#i'm going to start tagging these as meta

[starflungwaddledee]

Oooo starstruck dee has little stars at the bottom of her feet! Are they just aesthetic or would they make imprints into the ground? (like pawprints)

exactly like that! though she's not the only one...

edit: might need to add some additional dialogue to this to make it more clear, but a clarification in the interim; he knows about his own footprints. he's just surprised to see something similar already there when he knows he's only just landed. he lifts his own shoe to confirm that they're not identical (and also to reveal this to the viewer). seems his stoicism beat off the clarity in this one, sorry 😭

[vickyvicarious]

Who's Read What in Dracula? Masterpost

This is a little self-assigned project to try and keep track of who has read (as well as written) what documents, and, importantly, when they do so. Last year I spent some time thinking about this and it informed some of my thoughts about specific characters' perspectives and actions in interesting ways. So I thought it could be a neat resource to have for others!

I'm going to update this in time with the novel, so there won't be any spoilers. This post is going to be a master reference, with links to each individual character's posts. I originally wanted to do this as a series of graphs for each character, with color-coded bars for each document they've read, but I'm not savvy enough to figure out a non-confusing way to do so, especially given the number of different authors/documents. Instead, I'm going to have a separate post for each character, and just have the info in written form there. Here are the links to each of those, in order of introduction:

Jonathan Harker

Mina Murray

Lucy Westenra

Jack Seward

Quincey Morris

Some housekeeping notes: Obviously, each character will have read their own writing. I'm not going to update day-by-day for any such things. Instead, I'll only update whenever they access new information by someone else, or begin what I'm counting as a new document.

Most of the time, we know for a fact when characters get access to a new document. However, there are a few exceptions. I have my theories, but I will mark them as speculative whenever that label applies.

I break up documents based on chunks of information and have assigned titles to them as such. The labels may change as time goes by as needed to avoid spoilers. I also try to add in dates, but for any longer accounts it will just be a range of dates rather than every entry.

Below the cut is a list of all the documents, in order of appearance, with dates. I'm using color-coding for all the main authors, which will match the colors used in individual character posts. This too will be updated over time, so no worries about spoilers here either. Unless, of course, you don't want to know if someone who has only written once before will go on to write often... in that case, don't look below.

Castle Dracula Diary (3 May-?) - Jonathan Harker

Invitation to Castle Dracula (3 May) - Count Dracula

Letter to Innkeeper (4 May) - Count Dracula *

Letter to Dracula (5 May) - Mr. Hawkins *

Letters to Lucy (9 May, 17 May?*) - Mina Murray

Letter to Mina (2/3 May?) - Jonathan Harker *

Letters to Mina (11 May?, 24 May) - Lucy Westenra

Dictated Letters Home (11 May, 19 May) - Jonathan Harker *

Letters to Various Solicitors (11 May) - Count Dracula *

Phonograph Diary (25 May-?) - Jack Seward

Letter to Art (25 May) - Quincey Morris

* We know these documents exist, but never get to read them (or in one case, only get a brief excerpt) as they aren't added to the record. Sometimes some of the main characters do get to read them, but not always.

Question marks after a date denote uncertainty, though they're all likely written within a few days of the tentative one listed. When after a dash they mark an incomplete document.

[essektheylyss]

I know you said you need to stop screaming first but I am EAGERLY awaiting your thoughts on Essek in the teaser

OKAY OKAY HERE GOES.

The thing is, there's no real reason to include him.

Yes, he's very popular, but he has never historically been included as a default, validly! He occupies a very interesting space mechanically and narratively, but he is still not a PC. Yes, he's part of the Mighty Nein as a group, per canon, but not until the end, which in theory would be well beyond the first season, and so is Cad, who is not present in this teaser—presumably to preserve the mystery around [INSERT MAJOR SPOILER WARNING HERE].

I would imagine that Cad is not present because having Taliesin's voice twice is too much of a tipoff for anyone watching LoVM but not the campaigns, whereas simply having Matt voice someone is not.

HOWEVER.

There are a decent number of lines that you could choose for Essek that are about the Nein—personally, my favorite, that I've thought previously would make a really stellar trailer line, is from 124: "You certainly carve a unique destiny, don't you?" Everything down to the way Matt delivers it (which you can see here) would make it a really viable option.

But the line they went with isn't about the Nein—it's very much a line about Essek himself. "I want to unlock these mysteries. I want to dive as deep as I can into that ocean of the unknown and see what is possible." It's a line that is very specific to Essek and his actions and goals, even beyond his involvement with the Nein.

And it's placed in the middle of the pack, which frames him on the same level as the rest of the Nein! Someone who is not familiar with the campaign would hear that as simply another protagonist. But of course, he's not—unless there is some serious restructuring (more even than the restructuring present in LoVM, which, aside from introducing a few of the initial less plot-bearing aspects later, like the Slayer's Take, it's thus far structured in order), he won't come into the show for quite some time, and almost certainly not in the first season.

But we don't really have any idea how this show will be structured. There are different comments on the beginning from different sources; notably, Gizmodo mentions Calianna being present in some way initially, while no one else does. The logline most outlets are reporting revolves the Nein "prevent[ing] the kingdom from plunging into chaos when an arcane artifact capable of reshaping reality falls into the wrong hands," presumably the beacon (my beloved).

So it makes sense to mention Essek, for, you know, the obvious reasons, as comment on the beacon itself. (I'm going to guess they're simplifying it to one beacon, per the press release, for ease lol.) But this line, while about dunamancy as a whole and the powers of the beacon, is not about it directly. It's still about Essek's interest in it. It is an excellent line, and on its face, it has nothing to do with the Nein or the plot of the first fifty episodes of the campaign.

There's plenty of speculation to be done about how this might be structured, and I'm sure I'll do plenty of it because, let's be honest, I do not shut up about adaptation and translating stories between formats, it is one of my absolute favorite subjects, and this is the Nein, babey!!!

So my point here being: I think there is a lot of room with the nature of Wildemount politics to get a little wild with structure in the translation from D&D game to TV show that, while not impossible in LoVM, wouldn't really have added anything to the story, and honestly, might've taken away from it. Because the point is to watch Vox Machina become the big damn heroes! We do see tidbits of Brimscythe and the Briarwoods beyond the purview of the heroes, but mostly in ways that feel very '80s cartoon villain cameo' which fits the feel of the show perfectly.

But there are a lot of political players and forces in Wildemount that the Nein navigate whether they're aware of them or not, one of whom of course becomes a member of their party, and that's part of what makes their story so interesting. The Nein are the heroes that no one knows, who are always playing within and against the system and are hyper aware of that, and I think expanding how much of that we get to see now that the format allows for it (not necessarily a lot, not to the point of adding whole plotlines, but at least some of it) would only add to the tension and stakes, and Essek's presence in the trailer makes me wonder if they will.

[gnomewithalaptop]

What is cue the sun? 👀

I need you to know I am kissing you on the mouth rn (platonically) -- I've been rotating this plot in the microwave since like. mid-august.

It's transcendence au (obvi) but here's the basic hook:

The year is 7098. The last Mizar (Fang Wu -- and shoutout to aba_daba_do for making a kickass OC) has been dead for four years now, and Alcor has been MIA for about the same amount of time. In their absence, the North American continent has broken out into a full-on, cross-continental war, with the main players being the Greater Austinian Monopoly (formerly known as Texas) and the Alaskadian Collective (Alaska, plus some parts of Canada and north-eastern Russia).

In a last-ditch effort to find some long-forgotten piece of magical information that could win the war, Alaskadian scientist Fatima Tursynbekova (an r!Ford) is sent to the abandoned site of what used to be Gravity Falls, accompanied by her troubled teenage daughter Olya (an r!Gideon). They're expecting to find little more than scant remnants of a town that was razed to the ground over thirty years before -- not much better than an archaeological expedition if anything.

However, what they find instead is a thriving small town -- the inhabitants of which are all completely and utterly convinced that it's the year 2016 (feat. the OG Mystery Twins and an extremely sus Stan Pines).

Anyways blah blah blah romance, secrecy, interpersonal drama but COME LOOK AT THE MAP I MADE I spent entirely too much time on it and I've been dying to share:

(Plus better quality image link for if tumblr steals all my pixels)

[bardnuts]

i spend a lot of time thinking about when exactly Astarion catches feelings For Real and I think the funniest answer to that question is literally the first time you have sex. He's got 200 years of experience in not catching feelings. "This is a good plan," he thinks. "A nice, simple plan. Make them fall for you, don't fall for them."

Then you ask him if he's ok or some shit during sex and it's DOA. Plan failed immediately upon its attempted execution. Defeated by the concept of a gentle lover. The rocket blows up on the launchpad

[thatonecrookedsmile]

["So what can you expect in the coming months?"] ["…you never know!"] ["He’s always watching me..."] ["-I saw Mister Drew the other day…was meeting with that Connor fellow, holding some papers."] ["I think they saw me looking though…"] ["Just too many secrets being cooked up in the kitchen!"] ["If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was magic there."] ["A well calculated understanding between creation-"] ["-big things are coming!"] ["-and creator."] ["Massive things!"] ["That smile…"] ["..you just learn to go with it."] ["He’s always watching me..."] ["You just watch…"] ["I’ve got a good feeling something great is going to happen…”]

...

…How very interesting,such… knowledge.

{A message from Wilson Arch}

-----

Yoooo, guess who is having a birthday today. Me,obviously. :D

Oh, and Wilson too, I guess. If you wanna be THAT guy.

Remember when this video came out there were people who heard the voice at the end and thought the voice was either Sammy or the Ink Demon? Man, those were the days. However with all due respect, I'm glad neither case was right in the end lol.

On this day 5 years ago, "Unknown - April 14th" was posted on YouTube, which means it's been 5 damn years since we first heard from Wilson...

man, what a damn BABY MAN, am i right folks

It's interesting to think that even though it's been 5 years, we've only known who Wilson really is for 2 years now (or more appropriately, 1 year and 5 months of those 5 years). Of course, now, after BATDR was released, we know who he is and what his place is in the Bendy universe. But between April 1, 2019 and November 1, 2022, all we knew about him was that he…existed. He was someone - someone bad apparently - who sounded old and who would have some relevance in the plot of Dark Revival. And that's it. We had no name, no appearance, nothing. He was someone, but we didn't know who.

It's no wonder he was only referred to as "Unknown" by fans during these 3 and a half years.

In the end, I would say that this drawing is a mix of 2 things. The first being the result of an idea I've had for a while, which is basically making a drawing in relation to the original video/"unknown" tape, but this time with Wilson, since now we know it was recorded by him. Plus it's been 5 years since the original upload,5 years of Wilson. I think this would be the perfect time to do this.

And second, a strange kind of redux/homage/"final chapter" in this kind of "collection" of drawings I did between 2019 and 2022 all based on the idea of "the unknown weirdo from BATDR saying How Very Interesting Such Knowledge" and so on. All of them having other characters in mind in the role of the Unknown. And now, here I am, redoing this idea again, only with The Man Himself this time. The real Unknown. Now as the Known, so to speak.

Going back to what I said before, you can see this drawing as a kind of farewell to this particular idea that I've kind of repeated over the years, as I've now done it again only with Wilson this time. (Does this mean I'll never draw this concept/line of thought again? I mean, I assume so. But there's no guarantee I can't make something similar again down the line. Who knows what the future holds. We will see what happens in the next 5 years.)

But,yeah. 5 years of Such Knowledge™.

Have a good April Fools' Day.

(Also, there are still a few hours until the day ends where I live, so for me it's still April 1st, so yeah, this still counts)

[laceratedlamiaceae]

A big part of the reason I've gravitated towards the Izzy Enjoyer side of the fandom, aside from the fact that I love him, is that Izzy fans actually seem to understand him. I used to be more into blackbonnet fanworks, but so much fic and meta gets them completely wrong. Obviously there's room for interpretation and I have nothing against people who see Ed and Stede differently than I do, but if I see another fic that portrays Stede as some paragon of moral purity and healthy masculinity (he's a bitch! he's inconsiderate! he's completely repressed!) or Ed as a helpless damsel-in-distress who hates violence (he's the greatest pirate captain in history! he loves a good maim! he wanted to retire because he got bored when he didn't have to fight anyone!) I'm gonna lose it.

I think the main reason for these interpretations is people conflating media consumption with morality (I can't find it but there's a good post that goes into this in a lot more detail). They need their favorite characters to be good people so they can think of themselves as good people, and it's easier to come up with a skewed interpretation of a character than it is to rethink a strongly-held principle so we end up with people who believe that Izzy made Ed maroon the crew, or that Ed was being honest when he said he hadn't killed anyone since his dad, or that Stede is exempt from toxic masculinity because he sometimes wears frilly clothes.

On the other hand, Izzy fans (in my experience, at least) are able to recognize that he's a complex character who does bad things for interesting reasons, just like Ed and Stede. I don't agree with everything my fellow Izzy lovers have said about him but most of it at least makes sense and doesn't blatantly contradict anything we see in the show. I imagine a lot of that is just because it's hard to portray the main antagonist as a good guy, but whatever the reason I wish Ed and Stede were allowed to have the same nuance by the fandom at large.

[ikkaku-of-heart]

@kaizokugaris asked: Ikkaku & kid ! Send me a ship and I'll fill out this bingo card (Still Accepting!)

Hateship. Based off of my ships with Kids like @rubidusmagnet and @ephxmerall, Ikkaku and Kid would angrily fuck and possibly have a bit of respect for each other's skills but it's definitely hot hate sex and a toxic relationship at best. It's dub-con/CNC at worst. Which is a lot of fun to write but it's definitely not something that will work out long-term and barely even short-term, lol. So it's a guilty pleasure but definitely not a ship in the healthy sense.

[scare-ard--sleigh]

i'm going to talk ad nauseam about my joseph backstory hc's, ready, go;;;;

might be maybe projecting here but im having Thoughts about joseph picking out his career bc of some familial conversation about needing to take his life more seriously, that ended his time of traveling. i see his parents as clergy, in my fic joseph describes them as "old school fire and brimstone types" [EDIT: he actually does canonically describe his dad as "fire and brimstone" in the 3rd date which i'd forgotten!!] and i think it scares him into coming back (and i think he left because Something Happened at age 16/17.) it's not his first choice but he's knowledgeable because of his upbringing, and hes charming enough to be GOOD at it.

he studies and he works whatever positions the church will give him, which are plenty, because they know his family and that he's good people and he gets the hang of everything really quickly. it's not the life he would have chosen for himself--i see him having majored in philosophy while trying to figure out a ship captain path--but hes grateful to be doing something he doesn't totally hate.

he meets mary in the beginning, details TBD though that story is very important, and he's enamored pretty instantly. they date and they're not too serious even though both sets of parents are telling them that they shouldn't bother with each other if they don't see a life together. they want to do it on their own terms, though, and their long romance and longer engagement feels like a victory. joseph finally feels like he's secured a life that he's chosen and it makes him feel empowered to make his job his own too.

and it doesn't take long for christopher to be conceived ;; he's a surprise but not an unwelcome one and for a long while everything really is perfect!! there's a lot of honest love between them and they really did go into this seeing a life together!! i think even through the twins being brought into the picture things are still good and happy and nice.

i don't think their rift happens overnight and it takes both of them a long time to realize just how unhappy they are. mary would claim that joseph himself still doesn't even know, but it's important to note that he very much does, even if he appears to be in denial about it. it's just hard for him to fathom giving up a life that he had to fight for, and it feels like everyone's depending on him so he leans on the escapism in a maybe-not-so-healthy-way. there's a really long while where he can convince himself that it's just a rough patch, that their best friend robert's life is falling apart and they're feeling grief too, that 3 kids is a lot to keep up with and they're not as spry as they used to be and i think mary for the most part does as well. joseph throws himself into his work even harder (laying the groundwork for and then eventually achieving maple bay's #1 youth minister for 5 years running) and mary does as well.

even through all of this, dare i say, the love is still there because they do definitely remember the people that they used to be, and that's enough of a reason to try another day.

[tyrannuspitch]

my choice of comics to read so far HAS been mostly random but i should also be clear that i've had a pretty strong bias towards oneshots and very short runs so far, because, as someone going in completely blind re: what's worth my time and what isn't, that strategy gets me variety without too much commitment to any given run. which, now i think about it, is... probably not doing justice to comics' potential for complex storytelling. at all. because complex stories take time.

but in my defence. [head in hands]. oh my god guys. do you have any IDEA how many thor comics there are

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Have officially begun the process of moving all my content onto the new blog bc my faith in support to actually fix the issue does not actually exist.

If it gets fixed I'll keep using this blog like I've been and just consider the other one a backup. Otherwise I won't be deleted this blog, but I won't be using it regularly (if I continue to), and not for posts meant to go into tags.

I'm not following people yet bc I'm still in the process of moving posts, which means mass reblogging, which means 200 posts straight per day until I'm caught up.

[honestlyvan]

your post about bladelore was really interesting, do you have any thoughts about the designs of the ferronises?

(message from future Van as I edit this -- Beware Ye Of The Unmarked Asspulls in this answer. Also SPOILERS THROUGH THE END OF CHAPTER 7) Yeah, like, I'm kind of two minds about them? I definitely think the way they take on similar features to a big source of cultural trauma (Faced Mechons for Keves, Sirens for Agnus) of the two kingdoms supports the idea that ether is still a kind of collective memory, the way it was presented in XC2. They're weapons of intimidation, first and foremost, built to bolster the forces and make them more comfortable taking risks and choosing fight over flight, to feel like they've got something dangerous backing them up, but I also feel like they're subtly designed to reinforce the sense of hopelessness that is instrumental to the war working as intended. Z wants everyone to give up, the goal is to make everyone into Moebius and arrive at a kind of heat death of the universe that way.

From a practical perspective, I don't think the Ferronises are a new development in the war.... but I do think the war was probably initially fought without them, with everyone just under the one Big Flame Clock at the Castle. But we now that people do figure the war out, and if everyone was concentrated together, they'd just figure it out quicker, so eventually the amount of people fighting in the war necessitated they get split up and scattered across Aionios to stop them from seeing too much of the big picture to work it out like Alexandria did. So, basically, I'm taking the long way around to say that I think Flame Clocks preceded Ferronises, and Ferronises were conceived as extensions of Levnises, and are probably historically represented as such.

I think there's also a certain amount of incentive for Z to keep growing the scale of the war as more people became Moebius and started requiring Things To Do in the Eternal Now -- a lot of the Consuls in the game are or at least appear to be pretty new to their jobs, or at least have enthusiasm for it, which could be a ramp effect to embracing the true Endless Now of Not Doing Anything Ever Again after they get their petty victory or revenge or whatever it is that drove them to become Moebius in the first place. Maybe Ferronises were initially built to allow the Consuls to spar amongst themselves, and then as they got bored of that, new Consuls would take over.

Which brings me back around to the actual designs of the Ferronises -- lots of animal motifs to go around, but off the top of my head nothing really seems to match up that strongly with its Consul, other than maybe the miko outfit on Mu paralleling I's design. One that really leaps out is R with her fox design placed alongside the very scorpion-y Colony 11. Since there's a limited amount of Consul Titles to go around, if the ramp theory is correct, the Ferronises may be designed to spec by their original Consuls, but as they are now they're more like.... tabletop RPG factions, they all come with their own "playstyle" so to speak. Hell, depending on how circular you want to see the timeloop as, maybe colonies tend to have the same commanders over and over in a cycle, which would bring some periodic consistency to the game of war.

During the events of the game, we may actually be in a lull between campaigns, with a lot of consuls electing to not play, leaving Z to having to pull up a bunch of new Moebius to fill the seats around the gameboard, because if the war cools off too much, the people of the Kingdoms are gonna start asking questions again.

[dailykyoob]

Ah!!!! Barracuda being “Kicked out” from the tree of life is one I use and dont really see !!

OOOOOOOH INTRIGUING I love it...it does make a ton of sense for them to be connected to the tree because well...Theyre triangle ^_^

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

spent like 20 minutes the other night trying to explain to my mom and one of her friends how "the story, my child, is true" (from the end of Andrew Peterson's Wingfeather Saga) and "tell me a story. make some light" (from Kate DiCamillo's Tale of Despereaux) fit together in my mind and make me really hyper crazy about The Narrative and Light

[maggot-monger]

the difference between writing for my own highest standards of quality and writing because i need the ideas to exist somewhere...unsure how to qualify this difference but it is a decision to make every time i start writing

[korattata]

...i dont think i've ever seen a game calculate your play time by what the date/time is since the last save.

I fixed my system clock in the middle of playing bc i forgot i had been outbreak resetting in pokemon & it displayed my play time as -17 hours

So i tested and yeah. Putting it back a whole year did this lol.