death, accident or not, of their only friend and grandmother, and that neither, especially the 12 year old spiraling with grief, would suspect a former spy died. Thoguh in fairness on the spy thing it’s plausable Magica didn’t know that, but still it’s a bad plan. Magica has good ideas but is just so obessed with the brute force way of doing things she forgets the subtle approach works better.. and so far it has well for Lena.  Problem is it’s VERY clear by this point that Lena likes Webby, maybe not romantic styles JUST YET but it’s getting there. Webby on the otherhand has been in love with Lena from the freaking concept art which showed her blushing around her.. and that was in her 87 design.. which they thankfully changed. It’s not terrible but it just dosen’t fit well with this universe. Point is Lena is catching feelings and Magica realizes this and tries to gaslight her telling her she’d never acccept the truth abotu her and so on. As we all know and as we’ll see that’s bullshit but it’s an effective manipulation. We also find out Magica’s plan: she had Lena sneak a jewel into the treasure going into the bin, and it’s going to turn into a monster that will seek out the Number One Dime for them. She also vaugely hints that there’s something Lena needs from Magica. 

Once Lena returns, and Webby let’s her rabbit know the interogation isn’t over, she gives her possible future girlfirend a gift: friendship bracelets! They both put them on and it’s really fucking cute.. and will be both a tangible symbol of hteir friendship and a plot point several times, something I honestly hadn’t thoguht about till now. Lena, put off by the gesture not because she dosen’t aprpciate it because of the crushing guilt of lying to the one person who cares about her under the insucrtions of a sociopath, goes to Webby’s big old corkboard which is always fun to look at.. especially since it’s clearly the ONLY glimpse at Hortense we’re going to get all series. 

We’re not getting Grandma Duck either. Though at least Frank actually regrets that one. But the important part is one of the posts mentoniing Scrooge hates magic, something Webby elaborates on: He hates spells, hexs curses and what not and feels them a shortcut.  From the man who has a garage full of them. 

I do kid as I did realize there’s a valid expliantion for this: Scrooge will use magical items, protection spells that sort of thing.. but he uses them like anything else as needed. He’s too pragmatic to not say, use the jewel of atlantis to give a city clean energy and water he can montizie, or the split sword against FOWL.. but more often than not he just dosen’t need them. He collects them because it’s fun, oftne profitable.. and their simply SAFER in his museum wing, garage and second bin will get to in two weeks. He’s seen time and time again how people misuse magic, forget it has a price, or just rely on it instead of actual skill. He’s also clearly been on the bad end of a LOT of evil sorcerers and soreceresses, especially magica. Magic isn’t inherently bad, which in itself is a BIG message of Lena’s arc, it’s just somethign that’s the OPPPSOITE OF everythign scrooge is: sacrifcing others for power, relying on something besides yourself, distance attacks versus up close and personal phsycial attacks.. it was never going to be for him and tons of bad experinces with it only cemented it. He’s just not so stubborn outside of the santa thing to avoid something if it’s going to net him a profit or come in a pinch. 

So naturally Scrooge has banned any magic books from his house, as he has no use for spellcasting and any he’d need to keep for saftey or history’s sake are likely at the archives, but just as naturally, Webby smuggled one in and wants to try it with Lena ducking it and asking to play some games. I”m sure Huey has a few yugioh decks in his room go bug him. But before they can decide on one, the boys attack for a PILLOW FIGHT.... which is a sweet gesture and them just wanting to hang out, but ends with them all eating the ground and questioning why they thought attacking the duck equilvent of cassandra cain was a good idea. Louie decides to salvage it with a swim.. but since their pool has a boat in it he has a diffrent location in mind: the bin.

So while they head off to get head injuries, Beakly tries to prepare Scrooge as the Media are vultures and looking for the next scandal with public figures and it’s accurate. But given Scrooge’s natural mood is grumpus, this dosen’t go well at all and even a spray bottle dosen’t exactly help.. I mean it is the best method to deal with grumpy old men but it can only do so much. 

At the bin we get a lovely bit as Dewey prepares to dive and his brothers treat it like an olympic one, with both doing commentary, Dewey’s apparently response to if he was worried about brain damage was Nerp, and we get the wonderous national anthem of dewdonia. Just nice as well as lovely to see the brothers just having a crack and enjoying each others company with their own weird injokes but without the injokes feeling as forced as they were in “Beagle Birthday Massacre”. Things take a turn though as we see just what magica created with the stone... a giant shark made of scrooges money who eats that fucker in a single bite.. in this case Dewey. Louie and Huey naturally run off panicked.

So while Huey and Louie gain another scarring memory to tell their therapist when their older, Scrooge begins his interview with Roxanne Fetherly who.. honestly just weirds me out. Not for any personality stuff but because she has green feathers. And it just.. really feels WEIRD. I mean green ducks are a thing in real life.. but it just looks off to have such a pastel color on a duck when the other colors are white or tones meant to invoke real world races, allowing ducks to be black, latino, asian and so on and so on coded. That’s fine and blends in fine.. but with that metaphor the green just really dosen’t fit well at all. It feels like an early decision they made, but decided not to retcon or go with for anyone else which makes it all the more weird. We’re 3 seasons in , almost at the end, and the only other green duck we��ve seen was like that because of magic and the offputting nature of it WORKS for magica. Here I just don’t get it and I never well. But naturally Roxanne starts in on invasive, gotcha questions with no real good answers or time to respond, so fox news level questions, and then asks what part of ireland he’s from. 

Naturally that sets him off so while that rant goes on, literally next time we see him he’s still going on about it, we cut to the girls playing truth or dare.. and given Webby’s first question is about deepest darkest secrets the boys once again save her by running in... to report on the monster she created that just ate their brother. Lena brushes it off but does get them not to go to scrooge claming he’ll throw them to the shark himself. I mean he’s not comics scrooge so he probably woudln’t but their also two scared 11-12 year olds so it works well enough. They just need a way to go after the money shark. Enter launchapd who in the second best bit of the episode, says he sensed his best friend dewey was in danger. Beck’s delivery is what sells it.. and I’m not going to question it. He’s somehow alive despite presumibly living off a diet of spaghett-o’s, barely avoiding a car accident on his best days, and as we’ll find out later believing children in costumes are monsters he summoned when he was 8. The fact he suddenly has spider sense specifically related to people he cares about is honestly less of a surprise than the fact he’s not in heaven crashing God’s Speedboat into God’s Golden Castle with God’s Golden Lion riding shotgun. 

So they do the natural thing and.. steal Donald’s houseboat while he sleeps. He has no more involvement in this episode other than noticing it’s back and not in great condition at the end. I bring this up because this is one of Donalds ONLY apperances this season, and it’s part of the larger more irritating problem that he’s hardly ever used.. despite promoting him as a major part of the series. 

I will talk about this more during the Della arc as i’ts more relevant there, but needless to say it bothers me a lot and not knowing how to ballance it’s massive main cast was a constant struggle for the series even up to the final episodes going on right now. 

So our heroes head out on the bin late at night, where could the Jaw$ be she’s nowhere in sight. So they decide to use other treasure as a lure they either fished out of a bin or out of scrooge’s bathwater. How bathing in coins gets him clean I don’t know and frankly I dont’ think we want the answers to that and the idea of scrooge fully naked is so horrifying I forgot what I was talking about.

Ah yes our heroes are playing bait the money monster and find out it’s a shark, and Lena.. is not okay with that and goes to talk to Magica inside the boat. Magica tells us she has a name, Tiffany. Awww what a lovely name for a money shark. I would of gone with Rags to Bitches, but I may have brain damage.  Lena understandabily does not like the idea of getting eaten by a shark, asked to be informed and while Magica is mad at her for going after the thing, Lena reasonably points out that it was this or Scrooge got involved.  Up top Huey tries catching it with a bit of treasure on a rope.. after not shutting up about shark facts because “Facts comfort me when i’m nervous!” Precious angel. But Huey’s leg gets caught and he and Louie, somehow on the latter get thrown up in the air and chomped. Back bellow Webby has a suggestion: using magic. Lena naturally not wanting to blow her cover or really liking magic period is against it for now. 

Back at the interview, Roxanne brings on a special guest to prove people don’t like scrooge: GLOMGOLD!

Glomgold may create some issues for the subplot and we’ll get to those in due time, but damn if it isn’t always a pleasure to see him. He’s also on good terms with Roxanne... are.. are we sure this is local news and not fox news? Taking the word of a conservative greedy billionare over a progressive one seems like a fox move. Though I might actually watch fox news if glomgold was a commentator.  “I propose a red new deal instead of this blasted green new deal, I throw Scrooge to a tank of sharks connected to a generator, the tank turns red with his blood and that somehow creates power! HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT MCDUCK” 

So we get the best bit of the episode as Glomgold tries to complain about his building being destroyed which would be fair... if he hadn’t tried to blow up Scrooge’s bin twice this week, with Glomgold going for THREE.. for threee.. for three... it dosen’t go off but it does get scrooge to say he’s glad the building was destroyed. Which is fair but NOT super great PR.  

Back at the shark things don’t get better as Webby and Lena argue over the use of magic, I mean as much as they can argue Webby just wants to know why she’s so cagey about this while they go with plan “Launchpad crash into it”. Launchpad also gives a hell of a monologue. Good on you bud. As you can see launchpad’s gotten 100% better since his low point in our last episode. That’s because it’s clear the writers had some struggle ballancing his amped up stupidity with actual competence, making him primarily jokey comic relief in the first few episodes and I wouldn’t be shocked if Terror of The Terra Firmians was written before a lot of the later episodes despite airing around the same time. But by mid-season he’s got his much more lovable charactersation of a dangerous moron..l but one who CAN be competent and is genuinely charming due to how much he cares about his friends and his job. They also dialed down the stupid down to an acceptable homer simpson level: still a danger to himself and others but hilariously so. Point is they fixed it and while i’ll complain about mistakes the show made I will give this crew all the credit for course correcting time and time again and actually listening to fan feedback.

So Webby figures they tried the Jaws option and lost the boat and launchpad, time for plan Magic. They hold hands, EEEEEEEEE, and try a spell.. and it clearly starts working but almost works TOO well, as Lena starts glowing first purple.. then blue. Hmmmm... intresteing. Lena breaks it off and Tiffany breaks out of the bin.. just as scrooge says on the news his adventures aren’t dangerous. 

Scrooge naturally goes to face it while Webby wonders why Lena didn’t go for it. To make it a triple Scrooge shows up in time to distract tiffany.. with the number one dime, which as lena found out earlier is on his person rather than at the bin like the public thinks. So while Scrooge puts up a good show.. seriously it’s really awesome and really neat looking, though he also gets VERY upset that people are naturally holding out buckets for the cash shark, which he’s not happy about because well.. he did EARN that money. Most bin money is stuff directly earned by him so fair enough. But while he’s you know, Scrooge Fucking McDuck, and thus puts up a good fight the monster eats him.. and gets the dime stuck in it’s tooth with Magica wanting Lena to grab for it, forgetting that minons, while mildly disposable, aren’t really replaceable when your SOUL’S ATTACHED TO THEM. That’s where Magica’s weakness is. her plans aren’t half bad but as I said, she’s far too bloodthirsty and short sighted. She has better ones than glomgold but ironcially they share the same problem of not thinkign them through. And Magica cares so little for lena she’s blinded to the fact her own personal saftey is tied up in her. 

Lena naturally dives for her future girlfrriend and heads into the belly of the beast. And it’s here her REAL moment of truth is. While the one last episode was noble.. it was also easy enough to brush off internal as pragmatisim. Letting Beakly die would’ve brought too much heat and been too easy to quickly go terrible, while saving her got her off Lena’s trail and gave her free reign of the manner. But here? Webby is about to slip into Tiffany’s stomach and whle she hasn’t digested anyone yet given who made Tiffany with it’s likely just because she hasn’t had enough mass to create chainsaws to carve them all up. It’s the Dime or Webby. Lena’s own freedom or the girl she loves. Nothing good comes from saving Webby.. other than Webby. Other than the one person whose truly loved her. I mean think about it: She was created by magica, abused for a good decade and a half. No one but Magica has had a chance to care about her and as we’ve seen Magica only sees her as a weapon to get back at scrooge and not as a person. Webby was the first person she’s ever made a genuine connection with, that’s been there for her, that loves her unconditionally and woiuld be there for her no matter what. And it’s in that moment Lena realizes she can’t sacrifice her for her own good... that after years of having to be selfish to surivive being chained to that monster... she can’t be this time. No mastter what it costs her.. Webby is priceless. So Lena recites the spell, growing bright blue and blowing up tiffany. Lena gladly hugs webby who reciorpates, awww gaybies, and Launchpad hugs dewey. Awww... what it’s still precious he’s a good surrogate uncle. The wacky kind who sleeps in a van on your lawn. 

So Scrooge is glad.. though it’s here his subplot falls flat. Him getting attacked by the media and getting a compupance by loosing tons of money from tiffany is fine. Evne if he earned it, his lack of care did bring this on him.. hte problem is they take it too far by having all his nemies show up, him unable to say anything and glomgold blatantly doing so just to steal from him. Otherwise the subplot is fine, a bit heavy on scrooge being a dick but it has to to work and puts him in an awkward situation. But this ending just feels to over the top to realy enjoy. And the series does do over the top humor well so I don’t know what happened here. But having a bunch of outright thieves steel his money instad of a bunch of citizens who didn’t know better and deserved it for the damage, feels wrong and it tastes wrong. 

Speaking of feels wrong and tastes wrong we get an INTEINTONAL dose of that as back at the amptheater, Lena and Magica argue about the situation and Magica trying to kill her. Lena tries to walk away but can’t.. phsyically. Magica won’t let her. And this is honestly a very crushing and very well crafted metaphor for how abuse victims sometimes CAN’T escape their abusers. Magica is verbally abusive, treats lena like she’s disposable and constnatly downtalks her self esteem. To Lena magica is nothing but a tool.. but like MANY children caught in horrifcally abusive situations Lena can’t get away. It’s a literal metaphor, an da good one, for how you can’t ALWAYS escape abuse easily, and this especially true for kids who have nowhere to go and hte law on their abusers side more often than not. It’s hard to escape an abusive parent and even harder when they dont’ consider you a person. I thankfully have no personal experince with this but it dosen’t make it any less of a problem nor any less noble of this show to tackle the subject in a frank, if fantastical, way, and a good chunk of Lena’s arc is overcoming this abuse and not letting her abusive past drown her. But for now.. all she can do is agree to do what Magica says till she can hopefully be rid of her. But the light at the end of the tunnel’s coming.. there’s just a whole lotta darkness first. 

Next Time: We take a break from the episodes to cover some Lena related comics for a double feature; The first Spies Like Us has everyones faviorite lesbian ducks go on a spy adventure that was never printed in the us for silly reasons we’lll get to and then the 87 ducktales comic dime after dime which features Lena’s predecessor Minima. 

Later Today: Close Enough Season 2 is here! I”m going to talk about it! Exclimation Points! 

If you liked this review feel free to follow for more. And if you have an episode of Ducktales or another animated show you’d like me to cover just hit me up via my asks or direct messages on here and comission it. And if you’d rather just support me on a monthly basis, head over to my patreon. THE LINK IS RIGHT HERE.  Even a buck a month would help and the more of you that donate the closer we get to my Duckcentric stretch goals. The current closest ones are 15, which would lead to reviews of The Goofy Movies and Treasure of the Lost Lamp, and 20 which would lead both to a review of the Super Ducktales mini series, and monthly darkwing duck reviews! So if you like me talking about ducks and want to bolt some duck reviews to the schedule, even a dollar a month would inch me closer to that goal. Eveyr bit helps. But money or not, it’s been a pleasure and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[fursasaida]

so dad’s memorial is a week away and despite lots of competent help there is still so god damn much for me to do i don’t...know what to do

i am managing the contact list and comms

i am editing/approving everything my mom produces

i am handling all the backend tech stuff for media prep (not the event production/running, thank god)

i am...you know....in graduate school

i spent 3 hours on zoom with mom today going through videos people sent of themselves talking about dad. taxing. draining. in itself. but the thing is that right now we’re in this no-man’s-land where we have too many to just put them all together, but too few to cut them up into a full-on montage/compilation.

for reasons not worth getting into, this is a problem for the whole memorial program. i could not stay on zoom a minute longer so i told mom that i was going to go away and think about how to rejigger the whole thing, and i will provide two “script” documents for the final product--one being the less good solution we talked out, the other being whatever brilliant alternative i can dream up, and if she doesn’t like my brilliant alternative we can then send the already-agreed-upon version off to the editors.

so i have basically now given myself a massive all-nighter assignment to figure out what the hell to do with all this. and my eyes are staring out of my head and i still have classwork to do. and i have to make sure to send out an RSVP reminder tomorrow. i am not feeling great about the next 36 hours at all. i keep telling myself this will all be over in a week when the memorial happens, but also, god, i wish i had some more time. i hate this. it’s not fair. it’s not fair how much of it is all on me. that’s the only way it ever could be, inheritance is always a task, i know this, but. just had to say that.

[impostoradult]

But how much would you say market research influence the creative direction of shows? Do networks dictate what the plots have to be according to these results? In the setting of, say, certain popular television shows whose finales/final seasons were complete garbage?

The answer to this -- unsurprisingly -- is that it’s complicated and can vary quite a lot. 

Network and cable TV is more heavily influenced by market research than premium cable or streaming. All of them do market research, of course, but network and cable TV is particularly beholden to market research data because their revenue models are still so deeply tied to weekly ratings. (With the subscription models of premium cable and streaming, there is less concern with the performance of any individual show. They still care, but it’s factored in to a lesser degree)

Market research is also more likely to be influential in networks and studios saying “No” to certain things that might be very unpalatable (e.g., killing a character off, breaking up two characters in a relationship, making a character previously thought to be straight queer, etc.) than in mandating exact storylines. In other words, market research is more likely to exert power in the vein of “You CANNOT do X thing” versus “You MUST do Y thing.” 

When market research is used to influence the direction of a piece of media in this way, it is often more in the vein of, your cast has one token female character, you need to add more primary female characters. Or people are sick of this cheating storyline, find a way to end it/resolve it so it doesn’t drag on into the next season. Or, people really like this new character, let’s keep them around/increase their presence in the story.

Often the specifics of HOW is left up to the writers. But market research is definitely restricting what writers can do, and it does place broad mandates on them like “increase this character’s presence” or “less focus on romance, more focus on nuclear family dynamics.” 

(Additionally, market research may be behind very specific notes studios and networks give on scripts, and the writers may not even know that’s where the note is ‘coming from’ so to speak. The studios and networks often don’t share full market research data with the writers/creatives) 

***

But you also have to remember, market research is always “competing” with other production dynamics like X actor has a contract for Y number of episodes this season, and we can’t just cut them without eating their contract (even if market research says nobody likes their character). Or, if the writers REALLY stand their ground on something, sometimes they can convince the studios and networks to do something that is perceived to be unpopular/risky. Or if they get data that says people are hungry for more battle sequences in a show, but the show’s budget just won’t sustain it. 

In other words market research is a powerful cog in the machine, but it is only 1 cog, in a much bigger machine. 

***

I will also say, market research is especially influential when a show is being pilot tested, and first developed/launched. A lot of the reasons networks and studios decide to pick up certain shows (or types of shows) is because of what their market research says. And they do A LOT of interfering and rejiggering at the beginning to make the show fit with what their research tells them is appealing in that moment 

I think the people who are speculating the ending of Supernatural was designed to carry over to Walker are very much onto something. 

One thing I do know is Supernatural is atypical in how much of its fandom activity and audience investment is related to the actors, even more so than most other shows. I think the ending of Supernatural was at least in part designed to move the audience investment over to Walker through Jared Padalecki. 

My strong suspicion is, Supernatural’s cultural legacy isn’t as important to them (from a business standpoint) as the success of Walker is. They will still make money off Supernatural in years to come with streaming deals, and licensing rights for merch, etc. But Walker is still probably a higher priority for them, from a money standpoint. 

Although this is speculative (I don’t have any insider knowledge on this specifically) I do strongly suspect the ending of Supernatural was used as a launching pad for promoting Walker, which is ONE of the reasons the finale was...like that. 

[wot-tidbits]

Live Signing Session—Dragonmount Patreon Stream

SOURCE

SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE SERIES!

QUESTION:

It has been 13 years since you were selected by Harriet to finish the Wheel of Time. After 13 years have passed, like, has the shock worn off yet?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

Yes and no. There are times when I look back and I just I’m like that was really a surreal event in my life. Nothing quite can ever compare to getting a phone call being asked to finish the Wheel of Time. I look back and I’m like how did that even happen?

For those who don’t know, I didn’t apply for it. Harriet just called me and it’s really, really strange. At the same time the fact that I am a best-selling author has kind of settled in because I have to deal with it every day and I’m very used to it at this point. And so the public’s attention being on me, I have gotten used to that. The fact that I got that random phone call still is really weird when you look back at. I don’t know if you have things in your life like that, where you’re like: “Man, that really happened!” That is really strange, like winning the lottery, right? I always describe it as winning the lottery that you didn’t know you’d entered. It’s more like actually getting an inheritance you didn’t know you were getting, but someone you loved of course had to die for you to get the inheritance. So it’s still wrapped up in weird emotions for me.

QUESTION:

The way that Harriet became aware of you was because her friend Elise Matheson was printing out blog posts and other news clippings that were online where there was a news report or tribute to Robert Jordan and yours was on that list and Harriet read that and ran with it from there. So it almost seems to me that you’ve written some amazing things, but maybe that blog post might have been the most important of your career in some ways.

BRANDON SANDERSON:

The single most significant three paragraphs in my entire career are probably that little blog post. […] The weird thing is that I was late. I spent about a week thinking about, “What do I write?” and everybody had tributes come out like the day after and I didn’t jump on that. You see me posting things later when I do blog post reactions. I often am like, “I want to think about this.” And so if I hadn’t waited who knows if that would have come up in the search results.  First, because it was brand new when Elise was looking for things. Who knows, if I’d waited one more day it wouldn’t have popped up? If I’d written it the week before, maybe it wouldn’t have either. That’s just one of those things, right?

QUESTION:

What would you say to 2007 Brandon?  

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I have read this book where you go back in time, and it never turns out well. I would not go back in time and say anything to myself because I would end up as my own grandfather somehow. And then I would need, like, Christopher Lloyd to show up and help me fix all the problems in my life.

But if I take it non-jokingly, I don’t know. I’ve never been asked this one before. It’s usually your young writer self, what would you say? I honestly have no idea. Maybe I would say it’s gonna be alright. You’re gonna do a good job. Don’t stress this as much as you are. But maybe it’s stressing it that made me do a good job? And I haven’t stressed over a book as much as those books ever. Except maybe my very first release with Elantris. But I am not high stress person, so even that level of stress is nothing compared to what I know a lot of other people stress about.

The nice thing is that by 2007 I was confident in my writing. There were things I needed to learn. There were going to be some hard things I needed to learn and I learned them over the next five years. And it was a tough growing period of writing.

I might say take another stab at Mat once you think you got him. Listen to Jason (Denzel) when he says Mat’s off. Because you (Jason) were the first to point that out to me. I might say Padan Fain. A lot of people are going to think there needs to be a little more. Can you write like 2000 more words on the Padan Fain narrative arc for a Memory of Light? Remember to do that. Brandon, they’re gonna split into three books anyway. Stop stressing about trying to get them all into one book. They are not gonna let that happen. Tor’s not gonna throw that money away. They are going to insist on three books. So plan it that way from the beginning and maybe the timeline issues and Towers of Midnight would have been solved. I’m mostly looking at warning myself to prepare things for the future.

QUESTION:

You and I have talked about that in the past. Rand had a very climactic moment at the end of The Gathering Storm. And then you had some moments but it largely became Perrin and Mat’s book in Towers of Midnight. And then we got back to Rand again…                    

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I actually like that breakdown. I don’t think I’d change that. I think that Rand in Towers of Midnight being a little bit like Rand in the Dragon Reborn where you’re getting some distance from Rand, because he’s gone through a major change and you’re seeing him externally for a little while.

Actually, I think that’s a selling point of the Dragon Reborn and I like having echoed that in my three, where you know that distance [is there] and then you get back in his head and you’re like: “No, this is the Rand I still love”. This is the same person, he’s just developed. He’s changed a little bit. And that distance, that time with distance, it just gives you a different perspective on the character.

Like I said you are in Rand’s head in the Dragon Reborn, but he feels like a different character, and then we get our Rand back in book 4. I really like how Jim pulled that off. I wasn’t doing that intentionally, but in hindsight looking back, it feels like the right way to do that.

I would try to fix the timeline issues though.  I did a lot of work in the Gathering Storm when it was one book to overlap Perrin’s climax and Rand’s climax at the kind of center point of the story which became the two endings of Towers of Midnight and the Gathering Storm. And because those originally had been overlapping back and forth timelines and were split into two books—which again I kind of like how it went—it was clunky since it wasn’t designed that way from the get-go.

QUESTION:

About the deleted chapters you did for the charity novels and are there anymore that might appear?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

No, the only other scene I think I’ve mentioned before; I have like that brief like two-page scene where ladies weave the bridal wreath for Rand. I’ve talked about that before. That’s the only significant chunk they got cut that’s left and it’s only like two pages. The ones were like full things, so someday we’ll find a place for that. I don’t think we have yet, but someday we’ll find a place for that, but it’s only two pages. It is real short.

Did I tell you why that got cut? I should mention it. So it was actually really cool. I wanted to get Rand engaged, have the bridal wreath and have all three of them like weave it together and kind of use some Aiel tradition there and whatnot. And it was a really great scene. I enjoyed it. Everybody liked it.

Then we put the book together. Because often I will write—when I have a large number of viewpoints, I will write a chunk of viewpoints from a character’s viewpoint, and then at the end is when I really start putting things together and then I have to smooth between these things and make sure that the pacing is right. Because you don’t want all sorts of dry scenes together. You don’t want too many action scenes together, unless it’s at the end where you do want a lot of action scenes, and you want to kind of be bouncing back and forth. There’s just a rhythm and feel to it that usually I have a pretty good instinct [for] while I’m writing knowing how they’re going to fold together.

But once in a while you get something that just sticks out like a sore thumb and this was one. Because it was opposite the Talmanes’ scenes going in Caemlyn and like dramatic scenes of people getting stabbed by myrddraal and nearly dying and all this stuff. And it was more powerful stuff. It was really nice tense stuff and then you jump back and the girls were like “Tee-hee, I am like this branch that I’m weaving into the bridal wreath. It has thorns!” And it just did not work!

I’m making it sounds sillier than it was. It wasn’t that silly, but it did not fit thematically. Harriet was like “Oh, this does not match at all.” I’m like “Yeah, you are totally right.” So we cut that one up, which made me feel sad because I did want to get them engaged. I know a lot of people have been waiting for that, but it had to go just for the strength of the opening narrative. That one’s around. It’s fun. You can imagine [it] exactly as what it is. All three go out and gather different things to put into the thing and you don’t seem them gathering, they just come together and say “Here, I brought this. It’s a good match for us because of this” and they kind of weave it all together. Maybe someday we’ll get that but there’s not a whole lot left.

Getting the Perrin through the Ways out—like, I had wanted to find a place for that for a while because I really liked that sequence. I’ve mentioned before that when I look back at it, I’m like, “it needs a lot of revision,” so I actually had to spend a lot more time revising that sequence for the charity anthology than I did the other one, which I just kind of chopped up and it was good to go. Because that had lasted all the way until the last edit, but the Perrin scenes got cut out earlier after we did a bunch of just timeline rejiggering and things like that. Harriet had not been pleased with my depiction of the Ways, and looking back—I think I mentioned this in the Forward—she was right. And that took a lot of revision to make feel right, which I wasn’t planning on spending, like I spent two weeks revising that little sequence for the charity anthology, but I wanted it to be good.

It was fun because when I sent it to Maria to look through to make sure I hadn’t broken anything too big continuity-wise even though it’s not canon, she wrote back. She’s like “This was so nice, being able to actually read Wheel of Time and edit it again.” It was like a bright spot. And that’s kind of how I had felt on it. So it was nice to work on but it was way more work than I expected. The bridal scene will not get similar treatment if we find a place for it in a future Unfettered or something like that.

QUESTION:

Aside from that do you have other scenes still remaining, deleted scenes that could potentially see the light of day?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I don’t think there is anything else at all. I don’t think there are even any scraps or fragments. Everything that Jim wrote I put in the book in some way. There is maybe some Q&A stuff that didn’t get in the book. In one of his Q&A’s with Maria in the notes he was talking about … No, no, this wasn’t from the Q&A. It was just notes from books back that they found dug in there that they were having Rand use the Choedan Kal. Jim had in the notes Rand using the male one at the end of the series but that one was destroyed. It was the access key that was destroyed. I’m like so do we find another access key or was this just old information contradicted other things? Because this was like he was writing book eight or something, he was thinking about doing that and they found a little note file for it. They’re like maybe we use these things, maybe we find another access key or whatnot.

There is stuff like that in the notes that would be fun to release. The fans could like imagine the what if because it’s entirely possible that rather than going with the Callandor solution, Jim would have gone with the Choedan Kal that he would have decided: “No, no, the right thing to do is to find another access key” or something like that or whatnot. And then you have a different twist on the ending using that. There are things like that that could be fun to see from the notes. I don’t know how much has been dug up, how much of it Harriet put in the library.

QUESTION:

Mat and Tuon are my favorite characters. Is there anything little or unknown about them that you can share with us?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

Everything I had from Jim that was in the notes I was given—now, remember, I had people look through the notes and give me the stuff that they thought was relevant, Maria and Alan did. So there’s entirely possibly like a lot of the things that are notes that I didn’t see were drafts of appendices that Robert Jordan added things to, and then taken out from like book 7 and 6 and 8 and stuff like that. And there might be things in there.

Everything I had either was in the books—or because that last scene was written by him, the one with Mat and Tuon in the epilogue—he had done a draft on that scene so I was pointing everything toward that scene to just get it in. So that I could drop it in as close as how he’d done it as possible. The only thing that I know is that Mat does go to Seanchan and that eventually he’s found in a gutter without his hat having gambled it all away. And he’s muttering “I lost it all” or “I gambled a lot away” or something like that. That’s in the notes for the outriggers.

The notes for the outriggers are three sentences and one of them is about Mat having lost it all. We can guess he goes to Seanchan. We can guess that he ruins, messes things up and then spends several books fixing them again which is how Mat basically rolls. That would be my guess.

We can guess that Perrin has to go. We think Perrin thinks he has to go to kill Mat. We don’t know but one of those sentences is Perrin is going travelling on a boat thinking about how he’s got to go kill a friend. So there’s got to be some tensions between the continents and things like that, and I would assume that hijinks ensued, but your imagination has got to go on this one. That is literally all I know about Mat and Tuon going forward.

Fun fact is that this was somewhere in the notes but they hadn’t shown it to me, I came up with a new name for Tuon and then Maria’s like: “Oh, Jim came up with one of these” and it was two letters off. We’d both come up with the like exact same new longer name for her. And that was cool, that I had been enough on the same wavelength. And we of course used his. But that’s kind of fun because I think we were both looking at the list of Old Tongue words and found something that worked together and came together and it sounds like fortune and that’s the same direction I’d gone.

Maybe he’d written something that had told me that I should go that direction but either way, that’s a fun thing. There is a little email from Maria saying: “Hey, we should use Jim’s name for this!” And then it was almost exactly the same. I felt  very cool on that day. I can’t remember what mine is because Fortuona ended up in the book but mine also started with f, o, r and then I think I had an extra syllable in there and I had Tuon in there as well but maybe my ending letters to it were different or something, I can’t remember.

QUESTION:

I know you’ve spoken a lot about that you’ve read some of these early scripts and…

BRANDON SANDERSON:

Yeah, I’ve read the first six. Still haven’t seen seven or eight.

QUESTION:

I know you’ve had a chance to talk to Rafe (Judkins). I am really curious what your take is going to be and how you’re going to be involved or how, if I can use the word “possessive” of it, that you’ll be when they hopefully get to the end of this saga. When they’re in their season seven or eight and it’s covering your books and to see how much they keep and change. And how much they’ll have to change because their previous changes will lead to, you know, have ripple effects.

BRANDON SANDERSON:

This is uncharted territory for me. And I have no idea. It could be like Game of Thrones where despite the changes they stay pretty much according to what are the big events, so what I wrote ends up there. But it could go completely different.

As I’ve said to people, I envision this as a new turning of the Wheel. It’s the same souls but in a different actual turning of the Wheel. It’s not the one that Jim and I worked on. It’s a different version of it. And so some of the same events are happening, others are different and being rearranged and so. I don’t know. Like my experience has been fantastic working with Rafe (Judkins) so far. But the sum total of my involvement is: I talked to Rafe and tell him what I felt about various scripts and things. I went on set one time and I was mostly there so they could interview me for b-roll to use in their “making of” and to actually let me meet the actors and things like that.

I am not a significant player in the series. I don’t know, maybe they will want me to be more of [one] when it gets to my books. My instincts say that I will become less and less needed. And I am not even sure how much I was needed right now because Rafe knows, has a vision, and is doing a good job with it.

I’ve been in his shoes before but it’s almost like the handoff, at least the way it’s supposed to work, between past presidents where they like leave a letter and are there for a phone call if you have a question for them, but mostly you find your own way. And that’s kind of how it is with me.

QUESTION:

Did you ask them about having a cameo?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I didn’t ask them about having a cameo, no. Maybe eventually in my own things I want to have a cameo but in the back of my mind I was like if I do a cameo I should do it when they get to the material I wrote. That’s more appropriate and so I haven’t asked for one yet. I hope the series takes off and then they get to mine and then we stick in a Brandon cameo.

For those who haven’t heard one of the things I want to do for my books when they get made is I want to die in various different—like I show up, I’m like the Kenny from South Park of the Cosmere or whatever. In every season there’s a version of me that dies in some horrible way, you know, just like a redshirt [from Star Trek] or something like that. I think that would be a lot of fun. You need people falling off the wall, getting eaten by koloss. I’m one of those people. Stuff like that. It just feels like revenge the characters could have on me and it could be this fun little thing. Stan Lee covered the cute cameo. I could cover the gruesome death cameo role.

QUESTION:

Having been through a full three books and years of working on it, what sort of high level general advice would you offer to the people, the writers in the writing room working on the series?

BRANDON SANDERSON:

I actually talked to Rafe about some of this stuff. Number one was of course, Mat’s harder to write than he looks. I actually did say ask Jason (Denzel). Mat is harder to write than he looks.

I talked about the kind of soul of the Wheel of Time. What makes the Wheel of Time work. I remember talking to him about the interview that I heard with Jim where someone asked him summarize the Wheel of Time and he hummed and he didn’t want to do it but he eventually said what it’s like to be the normal person and be told you need to save the world. They put that burden upon you that you’ve got to save the world and you’ll probably die doing it and it’s not a burden you wanted. What do you do with that? If there’s a core theme of the Wheel of Time it is either that, or the core theme of old things become new and new things become old, used in interesting and different ways both with the characters and the world building and things like that.

I talked about some of that stuff. But really what worked for me and what anyone has to do who’s in this situation is read through the books, feel the books and then try to have that in mind when you’re working on it. Anytime I started to get lost, I just went back to the books and read what Jim had written and it pulled me back in. When I was working on—and I reread the Eye of the World when I was working on the deleted scene we talked about—it threatened to do that to me again. I was pulled in I’m like “Ooh, this and that!” and the books are just so descriptive, with lush use of language in a way that never feels like it bogs down. You just have to go to the books. He won’t do it the way I did it and that’s all right as long as he’s going to the books and he’s like feeling the soul of those books.

-------

Huge thank you to @highladyluck for being my editor.

[calypsoff]

Nine.

Rolling my eyes as Jay Brown walked out of the studio, I mean of course I would roll my eyes at him “saw that” Leandra spat “he’s getting on my nerves, but anyways” sitting back in the chair “now, I am thinking of removing Pour it Up, his negative energy has made me dislike it” Leandra was quick to shout no “listen to me, that song will do well, I mean I am pissed he acting like that but I think he wants you to remain a pop princess but imagine having your birthday and people just hear your voice getting lit, I know I will be screaming in the strip clubs so leave it. He is old and stupid, do you. I am feeling it and so are you and you know it. I love Pour it Up, I think he feels you are turning away from the good image which good on you, fuck them” Leandra as a point, I am not letting him rule me but the headache he tries to cause me for nothing “anyways, I am going to ring him. I am need a break” Leandra got up from the couch “the nigga that can’t text” I let out a low chuckle, Chris is dramatic as hell. He’s currently with his parents because he can barely move and his mom was concerned, now he can’t text me like it’s a nuisance to me because between things I like to text him, oh not Chris. He can’t move his hand, so he says so here I am having to call him, but I don’t mind it, he’s just dramatic. Sighing out smiling as I placed the phone to my ear, I actually need to eat something on this little break we have going on “one minute!” he shouted, he has me on speakerphone again, the thing is if I was there I would be actually taking care of him, that is just my nature to be like that and I would spoil him.

“Sorry” he apologised “I am disabled, you know. I broke my fingers so it takes me a while to do things” he is another male in my life that annoys me, but he makes me smile “you have told me this on every call Chris, thank you” getting up from the chair “oh I have, I just thought I would remind you. How is Robyn? Is Robyn happy? I sense you’re displeased about something; twin senses are alarming right now” I hate that he makes me smile like this, like a whole goofy bitch “just my manager, they want me to remain pop princess. They feel I am losing that image and I need to do better with bringing the pop back, I don’t want that, it’s just annoying but it’s nothing major” sitting on the couch, that is better “Then you do you, they need you more then you need them. I told you this before, they need you to sell, so if they are making you do shit and you don’t feel it’s right then you don’t do it, ok?” he is right “ok, I will still be annoyed with it. Is living with your mom fun?” he seems to be pleased “I get my meals cooked, it’s amazing. I told you last night that I was going to attempt a bath, well I did. I really needed you to wash my ass, you weren’t there” I giggled, he is stupid “I am serious, I used my mother’ things, like bodywash things and I couldn’t squeeze the bottle, so I used my ok hand to do it and I squeezed too much out, now my mom is complaining I used too much but I smell like roses and flowers, I smell good.”

Twirling my hair between my fingers “mhmm” I was going to speak but Chris cut me off “mention soap, I will scream” he knew me “oh god, did you ever drop the soap while being locked up?” I mean I haven’t asked that yet “I have actually, have you ever had dick up your ass? Huh? Answer that” he turned it on me of course “no I haven’t” I mumbled “it’s not nice, my butt bled” my face softened “are you being real?” that is concerning “oh you not smiling now are you, no I didn’t have that happen to me Robyn. Unless you find that type of thing kinky? You like all that men to men action?”  I swear he’s got me smiling like crazy “shut up, annoying ass. I don’t, I just wanted to ask. But anyways! If I was there I would helped you” chewing on my bottom lip “with your mouth or hands?” raising an eyebrow “both, you know how I do” the phone line went silent and I jumped, I didn’t know Jay Brown was here, now I am wondering how long he was there “carry on” he said, did he hear that “keep talking, I can masturbate that way” well little does he know I am about to go “I will call you tonight, learn how to text” he needs too “boo! You suck” he said “dick” he added “that I do, but yours. Speak to you later” disconnecting the call “sounds intense” Jay said laughing “got the sex voice on” locking my phone shaking my head, I don’t want them to know I have anyone on the agenda “not really” let me just go for a break.

Looking back forth between my team, they are picking out songs they like and dislike “I really want Stay on there and Pour it up” I added before they cut them off “Diamonds too, whatever y’all decide they are the ones I want, I need to go for a drink” I need the breathe, I mean I will let them dislike what they want and then I will rejigg it to my standards, Mel got up from the couch to follow me out “ok, we will mock up some ideas then” I really want to leave Miami already, I have done so much and I feel I am going crazy “you are so stressed!” Mel hugged me from behind “I am, I am stressed out about a lot” Mel massaged my shoulders as we made our way to the kitchen area “two weeks of this, of this hell” Leandra cooed out “pour me a drink” waving my hand “I will do it” sitting on the bar stool “I feel I am going crazy, it’s like I came off the tour and then this, when I came back from Virginia they near enough blew a fuse with me about everything, like we have a schedule and I get it. I can’t wait to be my own boss and I know it will happen” grabbing the wine glass “put it into the universe it will happen, you also wanted to do this” Mel pointed “I did because the more albums I release the quicker I can get out of this contract” Mel let out an oh “I get it now, but you need to not stress yourself out” she is right “Robyn girl! I am here! Turning around “Yusuf! My baby come here” jumping off the bar stool to hug him.

A smile formed on my face; I know people about to be shook but I am happy with this. I just want to break free and be free and this is me “you really just did it” Yusuf said it like he didn’t just cut my hair like this “I did, and I am happy. I am sick of being the person they want me to be, it’s time to be me” staring at the pixie cut he did for me “well I have wigs at hand if you need, are you ok?” nodding my head smiling to myself “I am, I think I just need to be me. Probably going through a breakdown, I don’t know but all is well, promise you. Just need to do something because I want it to happen and this is different, I like it anyways. Getting up from the chair “I want to see their faces” I don’t even care, I mean it’s my hair. I want it short “bitches” Yusuf ran ahead of me; he opened the door “where is she? Is it something dramatic? Seems it” Mel knows me “oh my god! Bitch, you here with the pixie cut, I wasn’t ready but I kind of was” poking my lips out smirking “wait till Jay has a meltdown, I think the more then make me be something I am not, the more I will push. I don’t care, I will push more and more. But be truthful, I look good right?” Mel nodded her head, I thought so.

I stifled out a yawn “goodnight” I said as people filed out of the studio, I mean it’s been a long morning, afternoon and night and I am glad we get some rest, we need to just rest and let it simmer on what we want to do, I know what I want and how I want the direction of this whole album roll out to go but the record label has their own plans, of course they do but we will get there collectively. Chris text me though, he really text me and it made me laugh because he kept writing a word out and pressing send one after another, he is a pain that boy. Let me face time him before going to bed, I am tired so I will be sleeping good tonight. I think he is awake, but it is like four in the morning here, I am sure he will be because he text me an hour ago. Tapping on his name and waited for the face time to connect, holding my phone up trying to get the best angle. Sitting back in the chair just watching myself, I really like this cut “one moment” he said, I can see his ceiling “ok, got it. What!?” he spat, his eyes widened “where is your hair gone!? Robyn?” I chuckled at his reaction “yes that is me” he is shook, he was not expecting this at all “uh, I am sure you had hair like a few hours ago, what happened?” I laughed out “I cut it, do you like it?” touching the top of head, and started to play with my hair, well what is left of it “it’s different” he tilted his head “you have the face for it, I like it. It’s difference, what made you do it though?” I shrugged “just fed up, I just want what I want so I knew they wanted that look, well the look prior to this, I called Yusuf to cut it” Chris is staring at me so hard “I don’t like to know twin is not happy, man fuck them rich folk. Just do you, like honestly, be you. People love that about you. I mean I for one love that about you, I just wasn’t expect a bald Rihanna” I gasped “I am joking, it’s me. I am joking. You and I have the same amount of hair look at us!” he got a point “I need to grow the beard next but about that Chris. It’s been what, six weeks altogether now? Well about that, you need to cut your hair and shave, you look homeless” Chris sighed out “first you don’t like me using soap and now you trying to make me shave, anything else!?” he spat “let me see how much your pubes have grown too, I am joking. I am just going to put you down; I am going to light a blunt up” let me prop him up somewhere.

Blow the smoke from my lips, I feel much better now “you seem relieved now” smiling a little “somewhat, I always tell myself it will be a quick call but knowing you and I we speak on so much and it could be the most random things. I love it, but I wanted to ask. What you doing for my birthday” I need to know this “I am disabled” placing the blunt between my lips, I figured he would say that “I ain’t even think about your birthday, I mean who the fuck cares” rolling my eyes shaking my head “I care, if you don’t do anything I will be sad. I am being deadass too; I mean you could just fly out to me? Or better yet ride the greyhound, you love being stubborn” I will not let that go either “if me and my bar of soap can come, you disrespect my ways, but my skin is good, hater!” he lucky his skin is good, because that is waiting to just fuck up his skin “but that depends where you are? I mean you could be in Barbados. I can’t get the greyhound there” he has a point “am I not worth that?” Chris chuckled “you trying to catch me out here, but I think I am going get you a wig to hide your hair” putting a finger up at him “let me listen to something from this album then, sat in the studio doing a whole lot of nothing” pointing at the phone “it’s the second time you said that I work hard and no. You buy my shit like every other fan!” I spat “wow” turning around in the chair “man, I can’t believe your hair gone Robyn, it looks good on you but I just. It’s different” reaching over on the soundboard “you are literally keeping me sane Chris; I am not even lying to you. Like, I have my people around but it’s just different speaking to you. But this is from the album, a little snippet. I actually made this during the time when we weren’t getting along, after New York, me and the team. It’s called fuck Christopher Brown” looking at the camera “man, when I see you. I swear!” I giggled “it’s called love song” turning it down a little as I played it.

Turning it off and looking back at the phone “why window shop when you own this? Own this? Who owns what, is this directed at me? Man, you must have been real angry, like you sound fed up, I can feel the yearning and fed up vibe, like you have said that to me one time, why fuck around, nice. I like it. You and Future really vibing together, I love it big head. Proud of you, even though I sense it directed at me” he knows “well I just thought of you, when I was singing it, I was just thinking of you stood there but I have a few more songs on there, remind me of you. Like tomorrow, I will play you the whole album, after my photoshoot I will, it’s for the album cover and all that but I will play it all to you first before anyone that is” Chris cooed out “on a real, tell me what are you thinking of doing. Will you be in America or not for your birthday? I don’t mind it, then I can just plan around it” I paused thinking “it will be out of the country, which I would like you to be there but I rather you weren’t also, not because I don’t want you there but because I will probably be all over you and then it will just get leaked out” Chris smiled “and I get that, so either we can meet up before or after. I don’t have a job now though, Amazon fired me so we have any day you want” letting out an oh, now I don’t like that but I also don’t want to pity him and I don’t want a thing from him, this is when it gets difficult “that is fine, I really just want to spend time with you. Let’s stay in Virginia, in your apartment. We can go to the quiet beach spot we used to go too” I would prefer that “let me decide what we do, but tell me when you free” I don’t want the world from him, I want just him alone and that is it, this is hard.

[rwmhunt]

Leviticus, Chapter 20

1. Are likely bullet holes; When his foot slipped, he sank, Said “but, it is easier To be sublimely unintelle- than It is to be compreha- atleast, Through this runcible ordure”. The which, in real time, Being commuted to scripture, Was the while in no wise elucidated, Except for the retort with which he rejoinded- “Explain yourself!”

2. Stiffed, moreover, by a soft Drink in the impact Lounge, eye shuddered sojourns So that the ball might flop into the sinus Of the brooding ground As stone stones fall at my back; Don’t break, weak fools.

3. For reasons personal As unto myself, I shall set my face against he Who grunts his seed to Molok, And shall cut him right off Dare he offer up excuses, As they pertain unto my holy name Along inabilities to reliably distinguish True memories from the digital Thence, rejigger their theories By a biometric magneto-debathification.

4. Here, the perceived Level of personal threat Needst be of increase Against a complacence, And by use of a hard-hitting Form of emotional messaging; So let clemency be a no-no. Kill; kill and provide not Comfort nor aide To the enemy thereunto.

5. Face set cut a hole off All who followed my pillow and me. Some, turning to the camera, Pulled masks over; Most didn’t bother. Me, me, my sunglasses Who made for a false invisibility cloak- An allowance for the human Of burning flesh To set beneath the sun; The house will be in order.

6. By Molok, by dybbuk,   Turneth to ghosts,   Tearing through familiar spirits- I am the way an element will jump up, Unread, from the line below, like Tungsten, parallax, the zeitgeist. These shall be your familiars, And you be stuck with them.

7. Keep me thy sanctity; This is uncertain on a really intense scale. Where staple news hath held the civil veneer, And it’s a long way to Trimorphic Protennoia, Yet god loves his cowboys So betimes, doth make employ of them   As to other things unto himself; See sedition and insurrection, which are Tossed insults across the upper midwest, Turning further, Unthinkably left; The house will come to order.

8.There are many gods unto themselves But you can’t sustain; I was once this other thing, And I’m doubting that is going to happen, Yet keep ye my statutes, And to the west be the property of Marduk.

9. Then afflict my people Through specific vulnerabilities   Of their own creation As they would have unto their elders By means of relations And with the environment, With foreign species,   And with each other. Curses, curses, Skyrocket downward, Defeated victoriously- If we are not prepared to fight, Then a fear-epidemic can.

10. Strick, tryst, Everyone dies Entropy-loss, From effort to heat, Heat-chaos, Chaos-destruction, Destruction-peace.

11. Uncover eyes of thy father as if You uncover my wife- By persuasion, see I A perceived threat, where A substantial number Feel quite sufficiently reassured By levels of concern, Having a good heave-ho about them And an understanding of risque; Death swipe the both of you.

12. Take not the wife You left your son to; O, Wait, what’ve you done? Behold; an exerted control- To do what you cannot, Seek elements of a naiveté Or credulity; but Your blood is upon you.

13. Abomination, so death, Lover of mankind, The blood is always mine. The impact is experienced Throughout the body, says she, because   When my people perceive a threat,   Abstract or actual, They activate cortisol, So let be the biological stress response Whence glucose is mobilized And the immune system triggered; Levels of inflammation are increasing Which is affecting the function of the brain,   Mark; - you are more sensitive to threats, Less receptive to reward.

14. Bring along your mother Go up through fire- Wickedness Whence comes from the Latin For “with” and “touch”;   While the street was burning i chanted An Argument from Silence

15. Of a beast lain on the alter   You shall not Know- Hearsay doth serve you as a first hand   For evidence of a belief,   But shall not attest proof   Unto that which Such beliefs portaineth to.

16. Nor her- The replaced reporter   With a mental instability who hallucinates; The apple of the eyewitness testimony Rests in the unreliability of human memory So make sacrifice of high standards; Lo, but hang;   For I neglect that I am not that interested in truth-telling.

17. Keep not your familiar spirits   In naked perpetuity, O You, incorrigible witness.   Let the train gaineth traction   O'er such a horrid body of evidence; The old “social dances”;   See, Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman,   It’s not good and you know it-  

18. If you go menstrual   Then there hath opened forth to you   A fountain of shame,   And the blood shall be cut from the people,   Lo, but hearsay, here goes Gambling against pornography’s outcomes-   So, humans are expressions,   But woman is form. Hm.  

19. Your aunts are agony, And recounteth   How old Miriam hath called, saying Her nephews had unto her a-visiting come, Usurping her of all such meats and monies As belongeth unto her personage, So that she had not had since Monday, Whence we delivered unto her a parcel And from her eyes there felleth tears, But you, incredible witness, How in the world can facts be obtained   From such non-clusive evidence? You needst bear an earthen iniquity.

20. Concubines are porcupines For others- be barren with you, Kenosha- Who was unready; For the worst hearsayer of all Is of a kind which comes corroborating   Out from delusion, And should you be accused of that which you have not done, Then just laugh at it and inculcate yourself further. For the world is a dowery toward your least resistance.

21. Go filial it’s all too much; Anything companied to the bowels In support of an assertion counts as evidence, As such, tender mercies, Your line is ceased.

22. Whence the land shall vomit you forth, Cannon fodder, And shouldst thou cross my rubicons; Your blood be cheaper than the water Which slips below it, And sacrifices for justice and accountability   Prove merely a nuisance.

23. And give a fuck For your colonialist appropriation- Once implanted, imagination Can become inflated, Creating false arbitrage. Those displaced were up to all kinds, I hate them.

24. And milk and honey Shall flow from their land As you shall see no good in them, For as with a supremacy have I blinded you.

25. And the ground which ye shall own, As teameth with unclean things Of a higher level of certainty   (i.e., as probables),   Shouldst remain, if credulous (only possibles, or),   On the bases of an otherwise Convincing argument   Against such teaming origins, Be downgraded (to impossible) As a lesser degree of certainty (than improbable), And in falsity, all shall be unclean.

26. And you shall be mine; Cede to me,  shouldst you be logically Compelled to withhold belief From nine-tenths of so-called Historetical facts about which You have really no doubt at all, But on the contrarie, cede, and,

27. Did I tell you the one about the wizard? Hearsay, you, the more unreliable spy Than my eyewitness’s can account for, Because you at least doubleth The reassurance of testimony, So to see yourself at the centre of it; A huge ego, Loving to create stories; You think you yourself very unique. False allegations have you committed, Casting the fallacy of the excluded middle fallacy By taking a psychologist hostage. Mutually, you aid selfish   And de rigueur people As are those which often take power,   Because I have created   Systems of reward that Exemplify how, sometimes,   A culture might falter, fail; Pick out the wrong hero.   If you can see yourself as very unique,   Then you are.

[artyloreviews]

Death Stranding (2019) - The Incoherent Ramblings of a Porter

Death Stranding is an equally flawed as it is innovative. Hideo Kojima’s new entry, unbound from the chains of his previous corporate affiliation is a divisive one, but offers much, both technologically and narratively. While perhaps not as memorable as the former Metal Gear series, it is an attempt at an experience that would otherwise be immediately shunned, were it not for the name and talent attached to it.

Death Stranding, much to no one’s surprise, is one of the most divisive titles to release among critics and players alike. As a longstanding fan of Hideo Kojima’s work, I too was questioning whether or not the experience of going through Death Stranding was worthwhile, as some notable review websites, following the lifting of the review embargo, refused to rate the game - let alone play it. There is some fault in me reading reviews prior to experiencing it for myself, but I believe it is necessary to disclose that particular bias, in spite of my somewhat feverish favor of Metal Gear and my almost instantaneous pre-order of the title upon it becoming available. I would go as far as to say that my acquisition of a PlayStation 4 had been somewhat influenced by the announcement of said new “independent” Hideo Kojima game all the way back in 2016. To say that I had nothing but expectations, would be an understatement. The reception being as divisive as it is makes it difficult to be objective on the topic, so I will allow myself the irregular personal remark every once in a while, if need be – consider that what you will. Think of this as less of a review, and more like the condensed ramblings of a madman. Alongside that, I will attempt to be as spoiler free as possible – at least for a time. I will make it clear whenever that is no longer true. If that sounds good to you, let us move onto the brunt of the topic…

Death Stranding is a spectacularly boring game. The eternal debate whether games should innately be fun or engaging comes to mind almost instantaneously upon first impression. You’ve most likely heard it: “Mindless busywork”. “Walking Simulator”. All signifiers of the core gaming demographic’s displeasure with whatever the fuck Death Stranding is. Its director Hideo Kojima, calls it a “strand game” – the first of its kind. Something I would consider to be one massive taunt towards the public, as if saying: “We’ve made something that didn’t exist before - a new color of game.” How much of that is true remains to be seen, as the future of strand games as a genre will likely be decided, depending on whether there will be many new strand games entering the ecosystem, or if the originator of the term remains the only example of their existence. The fundamental idea of the strand game is not an unfamiliar or an unappealing one – it’s what up until now was called “asynchronous multiplayer” or “network/online features”. Death Stranding is a single-player game at its core, but these online features are somewhat more integrated into the experience. Another term comes to mind that could perhaps adequately describe how that online element is integrated, and I believe its derivation from an antiquated term for a certain subset of MMO games is not coincidental - Death Stranding is a “persistent world”. Looking at Death Stranding as a type of MMO is not too farfetched, I believe. The importance of social aspects in that type of games is not to be understated and it just so happens to be one of the core themes not only of the strand game, but Kojima’s recent beliefs as a whole.

Surprisingly for some, the thematic elements of Death Stranding are not so obtuse and impenetrable like in the Metal Gear series, but rather surface level in comparison. In essence, it is a game about reconnecting people in an age of social isolationism. Kojima hints that the internet has served to connect people, but also widen the gap in actual physical connections through its ease of use and accessibility, making people more likely to stay at home and connect via all manner of messaging services, rather than meet face to face. This topic is also likely more culturally significant to members of countries like Japan and the USA, as the notion of isolationism in general has had a greater effect diachronically, as domestic interests outweighing the need for more outward connections has been at the center of both countries’ foreign policy at one point or another. It comes as no surprise then, that a Japanese studio sets their game in a ravaged American wasteland where conversations and physical contact are merely superficial, goods and services are delivered via a third party, and the outside is seen as hostile and the idea of connection is seen as dangerous.

The game’s story, however, seems to be disconnected from all of this. I would go as far to say, that you could change the themes for something else entirely and the implications would remain the same. The writing seems more interested in revealing the deciphered cryptic marketing materials shown prior to the game’s release. Phrases such as “Create the rope.”, “Tomorrow is in your hands.”, “Stick vs. Rope” and just the word “Strand” are littered everywhere, drawing vague lines between plot events, real world history and cultural practices, and Kojima’s own brand of conjecture. The naming conventions for people and things remain as campy as they’ve ever been, as the translation from Japanese to English seems to yet again have been the difference between something that sounds cool and western, to completely banal.

On a technological level, the game is a masterpiece. From simple rendering, to the way physics is implemented, to the effects and lighting. Kojima Productions (often abbreviated to KojiPro) have mastered their 3D scanning technology, since the creation of the Fox Engine and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Death Stranding was practically sold on the idea of featuring notable voice and film actors such as Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Troy Baker, Margaret Qualley, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Lindsay Wagner and directors such as Guillermo Del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn. Most people will likely see this as Kojima boasting about his connections to Hollywood celebrities, but the fact remains, that this is a star-studded cast of an incredibly high caliber. Particularly commendable are Troy Baker and Tommie Earl Jenkins, who through use of this technology enhance the fidelity of their in-game performance to almost life-like proportions.

The individual systems that make up the core mechanics of Death Stranding are made with the same level of attention to detail as one would expect from KojiPro. The same maximalist control scheme that spans the entire controller that was made infamous with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater makes a return in all of its “hold three different buttons and time a fourth correctly to perform an action you will have to do repeatedly” glory. However, the amount of menu time one has to indulge in has increased tenfold, as any and all rejiggering one has to do with their inventory and or interacting with the world requires about 2-3 button presses, holding a button to confirm and waiting through about 3-4 “micro-cutscenes” which are individually skippable by pressing 2-3 buttons per scene, even if you’ve seen that particular animation play thousands of times. And you will be seeing some of these animations thousands of times, because they are there for everything and anything, from the most core of mechanics, to the things you would never care to even see, let alone do. This is a very long-winded way of getting to perhaps the game’s biggest detractor:

Death Stranding does not value your time. Everything is very laborious, slow, monotonous and sluggish. While eventually you could get into the grove of things and begin to look at it in a different light, the fact remains, the game fundamentally works against you in every way, because the as view of it all likely reveals how little there is of Death Stranding to actually experience. Some have expressed that it should be looked at as more of a meditative experience, where the journey is not merely a means to an end, but rather time for you to be with your own thoughts and explore. While I wholeheartedly agree that that is somewhat of the core Death Stranding experience, I have to disagree that the game’s meditative nature and exploration are player-driven. Even the story itself has glaring pacing issues and it often wastes massive amounts of the player’s time through tedious backtracking, just so there can be a few hours of game in between cutscenes, even when everything is clearly urgent. Even some of the more appealing set pieces, get cut short as a spontaneous blurt of synth noises plays whenever even an insignificant gameplay event takes place.

Ludvig Forsell’s original score for the game is simply fantastic. While it doesn’t have the character of the scores for previous Kojima titles like those by Norihiko Hibino and Harry Gregson-Williams, it does retread the familiar cinematic tropes that seem to be more of what Kojima’s vision is shifting towards nowadays. Forsell’s prior work for Kojima on MGSV:TPP was forgettable, save for maybe one or two tracks, but for Death Stranding he seems to have had free reign to compose for this new IP, and has made some highly moving tracks that play sparingly in important plot moments, giving them that extra punch. Ludvig’s heavy use of synths is highly welcome, as it seems to be more of his specialty, rather than the grand orchestral compositions. In addition to the score, Kojima has picked out some select licensed tracks. Those seem to be of varying and sporadic quality, and barely any thematic connection to the game. It appears to be Kojima’s new thing; to just put in whatever he thinks will sound good and hope that it fits with little consideration as to its cohesion. Hideo’s recent displays of his taste in music seem to be embodied by the inclusion of one Icelandic band - Low Roar, whose entire discography is seemingly included, and frankly is the only one of the musical choices that seems to fit the tone and atmosphere of Death Stranding’s world, featuring somewhat melancholic and subdued vocals, backed by mellow synths and pads, slow drum beats and droning guitar. Low Roar seem to even have the range for more imposing tracks, as shown in the reveal trailer’s “I’ll Keep Coming” and the in-game track “Give Me an Answer”. If Low Roar were to be the only inclusion, I would frankly be happier than the menagerie of tracks that the in-game player provides. It is one of those cases, where less would mean more, as it would indicate a clearer vision than the strange assortment of tracks seemingly pulled straight from Hideo Kojima’s incredibly expensive Walkman.

I recommend you play Death Stranding for yourselves, despite my bold claims. I wish I could tell you why, but it is a Hideo Kojima game after all. Much lies in context and that frankly is as much as I can muster without going into it deeper. This is the point where I will not so reluctantly have to go into spoilers. And when I say spoilers, I actually mean “beat the game”. We will have to retread on some of the previous points with the benefit of hindsight. I’ve intentionally barely said anything about the actual content of the game but the briefest remarks, which you might find disappointing, but I assure you it is necessary. I would go as far to say that this is where the real review actually begins. Read beyond this point at your own peril:

Death Stranding is a spectacularly boring game… and it has to be. The ending of Episode 2 is what shifts the paradigm irreversibly. The moment Higgs – the particle of god that permeates all of existence, reappears following his brief appearance in the inciting incident with the corpse disposal team and kicks you in the head with the words: “So how ‘bout it? Aren’t you tired of the grind? Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for this whole time? A game over!?” Up to that point, I could understand the frustration that most people had with it. I myself even contemplated if this is worth my time, and was considering quitting the whole endeavor, genuinely seeing it as pointless busywork with little to no variation. But after it? Boy, was I reinvigorated to endure just a little bit more. Higgs’ fourth wall break was just a subtle wink, a hint that all of this was intentional. It recontextualized the sluggishness and the drab grinding, where it was used to make the eventual reveal hit harder, the reveal that there is so much more to Death Stranding, so much we people don’t know. It makes you feel like you’ve passed a trial by fire, where you’ve been forced to use only the most basic mechanics for the first twenty or so hours, delivering everything by foot with no aid, only to be among the few who have shown the resilience to be rewarded with confirmation that it was not all in vain. The world is miserable, depressing and unforgiving. Small mistakes can be irreversible and that carries the weight of constant hypervigilance. But with Episode 3 Death Stranding shows its true face. Suddenly you have more structures than you know what to do with, you can build roads, you can drive vehicles, you can enhance your abilities with exoskeletons, you can customize your backpack with actual useful trinkets, covers and pockets. From a game that was slow and drab, it turned into a game about actually “Rebuilding America” piece by piece, creating infrastructure and using the online features to make the game better not just for yourself but for everyone!

What a strand game truly is, is very akin to an MMO, in more than one sense; and in my opinion it is frankly better. There is this anecdote I read on Twitter while I was playing through the game. It was about how the simple act of placing down a rope over some difficult terrain carried weight, because you wanted to throw the rope back, so someone else who is following your path, can use it too; how no other game does that or makes you think of feel that way. And that is what I think is at the core of Death Stranding’s gameplay loop, distilled into one meaningful choice. No longer do you have to thing only for your benefit, but for those who will follow in your footsteps.

Building structures is your stake into the future. When you finish the game, you will most likely not come back to it for a long time, but those structures will remain, even after you’re gone (at least until the timefall eats away through them) and other people will make use of them to accomplish their goals. I can say that there are few experiences as immersive as creating a path, that evades a camp of MULEs and a BT field though a perilous mountainside and seeing that someone else is using it. That single message that pops up onto your screen, makes it feel worth it. Even the simple act of walking down a path makes it so that if enough people walk along it, it will turn into a beaten path, which is much easier to see and usually has no snow on it making traversal less difficult – a mechanic that I do not know how I will live without in other exploration-based games. And KojiPro have made an effort to make sure you know that is intentional, as seen in some of the interviews and e-mails you get, where they discuss how things like oxytocin and “likecin” are produced from physical contact and receiving likes as a porter (or even how receiving too many can lead to addiction, like in the case of MULEs and Homo Demens). There is one particular correspondence with the crew of the first waystation you ever connect up to the chiral network, and how they’ve slowly stopped using the synthetic oxytocin that you delivered to them and began producing it naturally, because you’ve given them hope and they’ve been going outside and celebrating with each other – restoring physical contact. I can’t even explain the weird sensation of meeting your first set of NPC porters out and about. After such a long time of speaking only to holograms, beginning to doubt if there even is anyone out there – meeting two confused porters, running around doing deliveries with tools strapped to their suits and being able to wave to them (or even trade items) is such a surreal experience.

Those are some of the more immersive elements of the game and frankly, I wouldn’t mind to see those explored further. However, Kojima had other intentions, and that is where I and the game’s story diverge. Sam Porter Bridges is so far from me as a player, that he might as well not even be controlled by me. His actions in the plot are so oblivious, that it is hard to sympathize with him, especially so during the final hours of the game. Fragile literally forces into the plot your love for Amelie, as if the estranged brother, who does not give a single fuck about his family or his country that (mind you) no longer exists, cares about this “sister” of his, that he is even somewhat forced into going to save. The way she manipulates him into kicking Fragile to the curb is also one of the moment that drew an even larger divide between where I was and when Sam supposedly was, and I surmise most players felt the same. There is this sentiment that most people don’t even refer to him as Sam, but rather as Norman Reedus, since Sam is not even an empty vessel for the player, but something even more abstract; something like a character that you only get to pilot in between bad decisions made in cutscenes.

The eventual reveal that the entire main goal of the game was in vain from the beginning, that you were being manipulated by Amelie, who was never in danger and needed no saving, just so that the overly forced End of the World plotline can take place, presented as a major subversion, felt expected. “Just like how The Patriots turn out to have been manipulating Snake in Metal Gear Solid from the beginning.”, I told myself when first listening to that pivotal Mario and Princess “Beach” dialogue. The fight with the big BT with Higgs stuck to it, firing rockets at the middle section and the radar dis-- I mean right shoulder of the BT genuinely felt like fighting Metal Gear Rex - especially with Troy Baker screaming in reverberated pain like Cam Clarke did in MGS1. That, followed by a hand to hand fistfight atop Re-- I mean, in a sea of tar with fighting game health bars and stamina meters to save the woman in the background – just like in my Metal Gear video game. It’s pretty blatant and it doesn’t really take a keen eye to see it.

“Getting a little touchy-feely there, Mr. Aphenphosmphobia. Well, congratulations. You won the game. Too bad you didn’t stop shit…” is where the game probably should have ended. What follows is what I would consider to be Kojima’s weirdest decision to date – explaining everything that was confusing and tying up loose ends in the same game that creates them. The next four-five chapters are just that – exposition dump after exposition dump. Nothing left for consideration, no pondering as to what something means. Kojima singlehandedly offered a MGS4 to his MGS1. A key to all questions at the very end, so that nothing is left uncertain.

Which takes me to my next point – the interviews. Slowly but steadily, the idea of the “codec conversation” in Kojima’s repertoire is phased out by optional cassette tapes or in the case of Death Stranding, actual text exposition dumps. Previously you’d at least get to appreciate someone reading them to you in character, but now you have to go through hundreds of emails and interviews by yourself. I can’t begin to imagine what understanding some of the concepts of the game is like without going through the interviews, even if I haven’t gotten to read them, as it most likely requires 100% completion. In Metal Gear, seeking out new codec conversations in random parts and events of Metal Gear, ensured there was quite a large amount of replayability and you’d usually find new details about characters or helpful tips and strategies on repeat a playthrough, but now, once you’ve completed the game, there is nothing new or different – It’s always going to be the same interviews, in the same place, at the same time. Death Stranding has no replay value whatsoever. Once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen all of it.

Speaking of in-game players and Walkman earlier reminded me that there is also the surprising absence of a portable music player in-game, for what is probably the most musically saturated Kojima title in years, as music is only available to you while resting in your private room or in a safe house, where you can listen to the owner’s collection of tracks, even those obtained later in the game. This is in a game, where about 90% of your time with it is in complete silence, save only the odd interjection by Sam, mumbling something to himself and the sounds of the wind and falling rocks in the distance. I feel like I would genuinely feel so much better and could stomach most of the detracting elements of Death Stranding, if I could only play some Low Roar, as I discover a nice view and decide to take a short rest to take it all in. If a game like Metal Gear Solid 4 could have an MP3 player in it and even load some podcast in for you in the goddamn war-ravaged Middle East, then surely we could have had one in this one as well, right?

The quality of Kojima’s writing also varies wildly, as genuine moments of subtlety and clever world-building are followed by incessant amounts of tutorialization, presented as dialogue that an actual human is supposed to produce in a way that sounds natural. All of that, mixed with hundreds, if not thousands, of different ways of saying “Thank you, you’ve really saved us out here!”, “Could you deliver this for me?” and “Boy, we sure do feel connected out here, thanks to you!”, littered with thousands of emoticons and expressions of adoration for your skillful and vitally important delivery of a couple of packages of old magazines and some rocks. This, complemented by the late realization that the world of Death Stranding isn’t actually that large in scale, so much so that I would bet you can pinpoint exactly were on the map a location is, given only a screenshot of a random assortment of moss and rubble; all makes the over-exaggeration of the effects of your feats seem like genuine lies, placed there to make you feel a false sense of accomplishment. Perhaps they do it with good and earnest intent in rewarding you for the things you’ve done for them, but you know what you’ve delivered, and you know it’s not that important most of the time.

A section of the game that I was particularly fond of was Episode 11 – i.e. the final episode for Cliff Unger in Vietnam. I recommend you all play that sequence again via the figurines behind Sam in his break room, but with “The End” by The Doors playing in the background. The whole bit is clearly an homage to Apocalypse Now and it almost feels timed to the beat. I felt like it was supposed to play, but they couldn’t get the license to it, so I added it on top myself and at that point I could feel Kojima and I enjoying the sentiment on the same wavelength. This is also the episode where Mads Mikkelsen finally gets enough screen time for you to really get an appreciation for his performance, which up until now had been quite subdued. Cliff is fear-inducing and nightmarish upon introduction, his voice reverberating throughout the battlefield, but with the events of Episode 11 you begin to see his more tragic side of the story’s main events. Mikkelsen lends his talent completely to the whims of Kojima, and that makes for an outstanding performance, much like those by Troy Baker and Tommie Earl Jenkins, yet somehow felt misused and underplayed, as Cliff simply fades away from existence.

The game’s ending has me holding conflicting opinions: at the same time, I genuinely do not understand why anyone would care enough for Amelie, not to empty a clip into her back, much as I did immediately upon being given the option, and at the same time despising having to just witness the non-decision you have to make in the game’s final moments. Having no choice but to hug her and listen to her ponder upon existence, and eventually having her make the decision herself whether or not to initiate judgement day. You only have to run around aimlessly and listen to her monologue about how much she cares, as your trigger finger is still itching to end it all, as the game eventually wins itself. Stylistically impeccable and unnerving, as the uncertainty of what is going to happen, continues to grow, only to climax with a whimper of what feels like a glorified deus ex machina. This is followed by Tommie Earl Jenkins’ powerful final scene, breaking down a character that up until now had seemed one-note and bereft of any emotional depth, only to reinvigorate him and shed any doubt as to who and what he represents in the world of Death Stranding. That however is thrown away, as it steps aside for the epilogue with Lou, as Sam has somehow synthesized a connection to him exactly as Deadman takes him away to delete his memories and their connection, yet Sam manages to carry it to the very end, where it is ultimately revealed that after all the displays of his renewed connection to the people and the world around him, he still doesn’t care for anyone or his country, burning his cuffs and forgoing it all, yet Lou is somehow exempt from Sam Porter Bridges’ final moment of decicive introversion. Even after all of this, Kojima adds one final series of subversions, as Sam is revealed to have been Cliff Unger’s son, through whose eyes we’ve been seeing those dream sequences, finally stitched together into one cohesive whole at the very end, revealing a backstory that ties up loose ends no one was really asking to have tied up. And also, Lou is apparently Louise – a girl. The ending is divisive, because you have the actual tangible story of Sam growing to accept people in his life, getting used to the taste of Fragile’s cryptobiotes and building a relationship with her, ridding himself of his phobia and getting in touch with the people around him like Deadman and Die-Hardman, connecting everyone in the UCA into a whole and living to see another day – only to throw it away at the last minute, but not entirely, out of fear that something would be left unaccounted for. It could have been so much more, or if not, at least somewhat better executed.

When it comes to technical execution, the game is spotty, but ultimately very well made. The physics of just walking from point A to point B are probably the most impressive thing you’ll probably experience this decade, even if it is sometimes unwieldy and comical. The whole element of keeping balance and the implementation of inverse kinematics to any terrain, is a marvel to behold and it will frankly be difficult to play anything that doesn’t have that much depth anytime soon. One could only wish they had put that much attention to detail into the vehicles, which drive like a load of bricks even on flat ground. When it comes to pure visual fidelity, the Decima Engine is stunning in its execution of photorealistic graphics when in the hands of KojiPro. The amount of landscaping that has taken place is probably mind-blowing, as a lot of the routes that the game takes you through are plotted in such a way as to lead to wide open areas of land, where the game’s more introspective moments occur, where you’ve just crossed a difficult to pass field of BTs or hostile terrain and the camera pulls back from Sam and captures the vista that unfolds before you, as the melancholic tones of a Low Roar begin to pierce the silence. I say it takes you there, because for those who have tried to make some more extreme routes, will know well that there are actually quite a lot of invisible walls all around you at all times, allowing routes to mainly take place in certain sections of the map. You still have the freedom to place whatever items in whatever location you wish, but there is almost always a clear alternate route that you can take, which more often than not has been placed there by the developers and only needs you to place the ladders and ropes along it. This is what I meant earlier in the piece by the exploration not necessarily being player-driven. The invisible hand of KojiPro is there to guide you at all times, as you can never really stray too far from the intended path, believing that you are doing so of your own free will and creativity.

Death Stranding is a divisive game because it really tries so hard to be this artistically extravagant video game with great implications, but ultimately renders its greatest threat as a Mary Sue very late into the game, way beyond the average span of interest, while it already has a very charismatic and well-defined villain in the face of Higgs from the very beginning, who gets somewhat shortchanged into being the self-insert fourth-wall-breaking tool, who is only played as a means to someone else’s end. Everything past Episode 11 feels unnecessary and diminishes from what the game had already done perfectly until now. The game’s length in pacing are all over the place as well: Excluding what I would consider to be the mandatory grind of Episode 2, everything else genuinely seems like padding for time, going back and forth across the whole map multiples of times for seemingly arbitrary reasons, haphazardly going into BT infested zones for items of sentimental value, while the threat of annihilation looms over every encounter with them, and by the time something actually engaging happens, you’re often too exhausted to do it.

At the same time, it is also offers this incredible amount of progression and gradation compared to how you started out merely two chapters ago with your ever-expanding arsenal of infrastructure changing the fundamental core of the game. It features all-around outstanding performances (excluding some awful line-reads by Léa Seydoux, which is a shame, because her character could have been so much more, only to be reduced to a fast travel NPC with a catchphrase, which she never seems to be able to pronounce). There is the amazing social strand system that takes the game from a regular single-player slog, to a somewhat indescribable social multiplayer experience, where everyone it working towards the same goal, but helping each other along the way, making travel more efficient and hauling larger loads easier. It also presents this horrifying yet beautiful world, that gets easier to traverse the more you know about its hazards and people, and in a way builds sympathy for the plight these people endure in their post-apocalyptic dystopia. Death Stranding’s world is somehow empty, yet full of substance, yet one-note in scope, yet thematically rich. A game that is equal measure incredibly gratifying, boring as shit, visually and mechanically impressive, a surface level social commentary, a love letter to war and kaiju films, an Icelandic alt pop album and a walking simulator – truly a feat only Hideo Kojima himself and Kojima Productions could accomplish.

7/10

[askagamedev]

"Game critics" often talk about putting critical plot points in DLC, and then when they describe the story in said DLC it's clear that the original game's story works perfectly fine without them. But that makes me wonder where the story in the DLCs came from. Is it usually a cut-for-time-or-budget thing, like other early DLC? Ideas that came later (and if so, how much does player feedback affect things)? Ideas that the devs wanted to work in, but that would just clutter the original narrative?

Good DLC story content tends to be stuff that meets these general criteria:

Is self-contained (i.e. the critical path of the core game remains a complete experience)

Adds additional context and lore to the main game

Is sufficiently large in scope that the players feel like they have accomplished something

Has some fanservice for the core fans (Optional)

These requirements generally mean that any ideas for the DLC can start from bits and pieces of cut mainline content, but often needs some significant massaging in order to get it to a point where we want it. We might repurpose some quests and some rewards for the story DLC, but we may need to combine several pieces and rejigger some of the story in order to get to sufficient critical mass for the DLC to feel substantial enough. It’s usually easier to start with concepts from cut content, since we’d already started developing it before we realized it wasn’t high enough priority to finish. 

We also can’t always repurpose old content for the story DLC. Like.. for example, if there’s some sort of new unifying game mechanic in the DLC or expansion (think artifact weapons in WoW Legion), we may need to build content around that new mechanic and old stuff might take too much effort to repurpose. The concept behind the old stuff might not fit or might not be fun anymore because the game design went a different direction from when we originally came up with the cut content. The cut content could also be too big in scope - a major game mechanic or element that we don’t have room to fully flesh out within the scope of the DLC. That sort of idea might actually be back burnered for a new game or full expansion, rather than DLC.

Generally, what we care about is creating a cohesive, engaging, and self-contained experience that lasts for at least a couple of hours. We have a limited amount of development time to do that, so we try to fit what we can into it. That prioritization means figuring out what we can repurpose from the cut content pile and what we need to build that’s completely new. That’s mostly up to DLC leadership keeping tight control, maintaining a good vision for the content, and coordinating with the mainline development leadership.

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[bomberqueen17]

saturday

I decided again that discretion was the better part of valor, and instead of leaving early this morning to spend three weeks at the farm, I rejiggered the schedule so I’ll be going for one week, then back a week, and then I’ll be spending three weeks at the farm-- gives us more time to get the new inventory thing settled at work, gives me time to begin winterizing the yurt and take measurements and then come back and make more quilts. yeah. 

Also, I decided to leave Sunday morning instead of this morning, and so I’ve spent today actually being productive in my own house. Four loads of laundry, including washing the chair pads for the kitchen chairs, one of which got red wine spilled absolutely all over it the other day. It was a perfect day for line-drying-- intermittently sunny, but a steady and quite heavy breeze out of the west, which sucked/snapped the linen sheets dry in like literally twenty minutes. (I have discovered that linen sheets can only be hung to dry, and only outdoors, and cannot be used at all if it’s not outdoor-clothesline weather, which is fascinating. The dryer irons intractable creases into them; hanging over a door crinkles them. They must be on a line and must snap in the breeze. Only then do they come out soft and usable.)

And I also cut out a version of the -- oh, I don’t think I mentioned, I borrowed the Alabama Stitch Book from the library on the recommendation of mmmm was it @missbuster I think it was?? thank you!!! -- anyway. It includes a pattern for the T-Shirt Corset, and for a wonder it was still present in the library book, but of course an XL is for a 44″ bust and that’s quiiiiite a bit shy of my measurement, so I traced it onto some newsprint and then went around and added like uhhh hhh IDK a bunch around the edges, and cut it out and just gave it a shot on an old bleach-stained black shirt and a newish giant dark gray shirt Dude picked up at a tech conference with the logo of some long-ago startup on it. (Because, of course, Ms. Chanin’s instructions have you lay it all out on a single shirt, but she also is assuming you are less than 44″ in circumference at your largest point, and so the layout directions were also useless.) (I do like the book, I like it so much I bought it-- for my BFF, who has a bust measurement of maybe 40″, so she’ll be able to use it as written.)

I appear to have missed the straight of grain on at least one of the pieces, which was bound to happen since I couldn’t use her layout and also I’m working on a too-small table, but apart from that, it went together pretty well. I also did not hand-sew the entire thing or in fact a single stitch on it, because while I admire her slow fashion aesthetic, I own a fucking sewing machine, and would like to know sooner than several weeks from now whether the pattern needs serious adjustment or not.

So I basted it all together with my sewing machine, coincidentally with hot pink machine embroidery thread because that’s what I had in there, and tried it on and then adjusted a couple of the seams, and then all of the lower seams had utterly failed to line up at all, so I cut it off level with the shortest one, and then I dug out an old broomstick skirt my BFF gave me that I’d kept with the intention of using it in a different refashion that didn’t work out, and instead of continuing to save it for that purpose, I just cut it off before I could reconsider, and then I took everything upstairs to the serger, and instantly broke a thread and had to rethread the thing so I decided, fuck it, I’m putting the hot pink embroidery thread in the upper looper spot (that’s the one that shows), and doing all the stitching on the exterior the way the pattern calls for (it’s to show off your handsewing, and like, i get it, but I’m not doing that), and so I just sat there and rethreaded the serger like four times but sure enough, in the end, I have a new dress. So that’s not too shabby.

I also cut a circle skirt out of a discarded twin fitted sheet-- which neatly wound up not using the badly-worn parts of the sheet-- and found the sleeves of an earlier cut-apart t-shirt to be pockets, and the waistband I cut off the broomstick skirt will do to gather the circle skirt to, and then I can sew that to the top of another promotional t-shirt I took in the shoulders of and hand-embroidered the neckline of and cut into a crop top I won’t wear and had figured on sewing onto a skirt. Then I’ll have another t-shirt dress.

I was so productive because I was procrastinating making another yurt quilt, by the way. But it was nice, and I’ll take it, and also I have no idea how to attach pockets into a circle skirt so I should look that up, I started and that’s when I broke the upper looper thread and abandoned that project, so. 

Anyway I’ll try to take pictures of the completed dress soonish, we’ll see how that goes. 

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 1, Episode 13, The Second David Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Chris: I’m Chris Downey, Executive Producer.

John: And Writer of this episode.

Chris: And Writer.

John: John Rodgers, Executive Producer and Oo-Writer. On my 13th Guiness for the DVD series.

[All Laugh]

Chris: For those of you keeping score.

John: Keeping score at home.

Dean: And I’m Dean Devlin the- one of the Executive producers and Director of this episode.

John: Alright what was our problem with this episode? We had broken up the team and done just about the best season finale you can imagine in episode 12. We did not know if we were getting a second season and we all hate cliffhanger endings.

Dean: Right.

John: So we really wanted to get the crew back together and my god how do you do that? And, you know, and this really killed us this- we hammered this first act- we had the back half of this written for ages.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And really just hammered the first act of this to hell.

Chris: It helped having a little time between the two episodes.

John: Yes.

Chris: On the show three months have passed, so that kinda gave you a chance to reset.

John: Yeah.

Dean: One of the things that I loved in this opening, guys, talk about how you guys came up with this. This idea that we’re seeing all of them break in, and of course as the audience I'm assuming they're doing this together, only to discover that none of them knew the other guy’s were doing this. How did that idea come about?

John: It was originally written that they were- it was originally written that they were all practicing a break in together.

Chris: Right.

John: And the idea was that he would go and have his meeting with them to tell them screw you I'm coming. ‘Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!’ And they would be practicing the break in and they would fail miserably and it would be we’ve just basically written a check we can't cash. Our mouth has written a check we can't cash. And then it was- it was weirdly static because the group was- why were they back together again? We felt like we hadn't gone anywhere off the previous episode.

Chris: The dry run didn't really- in a neutral location didn't really give you anything and you had the idea to bring it to where...

John: Why don’t we- basically, first off, like we’re gonna steal the gallery anyways, so let’s see it. We haven't really seen where we’re gonna be doing the crime, yet, and we should establish that as early as possible. I like very aggressive first acts, which is why often they're intercut between two or three, like, pipe and execution or two or three different storylines, and then it was just one of those things in the room where it was like, ‘what if they don't know each other’s there?’ and that just opened it up. The idea that- cause that was it, the question was, ‘alright when did they get back together after they've broke up?’ And that became, ‘what if they didn't?’

Chris: What if they didn't?

John: And that gave us this really, a ton of fun opening.

Dean: I tell you, I still laugh every time I watch this when Sophie turns around and goes, [whispers] ‘what are you doing here?’

[All Laugh]

John: Yeah. And Parker says the same thing back to her. And at that point the characters were so well established, it was really here's the setting just throw the actors in. You know what the responses are gonna be.

Dean: Right.

John: I think it was Lawrence Block who said, ‘you really know your characters when you know if they walk across a dark room and bang their shin on the coffee table what they're gonna say.’

[All Laugh]

John: And that's a quick reminder that she knows Nate’s wife Maggie; that she would recognize her to establish the stakes down there. And this is great, by the way, that's a green screen behind them. This is shot in the upstairs of the-

Dean: Of the same airport.

Chris: Same airport.

John: Yeah, this is the second floor.

[All Laugh]

John: And that's really the crux in shooting TV is, we've got a lot of locations for, you know, a TV show. Which we have to because you can't con people in your office. I mean we’re not a hospital show or lawyer show - we can't just go to the courtroom, so really the location managers job is to find someplace we can do four or five different looks at. And finding locations that do that...

Dean: So difficult.

John: Yeah, it's incredibly difficult.

Dean: Now you know we talked in the first part of this two part season finale about how we worked a little bit backwards, that we saw the location first and then kinda said alright well let's rejigger the script to match this. Well one of the things that I liked very much was these four stories.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Of the main museum. So quite dutifully, you guys wrote action on three different floors simultaneously.

John: Screw you Devlin!

Chris: Dutifully? I remember being there at the time going ‘John we already worked this out!’ ‘Shut up, shut up. He wants it this way! Figure it out!’

John: I will say, this is because we’re all very good friends and you often- the whole idea is that you're allowed to argue with your friends when you’re making television. Dean had brought us to this location we had really planned out the perfect crime and then we show up he's like, ‘it's got four stories, it's completely open, and I want rappelling.’ And we walk into the room and he was like, ‘what do you think?’ ‘I’m sorry Dean, it's gonna take me more than 30 seconds to come up with another perfect crime!’ And we lived there. We literally lived there for two days just walking around looking at it and pulling out notes of other con stuff we hadn't done.

Chris: God bless you, figured it out a way to work in the rappelling and all we lost was the hazmat suits.

John: Yeah, all we lost was the hazmat suits. We’ll use the hazmat suits in season 2.

Dean: Well this sequence not only is it on three different floors, but they all have to see each other at some point and I remember-

John: That was our vengeance, by the way, ‘like okay you want four floors? Here's four floors Devlin! Shoot this!’

Dean: Well at the end of the shooting day, I was in a pancic because I didn't know if what I had done was actually gonna cut together. And I remember coming here that night-

John: You cut a rough draft of this version that night after we wrapped like a 14 hour day.

Dean: We came here cause I was so nervous that I didn't have the coverage and our- Sunny Baskin cut this episode and he's a brilliant editor, and he'd already roughed in something by the end-

Chris: Terrific.

John: Oh that's great, knowing that you'd be freaking out.

Dean: And it was amazing.

John: That's the glass by the way. That's the glass from the first season finale.

Dean: First part.

John: Yeah, it’s basically in that episode.

Chris: 12 Step, too.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Yeah they keep passing it back and forth.

John: In the first episode it's Sterling to Nate and the challenge is to you sir, and in this one it’s Nate to Sterling and the challenge is to you sir. And the idea is that in their friendship the glass became like this sort of-

Dean: It's the glove.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Chris: Maybe talk a little bit about this location. This is not actually a museum this is a-

John: This is the campus building where we see briefly in the first half. And yeah, utterly abandoned and- the fact that he just gets a cheap shot in there is lovely.

Dean: I always love how these guys always try to get a- and again that's a call back to the pilot, when in the reverse situation, Aldis bangs Eliot's head against the car door putting him inside.

John: Just to give him a little something back. Yeah, you can really watch like the pilot and then the two part season finale and match a lot of them shot to shot.

Chris: One of them’s coming up.

John: Yeah.

Chris: One of the iconic shots.

John: Oh yeah the pull up. The car, that’s right.

Chris: Yeah the car, yeah.

John: And yeah, so we had a basically had the place- the run of the place and then we built this entire- this is Lauren Crasco she built the entire lobby to a museum. I've been in museums that don't look this good.

Chris: Look at that.

Dean: Here's a classic comedy beat.

John: Which we rarely do.

Dean: That I've just always wanted to do.

[All Laugh]

John: Oh and by the way that's Gina just realizing she needs to take off the shoes, that’s not written at all. And timing them to come out, Aldis is still handcuffed.

Chris: This is it. I love this, I love this so much.

Dean: This is to match the pilot, when they come out of the the first heist.

John: That matches the first heist, except the first one they're in control, in this one they're almost about to get caught. It's almost like the directors thought about this. This location I love. This is up the hill from the college.

Dean: Right.

John: This was on the campus.

Chris: And this was the president of the college lived there?

John: I don’t know, but this was a night- this was built by like a steel magnate in the 20s, right?

Dean: That's right.

John: And it had a swimming pool, an abandoned swimming pool in the basement.

Dean: Indoor, underground swimming pool and a strange bar area downstairs. It was very-

Chris: Right out of Raymond Chandler.

Dean: Totally.

John: It was! You totally expected to find the like a dead flapper on the concrete down there. It was very- it was really great house. And this became our favorite headquarters. As much as I love the offices we had, there was something about just the looseness of the- well, the space was lit beautifully, I mean, it really was gorgeous.

Dean: Again, hats off to Dave Connell, our DP.

John: It was really gorgeous.

Chris: If we ever get to do the Leverage tour, come to LA we'll take you walking around this.

John: We’re thinking about doing that just to make a little money for second season.

Dean: This is- this scene is a scene that I think is particularly well written, and fun for the actors to play because it's driving home why this team is apart, and watching how Nate pulls them back together again.

John: It's interesting that- it's an interesting arc over the course of the season, where he doesn't want to lead them, they talk him into it, and by the end of it he realizes whether he wants to or not, he has to pull them back together in order for everyone to get the closure that they need, including him.

Dean: And you do get a sense that he really does love these people.

John: Yes; in in his own broken way, you know, he understands that they need each other.

Dean: There's a very subtle thing he'll do in a minute when he does this whistle, and everyone makes their way over to look at the plans, and of course being who they are they cant help but wanna solve the crime. But if you just watch Tim Hutton's face as he's slowly backing away, watching them look at the plans, it tells you more about how his character feels about the other characters than really anything else he says .

John: ‘Oh look at that, aren’t you hooked?’

Dean: It's such a daddy looking at his kids discovering a toy.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Oh there you go, you're absolutely hooked. And that's the whole psychology; he chased them, he knows them, and to a great degree they're all as broken as he is. They have to solve the problem; they just don't have the same skills he does, you know, which gives us the later the hitter, hacker, grifter, thief.

Dean: And it shows, again, his profiling skills. His ability to kinda be two steps ahead in the chess game.

John: I love- And then he does the kind of lay down the law scene and talks them through it. It’s a lovely little scene.

Dean: This is a little inside baseball...

John: Well that’s what we’re here for.

Dean: When we shot this scene, I thought he did a terrific performance and we cut it together - everyone thought it was, but Tim listened to the way he did the lines as he walks forward and says this thing about ‘I already told them’ and he said, “I wanna redo that.”

John: Wanted ADR it?

Dean: Yeah. There was no reason to on a technical level, he just felt he could do something special with it, so he came in here and lo and behold, he did elevate it just a subtle amount, but it was absolutely worth doing. And one of those things that really only someone who really knew their character inside and out, could tell.

John: Yeah and a guy who’s directed. You know, the director part of his brain was like, ‘yeah you could have got a little more out of that’. And this is, again, with the food there, this is the kind of recurring theme. This is their snacks, this is their home, this is their living room, this is what they do for fun.

Dean: Yeah. They enjoy this stuff.

John: ‘Biblical’

Dean: This was the level little twist on, you know, we do a lot of scenes where everybody walks out of the room and we linger on Nate thinking. Here's, like, the opposite.

John: Yeah, because he knows he's in control at this point; he absolutely knows what he's gonna do. He's got an agenda, he's walking in with purpose every time. It’s- by the way, it's interesting, when you got a five hander - trying to get people in and out of these goddamn rooms.

Dean: Oh boy.

John: And the blocking and in writing you know we try to help- the writers try to help the directors, trying to split it up and make sure they're not all there at any given point, but then you have to cook up, you know, there's a lot of times Nate walks into the room with purpose and you have no idea what purpose. It just- obviously he's got stuff to do, and it starts the scene.

Chris: There's just something about the lighting and the way this whole-

John: This became our favorite location.

Chris: It's a really warm and I don't know what it was about it.

John: Yeah, and this is the low tech scene the plans and stuff. This kinda really brought home our love of process, because here's the thing, we spend a lot of time in the writers room trying to figure out how to do these crimes. That's our process scene. So we’re bored with that then we just write the heist. And this was really because the character beats were coming across in the process. When we went back to it, you know like, season 2, you can do a lot more stuff than just them hanging out, figuring out crimes. I like watching them do it. I genuinely enjoy watching them do it.

Chris: We kept wanting to make better screens. ‘We need screens where its like Minority Report where they touch the screen and they move the pictures’ and here they've got planes, and there’s paper.

Dean: Drawings and strings.

John: And the emotional agenda .

Dean: Yeah.

John: They're all basically- It's a Sophie/Eliot and Hardison/Parker scene, happening at the same time Nate is trying to get them to plan the con.

Dean: I love the reminder here, you know, of how angry Eliot is at Sophie for having betrayed-

John: Yeah, he does not forgive her; he will not forgive her until, you know.

Dean: Until he gets an apology.

John: And to me there was always- we played around with a scene we never wrote, where Hardison basically talks him into it, and it was a Hardison/Eliot scene that kind of focused on their relationship, but honestly this things jammed, we just didn't have time. There's a lot going on.

Dean: Yeah. Well in fact, there's some lovely scenes that were cut from this episode that will come back, you know, which is when Parker steals the pills-

John: Oh yeah!

Dean: -and Aldis does the woman who's overdosing.

John: The dying grandma! The dying grandma.

Chris: Oh, that was great.

John: That's right we shot that, too. Can we put that on the extras?

Dean: That'll definitely be on the deleted scenes on this DVD.

John: Theres an entire separate con, to set up the museum con, that we never see and then we just cover it in a line. And it works, it works fine.

Dean: But it's a fun scene to see.

John: Who is that? Who is that gentleman sneezing?

Dean: This would be- we call him the king of hold, affectionately. I first worked with Erick Avari in Stargate where he played Kasuf, the leader of the other planet. He did a small part for me in Independence Day, and then the second Librarian movie, he played main villain and we brought him all the way to Africa. And he worked for 2 days and be off for a week, he’d work for a day, be off for a week, so we called him the king of hold.

John: Digital shutters there.

Dean: Digital shutters, but mirroring the actual shutters that were actually there.

John: There were real shutters there - that was one of the attractions of it. And then I love, however, when they say, ‘okay we can turn them on for you’ and we’re all ready, we’re all gathered to get test footage and everything-

Chris: ‘Better put your earplugs in, these are gonna be pretty loud.’

John: We turn the thing and the alarm starts going off and they come down at about an inch an hour.

Dean: Right. [Laughs]

John: [sound effects] Like, okay, that was somewhat less dramatic than we had hoped for. And so we wound up building- we wound up shooting it actually then speeding it up.

Dean: And then mixing it with some digital ones, that's right.

John: I love, by the way, the opening of this - if young actors, if you go back to the beginning of the scene, you can watch Mark Sheppard subtly upstage everyone. It's not super subtle, but it's just a nice stage technique.

Dean: And Kari, in her recognizing the man who was flirting with her at the party, just gives such a great little performance.

John: ‘Oh, yeah.’ That's also an interesting look that kind of really established that Kari and Sheppard knew each other from when he was Nate’s friend. And there was a softness in that relationship I wasn’t expecting. This is great. And this is something we almost never play.

Chris: Yeah.

John: This is Nate and Eliot bickering, which we almost never do. And Chris by the way-

Dean: And Eliot having the upper hand.

John: Yes. And Chris, by the way, plainly using the voice he uses when he seduces women. This is not Eliot by any stretch- plainly Chris Kane putting on the phone voice.

Dean: And this end here was all improv. And it was just great.

John: Well the hot coffee bit, cause it's really, it’s funny, ‘cause I-

Dean: The ‘you're putting your hair up?’ ‘I’m being the-’

John: ‘-the professor dude!’ I love that. That's all improvised. She probably just wants some hot coffee was great. Chris came up to me right before they shot this like, ‘how dirty?’ And I was like, ‘medium dirty.’

[All Laugh]

John: This is shot in the front yard of one of the university buildings that looks like a frickin cafe. We just, you know.

Dean: Yeah it was such a great location, we just lived there.

Chris: And this was on the stage.

John: Yeah. Inside in the van. And this is great because, again, Nate’s not comfortable. Nate not in control is not good, and this is kind of where we gave Kari all the complaints the other characters had about Nate for her to vocalize, so they could kind of- it was cathartic to the group to here someone else say this.

Dean: And then the kick on the ground to say he was terrible in bed.

John: Just a little- I love the reactions everyone did there - how uncomfortable he plays knowing that Nate is watching.

Dean: Watching everything.

John: Yeah, exactly. Kari really takes a ridiculous amount of delight in here. I often wonder what Tim was like as a director for Kari to launch in to this quite so [mumbles]. She really dug in on that bit.

Dean: Tim gets to play such a reversal here, given that he's always in control, he's always the one whos withholding, and now he's trying to explain-

John: Oh, I love parkers ‘Ooh, there's no save from that’. Yeah, he’s trying to explain- Tell you what, again, the joy of a television show is that the characters change, the actors- you have 12 hours to find what these actors can do. Nate being somewhat annoyed and out of his depth is definitely becoming the kind of the season 2 vibe.

Chris: Yeah

Dean: Oh yeah.

John: He's just- its a bit more they need him in the life more than he needs to be.

Chris: I love her eating gummy bears, too. Sitting there and...

John: Yeah, ‘I feel used’. And it was interesting, cause the originally that was done with them offstage, and seeing them sort of framed there really opens up the space and, you know. ‘Going great. Going great.’ And that’s, again, the old friends vibe that's kind of everyone's locked into at this point.

Dean: Now this is an interesting bit, because it starts off with a bit of humor and it becomes literally the most dramatic scene of the entire series. And the pay off to everything that we set up about the son in the pilot.

John: Now we shot the death of the son full on. We shot the entire sequence when we did the pilot, right? So that we could use that footage- we never used the footage in the pilot.

Dean: Well we used just the beginning part where he's looking at this son, but we never used the part where he ran in and picks his son up.

John: And you had argued, correctly, you had argued that this is really dramatic, it would throw off the tone, the pilots supposed to be light, and I was like, ‘ahh you don't really see what happens’ and I will admit the first time I saw this cut together, I cried. I was like, ‘You’re right, this was devastating.’ Not only for the performance in the flashback, but what Tim is doing live.

Chris: Well, I mean, his- to me he carries the whole thing.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Not even that scene.

John: You don't even need the flashback, but the flashback plus this is devastating.

Dean: And we parsed it out over the course of the season. We saw a little bit more every time we did the flash, it was a little bit longer than the last time. And here we played it out and then of course, we got to bring Kari into the flashback which is really the coda of that.

Chris: And Dean, what went into setting it here? I mean, did you think about other places indoors?

John: For example, one without a fountain 8 feet from the actors?

Chris: No, no but I’m just saying, it would have been...

John: I'm giving him shit.

Chris: You know was- what went into that?

Dean: I thought it was actually trying to go against the cliche of it being night and dark and gloomy. That if it's a beautiful setting, its outdoors, it's a little bit, you know, the thing where if you're gonna break up with your girlfriend, you wanna be in a public place.

Chris: Right, right.

Dean: Well, he’s about to tell her the most painful, private thing in the world, so he's doing that someplace where its gonna be easy to escape if this goes horribly wrong.

John: And thats whats- there’s an interesting there's an interesting moment here where he says,’if you looked at me the way I look at myself, I'd blow my head off’. Nate is fully capable of deal with his own self-loathing. He could not deal with the idea, the concept, that she would stop loving him or hate him. And that's why he kept the secret and that's what destroyed their marriage.

Dean: And look at how he brings it here, this is such a wonderful performance.

John: Yeah. And by the way, we shot this pretty much continuously; he falls apart during the course of the performance in one long take, really. You could watch that take and just watch the entire thing.

Dean: And after the second take, I thought, you know, he must be spent, and I wanted him to get one more moment and I said, “Do you have another one in you?” And he looked at me like ‘Oh yeah, keep- I could go all day.’

Chris: Do you remember what take this was?

Dean: I don't. But I would imagine it was fairly early cause he really- he nailed it right off the bat.

John: Every now and then it’s like, ‘Oh that’s right: Oscar. This is the-

Dean: This is the part of the flashback you didn't see in the pilot, but it was all shot at the same time.

John: And just, yeah. And man, even the day we shot it it was heartbreaking.

Dean: It absolutely was.

John: And actually, Tim has a son about this age, and just flailing. And there's Kari just- And I will fully admit, I am occasionally overly poetic when writing, but there's absolutely some stuff that was written - which is when she steps in the doorway, Maggie realizes she's lost her son, but Nate has lost his mind. And that’s- His sanity, his sense of self worth, everything was destroyed. She had a tragedy, he was destroyed. He will never be the same human being again. And the actors- really great. That's the good thing about writing - you just write something really pretty and let other people do the heavy lifting. [Laughs] ‘Okay, turn this into something that makes people cry. I'm breaking for lunch.’

Dean: And then just so we didn’t end on too heavy a beat, we remind- we bring the plot back in.

John: Oh you hate him so much here. By the way, I love the fact every time we have a ‘Oh, I love my characters.’ ‘Oh, I hate him.’ You really juxtapose Mark Sheppard - Sterling - coming in. It's like, ‘Oh, they've just made up and now you're gonna be mean to Kari? Oh you bastard.’

Chris: There we go! String!

Dean: String!

John: This is the biggest cheat ever! And that's how the plot will work.

[All Laugh]

Chris: Oh come on, that goes back to the Greeks!

John: That does.

Chris: Who was the first person that came up with the-

John: In media res, that’s what it is.

Chris:  And thats how its gonna go. Any questions?

John: It was one of those things where - how do we do pipe that doesn't blow how the con’s gonna work, but shows that we’re planning? Don't. Just come in. Oh. Oh my God, this-

Dean: My favorite Parker moment of the entire series.

John: Why does Parker sniff her? I don't understand.

Dean: It's the weirdest little moment.

John: And yet it completely makes sense.

Dean: And it’s fabulous.

John: You know what it is? It’s like, ‘is this our new mommy?’ Its like it’s- really, really a weird moment.

Dean: And by the way, not a direction I gave her. It just happened because she knows this character so well and it was just fabulous.

John: And that's the nice little look between Hardison and Nate, that Hardison is indeed reading her mail. Just to be on the safe side. And this is where we launch into - when he says we need that large object moved - we launch into our tribute to Never Send a Boy King to Do a Man's Job, the-

Chris: Sure. The touchstone.

John: The Rockford Files episode. The greatest

Chris: From which all things spring.

John: From which all things spring. And this is great. She just- it’s not like you can just make people do what you want. The fact that everyone's kinda laughing at her - no, we do impossible shit every week.

Dean: You haven't been watching this show, have you? She goes, ‘You're adorable’. And pets her head.

John: Which is, by the way, one of the things I say to someone when they've annoyed me or cut short, so they appropriated it for the moment. The actors actually -  it's weird how the actors pick up the writer mannerisms, cause we’re on the set all the time, so there an awful lot of actor writer in-jokes.

Dean: And also sometimes there's second generation. For instance-

John: Seriously.

Dean: Seriously. Started as a thing you would do, it became a thing Amy did, and then the actors pulled it from Amy.

Chris: Yeah.

John: So this- this is great, by the way, again, one of the fact that Nate’s not in control, he's emotionally kind of spun out, and the fact they're telling him, ‘You know what? You were kind of a dick season 1. There are times we like when Sophie- Sophie a little better than you.’

Dean: That's right.

Chris: It's great, too, when you get to add another person to the team. It's not something that we did - we only really did it at the end of the year, and it just kind of mixes things up, changes the dynamics.

John: Opens up the dynamics a lot, yeah. And the idea that Sophie has genuinely come to like Maggie at this point, you just can't not.

Chris: Didn't we-? We lost a little bit of them bonding.

John: Yeah, it was just cut for time. There is a bit where they are having kind of shorthand conversation-

Chris: ‘Oh, and I hate when he-’ ‘Oh this is the worst thing that he does.’ ‘It's terrible.’

John: It kinda went by the wayside, but yeah, they're pretty good friends by this point. See you learn and you con.

Dean: One of my favorite lines.

John: See Nate? Sometimes you know what? You don't have to be so imperious all the time man. And yes and this is- a lot of the little bits here are from Apollo dropping us all those, sort of, loose notes he gave us about cons; like little ways to make people believe you that we worked in.

Dean: Persuasion techniques.

John: Persuasion techniques, and letting him finish it, and never give him the information. Let them completely the information in their heads. And the- you know glasses switch. What was i gonna say the- so yes, so it's a this episode this segment is based on a famous Rockford files episode written by Juanita Rosenberg?

Chris: Juanita Rodriguez. Juanita Bartlett.

John: Bartlett. Which is their big con episode and both Chris and I had watched when we were kids, and really set the standard for big con episodes on television. So we were literally stuck thinking, ‘Alright, Dean has shown us this location, we have now come up with a way to hide everything-’

Chris: ‘Things we could use in a museum. Mummies?’

John: It became what large object could we use to hide the door? And we literally said, ‘Well, I mean, if we're writing Rockford Files, it'd be a mummy. But there's no way we can do that here…’ Well who's stopping us?

Dean: By the way, Gina doing the fantastic, very specific Iranian accent.

Chris: Yes, yes.

Dean: And you probably- most people in America won't even recognize it, with the exception of thinking, ‘Gosh she sounds like Christiane Amanpour.’

[All Laugh]

John: No that was- she was actually- the great thing is, Gina originally- when she’d come back and forth from London, sometimes she'd stay at this hotel, and so when we'd give her an accent she would go down to the bar and just try to find if any of the guests were from there, and then she would hit them up.

Chris: Oh that's great.

John: So yeah, for some of the promos and stuff when she was speaking different languages and stuff, that’s where she got the phrases from.

Dean: She's great in this scene.

John: Just a little distant, a little- just carrying the pipe, not try to sell anything. I like her hair that way, actually. She cut her hair.

Chris: Very 40’s. She had a very 40’s kind of-

John: Very 40’s vibe.

Dean: This was a fun bit you guys came up with.

John: Well again, the idea that we believe the information that's put directly in front of our face. There's so much information on the web, and something happened the week before - one of those things you read and you believe turns out to be fake, just an internet joke that everyone bought into, is we trust the web, we trust Wikipedia, we trust everything on the web, and it doesn't occur to us to think that someone would put a path of lies directly-

Dean: -in front of us.

Chris: Right, right.

John:- in front of us.

Dean: By the way, that's one of our writers, Amy Berg, as one of the professors.

John: Amy Berg, writer of-

Chris: And our prop guy, Eric Bates.

John: Our prop guy, Bates, is one of our other dead archeologists. And the guys just having fun here. Really it's just point the camera at this point. Just kinda slide back and forth and assume they're gonna do something amusing. And then she brings her in for the close out. Lauren Crasco, great job this is the- where is this?

Dean: This is a little auditorium in that same compound that we did the museum and everything else and decorated to be a presentation room for an Egyptian exhibit.

John: Also, you'll notice, by the way, that it's a small writing thing, but it's somewhat satisfying. First off, the virus she describes exists and is real. Because we originally when we were pitching out the mummy's curse. ‘Okay, no one's gonna believe the mummy's curse, he's just an idiot if he believes in the curse.’ Well where did the curse come from? And that led us to this infection, the spore infection-

Dean: -the infection.

Chris: -the spores, yeah.

John: But the thing she uses to distract him, which is ‘you came to my office to talk about the benches, now you sign the purchase orders for the benches.’ The benches are the key to the entire final heist. Shes using his state here, the rest of the con, to set up the final con. And now putting the deadly, deadly mummy away as one would.

Chris: Please get that away from me.

John: And we know they're up to something. And this was actually, Amy Berg wrote this scene. We realized that we were going into the back part of the finale without resolving the Eliot/Sophie bit. And we were kinda stacked and Amy was hanging out for free, honestly she was just really just-

Chris: We were very tired.

John: We were very tired.

Dean: But the thing she brought to this scene that I think is so interesting, is it's the apology without ever having the ability to say you're sorry.

John: Well that's a lot of the writers room. We’re really very emotionally shut down in there.

Dean: So this is, as an actor, that's a very interesting thing to play. She needs to convey that she's sorry, but her character would never ever say she's sorry.

John: Actually the other great thing Amy came up with here, is the idea that we’re seeing the last one, not the first one.

Dean: Right.

John: And how that would annoy him. There's a lot of great little dynamics in this scene.

Chris: It's really nice.

John: I gotta say its a nice piece of work

Chris: Within a very, you know, fast paced episode, it's also nice to take minute.

John: Stop.

Chris: Kinda do some character stuff.

John: Close it out. We feel that we’ve resolved the emotional issue from the first half. By the way, the little thing that Chris spins, everything you notice he does it in almost every episode. I’m always… ‘Do you practice? Do you go home and practice?’

Chris: He did it with the beer, too.

John: Yeah! And he's like, ‘Of course I go home and practice. I would never do something if I don't practice.’ It’s like, damn. Yes the idea that he's genuinely annoyed he wasn't apologized to first, it's a complicated little scene for-

Dean: It is. And for me the thing that really makes the whole thing work, is the thing that brings them together, is the painting from the Homecoming episode.

John: Which is metaphorically their home.

Dean: Their home. And it's such a weird painting.

John : It really is. My own attachment to it has grown quite unnatural. Yeah a little left. That house was insane. I can't believe we had this.

Chris: Yeah, it was great.

Dean: What an amazing location.

John: And that little look he gives him like, ‘Okay. We're done here, we’re okay.’

Dean: Now in the lexicon of music that we use, this is probably the most over the top ‘dun dun dun.’

John: Well of course he's evil, look at him! Oh look, oh she's so nice, oh now she's worried, I hate him so much!

Dean: I love it.

John: Yeah. When we were screening this, I actually couldn't help but-

Chris: Well he gets amped up to make the act break pop.

John: A little bit.

Dean: This is a fun bit. And talk about how you guys came up with this idea that he's talking about each character, not realizing that those character are right in front of him. How did that bit come about?

Chris: Oh yeah. I think I remember I wrote this a 2 o'clock in the morning and then-

John: Yeah, and then I put a shine on it for the choreography because I had been in the location a little bit more than you had.

Chris: Yeah, I think it was just- the purpose of it was basically to set the jeopardy - that this guy was going- that Mark Sheppard’s character, Sterling, was gonna-

John: That's what it was. We had originally done the montage to see everybody going into place because we wanted the audience to know geographically where they were, because geography in a heist is crucial. You must establish where everyone is so the audience isn't wondering. And you had done the great thing of like, what horrible things he had planned to reset the jeopardy, and it was literally page count wise, the act was long and it was once one of those things where - would it work if we jammed it together? And we jammed it together and it absolutely worked.

Dean: Well the lovely byproduct became this hide-in-plain-sight.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: That the last place you'd look is right in front of your nose.

John: Exactly. And the little look of amusement to Sophie, that, ‘You're good Shepherd, you're not that good.’

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

John : And Nate Ford ending on the arrival of Nate.

Chris: Nate Ford. And I love the idea that he shows up - he bought a ticket.

John: Bought a ticket. Yeah. Nate Ford's superpower is finding the easiest, simplest way to do things. That's when everybody else overthinks it. Because, you know, the rest of this act is so simple.

Chris: Oh yeah.

John: Oh my god. Wow, nice shot.

Dean: Yes. This is, again, one of our 360 shots, but only taken to one revolution to end right on the, ‘we're gonna get him and we're gonna throw him into jail.’

John: This is also nice because we've established, and again, it’s because Mark does an excellent job, we've established that Sterling is very, very scared. He's beaten the team in the previous episode. So by showing Sterling start to get a little worried here, you're actually both empowering your own character and letting the audience know they should be getting anxious.

Dean: And this was nice, him going back and reviewing the tapes.

John: Cause he saw it. He saw it earlier, and now he's like, ‘this is not right.’

Chris: I love that little look - the turn of the head.

John: The little turn of the head, yeah.

Chris: Just disgusted by it.

Dean: Erick is so terrific.

John: Good sneeze; that was an improv too. The tissues here. It was a prop to do it.

Dean: And I love Tim’s look during this. The whole thing is evolving around and he's sitting there eating popcorn.

John: I don't even know how you get popcorn in a museum. It's just great. Look how great that lobby looks. That absolutely looks like the lobby of a New York museum I’ve been in. That's really fantastic that we built that- Lauren built that, so you can shoot 360 in there.

Dean: And again, almost everything we’re looking at in this act is steadicam, you know what I mean? Poor Gary Camp was lugging that thing around nonstop.

John: Well that's your rule, right? That's your rule - once we go to the action, if the con is going smoothly, we go to steadicam.

Dean: Exactly.

John: And we’re in. And the entire act’s the con.

Dean: Right. So poor Gary was lugging that thing the whole time.

John: And we’re shooting the RED which is a little lighter at least.

Dean: At least.

John: At least. How much does the RED weigh?

Dean: Well with all the bells and whistles, probably around 45 pounds.

John: So he's got 45 pounds on his shoulder.

Dean: And the rig.

Chris: Here's comedy, folks.

John: And that's a mummy. That is big sitcom writing right there, ladies and gentlemen.

Chris: And, you know, if you're gonna use a sarcophagus like that, the thing you're gonna assume is somebody's in it.

John: Right. And that's- originally, at one point, we played with that and then said well no, we wouldn't be in there.

Chris: [Mumbles unintelligibly.]

John : That’s Chekhov's rule, actually. If you put a mummy in the first act, it has to go off in the third act.

Chris: Right here's our magic box.

John: Here's our magic box, where we had to- man the set designers just killed themselves designing this thing, because it's actually functioning.

Chris: That's actually- that's functioning.

Dean: Right. And I love this little bit, that they're all just- cause really nothing's going on there except they're synchronizing watches, but it’s such a nice visual, and it's such a nice thing seeing the team is now together and the plan is now afoot.

John: And for the audience it is 3, 2, 1, GO, and it's really a reset that now is when enormous amounts of fun will start. And by the way, it runs roughly real time.

Chris: Oh there it is.

John: I love that look. I love when she does the ‘I'm about to have fun’ look. And by the way, we discovered later, this smoke is real. Tell them about the fogger.

Chris: Oh, the fogger. There is a state of the art security equipment. There now is a fogger, which if you break into a vault-

Dean: Oh and by the way, that’s our first A.D.’s wife Sherri.

John: Yeah. Doing a great job. ‘It's a robbery!’

Dean: So go ahead.

Chris: No, no. At any rate, tt does exist - an impenetrable fog that will be emitted if you break into certain high tech vaults, but this-

John: This was our special effects guys.

Chris: So I’m so happy this came out.

John: But we had to build an actual functioning case that worked with the security.

Dean: Well this next bit here, how did this idea come about?

John: This is absolutely an homage to Thomas Crown, which I wrote the sequel to. This is- this is like, how much absolute blinding chaos can we create? And it's great because we went to Eric in props and were like, ‘It'd be great if- because the entire first act of the show, The First David Job, rests on the fact they are identical. It would be great if we were able to do the same visual reference in the second half. But there's no way you can give us like 40 David statues could you?’ And Eric went, ‘Well I'll figure out a way.’ And on budget and on time, he went out and got us 40 identical-

Dean: He's so remarkable.

Chris: Right. And again, it was to play into what-

Dean: By the way, on the technical level, that is such a difficult steadicam shot. He just did a steadicam shot through a crowd of people. That is so hard.

John: Smoothly. I thought that was the crane. That wasn't the jib?

Chris: That wasn't a crane?

Dean: Nope, that’s Gary on the steadicam, and then he continues it all the way to the door.

John: Oh that’s right, cause he just cut away.

Dean: On a pure technical level, that is a remarkable shot.

John: He's a great operator. There's a lot of stuff we did, that if we didn't have Gary, we'd be in serious trouble.

Dean: And now I get my rappelling scene.

John: Sure, fine.

Chris: There we go folks. Folks, do you know where this came from?

Dean: But the fun of it is it’s Tim doing the rappelling. The last guy we’d expect on the show to do the rappelling.

Chris: There it is.

John: There it is. Boom. And by the way-

Dean: Great stunt.

John: Great stunt. And the happiness, if you actually go back and freeze frame that shot as he lands, you get three entirely different attitudes from the actors. And then he pulls it down and through. And yes, we desperately worked very hard not to kill any of our actors. What was I gonna say? But it is interesting because- how we approached the problem. The original con was that Tim’s the mastermind, and we want to make him the bait. The idea that Sterling’s blind spot is he's afraid of Nate, secretly. And so he would obsess about him and they could use that to drive everyone off. And when it was single rooms and multiple floors that was easier. When it became the big chamber and rappelling, like, well how do we do that? The only place to draw people off is we need to get them out of this chamber, and that birthed a lot of this stuff. And where would you follow Nate? Well it's like Nate would need to get them up on the roof, to get them away to a place where he could get away from them, and they couldn’t follow.

Dean: And they get locked in the box.

John: And that brought us to the rappelling - it brought us to a very cool sequence.

Chris: So when you say here, when Dean says, ‘I want rappelling,’ it can be an interesting sequence. Now I love this shot.

Dean: All kudos to Tim in this scene for just pulling this off.

John: Yeah. Cause this is a guy standing in front of 2 maquettes.

Chris: No its not.

John: By the way, this is beautifully lit.

Chris: It’s beautifully lit, look at this.

John: Yeah, cause are we doing this at night? Is that how we got it so dark? And then we lit it, or-?

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: I think it was night, yeah.

John: Yeah, so the outside’s blown out-

Dean: Yes, that's right. The outside is lit- its night for day.

John: That’s done all the time.

Dean: Sure.

John: Sure! Mad.

Dean: Tim is just brilliant in this scene. I love his sense of accomplishment of revenge.

John: Yup on both guys. And then the big reveal that all the paintings that they’ve stolen, everything but the thing they said they were gonna steal.

Chris: I think that was you Dean, too, wasn’t that? Like we should turn on the lights and all the paintings except the Davids-

Dean: And everything's gone except the Davids. And there's a lovely, again, acting moment  between Kari and Tim as Kari is explaining what has just been stolen. And it says miles about their relationship. Right there.

John: Yeah, and she's also calling back to something that [unintelligible]’s character said earlier. Look, there you go, there's a little bit of forgiveness, a little bit of accomplishment, because she is now fully invested in screwing the people who let her son die, you know. Which I kinda feel bad about cause he’s co-opted her in his emotional immaturity. I don't know how I feel about that now that we're looking at it a second time. Kevin’s meltdown here is spectacular, thank you.

Dean: Yeah, it’s a tour de force bad guy meltdown.

John: And then Sterling realizing, checkmate, you know, really- and again, Mark really modulated that character.

Dean: Mark does a great turn here where he realizes- he goes from ‘I’m screwed’, to ‘I win.’

John: Yeah. Mark Sheppard will not let me rest unless I do note in the DVD commentary that at no point does Sterling lose in season 1. He never loses - at worst, it's a tie. And that's what makes him a great nemesis. And this is, of course, an echo from part 1. You know, and that’s why, we start it with- both parts start with each one of those guys holding a gun on the other. It's one of those little filming things. I'm listening. And again you great to see Sterling- what's the strategy here? What's the out? You know he's always trying to salvage something. And also Tim’s choice to ignore the guy with the gun.

Dean: Yeah, the gun is the least threatening thing to him in the world.

Chris: Right.

Dean: You're doing him a favor if you pull that trigger.

John: Yeah and also that the game’s over. You know, in his head he's so far ahead at this point it, you know, it's all gone right that if he dies at this point, it's okay.

Dean: Right. Cause he knows he already won.

John: And it was, again, it was an interesting choice. The flashback, the classic zhoom zhoom, there's really a lot of zhoom.

Chris: The flashback. The this is very much a classic, ‘here’s how I got you.’

John: Yup. It's not the other version, which is: you didn't see part of this scene, it's the oh, you didn't understand the context.

Chris: You didn't realize the significance of it. Which is actually more-

John: -more interesting.

Dean: Well when you watch this, you always think, well for me, it was always why would he tell them in advance he's doing it? And it's all here you go, ahh, that’s why he tells them in advance.

John: You set up, and again, if you kill me now, I can die a happy man, because regardless I have destroyed you. And at this point Sterling’s- I love that little- he realizes.

Dean: This is when he starts to realize, ‘Wait a minute, I’m gonna come out on top,’ and then he loves it. Sterling-

John: Because he's a perfectly amoral bastard. He really is.

Dean: He is. And I love that he switches the gun. He goes from pointing at Nate, to pointing at his own man.

John: Look at him. He's not scared either. It's really we have- we’re definitely working on the Sterling/Nate team up episode for season 2, because Mark really made the character so interesting. It's: ‘Alright, I wanna see what it was like when these two guy actually did it together.’

Chris: Kids, actually be afraid of firearms, not like our characters.

Dean: The way he- the way Tim delivers the line here about, ‘I lost my only son, do you honestly think that you can frighten me?’ It just tells you everything about Nate for this whole season. It's why nothing bothers him anymore. He's already faced the worst thing a human being can ever face.

John: Yeah. And that's part of the challenge is now, is how do we rebuild him? You know, knowing there's a season 2, as opposed to, really, when we did this, we didn't know. And a parallel punch to the first half.

Dean: Right.

Chris: And it's the payoff.

John: It's the payoff punch. And it's the exact same- that Nate did in the first half.

Dean: Except in this one, it knocks him down. Her punch is even harder.

John: We really wanted to give Kari the win there.

Chris: She's very fiery, I buy it.

John: Yeah, I like the smile there, he's kinda proud of her.

Dean: And I love this line here, that ‘this whole plan counted on me being an utter bastard.’

John: Yeah, not just a bastard, and he's perfectly willing to accept that. What was I gonna say? This- it’s really fascinating this location, considering we lived in it, it looks like a million different things. It's really just the same looks back and forth: door to gallery, door to gallery, door to gallery. Different sizes and different people. You know, cause we decorated the entire other half, we dressed, and we never shot that side.

Dean: Not really.

John: We never needed to.

Dean: Just in one passing walk by.

John: Yes, where he goes up to the alarm room. That’s it.

Dean: That's the only time we ever saw that. And this is a nice, connecting the two rooms and realizing how they got all the paintings out of this.

John: Yeah. And the whole idea that down they shot down earlier. And we had to build these benches, and the original con was they were hiding in the benches and then we realized that Hardison - Aldis - is very big and cramming him in this bench would be cruel.

Chris: Yeah that was just-

John: And we wanted to steal all the art, not just some of the art.

Dean: And it was a great gateway to the room below.

Chris: And I love this shot down here, too.

John: This was a 360 in a tiny basement room.

Chris: Tiny.

Dean: With a very very wide-angle lens, which is a tough lens to put on a steadicam.

Chris: And look at that, it ends on this perfectly composed shot right here, I love this.

Dean: Yeah. We've got terrific camera people.

John: And this is the- I think this is the last thing we shot.

Chris: I think it was.

Dean: It was. It was the last day of shooting.

John: -the last day of shooting, and it's weird because I think everyone's playing kind of a weird beat here because it's the last shot.

Chris: Cause we don't know nobody knows- at this point the actors dont know we’re coming back.

Dean: Well it's also because this next scene that's about to play was shot earlier, but the thing I had said - John was standing next to me at the moment I said it.

John: It was very cruel.

Dean: But we were just about to shoot the set, and I wanted to get the right emotions from everyone, so I gathered the actors together and I said, ‘Guys, remember we don't know if we're gonna get a second season. This might be the end of all of it. This might be the finale of the entire series.’ And then I walked off the set.

[All Laugh]

John: And they were wrecked, they were just-

Dean: And you could see it in their performances. It's all there emotionally and they all- everyone of them brought their a-game for this scene.

John: They were genuinely crying. I mean really, they- you worked them up pretty badly. I'm glad we didn't have to shoot anything else after this.

Dean: No, they just nailed it. And frankly, for me, this is my favorite ending of anything I've ever done in my whole career. I love the way this season ended. Because if we didn't get a second season, I would have been fulfilled that I had gotten a complete story.

Chris: We took people on a trip.

Dean: And of course, the- for our listeners here, the hilarity for all of us was when we found out we were picked up for second season, and suddenly John and Chris said, ‘now how the hell do we put these people back together again?’

John: There are times when you’re a little too smart for your own good. And it really was, ‘You know what? Not like those other punk shows that do a cliffhanger. we’re breaking up the team-’

Dean: -and blowing up the offices.

John: -’and blowing up the offices. We have utterly destroyed all vestiges of the template from the first season. Okay we've got a second season. So you've broken up. Huh.’

Dean: Now what do we do?

John: Offices are blown up.

Chris: Oh come on, the audience see they're back. They're back together. Come on.

John: I know, but you know, we- and there's the-

Dean: And there's our callback to the walk away shot.

Chris: It’s beautiful.

John: But this one’s sad. It's a sad walk away. And we did different reactions here, too. Everyone - oh that's nice, Parker crying - we did different reactions here. Everyone had different reactions; we tried different styles and cut together the ones that-

Dean: Gina here is, for me, priceless.

John: Oh that’s an RSC trained actor right there my friends.

Dean: And I love just falling off the cliff here. That there's no resolution whatsoever, we just literally fall off the cliff.

Chris: Ohh.

Dean: Guys, thank you for such an amazing script.

Chris: Dean, thank you.

Dean: And an amazing year.

John: That was a great year.

Dean: I think this was my favorite year, professionally. And It’s all because of you guys, so thank you so much.

Chris: You too, man.

John: I will say thank you, man. It was so great to actually just make the TV show you thought you were gonna make for once.

Chris: Yeah, it is. We did.

Dean: For once, the thing that you wanted to do. Uncompromised.

John: And that’s all of us. All of us got to TNT let us run, and this is what you get. Thank you.

Chris: Thank you very much, Dean.

Dean: Thank you.

[krinsbez]

Hypothetical: Hungry Gods and Jealous Neighbors

(note: this is a fatalistic scenario: there are no Third Options)

There is a world, made by gods. These gods spilled their own blood and burnt their own flesh to make the world and it's people, and every day they must do so again to keep the world existing. In order to ensure the perpetual sacrifice of the gods doesn't kill them, it falls to people to spill their own blood and burn their own flesh to keep the gods alive; a certain number of people, therefore, have to be ritually sacrificed every year to ensure the continued survial of the gods, and thus the continual survival of the world and the people. To compensate the people for this, the gods have given them gifts; writing, metalworking, fire, agriculture, music, math, reason, medicine, animal husbandry, and so forth. Among these gifts is the means for every nation to calculate exactly how many people they need to sacrifice in order to do their part, without causing too much harm to society as a whole. Got all that? Now, through act of ROB, you have been summoned by the leaders of one nation to ask your advice on one question. Once you answer the question, you will be returned to your own world safe and sound; the consequences of your advice, which they WILL follow, will not directly affect you in any way. The nation in question is larger than all the neighboring nations, and so must sacrifice more people, but even so, it is the largest and strongest. Now, two years ago, one of their neighbors made some poor decisions WRT their agricultural planning and had a famine. Because of this, last year they had to give no sacrifices and the other nations made up the difference. Because of it's great size, the nation who's leaders summoned you took on the bulk of this. This year, several neighboring nations have decided that they will ignore their calculations and make no sacrifices, claiming the nation that summoned you can make up the difference for them as well. The nation that summoned you is so much bigger that it could make up those sacrifices and survive, but it would be greatly diminished. Which is what their neighbors are counting on, because they are tired of being weaker and feel they ought to be made equals. The question you are asked is this: should they increase the number of their people they sacrifice to compensate for their neighbors or should they make war on their neighbors and either force them to resume sacrificing, or take their people for sacrifice?

Semi-Random factoids:

-If they go to war, will be the first war in their world's history*, so no one knows exactly how it’s gonna go. But it's probably going to be very ugly; the nation's people are very angry about this. That said, A: between the nation in question's overwhelming advantage in population and resources, B: because no one has ever gone to war before, the neighbors won't be expecting it (otherwise they wouldn't have dared do this), and C; the gods aren't exactly happy with the neighbors**, the nation in question is almost assured of victory. One thing is certain; more people will die if you go to war than if you don't, as the war dead will be in addition to the necessary sacrifices, not instead of them; dying on the battlefield means the proper rituals to make a human sacrifice count can’t be performed. *Like, men are trained as warriors to fight off wild beasts or bandits, and sometimes there are skirmishes between border patrols. But you generally don't want to do things that mess with the sacrifice calculations, and the gods have ensured that there is plenty for everyone, so there's never been a war between nations. Also it's a pretty young world. **Although they won't get involved actively as they've got more important things to do; maintaining the world is hard work.

-The nation that summoned you has an overwhelming numbers advantage against all the nations refusing to sacrifice, combined, and that, while they would be weaker, they would still function* if they took on the additional burden of sacrifice. *That is to say, while they may have to make some cuts and individual families may have to do some belt-tightening, it won't disrupt their infrastructure badly enough to cause famine or anarchy or what not, at least with a bit of rejiggering and keeping in mind they won't have as many mouths to feed, etc.

[deathstroke50]

Me

I haven’t posted in a while - the meds I was taking ended up making me sick, so now I have a super slow discontinuation schedule... And it still makes me sick. Yay! I also haven’t talked about mental health, really talked about it, so I’m dropping all this below the cut.

So while @lorieninksong was suffering from their own mental health problems, I hit the ground running with a nice little collection of OCD, anxiety, and atypical depression. Yeah, apparently you can be happy and depressed at the same time - never knew - but hey what a wonder.

I got prescribed Zoloft - it’s a good med (usually) but in my case it caused mild hallucinations that my prescriber didn’t catch. Once I got up to an OCD-appropriate dose I started hearing ominous chanting to do terrible things and jumped ship from that med ASAP. Upon reducing dosage I got hit with massive nausea and muscle tension - enough to rejigger my entire pain scale. Turns out I need to titrate down exceptionally slowly, like 1/4th to 1/8th the normal rate. And it still hurts constantly... yay...

But that bad news aside, I recently came out to my lovely soulmate about the real mental health problems I had buried all my life. Because repression was my only coping mechanism. Breaking down in tears to tell them about how I would see and hear things that weren’t there was rough, but at least my psychiatrist was able to verify it was non-psychotic (dodged a bullet there).

Anyways, enough rambling, on to the main event. I’m posting this because I’ve just asked Lorien to start expressing themselves more clearly and straightforward, and it’s time I started practicing what I preach. I hate long tumblr posts, and this is already past my usual limit, so tl;dr below.

tl;dr - I’m transgender and came out of the closet a little bit ago; I hallucinate, but because I can discern them from reality it’s not psychotic; My memories and coping mechanisms were fucked because repression seemed like the best way to cope; Got on bad meds, getting off of them; I’m getting better, admitting my problems has helped me express, identify, and cope; I love my soulmate and I’ll be with them forever and “til death do us part” can go fuck itself - lifers are taking the easy route!