#instead of going to some wiki or something and getting the entire background

[theboxfort]

Undertale

[losersiren]

Yandere! Vault Dweller

N: I just finished the Fallout show, went on YouTube and fell down a rabbit hole of lore about the game. I decided Vault 11 shall be sacrificed (hehe). Everything I put in this fic is from the videos I've watched and the fan wiki, so it's like semi-accurate… Cw: talks about suicide, suicide (not the reader), violence, yandere tendencies, gore(?), death, manipulation, coercion, talks of death, should be gn! reader safe.... if not, put me in the chamber WC: 2.2k

Quiet. It was quiet. The silence is deafening, yet the ringing in your ear grows louder and louder, each second feeling as if eons had passed. The automated computer voice repeats in your head like a catchy song you’ll hear on those dusty records, the ones Mama used to play and dance to.

“Congratulations, citizens of Vault 11! You have made the decision not to sacrifice one of your own. You can walk with your head held high, knowing that your commitment to human life is a shining example to us all. And to make that feeling of pride even sweeter, I have some exciting news. Despite what you were led to believe, the population of Vault 11 is not going to be exterminated for its disobedience. Instead, the mechanism to open the main vault door has now been enabled, and you can come and go at your leisure. But not so fast! Be sure to check with your overseer to find out if it's safe to leave. Here at Vault-Tec, your safety is our number one priority.”

You were young when your parents escaped the bombs to the vault you're situated in right now; you grew up believing that damned computer about sacrifices and watched your fellow vault mates get killed one by one. You waited for the time it would be you in that same chamber. Now, with this information surfaced…they died for what? An experiment? What would have happened if you had been voted overseer…

The lump in your throat grows heavier, and the arguments and yelling in the background become more and more apparent that you can't ignore them anymore. Your eyes drift to the man standing tall and proud beside you, Charlie, his hair still somehow slick back; he still looks perfect even after the maddening chaos of events that transpired these past few days. His blue jumpsuit was as crisp as an ironed suit that the actors would wear from the moving pictures on television before the vault. His expression is as vacant as his blue eyes, his soft lips decorated with a barely visible smile. As he watches the other three vault survivors argue, Your brows furrow. 

Why isn’t he affected by the news like everyone else? This information is soul-crushing and life-changing!

Then again, you reason with yourself that maybe this is his way of coping; who are you to judge and microanalysis him like some psycho? Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep or the sense of safety ripped out of your hand like candy stolen from a baby. Heavens, you might nearly flip your lid entirely if something else happens. You sigh. To believe you almost were insinuating that Charlie would even be a drop suspicious, and of what, exactly? He saved and shielded you from the massacre that only left the five of you remaining; he was your childhood best friend..how could you? You reprimand yourself.

His eyes finally meet yours, and the sympathy and worry you sought appeared when the blonde saw how distressed you were. “Are you alright?” his soft voice fills your head–drowning out the talks of whether the group should commit suicide in honour of your dead vault men or venture into the outside world to educate others on how your vault was misled. You were somewhat dissociated from the whole conversation. Reasonably so.

His hands, soft yet calloused, turns your head side to side to check for any visible injuries he might’ve missed, which he shouldn’t have—knitted eyebrows and razor-sharp eyes search frantically for anything. 

Charles or… As you’ll call him later in your relationship, Charlie, has always been like this. When you met him, he was a reserved kid, a trait that would carry on from his pubescent to adolescent years. 

When other kids grew out of their shyness and worrisome attitude and eventually adapted to the vault, he was pushed aside. Well, that wouldn’t be the only reason. His father was the first overseer of Vault 11, the same overseer who thought the best course of action was not to tell the vault residents about the sacrificial system they were now to live with. That same choice he made was the reason for his death, and he was the first to test the new system. He wasn’t a good man. He was greedy, a neglectful father and husband, and so on. A family now ruined by one man’s ill-considered decision; Charles's mom wasn’t much better, the textbook definition of a hypocrite. Bad-mouthing her dead husband, the same one she defended when said husband would push his son away.

Most would fear having no one at the end of the world, but it became Charles's life; while everyone adapted to vault life, Charles adapted to the misfortune of the consequences of his old man’s actions. You decided one day to talk to him while others stood clear. It was a simple conversation; others would just brush it off…which he did initially. But after that day, you would constantly seek him out, and with that, you wore a genuine smile and interest every time you talked to him. His walls crumbled into dust for you and only you. You were like a shooting star he wished for. His reputation grew because of you and, with that, his feelings for you sored. You became his way of life. In his teen years, he decided to become the best match for you– He would participate in every extracurricular activity the vault would provide to make him an unstoppable force of a man. The perfect golden boy was made..for you.

He had the “perfect body,” perfect sperm count, unmatched intelligence, and charisma—he perfected them (even if you were the only one he talked to for long periods)—strength, agility, endurance—all of it. He will be everything you need and more. With that, he made sure no one would vote you as overseer…

He was so soft on you that it would rival feathers. Do you need help lifting that? He's already there. Do you need help with your pre-war history? He’ll just sit you down and study with you for hours. Are you bleeding from an accidental cut? Don’t worry he just finished his first aid training. He already had a plan for you both for everything that would happen.

Everything

“I’m fine…” You grab both of his hands gently. “...Well, not fine, fine, but I'm not hurt.” You smile weakly up at him. “It’s okay. You and I will get through this,” He coos, pushing strands of your hair away from your face and behind your ear. His touch is warm and tender, yet the words you hear next aren’t.

“Fuck..I..I can’t do this I’m sorry.” A man, short in stature, starts backing away, gun in hand, clearly distressed. Your eyes move away from Charlie’s to your fellow survivor; unknowingly to you, Charlie rolls his eyes at the man's “dramatics.”  “We don’t deserve to leave...That thing called us a shiny example..f..f.fucked! Thats fucked! I..I can’t live with that!” Another man says, “Anyone would’ve done what we did.” A woman comments, “You ask me? That's exactly the problem. Now, let’s get on with this.”

“Wait,” you say, stunned, as if he had predicted this would happen. Charles moves his hands to cover your eyes. The short man is first, putting his gun on the roof of his mouth and pulling the trigger, not sparing any more time; the woman is next, the second gunshot. Then, with a sigh and short prayer, the last man repeats the action done by the others. Each lifeless body hits the floor one by one, and then there is silence.

What the hell.

You try to understand the situation, but your brain has yet to catch up…it’s all too much. Charlie whispers calming phrases while he shields your eyes with one hand and rubs patterns along your back with the other. Tears start rolling down your face…and you sob. Hard. His hand moves to pet your hair, soothing you while you let it all out of your system.

He moves his body to shield you from the gruesome events that have just taken place; he moves both of his hands and cradles your face. You try looking behind him out of curiosity, but he stops you before you can.”Hey! Look at me with those gorgeous eyes,” He mummers, and of course, you comply. “There we go. You listen to me so well,” he whispers lovingly. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll both go back to my vault room. I have enough supplies for the both of us to survive outside for a while, okay?” He asks you, and you nod, agreeing to whatever he says. 

“I need to hear you say it..” 

“…yes, of course, whatever you think is best.” He smiles at you, thumb caressing your cheek. “Keep your eyes on me, okay?” He takes your hand and leads you through the halls. It's quiet… you don't like it. Your eyes are trained on his back, Charlie…he’s your lifebuoy in the angry sea, the only thing keeping you afloat; if it wasn’t for him…you might’ve met your end with the others. As if sensing your inner turmoil, he squeezes your hand, comforting you…and you squeeze back. Your world just fell apart, yet…it doesn’t seem entirely gone with Charlie by your side. 

It's only a short time till you reach his vault. You’ve been here so many times it's basically your room by now. The tall blonde turns to look at you. “I’m going to let you go, just for a second, okay..? I just need to get the supplies.” He holds your one hand with both of his– you reply with a soft okay, and with your permission, he starts to move. He moves towards his small desk to grab a small, flat-headed screwdriver, walks to a particular spot, and pops the floor title beneath him, revealing a hidden compartment. It's filled with two modular military backpacks, filled to the bream with necessities for outside the vault.

He was prepared for all of this…

Then he starts talking about what he has in mind for the two of you, settling on the surface of living together and everything. Charles gets lost when talking to you; he can speak his mind about almost anything, and rambling is second nature with you. The hermit turned a social butterfly in your presence.

“You know that computer may have been our downfall, but god did bless me with more information than I could handle…good thing, huh, glad I went through all that code…Vault-tec tried to make it secure, but I found a way...We could go somewhere called New Vegas…” He keeps talking. 

But you stand there, still, as a statue, looking down at him as he gathers everything…What did he just say? 

You think back to the start when killing between the blocs started..he was right there, ready to protect you, when you and the other surviving tested out if the chamber would kill all of you…he almost seemed to be too assured nothing bad would happen to any of you, almost like…no…no. You’re overthinking, right? But the more you listen…

“You knew…” you shakingly exclaim out loud, cutting him off. “Hmm?” He looks up at you as he puts the tile back…” You knew we didn’t need sacrifices…you knew it would play out like this…” you say louder and more confidently. Those once-homey blue eyes become cold and distant… analyzing you.  

You both stare at each other.

You turn and run.

 But your efforts are in vain; you don’t even leave the room before two muscular arms wrap around behind you, overtaking you, holding your arms down around your waist, dragging you back. You scream and kick with no success. You end up with his arms around you while he sits down, his back against the wall, and you in front of him with his head in your neck while you let it all out. “When?” you croak out, “When we were fifteen, I didn’t want you to become overseer…I didn’t want you to die..so I wondered if it was the computer that sent signals to kill whoever was sent in that chamber and wondered if I could stop it from killing you specifically; that's when I found out .” He answers swiftly and truthfully, “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” You question, “I didn’t care, honestly, the only thing that matters is you…If everyone died in the process, it would be less work for me…I wanted it to be just us from the beginning, anyway. I want you to need me as much as I need you…and now you finally do.”  

You feel weak and sick to your stomach… All your peers would’ve ended up dead either way. “I want to leave.” he hums, not mocking you but in acknowledgment. “And do what? You don’t know how to defend yourself; you have no supplies prepared, barely any survival instincts, and you don’t even know any information on the surface above. You can leave, but you’ll die…I can’t let that happen, sorry.” Charles buries himself more into you. 

“I hate you,” You whisper.

“That’s okay…all that matters is that you're here…with me and only me… I’ll keep you safe and sound.”

N: This was a long one, whew! I had to think about how I could make a Yandere fic with Fallout, and I had tons of concepts, but this one stood out the most. I hope my execution was good enough....Anyway, my next fic will most likely be a jealous fic about my Yandere lord, so stay tuned! Till then! see you soon my little guppies (��꒳`)♡ extra note: Throughout writing this, I thought "My Way of Life by Frank Sinatra" would fit Charli perfectly.

[yiffos-official]

I am willing to give you or anyone else on tumblr the skills and advice the helped me get my dream job

the idea of working for TEK a few months ago would just be a fantasy

my background in education is English. I learned what I know now on my own and only by random chance.

This is why I am so critical of the linux commumity on tumblr.

They're tagging themselves as -official when they can't provide casual end user support.

They're entirely too horny to be in this sphere. Computers and linux should not be about how much you want to fuck/be fucked by X

it will deter end users

This is very cool that you will help other tumblr users with this stuff; i may actually take you up on this at some point :3

(my tone here is /g, /pos, /nm, /lh)

I do, however, kind of disagree with the other points. I think that for any other social media it's correct, twt or fb does not have the culture to make these sorts of parody accounts viable or not-counter-productive to increasing the linux market share. But I don't think that tumblr is the same.

I think that tumblr does. I think the tumblr community has always been this somewhat ephemeral yet perpetual inside joke culture where almost every user is in-the-know, and new users to the joke are able generally able to catch on quickly to it due to their general understanding of they way tumblr communities operate.

IMO, it's a somewhat quick pipeline of:

\> find first "x-official" blog -> assume it's real -> see them horny posting about xenia -> infer that RH corporate would probably not approve of such a blog

I can appreciate that it might be intimidating to seek out help as a new linux user, and especially a new linux & tumblr user, but looking through these blogs, you do see them helping out people ^^. heck, my last post was helping someone getting wayland working on an nvidia system.

The main goal of these blogs is not to be a legitimate CS service to general end-users. they aren't affiliated with the software their blog is named after, so in many cases they *cant*. The goal is instead to foster a community around linux, creating a general network of blogs of the various FOSS projects that they enjoy.

I think that final sentiment, of these blogs detering end users, is most likely counter to their actual effect on end users who are considering switching to linux.

We all know a lot of tumblr is 20 or 30 something year olds who have just stuck around since ~2012ish, and new users to tumblr join with pre-existing knowledge of the culture and platform. Almost anyone coming across these blogs are going to be people who can see the "in" joke, and acclimate. I do highly doubt that a random facebook mom who's son convinced her to install mint on her old laptop would find tumblr, find a -official blog, scroll through said blog, and be detered from using mint.

The other side of this is that any tumblr users who come across these blogs, be it with an inkling of desire to switch to linux or not, will see a vibrant and active community that fits very well into the tumblr community. They remember, or have heard of, the amtrac & OSHA blogs, and are therefore probably aware that this is a pre-existing meme on here.

In all likelyhood, this will probably further incentivize them to make the switch, as they would be more attracted to a community of their peers over a community of redditors telling them to read the arch wiki repeatedly

I can, on the other hand, definitely see that for people who have difficulties with parsing tone, and especially sarcasm, would have trouble with this. TBH, I have these difficulties (hence when I was speaking to you yesterday I used the /unjerk indicator, as I couldn't tell what the tone of the conversation was), and so it took me a little while of being in this weird "I'm 99% sure these *aren't* official, but what if?". I have been there forI think that maybe being more transparent with the fact that the blogs are parodies is probably important. I'm guilty of this, and after i post this, i'll add it to my bio.

[flamebearrel]

🔬 + 🎵 + 🗺 for that ask game? I don't even go there, I just like to hear what you have to say about things

ACK thank you… you’re the light of my life

🔬: What character do you want to put under a microscope?

I’m gonna go with YouTube! I dunno why I like it so much but it being a relatively original design based on the UI makes it stand out from the other non-stick antagonists. Plus just LOOK at this goofy thing

If I have to pick a stick specifically then Red. He comes up with such unique and clever solutions to problems that no one else even considers

🎵: What’s a song you imagine an AvA/AvM animatic to? What’s the animatic?

Mother Mother must put something in their music to make so many of their songs animatic-able I'm telling you… In The Wings works really well for Purple I think, a recurring character who continuously teeters between friend and antagonist! Picturing the first verse being about their backstory with their parents and the second about the initial part of their arc where they meet Blue and Green (maybe the bridge montages the later parts idk). Relevant doodles attached

🗺: How do you imagine the world works?

I’ve seen on the wiki and in some discussions that people categorize sticks as either “Artificial” (the hollow-heads) or “Natural” (your “typical” solid color) stick figures. Frankly, I realllly don’t like this system because it clumps these guys with entirely different backgrounds together-

-but not these guys, despite living at most in different neighborhoods and under the exact same conditions.

I’d categorize them instead by how they originate: either “Drawn/Animated”, “Website/Game”, or “City/Outernet” stick figures.

Drawn sticks are created local to someone's desktop, usually via drawing program by an artist or animator. The powers and abilities they have depend on the names they are given, as well as (optional) code like The Dark Lord has. They can detach themselves from their original files, but presumably cannot be recovered if they do so and get taken out. These include Alan's hollow-heads, which are the only ones we've outright seen, but it's canon that other people have brought sticks to life too

Website and game sticks originate from the internet on, as you can guess, designated sites/games. The logistics of their abilities, appearances and lifestyles vary wildly depending on the worldbuilding of their source. If they die they can be revived if in close access to their webpage, but if that goes down, they're taken out too. Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and any Newgrounds/Stick Page guys fall into this category

City sticks live in the Outernet, a separate region almost entirely out of human reach. They live a life most similar to people (albeit vaguely, since a stickman is a simplified approximation of a human), being able to age, reproduce, and having their own economy/work systems. No powers, files or code to be attached to. King is shown to be one of these guys; Purple is slightly more complicated since they've lived on a mac, in games AND in the city at different points but they're one too due to their parents

Gates are needed to get from one area to another, using a site or game as the middleman. The only way to go direct from a desktop to the Outernet is the way this guy does

One other thing - For drawn and website sticks, the fundamentals of their characters like age, relationships, whatever are set by the intentions of their creators. So to me the main five are all set in the general "young adult" range (around 18-23), and only Second and Chosen consider themselves as biological brothers due to having a direct link between their programs and code

Followup post-AvA 11

[nekusstuff]

Silco x Lest hcs

RAREPAIR TIME

I've been shipping this ever since the second season came out and Lest appeared on screen and I've seen literally no one else even mention these two together (which make sense, they haven't shared a singular second of screen time) but I'm here to explain my headcanons for them and why I ship them!

This started off with me giving Lest an entire made up background story and it evolved into Lest x Silco, this wiki will contain the background for Lest and then it'll eventually merge into talking about the ship.

It's very tragic and doomed so if you're into that type of thing, keep reading.

Ps. English isn't my first language, excuse anything that's worded weirdly

૮︵⭒‿᧔☪︎᧓‿⋆︵

Lest was born to two working Zaunites catching them both by surprise. They hadn't planned to have a child in that day and age, they didn't have the resources nor the time, but when they realized, it was too late. A baby Vastaya was born in the mines a few months later, what seemed to be a healthy little boy, as healthy as anyone under born under those conditions could be.

The child grew with mostly absent parents since they worked endless shifts to at least give their predecessor a decent life, economically at least. This lead to the child having to grow up way too fast and learn how to be independent from the start, he was homeschooled, education was never Zaun's priority, but he was a responsible student, he read every book he could get his hands on and specifically got an interest for anything related to medical things and health, which soon proved to be quite useful since his father fell ill when the child was freshly 18. He did all he could with his knowledge, trying to find new ways to heal someone, but he didn't have the resources.

The child inevitably had to find a job, not being keen on spending all day in the mines, he promised his mother that he'd find something else. And so he did.

Ever since he was a child, something didn't sit quite right with himself. He looked in the mirror but never recognized the person staring back. He always found himself playing around with his mother's makeup and clothes, never knew why that's what he liked but never really questioned it either. That was until a new vendor opened a small vending stall close to their home, the first time the child and his mother went there to check it out, the vendor instantly caught the child's attention, she had beautiful bright makeup and clothes that wrapped around her in the most elegant ways, it was definitely a contrast against the gloomy zaunite streets.

The months went by and the child wouldn't stop hearing rumors about this vendor which inevitably led to him being scared to approach her, but he still had to go buy groceries. He had heard about how she was some kind of witch, how she had been born like a man, and just general complaints about her straightforwardness. It was true that she wasn't the nicest of people, but every time she'd seen the little Vastaya around, her eyes softened, like she saw something in him, like how she'd constantly catch him staring at her, not as the other people around who only stared to judge and speak about how "horrendous" her looks were, but as a sign of curiosity, of admiration, of inspiration.

One day while the child was paying, she stopped before grabbing his money and instead leaned in to speak to him. She told him to not shut down those voices in the back of his mind that begged him to explore more about himself and then made him keep the money, telling him to buy something nice for himself with it instead. With ears flipped downward he slowly nodded and then scurried away.

He did as he was told, he bought himself a long purple fur scarf, had to haggle for it but he got it. As soon as he came back home he put it around his neck and head and then did his makeup as he usually did. With his hair covered like that, it gave the impression to be longer, and for once, the little Vastaya saw a glimpse of who she truly was.

Lest let her hair grow and started working at one of the brothels in town, taking advantage of the men that would pay top coin for a night with a lady like her. With that she was able to let her mother stop working and start taking care of her father full time, in the meantime, she also started investigating about shimmer. It was a new drug she had heard about around the brothel millions of times and rumor had it that it had some amazing healing properties if used correctly. Lest didn't waste time and started investigating as much as she could about it, hoping to somehow find a cure for her father but the resources were starting to lower with the whole Zaun revolution thing going on and she didn't have the equipment to properly do her tests.

[I can imagine Lest being a burlesque performer]

Sadly, she wasn't fast enough, her father passed away and her and her mother were left devastated. She couldn't waste time on tears though, she had to keep working for her mother, and this only impulsed her desire to research shimmer so she could save lives, the state and time she was living in pleaded for it.

Months went by and she managed to stir up some shimmer solution that would be able to treat wounds, it wasn't all that strong but it was something, men didn't only came by for pleasure anymore, they also came for medical help and Lest was delighted.

The Silco x Lest starts here

Word quickly spread and a certain someone appeared in her brothel's room one day. The man had big scaring around his, what seemed to be, blind eye, this man was Silco. He asked for her help to treat his eye and in exchange of a sum of money, she soon became his usual go to nurse. Now and then, Lest would be performing before her appointments with Silco, meaning sometimes she was late to those appointments but Silco would still show up and catch a part of the show, between this and the amount of time they both spent together started generating some feelings between the two that they couldn't even admit to themselves. Lest put the excuse that he was merely another client and she knew from experience, getting attached to a client never led to anything good. And Silco put up a similar excuse, that Lest was only being nice for the money, that exchange was everything that held then together.

And so, after some drunken nights where Lest convinced Silco to stop being such a stuck up for a day and have some fun, a cute situationship blossomed.

As Silco's power grew, so did his seriousness, his visits to the brothel ceased, both because he didn't want to be seen around a place like that and because he had gotten himself a nice place to operate. Lest was invited to join him, she could work as a spy for him given her hearing abilities and natural charm while still being Silco's doctor, and she agreed leaving the brothel aside, but Silco wasn't the only one whose demeanor had changed, the experiences she had lived with getting in trouble about shimmer and the brothel itself had taught him how to be more secretive, more centered in her work. She became more of a listener than a talker but her silver tongue never really disappeared, it was just that now it wasn't used to boost up the egos of the brothel's clientele but to get herself information she might need.

Working with Silco, who had become the main distributor of shimmer in Zaun was extremely helpful, she could continue her research, this time with way better materials. Although her relationship with Silco faltered, their personalities often crashed against each other making them have constant fights. Lest didn't know at which point Silco got like this and she hated it, mainly because it also made her notice how she herself had also changed overtime.

Eventually Silco brought Powder in. Lest had mixed feelings about her, mainly jealousy seeing how Silco went soft for her so quickly, but at the same time, every time she saw them interacting, she saw that awkward and sweet boy who came every night to get his eye checked. The nostalgia was more than she could bare and once Jinx got old enough to cure Silco's eye herself, Lest left without a word, knowing well she wasn't needed around anymore, they would take care of each other.

Silco wasn't happy about this, appearing to be furious about Lest's disappearance when in reality he was worried, terrified of not having her by his side, you never realize how much someone matters to you until you lose them as they say.

Lest was a smart woman, she knew how to get around, and she managed to pry herself into Piltover, her hearing abilities once more proving to be as useful as her healing ones. She started treating people in Piltover while listening in to more than she should to then sell any information she got, just like she did when she worked with Silco. Eventually she met Mel, she also worked for her for a while and they seemingly clicked well quickly, and we all know where that led ✨another situationship✨ that ended up with Lest rejecting Mel because of her own trust issues.

When Lest found out about Silco's death she was devastated, she had been thinking about reaching out again, never actually doing so out of pure fear of the other's reaction "it's been a long time, would he even recognize me?" "If he does he probably doesn't want me anywhere near him."

But just like with his father, she wasn't fast enough, not brave enough, and now she would never see him again.

After this, the events on S2 happen, so there's not much more to explain.

૮︵⭒‿᧔☪︎᧓‿⋆︵

They make me violently ill, I didn't want to make this post too long so I didn't go into much detail about Silco and Lest's relationship, just wanted to finally write this idea down cause it's been on my mind FOR SO LONG, procrastination is a bitch.

If I see people are actually interested in this delusion of mine I'll make a separate post with short headcanons, basically me yapping about certain scenarios I see them having and such.

And that was it! If you read all of this, thank you so much!!!! Makes me really happy that you actually took the time to read all that lolz,

See you around!

[zorilleerrant]

So I read the First Test graphic novel adaptation, and, as with the vast majority of graphic novel adaptations, I kind of feel that... it simply didn't need one of those. It got across the gist of the story, but, you know, so would a wiki summary or even diving into fics and assuming you'll figure out what's going on eventually. The fact that it managed to cover most of the basics is not really a resounding endorsement for the book to be written.

There's nothing egregiously wrong with it. It takes quotes directly - sometimes I think more changes would've worked better, honestly - and covers the same story with the same timeline. At no point did I go, "hey, fuck you! That's not right!" Well, except for the panel with the Lucky Cats. No excuse for that.

That's about it, though. It's missing a lot of my personal favorite scenes, as well most of the ones that follow Kel's emotional growth, or set up later story elements about her growing up. The sparrows are relegated to secondary cast, which I feel really strips down the driving thematic elements of wanting to protect the small. I also feel like it's sort of ignoring the gendered element of the story; it feels like Just This One Dude has it out for her, and mostly everyone else is fine, something I find especially troubling since the complexity of him becoming a reluctant ally is important.

I feel like condensing it makes the whole story seem like it's moving too fast, as well as making it seem like all of this is essentially a breeze for Kel, when her struggle is, at this point, most of the story. There's a lot of parts where I go, well, I know why that's important, because I know (and recently reread) the book, but would a new reader know what's going on? Would they understand why these different parts are important, and what they're relevant to? I'm not even sure all of the actions scenes are clear if you don't already know what's happening in them, because of the lack of setup. It's followable, but I think many parts of it might be confusing.

I think it was a mistake to prioritize her tasks towards knighthood. Yes, that's the plot of the story, and the backdrop against which Kel's story is told, but it's also the most recognizable part of the genre. If you implied or summarized those parts, readers would be able to follow: oh, here she must have exercised, there she must have gotten better at jousting, and in between she must have practiced hand to hand. Imply them, create a montage page, or put insets in the upper corner of each spread. Then focus on the parts that are more unique to her journey, rather than her knighthood: finding out people are in trouble, debating with herself how to handle that trouble, struggling with protecting herself. Also, importantly, the fact that the system was arrayed against her and her concerns over whether it was selfish or brave to stand up against that injustice, and where the line was between disrespect and injustice.

The art is also... very functional. And while some stories need to be told visually, or their very point is that they're told visually, this was a print novel first. It certainly got itself across without any visuals. So serviceable art in a recognizable style isn't adding anything to that; I really feel that, for a true adaptation, it would need to have an art form that added something to the story, instead of just faithfully illustrating what's there already, with nothing in particular to latch onto or get excited about. They render the scenes fine, but they don't add anything that wasn't in the book, or even explicitly show anything that was only implicit originally.

However! Peachblossom is fantastic. Not for people who have a visceral reaction against horses making human expressions, but if you're a fan of that sort of thing, he's great. The faces are hilarious, really convey everything he's feeling, and are wonderful to look at. A shame he's relegated to such a background character, because an entire book of watching him get mad at people would be hilarious. I just need to see him bite someone.

[willowthegraycat]

Finkit and Fern

So, here's some news about Finkit and Fern!

I have completed drawing the clan areas, and those are now available to be seen as illustrations for each place listed under 'tri-clan area' on this page: https://finkitandfern.miraheze.org/wiki/Tri-clan_area

Speaking of that page, this is the first time I'm publicly sharing this wiki that I've been working on. It'll be a lot more impressive once actual episodes come out, because then I can add more information to it, but it has a fair amount of background info on it already, as well as drawings of the clan locations and all the characters. It's not finished, since I have more things to add, but it feels complete enough to share. You can get a good idea of what the finished wiki will look like by checking out the Ducky Momo Show section of the wiki, which acts as a mini wiki in of itself.

Of course, any requests for things to add will be done! I haven't gotten a request yet, maybe I'm not asking enough, but I'd really find it fun to get requests for things to add in particular if you want something added so keep that in mind I guess haha

Next up for me in drawing the backgrounds would be to draw the town, Tigrillo Town. The issue here is that I'm not done building it in minecraft, and building an entire town takes a lot longer than building a forest, even with all the extra areas and such. I have a lot of main buildings done, but there's still a lot of empty space, so I'm going to be working on that more passively when I feel like making more buildings, rather than forcing myself to make like 20 houses in one day. I really don't want to get burnt out with this project, so I want to switch up my focus and work on something else now.

So I'm doing another poll! Tell me what you want to see.

I'm making the poll only go for a day this time, but feel free to request things even if you missed it or your choice didn't get picked. I'll rewrite songs and share/design characters on demand happily, provided they exist inside my plans for this au. (most characters and songs do though, and I might make an exception for those that don't if you really want to see something, I can make like an au-au for stuff I left out of this au lol)

Also! I might not be drawing the buildings from Tigrillo town, but instead making labeled floorplans and light sketches of the outsides of the buildings. Once the town is built entirely, I will be making a Town Map, similar to the Tri-Clan Area Map I made.

If I give each building a page on my wiki, I would want to include who lives/works there as well, so that would mean design humans would be my next priority.

Just some thoughts

@cantdanceflynn

[woomycritiques543]

(Based on another post.)

Ok... I was looking at the designs and-

Has anyone realized how weird the racial implications of Hazbin Hotel (and Helluva Boss with the main characters) are?

I know someone else has already talked about this-

But Charlie Morningstar is clearly white coded. The “corrupt souls” she has to “save” are clearly poc coded or are directly poc. The “villains” of the show are MOSTLY poc with Velvet being confirmed as poc indirectly by Vivziepop not long ago and Valentino was confirmed to be hispanic too. It gets off “white savior” vibes along with the fact that 1. Theres a creole character who practices voodoo who’s stereotyped as a cann^bal 2. There being a hispanic poc (Valentino) who’s also shown to be highly aggressive, to a character thats Italian: a ethnicity thats considered as “white” in many places. Hell! Niffy is even Japanese, and she was drawn as yellow 100% of the time until just recently.

They also have this thing where theres something i’d like to call “Greywashing”: Where Vivziepop deliberately avoids using the color brown, and instead makes all of her poc (No, “Coco” doesnt count shes from another artist. This is only about the main designer.) a lighter shade of grey, giving the illusion of brown skin without actually making them brown. While Vivziepop gave Charlie a peach-like skin tone. So its clearly not because they're demons but something else entirely.

(Light Grey.)

(Grey, with a brownish tint mixed in.)

(LIGHT grey.)

(Not counting Valentino since he seems to be more moth based than Vaggie and isnt intended to be as humanoid unlike those that are on this list.)

While Charlie, our “main heroine” is drawn as a blonde looking girl with snow-white skin. I know some people will make the “they're demons!” excuse, but these characters in particular are clearly meant to be the closest to human looking. Especially Charlie, who’s design is just a generic looking white girl with some Halloween makeup slapped on, an eye infection, and neko teeth.

So her being the main protagonist, half of the made to be “worst” characters such as Valentino and Alastor directly being poc. Plus the fact that the show is demonizing a closed religion that was created by African slaves as a way of coping with their situation while Hazbin is showing it as “evil” or “dark magic”. Plus in Helluva Boss, the “succubitches” are all shown to be sluts who are written in a negative light, who also happen to be poc in their human forms.

... who are also shamed by the police as “degenerates.”

They also have a poc background character named “Rat”, a animal that tends to be stereotyped in cartoons as “dirty” or “disease filled.” and yet they decided to name the second darkest character (who is also from a different artist) this.

This combined with the other implications can only make me say:

What is Vivziepop’s deal with us?! Why is she outright refusing to draw us without making our skin somewhat grey- a light grey for that matter! The people at the wiki call Alastor “beige.” But I remember there being a time where they called him khaki, and earlier “grey.” Even beige is described as a “greyish tan” and is considered “the most pale” type of brown. So even the “browns” are very pale and arent the shade most of us are- aka pure, dark, brown! Even most light skin people are not grey- but brown! 

This isnt about the morality of the characters and them being demons, this is about the stereotyping from the creator. I dont give a shit if the show is meant to be “edgy”- you either choose to be borderline racist, ableist, and narcissitic with how you write your characters, or actually “progressive.” Choosing both just makes you look like most of the hypocrites over at Twitter who think that representation is a “two way” street that can be morphed into whatever benefits someone’s bias of a specific discriminated group. But back to Hazbin-

The implications with the poc are off-putting, and it makes me all the more nervous for how theyre going to present poc in the next show. Yikes! 

[davnittbraes]

The Second Step - Chapter Eight

Part of The World Is Light, Embodied.

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 4400

Warnings etc: Reader insert, female reader, anxiety, dangerous situations, disgusting amount of fluff, a lil bit of smutty smut

Notes: Ok look. I know. I KNOW. But I promise we’re getting close. I can’t help it that these two are walking, talking advertisements for why people need therapy. They’re doing things on their own time. Also I’m making up some more stuff about SW lore here, once again if it’s not on the wiki it’s mine.

Oh and can we please have some more Fluffy Din? This man has been through so much, just let him giggle once in a while.

Please check out the Series Masterlist page for more info.

The ship is quiet, the gentle thrum of the hyperdrive a soothing background noise. It’s late, the kid put to bed in his little hammock about an hour ago, leaving you and Mando alone.

Nights like this have become part of the routine these last few weeks, since you’d left Tatooine - the two of you up for a couple hours after the kid goes to sleep, tidying or cleaning or fixing little things, anything to occupy hands while words fall tentatively between you.

Those quiet conversations have mostly centred around the kid or whatever you did that day, whether it was scrub down the hold or make a supply run to some backwater town. Safe topics, perfect for just getting used to speaking openly and honestly with someone else. Something both of you are slowly getting accustomed to.

Sometimes you don’t talk at all. It’s just comfortable silence between you, no pressure to fill it. Those are some of your favourite moments - just you and him, existing, the something between you slowly but steadily growing stronger.

But sometimes, that something flares, pulses and pulls at your skin, woven through with anticipation.

Begs you closer.

Pleads for more.

Ever since the two of you spoke on the streets of Mos Eisley, finally accepting that neither of you truly wanted to walk away from the other, your thoughts have been a tumultuous flurry of anxiety, uncertainty and self-doubt. The entire walk back to the Razor Crest had been a contrast - the cacophony of questions bouncing around your skull, the night quiet and soft around you, the rawness in your chest from intense emotions set free, the reassuring weight of his hand still clasped in yours. The chaos hadn’t calmed in the last few weeks, even with the steadiness of routine setting your days.

And all of it can be boiled down to one question:

What next?

You have no idea what you want from this situation.

Well. Maybe you do, a little bit - you can certainly name the sensation that dips low in your stomach and makes it hard to breathe whenever he’s near. You don’t need to examine that persistent, warm throb in your core, you know exactly what your body is asking for.

You just don’t know how to get there.

Not with him.

The Mandalorian bounty hunter, who touches you with just as much desire as reservation.

Like he’s afraid to give in.

Pfassk. You can relate to that.

There had been moments since you came back to him, just like before. Blips of time where the something between you roared with frustration, the two of you reaching out to touch and feel despite all hesitations. Little moments that repeat in your mind over and over as you go about your days - the glide of well-worn leather down your arm as his hand directs you through a crowd, the smooth chill of his breastplate under your fingertips when you brush by him in the hold.

You’re now familiar with his nearness, the sensation of his tall, broad frame often within reach instead of a safe distance away.

It’s a foreign feeling, this level of comfort. It’s terrifying, it’s exhilarating, it’s…

Irresistible.

You want it.

You want more.

Step by step. Together.

Both of you had said those words. In agreement that whatever this thing was between you, it wouldn’t be forced by one or the other. Learn to trust, to accept. Let down the walls one brick at a time.

But it’s getting harder to pull away, harder for your hand to not linger on his arm and for your gaze not to get lost in that mysterious black void of his visor, thoughts drifting to what might be. Harder to step back and away from his presence.

Harder to resist the urge to step forward instead.

Like tonight. It’s buzzing on the tips of your fingers, along the curve of your neck, the small of your back. Reaching out across the space that divides you, beckoning. You’ve been sitting in silence for the last half hour or so, but you can sense that silence stretching thin under the weight of the pull.

“You’re good with him.”

Mando’s soft voice draws your attention from the kid’s robe that you’re mending - little monster caught it on the corner of a storage shelf while you were playing tag, tore a hole through the back. “Who? The kid?”

“Yes.”

A smile curves your mouth as you straighten out the tear in the cloth. “I just seem to get along with children and animals. Not so much anyone else, though.” You look at him out of the corner of your eye. “With a few exceptions.”

He takes a seat on a storage crate opposite yours, one you pushed against the wall of the hull to support your back while you worked. He’s quiet for a moment, his helmet looking at you straight on with a focus you’ve learned means he’s working up to saying something. You wait him out, smoothing the robe over your lap and starting the stitch, fingers moving deftly - you’ve mended countless such nicks and tears in your lifetime.

“Did you grow up with a lot of children and animals around?”

Your fingers flinch as a tremor of surprise runs through your body, and you pause before you accidentally prick yourself. Your childhood is not one of the safe topics the two of you have restricted yourselves to. But there’s a gentleness in his voice that tells you he won’t press if you don’t want to answer. A few weeks ago you certainly wouldn’t have, survival instincts quickly deflecting the conversation to something safer. But now…

Along with the something, there’s a thread of hesitant trust that’s forming between you and the Mandalorian, pulling tighter and tighter, bringing you closer together.

And instead of pulling back, snapping that thread, you want to let it.

Taking a deep breath, you resume sewing, slipping the point of the needle through the thick woven cloth. “In a sense. What about you?”

You can’t help but glance up at him then, anxiety immediately boiling hot in your stomach. Was that too far? No, he had asked you first. And he would just say he couldn’t answer that, like he’s done before, if he -

“Yes. There were always other children around when I was a small child.” He pauses, fingers flexing on the crate as he grips the edge. “Though that changed when the Mandalorians took me in. There wasn’t many my age.”

“‘Took you in?’” You pause, looking up in surprise. “You weren’t born a Mandalorian?”

The helmet dips a little, like he’s looking at the floor. “When I was a boy, my village was attacked by droids.” The edges of his voice dull, obviously tinged with old memories. “My family was killed, but Mandalorians saved me. I was raised in the Fighting Corps, mostly with others older than me.”

Your hands rest in your lap, sewing forgotten as his words sink through your thoughts, connections clicking into place. “You were a foundling.”

“Yes.”

Like the kid.

Your understanding of the bond between them deepens, sharpens, grows.

A sudden realization makes you sit up straight. “You were a child during the Clone Wars?”

The helmet tilts. “Why do you think that?”

“You said your village was attacked by droids.” Shrugging, you let your gaze drift down to your lap, twining a finger through the loose thread on your needle. “I haven’t heard of many other groups of droids attacking civilians, except the Separatist army. So you were a kid when - oh, you’re much older than I thought.”

His huff of laughter makes you look up in surprise again. He’s leaning back a bit, looking more relaxed than you’d assume given the subject you’re talking about. The knowledge that he’s comfortable telling you about his childhood burns pleasantly in your chest.

Sitting back to mirror his pose, you raise an eyebrow. “What’s so funny?”

“Only you would have the nerve to insult a Mandalorian by calling him old.” The words tremble slightly with contained laughter.

Rolling your eyes, you stick the needle through the robe’s fabric to keep it safe and cross your arms over your chest. “I said you’re older than I thought you were. Big difference. But keep this up and I’ll start pointing out every time you stand up to stretch your back when you think I’m not looking.”

He sighs, rolling his shoulders as if chasing a muscle twinge even as he speaks. “I’ll agree with you on one thing, I’m not as young as I used to be.”

As if sensing his back pain, your own lower back starts to ache, the time spent sitting hunched over your sewing despite leaning against the wall quickly catching up with you. “I understand the feeling.”

Silence falls suddenly, thick with expectation. He had talked about his childhood, even pretty much confirmed his age - a quick mental calculation told you he was probably in his early forties. But now you know that about him, and he’s waiting for you to share the same information about yourself - except you can’t, not in the way he wants.

Well, these last few weeks have taught you that he will take whatever you’re willing to give, and not ask for more.

Drawing a deep breath, you let your thoughts flick over memories you usually keep safely locked away. “I moved around a lot as a child, so I didn’t have the chance to really make friends. But I cared for a variety of different animals through the years.”

You smile, gaze slipping away from him and over the nearby storage rack, unfocused as you drift through hazy memories. “Animals are simple, honest - even when they’re clever and try to trick you it’s only driven by a primal need to survive, not greed or cruelty or the desire to control others. Animals accept anyone who is kind to them, regardless of -”

Your throat tightens, the memories suddenly becoming far too clear. Shaking your head slightly, you close your eyes and push them back before looking at Mando again. “They accept people who are kind to them regardless of where that person comes from, or what others might think of them.”

“Not a trait found in many people.” He says the words softly, like he can sense the flare of emotion you just felt.

You snort lightly. “Yeah, well, not many people are kind, either.”

“Not always. But when you find those people, it’s good. Everyone needs a clan, a tribe. It… makes things easier.”

A twinge of sympathy tightens in the pit of your stomach. There’s something he’s not saying, hiding beneath his words, but evident in the slope of his shoulders and the dip of his helmet. “Do you still have that? Other than the kid.”

He sighs, a heavy rush of sound through the modulator. “I’m searching for them. For… whoever is left.”

The exhaustion in his voice makes you want to reach out, comfort him, but you restrain yourself - the distraction of touching each other is still too strong, and this is a sombre conversation, as well as an important one. You settle for gentle encouragement. “I hope you find them.”

He’s quiet for a moment, helmet turning away as the looks at the floor. “I don’t know who I’d be without them. They give me a purpose, an identity.”

His words echo through your thoughts, twisting and turning as you consider them. That doesn’t quite align with your personal philosophy, and you don’t want to insult him but the near-despair in his voice urges you to speak. “You’re more than that, you know.”

The black visor turns back to you sharply, but his frame doesn’t stiffen with insult or offence. You pause, giving him a moment to reply, but he’s silent, waiting. “You’re more than a Mandalorian, or a bounty hunter, or a father to a little green dude.” Smiling, you kick out a booted foot to point in his direction. “You’re not just one of those things, you’re all of them and more. You can stop bounty hunting and take off the helmet but you’ll still be you. That’s your true identity, not titles or clans or even names. Just you.”

He’s still, unmoving, silent. Dank farrik, there you go, saying the wrong thing again. Your anxiety threatens to ramp up and you shove it back down - there’s nothing in his stance that says he’s upset with you. Just give him time, be patient and -

“So take away the namana berry farmer and the animal caretaker and the smuggler. Who are you?”

The question instantly raises your hackles, thoughts automatically pulling up various replies that would lead the conversation away from that subject, and it takes a moment of intense concentration to wrangle them back. This time is different - he’s different, he’s not asking to get information that he can use against you. No, his voice is curious, prodding gently at your defenses with no intent to try to push through them.

Which is good. Because even though you trust him not to betray you, you’re not ready for that yet.

Shrugging one shoulder, you throw him a crooked smile. “Me? Oh, I’m not really sure I know the answer to that yet. I’ll let you know when I find out, though.”

He huffs his laugh, shaking his head once in amusement. “Tionas.”

The word is foreign, you’re not sure what it was, but he didn’t say it with anger so it can’t be a bad thing. “What’s that mean?”

“You say you don’t have the answer.” The smile in his voice is evident, warming his words. “Tionas - in the Mandalorian language, it means a question.”

Warmth floats through the something between you, settling behind your ribs, fluttering along your heartbeat. It’s too close to those emotions you’re still trying to sort through, so you deflect. “You make me sound so mysterious, like one of those characters in the HoloNet dramas that suddenly appear out of nowhere and throw the whole plot off.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen one.”

You stare at him for a long moment, but the blank wall of armour gives you nothing. “I need to get better at being able to tell when you’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“What?” You’re probably looking at him like he’s grown an extra head but you can’t stop yourself. “Everyone has seen at least part of an episode. They’re everywhere on the HoloNet, it’s impossible to avoid them even if you wanted to.”

A soft chuckle floats through the modulator, straight to that warmth beneath your ribs, and he shrugs one shoulder nonchalantly.

Ok, well, it’s actually pretty reasonable that this stoic, Mandalorian bounty hunter has never seen a HoloNet drama. But the way that little laugh made your heartbeat race spurs you on.

You sit back, putting your sewing off to the side, and narrow your eyes at him. “I don’t believe you. I think you secretly love them - you’ve watched every episode, probably have posters on the walls of your bunk.”

He scoffs, but it comes out more like a laugh. “You’ve seen my bunk when you’ve put the kid to bed, you know I don’t -”

“You definitely have all the characters’ backstories memorized.” Pretending to ignore his interjection, you keep going, unable to stop a grin from curving your lips as he squirms with uncomfortable amusement. “Pfassk, I bet you’ve even watched all the behind-the-scenes footage, the commentaries, you know all the random facts about the making of -”

“You’re not going to stop, are you -”

“You have a cherished collection of autographs from the cast, which you got from going to all the conventions.” Your own laughter bubbles up, stuttering your speech. “You’ve waited in line for hours to get them and you look at them every night -”

In a flurry of movement he’s suddenly right in front of you, a gloved hand pressed over your mouth muffling your shriek of laughter enough that you can hear his answering chuckle.

You launch yourself upright and twist to get away but he grabs you by the waist with his free arm and your weight shifts, momentum throwing you sideways, sending you both downward.

His instincts catch the motion and he pulls you into his lap as he sits heavily on the crate you were just occupying. Your body vibrates with restrained laughter, a dizzying giddiness zipping through your veins, twitching your limbs as you half-heartedly try to break free of his hold. But his grip is strong, the arm around your waist a solid bar holding you in place, pulled back tight to his chest, and your struggling turns into shifting to get closer to him.

The feel of his broad frame pressed against you, his thighs under yours as your legs are slung sideways over his lap, the heat of his palm through his glove over your mouth - the giddy dizziness builds, spirals through your body, tightens in your stomach and the muscles of your inner thighs.

There’s a light tremble in his breath through the modulator - laughter or something else, you can’t tell - and it adds a rasp to his voice that shoots straight to your core, sparking arousal at the base of your spine. “What is it going to take to make you stop talking about this?”

Sifting through the potential responses, you find some that will turn the conversation down a safer path, a path that pulls you out of his arms and away from him again where the two of you can continue on with your evening as usual.

Your heart pounds heavily against your ribs as you choose a different direction.

A slight tilt of your chin pulls his hand from your mouth - but it doesn’t move it away, that warm leather-clad palm cupping your jaw as you turn your face toward him, looking up at the black visor.

Your voice is soft, breathless with anticipation. “I thought you said my mouth was one of my best features.”

His gloved thumb slowly traces your bottom lip, the leather smooth against tender skin. “I did say that.”

“Did you want to change your opinion?”

A sigh, full of mock defeat. “No.”

It’s right there, that something, hanging in barely-space between you, waiting.

You take hold of it and pull.

Sliding one hand over his and the other around his elbow, you tilt your face into his touch, keeping your gaze fixed on the visor. “Then maybe you should find a better use for it.”

The hitch of his breath through the modulator matches the stumble of your own heartbeat.

His thumb glides over your bottom lip again, this time pressing gently, tugging ever-so-lightly until your lips part. “You have no idea how much I want to.”

“Oh, I think I have some idea.” You flick out your tongue, tasting the worn leather, a sharp, bitter tease of the warmth of him beneath it. “Because I want it, too.”

He groans - crikking hells that’s hot - his fingers flexing along your jaw as if restraining himself from… you don’t know what but you want to find out.

You shift on his lap, one of your legs sliding off to brace a booted foot against the floor, giving you purchase to settle the curve of your ass into the cup of his thighs. His hand on your waist moves to grip your hip firmly and you arch into him, seeking -

The soft sound that chokes through the modulator, blends with your own whimper as your ass presses against the hard length of his cock through his flightsuit. Arousal flares hot over your skin, your core throbbing with need - and what you need is so close, only a few layers of clothing away.

A few layers of clothing and the restraint running through his frame.

Threading your fingers through his hand on your hip, you keep it there while you roll your hips back again, purposefully grinding over the hard length pressed against your ass.

He groans again - pfassk you will never get over that sound, how it sends a flood of heat between your thighs - sliding the hand on your jaw down to cup the back of your neck. “Tell me what you want.”

“This.” Dank farrik, your voice barely sounds like your own, high and breathy and squeezing through tight lungs. Need shivers down your midriff and across your hips as you roll your hips back against him again, torn between moving to a position where you can press that hard length where you want it most and pulling away from him for even a second. “I want this. I want you.”

“I can’t - fuck, I -” He chokes off as you let go of his arm to grip the top edge of his breastplate for more leverage, grinding your ass against his cock again.

Through the haze of arousal you can hear it, the frustration and hesitation and self-doubt inking his voice, bleeding through his own desire. Your fingers curl into the cloth of his cowl, seeking him underneath all the layers. “Whatever you can give me. I’ll take it.”

A shudder runs through his entire body and his hand on your hip clenches while his thighs flex, lifting your body as he grinds his clothed cock against the plushness of your ass.

Oh kriff oh pfassk yes -

A hot spike of need shoots through your core, cunt pulsing so hard it pushes a moan from your throat. You’re spiraling upwards and out into the space surrounding you, surrounding him, your body throbbing with that something that’s relentlessly pulling you closer, closer to -

The entire ship suddenly reels, spinning, throwing the two of you back against the wall of the hull.

Pressure cracks along your skin and in your eardrums, the very air itself shuddering with the weight of it, an all-encompassing silence muting everything so completely it’s as if sound never existed.

Everything rushes forward - rocks sharply back - spins to a halt and then alarms are blasting, the ship full of sudden sound and light.

And yet there’s a strange stillness, unsettling.

Wrong.

The two of you leap into movement. Mando runs to the cockpit and your feet taking you straight to his bunk.

The kid get the kid make sure he’s -

The door to the bunk slides open and there - large, amber eyes are blinking at you, tiny clawed hands reaching frantically over the edge of the hammock.

You quickly pull him out, wrapping your arms around him securely, murmuring in one big ear. “It’s ok, kiddo, I’ve got you.”

The ship shudders hard, floor rumbling beneath your feet, enough to throw you off balance. Spinning around, you fall awkwardly onto the bed and hurry to slide back into the nearest corner, bracing yourself against the walls and pulling your knees up to your chest so the kid is tucked safely against your body.

His soft whine hums against the skin right over your pounding heart. “I’ve got you, don’t worry, I won’t let go.”

Pfassk please let it be ok let us be ok where’s Mando -

Another shudder wracks the ship as it reels, jolting with a sharp movement.

The stillness shifts, the alarms cutting off as the engines whir back to life.

Relief washes over your body, but it’s quickly followed by concern.

Mando -

Bootsteps on the ladder send another wave of relief through you, so intense it darkens the corners of your vision as your blood pressures dips sharply.

Then he’s there, his frame filling the doorway and helmet tilting as his takes the two of you in.

The kid coos and squirms to get free of your grasp, so you loosen your arms and help him stumble out of your lap toward Mando. “He’s fine, just a little shaken up, I think.”

Mando picks up the kid, giving him a quick, reassuring squeeze, then shifts him to one arm. His free hand reaches for you, and you take it without hesitating, standing as he pulls you up toward him.

“Are you alright?” His voice is tight with worry, his hand running down your arm as if trying to reassure himself you’re still there.

A sentiment you can understand to - your own hand skims down his side, seeking the solidness of his body under his layers. “Yes, I’m fine. Are you?”

The helmet nods once. “I have to get back to the cockpit. The hyperdrive blew, we’re sublight right now and I need to watch the scanners.”

“Crikking hells, the hyperdrive?” You follow him as he steps away, moving toward the ladder. “Where are we? Anywhere close to a mechanic?”

“We’re only a couple hours away from Junkfort Station.” He climbs the ladder smoothly, kid tucked into the crook of his arm. “Should be able to get it repaired there.”

Then he’s disappearing over the edge of the cockpit entrance, leaving you staring up at the empty space. Your hands grip the ladder so tightly your fingernails dig sharply into your palms. But you don’t notice the tiny pinpricks of pain, you don’t even see the ladder anymore.

Junkfort Station.

A hub for smugglers and other underworldlings to meet, trade and conduct business. It’s a static space station, but there’s nothing static about it other than the fact that it stays in one place. A constant flow of people move through it - none of them honourable and all of them dangerous. There are permanent businesses, of course, smugglers and pirates need repairs and booze and sometimes a place to lie low for a while. But even those businesses are in constant flux, changing with the tide of trade and political power.

Junkfort Station. Uniquely positioned at the crux of four key hyperlanes, with direct or near-direct access to several smuggling routes.

Including the Kessel Run.

You lean forward, pressing your forehead against the ladder. 

Calm. Focus. Control.

Deep breath, loosen the tightness in your lungs.

Feel the cold durasteel against your too-warm skin.

Ok. What are your options?

Drifting at sublight through this part of the galaxy, so close to Hutt space, is practically asking to be robbed. The faster the hyperdrive is fixed, the faster you can get back into hyperspace and get out of here.

Your eyes squeeze shut against the flood of anxiety that bubbles up the back of your throat.

There is no other option.

You’re going to Junkfort Station.

*****

Previous Chapter     Next Chapter

[writingwithcolor]

I'm writing an AU of a movie that takes place in the 1880s USA, where a travelling white character and a Jewish character are waylaid by Native Americans, who they befriend. Probably because it was written by and about PoC (Jews) the scene actually avoids the stuff on your Native American Masterpost, but I'd still like to do better than a movie made in the 1980's, and I feel weird cutting them from the plot entirely. I have a Jewish woman reading it for that, but are there any things you (1/1)

2/2 1880s western movie ask--are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s? I do plan to base them on a real tribe (Ute, probably) and have proper housing/clothes and so forth, but right now I'm just trying to avoid or subvert awful cowboy movie tropes. Any ideas?

White and Jewish Men, Native American interactions in 1880s

I am vaguely concerned with how you only cite one of our posts about Native Americans, that was not written by a Native person, and do not cite any of the posts relating to this time period, or any posts relating to representation in media. 

Sidenote: if you want us to give accurate reflections of the media you’re discussing, please tell us the NAME. I cannot go look up this movie based off this description to give you an idea of what my issues are with this scene, and must instead trust that the representation is good based off your judgement. I cannot make my own judgement. This is a problem. Especially since your whole question boils down to “this scene is good but not great and I want it to be great. How can I do that?”

Your baseline for “good” could very well be my baseline for “terrible hack job”. I can’t give you the proper education required for you to be able to accurately evaluate the media you’re watching for racist stereotypes if you don’t tell me what you’re even working with.

When you’re writing fanfic where the media is directly relevant to the question, please tell us the name of the media. We will not judge your tastes. We need this information in order to properly help you.

Moving on.

I bring up my concern for you citing that one—exceptionally old—post because it is lacking in many of the tropes that don’t exist in the media critique field but exist in the real world. This is an issue I have run into countless times on WWC (hence further concern you did not cite any other posts) and have spoken about at length. 

People look at the media critique world exclusively, assume it is a complete evaluation of how Native Americans are seen in society, and as a result end up ignoring some really toxic stereotypes and then come to the inbox with “these characters aren’t abc trope, so they’re fine, but I want to rubber stamp them anyway. Anything wrong here?”. The answer is pretty much always yes. 

Issue one: “Waylaid” by Native Americans

This wording is extremely loaded for one reason: Native American people are seen as tricksters, liars, and predators. This is the #1 trope that shows up in the real world that does not show up in media critique. It’s also the trope I have talked about the most when it comes to media representation, so you not knowing the trope is a sign you haven’t read the entirety of the Native tag—which is in the FAQ as something we would really prefer you did before coming at us to answer questions. It avoids us having to re-explain ourselves.

Now, hostility is honestly to be expected for the time period the movie is set in. This is in the beginnings (or ramping up) of residential schools in America* and Canada, we have generations upon generations of stolen or killed children, reserves being allocated perhaps hundreds of miles from sacred sites, and various wars with Plains and Southwest peoples are in full force (Wounded Knee would have happened in 1890, in December, and the Dakoa’s mass execution would have been in 1862. Those are just the big-name wars. There absolutely were others). 

*America covers up its residential schools abuse extremely thoroughly, so if you try to research them in the American context you will come up empty. Please research Canada’s schools and apply the same abuse to America, as Canada has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about residential schools and therefore is more (but not completely) transparent about the abuse that happened. Please note that America’s history with residential schools is longer than Canada’s history. There is an extremely large trigger warning for mass child death when you do this research.

But just because the hostility is expected does not mean that this hostility would be treated well in the movie. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of tension between any Native actors and white actors, for how Sacheen Littlefeather had just been nearly beaten up by white actors at the 1973 Academy Awards for mentioning Wounded Knee, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act had only been passed two years prior in 1978. 

These Native actors would not have had the ability to truly consent to how they were shown, and this power dynamic has to be in your mind when you watch this scene over. I don’t care that the writers were from a discriminated-against background. This does not always result in being respectful, and I’ve also spoken about this power imbalance at length (primarily in the cowboy tag).

Documentaries and history specials made in the 2010s (with some degree of academic muster) will still fall into wording that harkens Indigenous people to wolves and settlers as frightened prey animals getting picked off by the mean animalistic Natives. This is not neutral, or good. This is perpetuating the myth that the settlers were helpless, just doing their own thing completely unobtrusively, and then the evil territorial Native Americans didn’t want to share.

To paraphrase Batman: if I had a week I couldn’t explain all the reasons that’s wrong.

How were these characters waylaid by the Native population? Because that answer—which I cannot get because you did not name the media—will determine how good the framing is. But based on the time period this movie was made alone, I do not trust it was done respectfully.

Issue 2: “Befriending”

I mentioned this was in an intense period of residential schools and land wars all in that area. The Ute themselves had just been massacred by Mormons in the Grass Valley Massacre in 1865, with ten men and an unknown number of women and children killed thanks to a case of assumed association with a war chief (Antonga Black Hawk) currently at war with Utah. The Paiute had been massacred in 1866. Over 100 Timpanogo men had been killed, with an unknown number of women and children enslaved by Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 1850, with many of the enslaved people dying in captivity (those numbers were not tracked, but I would assume at least two hundred were enslaved— that’s simply assuming one woman/wife and one child for every man, and the numbers could have very well been higher if any war-widows and their children were in the group, not to mention families with multiple children). This is after an unknown group of Indigenous people had been killed by Governor Brigham Young the year prior, to “permanently stop cattle theft” from settlers. 

The number of Native Americans killed in Utah in the 1800s—just the number of dead counted (since women and children weren’t counted)—in massacres not tied to war (because there was at least one war) is over 130. The actual number of random murders is much higher; between the uncounted deaths and how the Governor had issued orders to “deal with” the problem of cattle theft permanently. I doubt you would have been tried or convicted if you murdered Indigenous peoples on “your” land. This is why it’s called state sanctioned genocide.

This is not counting the Black Hawk War in Utah (1865-1872), which the Ute were absolutely a part of (the wiki articles I read were contradictory if Antonga Black Hawk was Ute or Timpanogo, but the Ute were part of it). The first official massacre tied to the war—the Bear River Massacre, ordered by the US Military—places the death count of just that singular massacre at over five hundred Shoshone, including elders, women, and children. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the number of Indigenous people killed in Utah from 1850, onward, is over a thousand, perhaps two or three.

Pardon me for not reading beyond that point to list more massacres and simply ballparking a number; the source will be linked for you to get an accurate number of dead.

So how did they befriend the Native population? Let alone see them as fully human considering the racism of the time period? Natives were absolutely not seen as fully human so long as they were tied to their culture, and assimilation equalling some sliver of respect was already a stick being waved around as a threat. This lack of humanity continues to the present day.

I’m not saying friendship is impossible. I am saying the sheer levels of mistrust that would exist between random wandering groups of white/pale men and Indigenous communities wouldn’t exactly make that friendship easy. Having the scene end be a genuine friendship feels ignorant and hollow and flattening of ongoing genocide, because settlers lied about their intentions and then lined you up for slauther (that’s how the Timpanogo were killed and enslaved).

Utah had already done most of its mass killing by this point. The era of trusting them was over. There was an active open hunting season, and the acceptable targets were the Indigenous populations of Utah.

(sources for the numbers: 

List of Indian Massacres in North America Black Hawk War (1865-1872))

Issue 3: “Proper housing/clothes and so forth”

Do you mean Western style settlements and jeans? If yes, congratulations you have written a reservation which means the land-ripped-away wounds are going to be fresh, painful, and sore.

You do not codify what you mean by “proper”, and proper is another one of those deeply loaded colonial words that can mean “like a white man” or “appropriate for their tribe.” For the time period, it would be the former. Without specifying which direction you’re going for, I have no idea what you’re imagining. And without the name of the media, I don’t know what the basis of this is.

The reservation history of this time period seems to maybe have some wiggle room; there were two reservations allocated for the Ute at this time, one made in 1861 and another made in 1882 (they were combined into the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in 1886). This is all at the surface level of a google and wikipedia search, so I have no idea how many lived in the bush and how many lived on the reserve. 

There were certainly land defenders trying to tell Utah the land did not belong to them, so holdouts that avoided getting rounded up were certainly possible. But these holdouts would be far, far more hostile to anyone non-Native.

The Ute seemed to be some degree of lucky in that the reserve is on some of their ancestral territory, but any loss of land that large is going to leave huge scars. 

It should be noted that reserves would mean the traditional clothing and housing would likely be forbidden, because assimilation logic was in full force and absolutely vicious at this time. 

It’s a large reserve, so the possibility exists they could have accidentally ended up within the borders of it. I’m not sure how hostile the state government was for rounding up all the Ute, so I don’t know if there would have been pockets of them hiding out. In present day, half of the Ute tribe lives on the reserve, but this wasn’t necessarily true historically—it could have been a much higher percentage in either direction.

It’s up to you if you want to make them be reservation-bound or not. Regardless, the above mentioned genocide would have been pretty fresh, the land theft in negotiations or already having happened, and generally, the Ute would be well on their way to every assimilation attempt made from either residential schools, missionaries, and/or the forced settlement and pre-fab homes.

To Answer Your Question

I don’t want another flattened, sanitized portrayal of genocide.

Look at the number of dead above, the amount of land lost above, the amount of executive orders above. And try to tell me that these people would be anything less than completely and totally devastated. Beyond traumatized. Beyond broken hearted. Absolutely grief stricken with almost no soul left.

Their religion would have been illegal. Their children would have been stolen. Their land was taken away. A saying about post-apocalyptic fiction is how settler-based it is, because Indigenous people have already lived through their own apocalypse.

It would have all just happened at the time period this story is set in. All of the grief you feel now at the environment changing so drastically that you aren’t sure how you’ll survive? Take that, magnify it by an exponential amount because it happened, and you have the mindset of these Native characters.

This is not a topic to tread lightly. This is not a topic to read one masterpost and treat it as a golden rule when there is too much history buried in unmarked, overfull graves of school grounds and cities and battlefields. I doubt the movie you’re using is good representation if it doesn’t even hint at the amount of trauma these Native characters would have been through in thirty years.

A single generation, and the life that they had spent millennia living was gone. Despite massive losses of life trying to fight to preserve their culture and land.

Learn some history. That’s all I can tell you. Learn it, process it, and look outside of checklists. Look outside of media. 

And let us have our grief.

~ Mod Lesya

On Question Framing

Please allow me the opportunity to comment on “are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s?” That strikes me as the same type of question as asking what color food I’d like for lunch. I don’t see how the cultural backgrounds of characters I have literally no other information about is supposed to make me want anything in particular about them. I don’t know anything about their personalities or if they have anything in common.

Compare the following questions:

“Are there things you’d like to see in a movie where two American women, one from a Nordic background and one Jewish, are interacting?” I struggle to see how our backgrounds are going to yield any further inspiration. It certainly doesn’t tell you that we’re both queer and cling to each other’s support in a scary world; it doesn’t tell you that we uplift each other through mental illness; it doesn’t go into our 30 years of endless bizarre inside jokes related to everything from mustelids to bad subtitles.

Because: “white”, “Jewish”, and “Native American” aren’t personality words. You can ask me what kind of interaction I’d like to see from a high-strung overachieving woman and a happy-go-lucky Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I’ll tell you I’d want fluffy f/f romance. Someone else might want conflict ultimately resolving in friendship. A third person might want them slowly getting on each other’s nerves more and more until one becomes a supervillain and the other must thwart her. But the same question about a cultural demographic? That told me nothing about the people involved.

Also, the first time I meet a new person from a very different culture, it might take weeks before discussion of our specific cultural differences comes up. As a consequence, my first deep conversations with a Costa Rican American gentile friend were not about Costa Rica or my Jewishness but about things we had in common: classical music and coping with breakups--which are obviously conversations I could have had if we were both Jewish, both Costa Rican gentiles, or both something else. So in other words, I’m having trouble seeing how knowing so little about these characters is supposed to give me something to want to see on the page.

Thank you for understanding.

(And yes, I agree with Lesya, what’s with this trend of people trying to explain their fandom in a roundabout way instead of mentioning it by name? It makes it harder to give meaningful help….)

--Shira

[strunmahalok]

So I was sitting and thinking about the weird things we do and don’t consider child appropriate. And I was also wondering if I ever read anything as weird as Animorphs apparently was and yeah actually I think I did.

Do y’all remember “The Guardians of Ga’Hoole” by Kathryn Lasky? Those random owl books that were apparently popular enough to make into a movie? I read all 16 of those and they got wild. Spoilers btw

The series starts with our protagonist, Soren, who is a baby. He wants to practice flying, his parents tell him he’s still too young he doesn’t have the right feathers yet. They leave to go hunting and Soren sits at the edge of the nest, fantasizing, thinking about trying it anyway, before he decides he slips and falls to the ground. So he tries to hide and wait for his parents to come save him, but he gets kidnapped by a group of owls called St, Aggie’s Orphanage. Who take children and brainwash them. These kids are forced to be active and doing stuff during they day (they are owls) and then at night instead of sleeping their forced to march in circles in a special chamber until they get “moon sickness” Eventually, Soren and three other kids teach themselves how to fly and escape searching legendary Guardians of Ga’Hoole to help them take down the evil orphanage. And that’s literally just the first book.

speedrunning the rest of the books, Soren is reunited with his old house keeper, a blind snake named Mrs. Plithiver, who tells him his parents have been murdered by an owl eugenics cult and his older brother and younger sister are missing. I am not kidding when I say eugenics. They were called The Pure Ones. They had an entire cast system built around around the tyto owl genus, with barn owls being the most “pure” and every other speices being increasingly dehumanized (deowlfied?) and if you weren’t tyoto at all you basically had to die, So any way, Soren finds he didn’t fall, he was push by his brother as an intiatian into the pure ones and rises through the ranks to become their leader. The pure ones and the orphanage decide to team up, the Ga’hoole go undercover, and in book six both organizations are basically reduced to nothing. Also somewhere in there there is something about iron filament putting off enough magnetism to mess with how their brains work in it’s very not good. But finally Soren gets to retire to be a dad.

Book seven we get a new protagonist. Coryn, the kid who was being groomed to be the heir of the now defunct eugenics cult. Despite them being basically nothing anymore his Mom is still raising him like the pure one can make a come back (think Kovu from the lion king 2). But something happens that Coryn decides that this is not for him, and he runs away to find out what the world is actually like. Okay, so these next bits I had to read the wiki to figure out. Coryn has the ability to see the future when staring into fire, he decides he needs to catch a special kind of coal from an active volcano, which he does, and then he takes it to Ga’Hoole to become their king. Also he kills his mom by shoving her into the path of a rabid wolf. There’s a lot happening their the the wiki is not jogging my memory enough to put any of that into context.

books 9-11 are a prequal arc about how  coal catching became a thing, the developemnt of back smithing in owl society (those two things have been happening the entire i just haven’t felt the need to bring them up) and how  Ga’Hoole was founded to fight Hagsfied, magic demon owl/crow hybrids. And some  worldbuilding on how dire wolf society works, That has also been in the background the entire time. Note sure when it was introduced but was really important in Coryn’s section I guess

Back into the present Coryn and the original four owls we followed go looking for a magic book used by an Arch-hagsfied, Meanwhile back at Ga’Hoole, owls start worshiping the special ember Coryn caught like it’s a golden calf. They make  up increasingly elaborate rituals and they built a prison overnight for anyone who is blasphemous towards it. The Band + Coryn come home, are horrified tear everything down and the special coal is thrown into a pile of less cool coals but nobody seems to beable to tell the difference and grab it out.

Book 13 a secret owl kingdom is discovered. The band, Coryn, and another owl named Otulissa are guided there for a visit by a blue owl  called “The Striga”. Turns out all of the owls there are blue, but some of them have weird long feathers and can’t fly without the assistance of kites. The last remnants of the pure ones apparently stalked our protags to the new kingdom. Striga kills one of them which is a big no no, so he gets banished and our heroes take him home with them.

Ah, from there on out things become very, there is “no war in Ba Sing Se” As Striga gains influence over Coryn. The Band is banished and mass book burning are instituted. The Band tries to figure out how to fix this and discover the hagsfied are not gone, Striga is one of them. And the blue owls from the secret kingdom lived very specific lifestyles to keep the hags from remembering there were evil. It’s why to no bloodshed rule was important, it maybe woke his magic? IDK the wiki is really bad for this book, some of these discoveries were maybe made in the previuos one? And the next book in the wiki is hyper detailed and I tl:dr-ed it because it’s 1am.

Anyway, anything that comes from the secret kingdom is bad new. Coryn’s mother is actually not dead and teams up with them. I guess there’s another war. The Ga’Hoole recruit a bunch of other species to help them fight the combined forces of the hag owls and the pure ones, and some where in that Coryn drops the sacred ember back into the volcano they got he it from.

And the last book is a prequel about Ezylryb. A famous in universe blacksmith.

This post was not supposed to be this long. It was supposed to be a"wow adults let me read a 16 book war series about way eugenics is bad actually and it wasn’t considered to dark for children?” But I ended up summarizing the whole series ‘cause it’s even weirder than I remember. And now this post is too long and I don’t want to get started on the spin-off series “Wolves of the Beyond” which is a six book series about why ableism is bad actually. Wolf society in these books is very ableist even in the owl-centric books it comes up decently often.

So yeah, this was one of my favorite series when I was kid and I think I started reading them when I was seven. I eagerly awaited the next book coming out and I legitimately don’t think my Mom ever checked what they were about. They were just the owl books I liked.

[moved-to-void-kissed]

🎶✨when u get this, list 5 songs u like to listen to, publish. then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (positivity is cool)🎶✨

Oh!! Thank you for this, Ruby! It means a lot to me that you'd count me as one of your favourite followers - thank you so much!!

..This was an absolute nightmare to narrow down to five songs, if I'm being completely honest, because I am almost entirely incapable of picking favourites when it comes to anything, let alone something as varied as songs. So, the way I picked was by reading more into "songs you like to listen to" and then picked five songs I know I have looped over and over again for a long sustained period of time. This might skew the overall vibes, but hopefully it's fine - it's just asking for "songs I like to listen to", not "songs that represent my music taste". (Also most of them are not in English, as a heads-up, though lyric translations are usually present on VOCALOID Lyrics Wiki.)

Last Resort, by Ayase. I like a number of Ayase's songs actually - Happy Ender, Cynical Night Plan, Yokubari, etc. - but this is my absolute favourite out of all those (well, maybe tied with Happy Ender). I kind of have a mini-PV running in my head for what's going on in the song when I'm listening to it, and it's generally just a good song to have going on as background music.

Shinkai City Underground, by TanakaB. Its lyrics are nonsensical in every translation of them I know, but the song itself sounds super catchy, and I also link it to one of my self-inserts (Lamia, specifically), so it ticks a lot of boxes! I like a lot of covers of it, moreso than the original Rin version actually (though that's probably because this song is from 2011..), so let's also pick this Meiko V3 one, if you wanted to have a listen to that.

MONSTER, by KIRA. I was torn between picking this or B.B.F, as both are extremely great and iconic songs (as are a number of KIRA's songs, honestly), but the next song on the list kind of fills a similar sort of niche to my ear as B.B.F, so I went with MONSTER. Another one that functions as a self-insert song, actually - this time for my Kingdom Hearts self-insert, Aria. This is the only one that's actually in English, oops.

SNOBBISM, by Neru and z'5. It's just fun. I associate it a lot with Splatoon, without any real reason (I'd say ROKI sounds more like it fits or is from that game, to be honest) other than assigning it to a team of OCs that I made back in Year 10. Oh, and I used Bizu (the demon character featured in the PV) as my icon during the final Splatfest, since I was part of Team Chaos and I felt he represented that aptly.

ROKI, by mikitoP. Again, it's just fun. And I think it's a neat touch that, in the original version of the song, the producer who wrote it is actually singing alongside Rin! ..That said, I do also like the version used at Magical Mirai, which has Len sing those parts instead (just as a warning, the video here is a concert recording, so it might have some strobe effects).

There are many other songs I could have put here (this doesn't even cover some of what I would say are my most listened-to producers, like Ferry or Hachi), but hopefully these are alright? It's kind of late for me, so I hope that all of this makes sense ;w;

Thank you very much again for sending this to me!! I hope that you're having a great day, 'cause you deserve it ^-^

[felassan]

Gamers For Groceries 2 event

A Twitch stream event from a few days ago. It can currently be re-watched here (it was fun & interesting, so I do recommend to check it out direct). This post contains some notes on things of particular interest & relevant timestamps, in case this is useful to anyone (for example bc of accessibility reasons).

First up is the All About Animating panel, a series of mini-interviews with game devs (animators) asking what they do, how they got there, and advice for anyone interested in getting into the industry. Some or all of the devs that were interviewed are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and a lot about the craft of game dev animation in general. This segment runs from timestamp ~38 mins 40 secs to 1:07:50. Some notes:

[sounded like DA4] Right now the creature team are working on different creatures in a way which involves going through a lot of mocap data

At BioWare they have a pretty big technical animation team, to support their animators, so each tech animator has a different specialty. Tech anim involves animation support, character art support, and rigging the characters so that the animators can pose them

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] One of the featured animators’ area of specialty at the moment is faces and hair (building the control structure for face animations). First they had to decide how the face rig and its control structure would work. This involves a lot of performance capture of live actors for things like cinematics and gameplay animation, therefore the rigs for bodies and faces have to be able to accurately capture the full range of expressions and emotions that the actor is portraying. Right now the stage that this dev is working on most is setting up the heads that they’re getting through the pipeline from character art e.g. making adjustments based on feedback from the cinematics team. “Polish - just trying to get realism”

Hair tech has come quite a long way in the last few years [in the industry]

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] Hair is very complex to get right. “In the past most games have used card-based hair, which is basically like sheets of polygons with a texture on it that looks like hair, through layers of transparency. But real hair is strand-based, digital strands, so we’re starting to look into that kind of tech - try to get more realistic, more beautiful hair, but there’s always a performance cost to hair. Layers of transparent things are always an expense, they need to balance like, it looks good and moves well, but it doesn’t make your computer or console chug. [...] I guess we’re in the prototype stage but we’ve almost got a set pipeline. It’s always fun to experiment”

In Mass Effect 2 or 3, Miranda’s hair was as expensive as a whole character (!)

[on balancing hair costs/performance, general] It depends on things like character importance and how many characters are on-screen at the time. When you’re in gameplay fighting a bunch of monsters you’re not going to be giving full beautiful hair to all the characters and the monsters, as it will cost too much. (Having a helmet on is a convenient way to get rid of hair.) But if it’s a cinematic scene, with 2 characters talking to each other in a dramatic context, there’s a better budget for nice hair allocated

Some of the hair in Anthem was quite expensive in cinematics. They kept getting bugs from QA saying (for example) that a character’s hair was tripling the performance cost in the scene, so it would go back to character art so they could take away some of the hair cards. “Tough balance, quality versus cost”

“I wish all the characters could have beautiful strand hair”

For p-cap, a lot of the time they don’t want to be too prescriptive in terms of the direction that they’re giving the actors, as the actors know what they’re doing and have a lot of experience, so they give them vague instructions that they then riff off of

[sounded like DA4] They recently did a mocap shoot

[sounded like DA4] There’s a bit more productivity happening now in the pandemic situation; now that the animators are not all going to the capture lab in Vancouver in person for shoots, if it’s not their turn to direct a shot they can instead be working on something else on their computers (multi-tasking). ((Lead DA4 Producer Scylla Costa recently gave a talk at a games festival on the challenges of DA production during the pandemic. In part of this talk he talked about various benefits and drawbacks to the remote-working situation. He also talked about and showed some behind-the-scenes stuff for p-cap and mocap. Notes, images and link here))

[sounded like DA4] Special mocap suits were sent out that they can use with a laptop to go anywhere and shoot motion capture. It’s not as high fidelity as what comes out of the capture lab, but it’s really good for prototyping stuff. Before the pandemic they did some of this (going to a park and shooting some running around)

[sounded like DA4] In one of the shoots they had some actors who were really well-trained in dancing. They were trying to get them to do some combat stuff. This was a bit challenging in the pandemic situation as there’s only so much they can demonstrate/portray as an example to the actors from a distance on camera. “It’s hard to describe what a ‘dodge to attack’ is through the camera to somebody who has no idea what combat looks like in video games”

[not sure if re: DA4 work specifically, another project or a general comment on the craft] The pandemic has really affected performance capture for the face side of things badly, as in order to record, the actor gets dots painted on their face in specific locations by a makeup artist. They can’t do that right now because of social distancing/restrictions, so they haven’t been recording faces at the moment

The more detailed a face, the more joints it has, the more the cost to performance is

---

There was also the Writers’ Block panel, featuring DA writers Mary Kirby, Sheryl Chee and Patrick Weekes, and DA editor Karin Weekes. The timestamps for this segment are ~2:37:50 - 3:26:20. Some notes:

PW has never been weirder than when they were writing Cole on DAI

PW thinks that they accidentally wrote part of “Timber” by Kesha into Solas at one point and they were like “Well, okay, I have to stop listening to Kesha”

For Sheryl, after a while Blackwall’s VA always nailed doing his lines. She loved the quality of his voice and so after a while would always hear his voice while she was writing. This really worked out

^ Mary had this with Merrill. As soon as they cast Eve Myles she listened to several hours of her in Torchwood, and then just wrote to the way that she spoke as much as possible

^ PW had this with GDL as Solas and FPJ as Bull. As soon as they heard FPJ’s delivery, they were like “Oh, okay, I have to write some lines differently, because Bull is smarter than I realized”. With GDL they were like “Okay, he’s going to put poetry into anything I say, in the best way possible”. In early drafts of Solas lines there were parts where they [PW] wondered “Is this too melodramatic? Is this too tragically-angstful?” and then they would hear GDL and be like “Oh! [It’s fine] Game on!”

For localization, German words are often quite long so they often have to make sure that everything fits on the GUI

They think scenes like the romance scenes sound prettier in the Italian versions

Behind the curtain in creating the in-world languages: PW: “There are some awesome websites that have every elven word, like ‘Here are the translations and verb tenses and conjugations’ [etc], [...] and usually Mary and I get very sad slightly looking at those pages going like ‘Does that mean that we have to stick to that?’ [...] The rule is, if I’ve looked at the Wiki and the words, and I go ‘Here’s the correct grammatical way to do it’, and if that turns out to be too long or too many disconnected syllables and it just looks bad or sounds bad, then we shorten it to something simpler, because the key is we want to give the flavor of a foreign language, but we don’t have the world-building budget and capacity to make something that is going to be dictionary-real [in a way that] someone could go through and translate all the background things written on the old temple walls”. Part of the reason for this is the consideration for VAs, who already have to act while bearing lots of things in mind, like the cues in the script for each line

Mary: “For building a language, the first things that I started with for qunlat, elven and dwarven, was what words do we need to use the most? Greetings, farewells, words for friend and enemy, basic things that will come up easily in conversation. After that it’s ‘How difficult is this for other writers to use?’ Can they just pick it off the Wiki? Do they need just one word? Do they need to write whole sentences, and how does that work? Qunlat has almost no grammar to it because asking anyone to learn how to use Qunari grammar and conjugate verbs in a pretend language is impossible, and then once you’ve done that a human being has to be able to read it, while not knowing what any of it means”

PW: “One thing that I was really impressed with with Mary in particular doing, Mary was one of the big lore people across the entire DA series; I can look at a word and go like, ‘That has two A’s in a row, that’s definitely a Qunari word. That word is kind of long and maybe has some apostrophes and has a couple of flowy vowel sounds, that’s probably elven’, I think that’s what’s important. You want players to be able to look at a word, players want to feel smart, [like] ‘Oh I don’t know what that means but I totally know that’s a word from the Qunari people!’”. Mary: “Every language has its own set of phonemes, the sounds that they make, and the sort of word structure and spelling so that it gives a flavor to that language. Hopefully that is always chosen to be pronounceable, because again, very important that the words can be said by human beings :D”

Sheryl: “One of the fun things to do is to make up swear words in the fake languages [...] Recently Brianne wanted a word, I don’t know if she managed to find one”

The origin of bosh’tet in ME: it’s just saying “bastard” and slurring it

PW: “I feel like there are times when past writers kind of leave traps for future writers, where past writers will go ‘Okay, I’m going to write this detailed phrase in a codex entry but don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if it can never be said aloud, because it’ll never have to be voiced!’ and then, next game, guess what guys! Look what you have to make someone [a VA] say! And you’re like [facepalm], c’mon!”

Karin: “Now, four games in, we have pages and pages of all these examples, and I wanna say this, well that’s how we said something before, well that’s ridiculous, I don’t wanna say that, but now we’ve said it and it’s out there, so it’s like, how do we, y’know, how do we evolve, and sometimes we just go ‘Screw it! Languages are living languages! We’ll just say it like this now!’”

PW's favorite is the sarcastic Mythal’enaste, “Because it’s the sarcastic Mythal's blessing that basically means you’re getting screwed over somehow. I love it because Mythal nasty! Whoever wrote that clearly never thought that someone would have to say this out loud”

Sheryl wrote Bull’s joke icicles line. She also wrote Isabela’s big boats line - Jennifer took it out but then DG was like “No it has to come back”

They have a pun test, they get a few of them and have to allot them wisely so as not to oversaturate on the puns. “Is this good/bad enough to be one of the times that we pull the trigger? We did have one of those recently, I obviously can’t talk about it, but it was pronounced Okay to go ahead”

The ‘baby-est’ writer is Brianne, who’s been there 8 years

It makes PW sad that the players never get to see the writers’ temp-text [placeholder text when portions are a WIP]. “People have the best temp-text". Mary: “The number of conversations that I’ve temped in like ‘WELL. I hope nothing BAD happens HERE’”

Q. If you could bring in anybody from outside of gamedev, who would you like to work with and do a writer’s session with? PW: “I will say romance novelist Nora Roberts, she is really smart and also she knows how to write inside a genre, and do wonders within it. Her structure is so good. If you pick up one of her books, you know here’s when this is gonna happen, here’s when they’re gonna meet, here’s when this first moment will happen. We’re all experienced and I feel pretty good about that but I really like all of the things she does that way, and also I am a sucker for romance so I would love to bring a romance novelist in and just have them look at our scenes and go ‘Okay here, no, they should pull the tie so that the article of clothing comes open, we need a sense of how warm the skin is here’ - something like that. I’d wanna see what they could do with that”

“Luke writes the best worst lines”

“I’m always impressed with Mary getting away with lines. There are lines that I look at like, wow, you buried that one. [...] The only players who get that line, I feel like they earned it if they went that far into it. [...] And then Varric or Merrill says a ridiculous line in a one-time throwaway”

Karin: “The group dynamic, you’ll see conversations or snippets of a lunch chat or a thing we’ve been joking about and you’ll see it get pulled in, and how all of you [the writers] are able to take a normal kind of thing - as normal as we get as a group anyway - and then turn it into a moment, and use it to further the plot or use it to further a character. It’s just the cleverest thing and it happens in so many different ways. [...] The little snippet of life, then how you crafted it into this very cool thing”

Quartermaster Threnn was written by PW in half a day. “When I was writing Threnn, ‘Okay, this is a good-hearted [person], I was doing a little bit of Steel Magnolias, southern, no-nonsense, but like, blue collar Steel Magnolias’. This is someone accustomed to the ways of the world so she’s going to call a spade a spade. If you come up to her and you’re an elf she doesn’t recognize you and says ‘Buckets are over there’ because she thinks you’re there to clean, [but] ‘Anyone calls you a knife-ear you come to me I’ll take care of it’. It’s problematic but she’s trying - the good-hearted person rooted for the wrong group on every occasion. She was a proud Loghain supporter, she gets really exited if he comes to Skyhold.  That was a fun character for me to write because I had a viewpoint in my mind. I remember someone was like ‘Threnn is really important to me’. And you have to honor that, cause you’re like ‘Cool, it means so much to me that this connected with some part of you’”

---

Also of interest was the Mass Affection panel, in which BioWare devs looked back in over a decade of history to remaster a classic. It featured devs who worked on MELE. The timestamps for this segment are ~3:36:09 - 4:24:37. Some notes:

When the pandemic hit the MELE team were in a relatively awkward spot. They were really entering into what they consider full production and were on-boarding a bunch of teams, as well as training and on-boarding third-party external partner specialized teams worldwide. When the pandemic hit, BioWare and EA were super on top of it. They were tracking it weeks beforehand, getting everyone their computers ready, and getting everything encrypted. When the middle of March 2020 hit they were home rightaway. EA were nothing but supportive throughout the entire thing. They got money every quarter for stuff. It functionally ‘hit’ at 4-6 different times for them as the pandemic occurred in different places throughout the world at different times depending on each country’s response plan (and their external partners were in different countries). “So it was one of those things where it was just like, every day we’d come in like can we still work with this company anymore? Do we need to find someone else? Do we need to pull people in off the other projects at BioWare to fill gaps here and there?”

There was a bug on Virmire at the part when you’re coming into the STG camp. If the Mako had its new boosters on and you came hurtling in really fast, it cut to the cutscene, but the Mako hit a jump and when Ash was like “What do we do now?” the Mako ended up literally flying around in the background sideways and then crashing into the camp

Another bug: when they were re-tuning the guns, the physics force on some of the guns with Hammerhead rounds was so high that when you were fighting some of the Thorian Creepers, you could ragdoll them so hard that you could basically embed them in the roof. They’d be moving so fast that they’d penetrate all the walls with their legs dangling out. It was so easy to do and you could do it to everybody. You could launch a geth halfway across an Uncharted World

Another bug: with Shepard’s casual appearance in ME3, if you didn’t have it set up perfectly correctly it would default to Grunt for some reason. You’d be walking around as Grunt, going on dates as Grunt, and your face would be all scrunched up because it was all mapped to human bones still, so it was just, like, Nightmare Fuel of Grunt

Another bug: in ME2 on Illium when trying to recruit Samara, the Asari enemies just would not stop screaming - regardless of whether they were hit or not, it was endless screaming. Later one of the devs got an audio file of the scream, endless and looped, and now one of the devs has it on their phone and uses it for their morning alarm tone

“Shepard would come up to characters and they’d just be screaming”

---

There was also the Programming Variables panel, talking about what hurdles game programmers face. Some [or all?] of the devs that were part of this panel are currently working on DA4. They talked a bit about their day-to-day work and about the craft of game dev programming in general. The timestamps for this segment are ~ 4:24:46 - 5:06:02.

[source]

[insights/notes from Gamers For Groceries 1]

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

[demonfox38]

Completed - Baba is You

I can't believe this is the first game I've perfected on Steam.

Like, I don't like achievement systems in video games, okay? I prefer to set my own goals. Sure, there are some achievements that are interesting, like learning to use a certain mechanic in a cool or efficient manner, visiting hidden rooms, or even running around with nothing but my character's default busted sword just to prove a point. Mostly, I just want to finish them. I don't go jumping through flaming hoops because I want people to think I'm cool. I'm from Iowa. I'm critically uncool by design.

If a game is good, I will put in the extra work. Like, getting 100% souls in "Castlevania: Aria of Souls" and 200.6% map completion in "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" is now just routine for me. With "Baba is You"? Well, circumstances are just a teeny bit different.

"Baba is You" is a puzzle game from independent developer Arvi Teikari. Your primary goal in the game is to create statements out of nouns, verbs, and conditions and use those generated rules to complete levels. It's basically catnip to programmers. These puzzles are packaged in cute, scribbly animations and gentle music. Ultimately, its soft presentation is the figurative sheep's clothing under which the wolf of this game lives, dragging its players through increasingly more complex situations, sitting there, laughing, its whole world wiggling in its adolescent mockery of you and your sluggish brain.

You're not always even Baba. I know. The absolute betrayal.

I originally saw this game being streamed back in 2019. A frustrating feeling overtook me as I watched the player work through the puzzles. I could feel myself solving them before she could, and it was making me itch. I didn't want to have any more spoiled without giving it a shot myself, so I purchased the game, put in a few hours, and then dropped it for two years. Hell, the major reason I came back to it was that I was babysitting my mom's very needy poodle, and I was more or less trapped on the couch with her during her entire stay. Had to do something. So, I decided this was it.

"Baba is You" really is the ultimate "Yeah, I'll get back to this" game. You know what I mean? There's always a handful of games that you make a little headway into, and then you think, "Yeah, I'll get back to this" and then drop it. I try not to be this way. Video games are expensive, and I want to get as much value as I can out of them. But man, does this game get overwhelming.

I mean, the TAS for a 100% run is currently around an hour and forty-five minutes. That's for 226 puzzles. That is a lot.

Granted, you don't have to finish every puzzle if you don't want to. The game can let you slide free with your first ending after completing only three subworlds on the main map. You know how many people get to that first ending? Like, we're talking maybe getting through 3 hours of gameplay or so. As of this posting, it's around 7.8% of all players on Steam. In comparison, here are first time ending numbers from other games I own on Steam:

"Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon" – 38% (Cleave the Moon)

"Trine" – 29.6% (Completed!)

"Dust: An Elysian Tale" – 23.9% (…And the Dust Settles)

"Fez" – 14.7% (Kill Screen)

"Psychonauts" – 13.2% (I Thought That Was Unbeatable!)

"Typing of the Dead" – 12.9% (Experimental Fiction)

"Final Fantasy VII" – 9.4% (End of Game)

That's right. From a percentage point of view, more players will put 80 hours into a 20+ year old RPG than 3 hours in this game. So, what's up with that?

At first, I wasn't struggling terribly with the game. I was making a pretty steady clip through it, stopping occasionally to check out the game's wiki. (BTW—view that on a laptop browser, not a mobile one. The background makes it hard to read some of the verbs and conditions.) My first tap-out in 2019 happened around the "Forest of Fall" block, when the game started introducing teleporting puzzles. My second brain-snap happened about 18 hours in the game when I accidentally created the phrase "Level is Key" in the puzzle "Fragile Existence," and then I realized that I could both create this level as Baba and had to create another level as a flag to win the overworld map.

And then there was a submap.

And another.

And another.

Holy crap, my brain was not ready for the mess that was Depths and Meta.

At one point, I stopped myself and reviewed why I was overcome with despair at my own stupidity. A part of it is yes, the game looks very cute, and the language used in the puzzles is very simple. So, when you don't get it, it's like saying you don't get "Sesame Street." And hey, maybe you wouldn't if it was in Mandarin and you only speak English. But, I did want to beat myself up for my sluggish responses and my growing feeling of helplessness. Why couldn't I beat the simple sheep game for babies? Was I really that stupid?

I think it helped to know what troubles I had my playthrough harder. This included:

Using text to push objects past barriers. (Yes, text exists in the world, and unless it's floating, you can use that text to move objects around. It's like hitting a car with a stop sign.)

Assuming attributes on an object that weren't actually assigned (i.e., assuming a door was locked or a wall would prevent me from moving through it, even if that wasn't the case.)

Manipulating text to double-layer nouns or break up commands by wedging an inactive/non-solid object in them. (See: Prison.)

Realizing that "you" doesn't always have to go to a certain destination. Sometimes, "you" just need to have something move over there or push something into where you want to go.

Remembering to use the "Wait" button to let moving objects finish their paths.

"Defeat" is a condition that applies only to "you", not objects in your possession. (They may instead be destroyed by "Sink").

Some rules need to be created and destroyed in the same turn.

Things that move on their own can be used to carry commands through obstacles.

Sometimes, you've just got to count your steps when you're taking an action and see if you can reduce them.

And granted, despite my stupidity, there were some puzzles that really clicked! I particularly enjoyed using the "Word" condition, as it allowed for me to treat both words and objects as a noun to make assignments. There were also times where I had to spell out the commands I wanted from letters left on the map. Fun! Natural! And hell, who doesn't enjoy a good block pushing puzzle, now and again? Super easy. Makes sense. Key is push, door is open. Of course!

Ass is Hot! Of course! (Wait, that wasn’t the solution...)

I tended to lock up more when the "Defeat" piece was on screen. I mean, you can always undo your mistakes, and there's no life limit or anything like that. But, hearing your player character go splat when you mess up is flinch-worthy. Additionally, I hated having to build complex paths for objects to follow. Like, screw the entirety of Adventurers. Also, learning what the "Lonely" condition meant felt very unnatural. It was hard to even tell why I was splatting until I read up on what it meant.

Interestingly, changing the language of the game only affects the menu's language, not the game itself. (I was wondering if adding a layer of comprehension to objects would stop me from auto-assigning properties to them or not. Makes sense that it's all in English, considering the "form objects from letters" puzzles.)

I felt bad when I finally gave up on putting effort into solving the puzzles on my own. I did. But, I was also 18 hours deep into my file in a single week, and I wanted to get back to my other hobbies. I felt that if I gave up on "Baba is You" again, I wouldn't finish it ever. And then, those 18 hours truly would be wasted. Also, I felt sick that only 7.8% of people had gotten to the first ending screen. The game isn't bad! It's hard, but not bad! I wanted to at least give it enough dignity to finish it off, even if I was more or less reading what I needed to build with one eyeball and building it with the other.

And hell. Given all of the version differences of this game and the amount of time that has passed since its release, it is a teeny bit YouTube proof. Not completely invulnerable, but I did catch a difference or two here and there. And it's not like the wiki's the clearest with what you need to do, even when they're telling you exactly what to do. You've got to mind your space with your words. At the very least, don't push anything aside or wreck it until you absolutely must.

I can't emphasize how much I felt bad about giving up. I mean, it's one thing to look at guides for other game types. You can get knowledge on how to beat a boss or level, but you've physically got to develop the skills needed to vault through that goal. With puzzle games, knowledge is 99% of what you need to accomplish your task. The rest is just putting in the solution as elegantly as possible.

92.2% of players didn't bother to do even that.

I won't pretend to say I know enough about puzzles to make an excellent puzzle game. However, I do think brevity would have helped this game. Like, think of puzzle games people like. "Tetris," right? Even a long game of "Tetris 64" lasts me a couple of hours at most. "Portal"? That's a handful of hours supported by plot and fun dialogue. So is the sequel. "Panel de Pon" / "Tetris Attack" / "Puyo Puyo"? Those are like "Street Fighter" arcade campaigns. Like, 15-20 minutes. To have a puzzle game go on for hours and hours without any character motivation or plot in sight? Yeah. That's going to burn a lot of people out.

Like, this game could have just the over world, a single hidden world, and then the Center portion, and that would have been more than enough. And then you know what could have been done with the rest of the puzzles? Put them in a new game! "Baba is More!" Bam! A second game, now with extra "Inception"-styled mind screws! Twice the money earned! (Yeah, okay. This plan might stink of capitalism.)

Making 226 puzzles is impressive. However, brevity is the soul of wit. Sometimes, design can be contradictory like that.

But, its achievements? Perfectly laid out. Truly finishing the game is likely to net you everything. I only had to put in a couple of hours after the true ending, and really, only fifteen minutes of that was solving the puzzles. The rest was just finding what I had missed. (I've heard rumors that "Baba is Baba" is bugged, but I think you just need to look up how to get the Level is Win solution in Meta figured out. The rest is elbow grease.)

I don't know if I can recommend this game. Again, having a case of the bad feels over that statement, especially since it seems like the developer has his heart in the right place. I'm hesitant to recommend this because when I was playing it, I had a migraine that lasted three days straight. Granted, there were possibly some external factors to why I had that. A fat polar vortex. Stress from work. Some hormonal influences. Not enough caffeine or water. Just generally living in the United States in the early 2020s. Plenty of things to crush my skull. I don't think it's in good taste to recommend something that will cause others physical pain. I mean, I'm used to games cracking my hands, but that's not exactly healthy behavior. I certainly wouldn't want to give someone an epileptic attack. Why would I want to drive a nail through their skulls, either?

I do think the game is solidly designed. It's a smart little cookie. But, it is unintentionally discouraging to get through, especially if you feel like you can't ask for help. Like getting a clue or an explanation is cheating.

Look. Try. Try hard. Be as honest and earnest as you can be. Just don't expect to do everything in your life alone, okay? I mean, there are times you've got to get an external perspective. I frequently had to crash after school with mathematics teachers and badger professors to explain topics outside of class. You think I was going to come up with how there are different kinds of infinities on my own? Hell no. I'm not creative in terms of mathematical proofs. But, I sure as hell can explain how different infinities work now! Even post-schooling, I still research topics, particularly when building or fixing things. I wouldn't have learned half of the things I've learned about maintaining game cartridges or building dollhouses without suggestions from professionals and enthusiasts. It's just part of life. You ask for help so you don't burn resources—especially something as valuable as time!

[tigerkirby215]

5e Viego, the Ruined King build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Pan Chengwei. Made for Riot Games.)

What? Did you expect me not to make this? It’s the goddamn Ruined King! He’s finally out after all these years! I mean sure he’s a goddamn twink but still; he’s finally out! Also Samira build is coming out 35 years from now.

And even though I put a Warlock TikTok meme in my last video, here’s a whole bunch of them because... yeah no shit he’s a Hexblade... Of the Ruined King.

GOALS

Ruin to all! - MIST'S EDGE: Basic attacks deal a percentage of the target's current health bonus physical damage on-hit.

Serve me in death - If you ever wanted to play as the enemy for a bit Viego will let you take a ghost or two; as a treat.

The mist is my great unending sadness - Foggy days are typical for an edgy boy, and King Ruin is so edgy he wants to cover the entire world with fog! Yeah that “mist is sadness” quote is real; I got it from the Wiki.

RACE

Viego is a human... but he has a great degree of variance. We’ll be going for yet another Variant Human because we’re not allowed any monster champions anymore. As a Variant Human you get a +1 in two different stats of your choice: increase your Charisma and Strength by 1 for the strength to be beautiful for your queen. You also get proficiency in a skill of your choice: Perception will let you see through the mist and search far-and-wide for your queen. And you get a language of your choice: Abyssal seems reasonable to speak to the mist.

Of course the main appeal of Variant Human is the feat at level 1, and to swing the Blade of the Ruined King Great Weapon Master will let you cut through a percentage of the enemy’s health! When you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon (such as a greatsword), you can choose to take a -5 penalty to your hit chance. If you do hit you’ll do an extra 10 damage with your strike! And as an added bonus when you score a critical hit (with a melee weapon) or kill a creature, you can make one melee weapon attack as a bonus action!

ABILITY SCORES

15; CHARISMA - League of shirtless anime boys amIrite? Gotta look good for Isolde.

14; DEXTERITY - Repeat after me: “something something Medium Armor.”

13; STRENGTH - This is a requirement for another one of the classes we’ll be taking. Yup this isn’t just straight 20 levels in Hexblade!

12; CONSTITUTION - A ruined king with a blackened heart is still allowed to have some health.

10; WISDOM - Destroying the entire planet just to simp for your wife isn’t the wisest move.

8; INTELLIGENCE - Nor is it the smartest.

BACKGROUND

You were the king of a long-forgotten nation, so unfortunately noble wouldn’t work. But you still have servants! The Knight background grants proficiency in the History that you lived through as well as Persuasion to get Isolde back. You also get proficiency with a Gaming Set and Language of your choice, which I’d say pick your fancy.

But the main reason we’re taking Knight (and not Noble) is for Retainers! You get three knights sworn to your kingdom (Kalista, Hecarim, and the third one) who will do mundane tasks for you. While Hecarim may be up for a slaughter unfortunately your retainers can’t do anything in combat and won’t follow you into dangerous locations. And of course if you treat your subjects poorly they will leave you. But it can always be useful to have more spirits in the mist to search for her!

(Artwork by @thejenneralchen on Twitter)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - PALADIN 1

Hah! Did you think we’d be starting with Warlock? Put simply we need things from Paladin more, notably the proficiencies as well as starting equipment. Dude imagine having to spend 3200 gold to buy the sword literally named after you? But for now you might just want to grab a Longsword to start. Regardless Paladins get proficiency in two skills from the Paladin list: Athletics are required in the jungle, and Intimidation will let everyone meet know that you will stop at nothing for her! You fucking simp...

You also get Divine Sense to sense the beasts of the mist, or your queen. As an action you can know the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet of you that is not behind total cover. You know the creature type, but not its identity. Within the same radius, you also detect the presence of any place or object that has been consecrated or desecrated. (Have a feeling you’ll find a lot of desecrated areas.) You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier plus 1, and regain all uses at the end of a Long Rest.

And you can restore a bit of health thanks to Lay on Hands. You have a pool of healing equal to 5 times your Paladin level that comes back at the end of a Long Rest. You can heal a creature for any number of hitpoints from that pool as an action when you touch them, or cure a disease / poison affecting them with 5 hitpoints. Man that would’ve been useful a couple of thousand years ago, huhn?

LEVEL 2 - WARLOCK 1

Time to pick up the Sword of the Ruler of the Mist. Hm... There has to be a better way of saying that. Regardless Warlocks get to choose their subclass at level 1 and to get a comedically large sword that saps peoples’ lifeforce we’ll be opting for the one, the only Hexblade patron! As a Hex Warrior you can wield martial weapons as well as medium armor (which you already could cause Paladin), but can also choose to swing a sword with your Charisma instead of your Strength or Dexterity. Which is great because you’re not exactly the buff sort. Unfortunately you can’t use a two-handed greatsword just yet, which is why I said you’d do good to grab a longsword instead.

But if you are locked in combat Hexblade’s Curse will make sure that you can dispose of them quickly. As a bonus action you can mark a target for 1 minute. During that time you do bonus damage equal to your proficiency bonus to the cursed target, crit on a 19 or a 20, and regain hit points equal to your warlock level + your Charisma modifier when you kill them. The curse ends early if the target dies, you die, or you are incapacitated.

And of course as a Warlock you get Pact Magic. You learn two cantrips and two leveled spells: Eldritch Blast will let you manipulate the mists for a ranged attack, and Prestidigitation will help you keep clean and kingly despite all the black mist flowing out of that gaping stab wound in your chest. As for leveled spells Armor of Agathys will let you put on some Thornmail to keep your health up and hit your foes back, and I mean Shield is on the Hexblade expanded spell list anyways so we may as well use it.

LEVEL 3 - WARLOCK 2

Second level Warlocks get Eldritch Invocations as the mist manipulates your body and soul. For now take Devil’s Sight to see through your Harrowed Path with your dumb human eyes, and we’ll be leaving the other invocation slot open for a level.

You also get another spell but all the other first level spells don’t really interest me. Yeah we’re not taking Hex you’re going to have to live with it!

LEVEL 4 - WARLOCK 3

Third level Warlocks get their Pact Boon for a particular tool of the Warlock trade, and to wield a weapon of spectral steel grab Pact of the Blade! The long and short of it is you can make yourself any melee weapon, and Hex Warrior affects any weapon you summon with this feature! This means that you can actually wield a two-handed Greatsword, but feel free to choose other options. Especially now that you can take the Improved Pact Weapon invocation to turn that Cutlass of the Twink King into a +1 weapon, and also summon yourself a gun (shortbow / longbow / light crossbow / heavy crossbow) if you so desire. But I mean, why would you when you have Eldritch Blast?

You can also add some second level spells to your list like Darkness to walk a Harrowed Path through the mist, though remember that even if you can see through the mist your allies probably can’t. And Misty Step, because something something Flash.

LEVEL 5 - WARLOCK 4

4th level means the first of many Ability Score Improvements. Charisma is used for everything that you do so... maybe increase that?

You also get another spell and another cantrip! For your cantrip Mage Hand is helpful to manipulate the mist to grab things from high places. As for leveled spells Blur is on the Hexblade list... but why would you take that instead of Mirror Image, which doesn’t require Concentration.

(Artwork by @WetHamster1 on Twitter)

LEVEL 6 - WARLOCK 5

5th level Warlocks get more Eldritch Invocations. To knock a foe down with Spectral Maw take Eldritch Smite, letting you channel a spell slot into a particularly deadly slash of your Viego’s Edge.

If you want an extra attack early you can also replace Improved Pact Weapon with Thirsting Blade, which is now available. But we will be getting Extra Attack from other sources later.

You can also now learn third level spells like Vampiric Touch for a bit of lifesteal. As a treat.

LEVEL 7 - WARLOCK 6

6th level Hexblades can put their passive to work, and have spirits serve your Sovereign's Domination. Accursed Specter lets you use the soul of a humanoid you killed and make it serve you, using the stats of a specter with temporary hit points equal to half your Warlock level and a bonus to hit equal to your Charisma modifier. The specter remains in your service until the end of your next long rest, which is good because you can use the ability once per Long Rest. The specter rolls initiative separately from you, and obeys your commands.

And hey: you’ve already got ghosts fighting for you, so why not summon your depression to fight as well? Summon Shadowspawn from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything (requires a 300 gold gemstone containing tears and) summons a spirit of Fury, Despair, or Fear to fight alongside you. There’s a lot of specifics to this spell that I don’t want to go into (its actual description does a far better job than I ever could) but the important thing to note is that it’ll give you another loyal follower.

LEVEL 8 - PALADIN 2

Time for a few levels in that other class we have. Second level Paladins can choose their Fighting Style and of course to swing a Shank of the Former Blessed Isles Great Weapon Fighting (style) will let you reroll low die to more reliably cut through the mists.

Paladins also get Spellcasting at level 2, and unlike with Warlock casting you actually get some spell slots! You can prepare a number of spells equal to your Charisma modifier plus half your Paladin level (rounded down.) Divine Favor will let you do a bit more damage with your titular blade, and if you want more of a burst of damage then either Thunderous Smite or Wrathful Smite will do some more damage along with additional effects. To protect yourself from the mists and others who’d want to keep you from Isolde take Protection from Evil and Good. And to borrow a death realm from the other world-ending lord of Runeterra take Compelled Duel.

Of course you could ignore all that spellcasting stuff for even more Damage of the Ruined Blade! Divine Smite will let you do 2d8 damage with a first level spell slot, plus an additional 1d8 per spell slot above first, up to a maximum of 5d8 (with a 4th level slot.) Additionally if you hit an undead or fiend you’ll do an extra d8, meaning that with a 4th level spell slot you can do 6d8 damage!

The real neat thing is that this works with Smite spells as well as the Eldritch Smite invocation, allowing you to effectively use two spell slots at once to smite if you so desire.

LEVEL 9 - PALADIN 3

3rd level Paladins get to choose their Divine Oath and nothing will stop your Oath of Conquest to save your queen. You get to add the Command spell to your spell list, as well as Armor of Agathys... Uh woups. Uh we’ll address that when we go back to Warlock.

You get two Channel Divinity options: to keep others from stopping you from reaching your queen Conquering Presence will let you force a Wisdom save on units of your choice within 30 feet to frighten them! Alternatively Guided Strike is like Great Weapon Master but in reverse, giving you +10 to hit. This means that if you use Great Weapon Master as well you’d have a +5 to hit and do +10 damage! But remember that you only have one Channel Divinity per short rest.

You also get Divine Health, because simps don’t take sick days.

LEVEL 10 - PALADIN 4

4th level Paladins get another Ability Score Improvement, and we still use Charisma for basically everything so with this you can cap it off completely!

You can also prepare two more spells but... there isn’t much I want from first level? I mean you can take Cure Wounds for a bit of healing... as treat.

LEVEL 11 - PALADIN 5

5th level Paladins get an Extra Attack. If you took Thirsting Blade from Warlock you might want to replace that too.

You can also prepare second level Paladin spells now! As a Conquest Paladin you get Hold Person to stun with Spectral Maw, and Spiritual Weapon for more soldiers from the mist. You can also prepare Aid to strengthen your army and Branding Smite to see your foes through the mist.

(Artwork by @vmatbox on Twitter)

LEVEL 12 - WARLOCK 7

Back to Warlock to replace a lot of things. But firstly you get another Eldritch Invocation: take Trickster's Escape for an emergency QSS.

You also get 4th level spells like Shadow of Moil to become a creature of the mist, and also to get an upgrade from the Darkness spell (which you might want to replace.) Speaking of replacing spells: you got Armor of Agathys from Paladin so replace it with Hallucinatory Terrain to cover the land with mist.

LEVEL 13 - WARLOCK 8

8th level Warlocks get another Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. We’ll be taking the Eldritch Adept feat for more Eldritch Invocations. Which Eldritch Invocation? Why Undying Servitude of course, for more servants of the mist!

D&D Beyond tip: Replace Devil’s Sight and then give yourself 120 feet of Darkvision on the sheet.

You can also get another 4th level spell like Dimension Door, to travel far and wide in a flash to reach your queen.

LEVEL 14 - WARLOCK 9

Hey more Eldritch Invocations! Whispers of the Grave will let you speak to the fragments of Isolde’s soul.

LEVEL 15 - WARLOCK 10

And hey: 5th level spells finally! To strike a foe with Heartbreaker take 

Negative Energy Flood, sundering their health and making them rise to serve you if you end up killing them.

10th level Hexblades get Armor of Hexes. If the target affected by your Hexblade’s Curse hits you with an attack roll, you can use your reaction to roll a d6. On a 4 or higher, the attack instead misses you, regardless of its roll. Naturally this ability makes you particularly good in a 1v1 with whoever you target for Ruination.

You don’t get another spell but you do get a cantrip. Take Toll the Dead to deal with enemies who have high armor, for the mist comes for all.

(Artwork by @stingrae36 on Twitter)

LEVEL 16 - WARLOCK 11

11th level Warlocks get their 6th level Mystic Arcanum, which looks like a spell slot and acts like a spell slot (IE it comes back after a Long Rest, not a Short one) but can’t be used to upcast your other spells. You can only use it to cast one spell, and for an AoE Heartbreaker take good ol’ Circle of Death.

Also more spells known from your regular Warlock slots: Banishing Smite is on the Hexblade list, and can be used to send any demons back to whence they came.

LEVEL 17 - WARLOCK 12

12th level Warlocks get an Ability Score Improvement or a Feat. I have no idea what else to grab so take the Tough feat for a much needed 24 hitpoint increase to a primarily melee-based character.

You also get another Eldritch Invocation so it’s finally time to get the true Blade of the Ruined King damage with Lifedrinker! This will make any foe struck by your Pact Weapon take an additional 5 necrotic damage. This means that you should be doing 2d6 + 11 damage with every swing of a (+1) Greatsword!

LEVEL 18 - WARLOCK 13

More Mystic Arcanum, this time at 7th level! Power Word Pain will let you subjugate the weak.

And more regular spells: Danse Macabre lets you get more servants forever loyal at your side!

LEVEL 19 - WARLOCK 14

14th level Hexblades are Master of Hexes. Put simply: when a creature affected by Hexblade’s Curse dies, you can apply the curse to a different creature you can see within 30 feet of you. (Though you won’t be healed for the last foe’s death.) This will let you bounce your curse around and reap all its benefits constantly, becoming a master of your own blade.

LEVEL 20 - WARLOCK 15

Our last level is the 15th level of Warlock for a handful of benefits. Firstly we can get an 8th level Mystic Arcanum: Feeblemind is the ultimate tool to truly sunder the weak and discard the chaff.

Secondly you can get your level 15 Eldritch Invocations, and to never mistake Isolde’s face Witch Sight will let you see through any illusion that may be hiding her!

You may also want to replace Improved Pact Weapon as by this point you’ve likely found something better than a regular old +1 greatsword. Visions of Distant Realms and Shroud of Shadows are both very good options.

And we can finally get our last spell: as you gather enough information on the new world Scrying will help you expand your search further beyond!

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Surrender to me! - Two smites plus Great Weapon Master on an already deadly blade results in absolutely devastating spikes of damage with your sword. God forbid you crit!

The black mist flows from me like a tide - You also have plenty of tricks to give you an upper hand in longer combats. Hexblade’s Curse of course, but also Armor of Agathys, Shadow of Moil, and Spiritual Weapon.

Fight, puppet; fight for your king! - You can summon all manner of ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, zombies, and everything in between to serve in your search for your queen.

CONS

The world denied my happiness - Low ability scores mean that your skills won’t be amazing. The ones you’re proficient in are alright but you aren’t much help outside of being deadly and being royal.

Answer for your crimes, death; answer me! - We didn’t take the 6th level of Paladin which means we didn’t get Aura of Protection. As a result your saving throws are rather low, and while I tried to avoid grabbing too many Concentration spells yo do still have quite a few, which is not at all helped by your meager +1 to CON.

She remains in this world; I can feel it - All the melee tools in the world don’t mean much when you lack any proper way to get close. You have Eldritch blast sure but beyond Dimension Door (which granted is very strong) enemies can easily keep their distance from the mad king with a big blade. Even if you want to use Dimension Door you have a very limited amount of spell slots.

But the world can only hide from the Ruination for so long. The black mist comes, and with it you come to search for your queen. Nothing can stop you; nothing will stop you until you have her again. The world shall be torn to shreds and shattered beyond repair, as long as you can have your queen... Or like, just find a Wish spell or something? Shame you’re a couple thousand years old because True Resurrection doesn’t even work anymore.

(Artwork by Bo “chenbowow” Chen. Made for Riot Games.)

[mfbbetterfury-extras]

“Why make character profiles?”

No one’s asked about this, but I figure I’ll explain my reasoning ahead of time just in case.

There are a lot of changes from canon in this project. I think that’s already obvious, but from my own experience I know I can often confuse aspects of a character that I view or use in multiple things. (Seriously, the times I confuse full names between the same character in different RPs? More often than you’d think.) So I wanted to make a quick and easy way to access information on those changes.

A few things this information is meant to help keep clear are:

Some of these changes affect previous seasons. Relationships between characters and the status of someone’s bey are two such changes I can think of from the top of my head. While these things will be talked about in episodes, I also think it’s a good idea to keep it collected in one place to refer back to so you don’t have to skim through episodes looking for something.

More clearly speaking, let’s say that a bey someone was known to have in season 1 will be changed to something entirely new. The episodes will address this directly, but the changes will also be noted in the profiles.

There will be a handful of OCs. They won’t be playing giant roles, but they’ll be there. Since they won’t have show canon background to refer to like say, Gingka or Kenta, I figure an easy way to make sure people can remember what’s been learned about these characters is to make these profiles.

Related to the previous point, some canon characters that weren’t originally featured in Metal Fury will be shown in this project. While some of them won’t get enough “screentime” that we know what’s going on with them, the profiles are a way to peek into their lives away from the story and see what they’ve been up to. In this case it’s more just a little bonus for those characters that are out of the spotlight but are someone’s favorites nonetheless.

And, of course:

This is a rewrite. Plenty of things are going to differ from the canon material. To keep things straight, both from your perspectives and mine, these profiles will act as something like mini wiki pages for each character. They’ll be added and/or updated after each batch of episodes released to stay up-to-date and reflect these changes in the story. While they won’t be super detailed, I hope to make them descriptive enough that important changes won’t be forgotten.

With that covered, let’s talk about how they’ll be posted!

Unlike the episodes, I don’t plan on releasing profiles as individual posts. With so many profiles being released with each episode batch, and how many will be updated frequently, it feels like a hassle I would much rather avoid.

Instead, the profiles for each batch will be collected on an online doc and linked to after the full batch of episodes is released. A new link will be provided with each batch, but old links will remain available.

The general set-up of a profile is pretty basic. It has bullet points to cover a character’s alliances, beyblade, special moves, and then some general info to describe them.

The profiles will be collected on Coda.io, which is sort of like Google Docs/Sheets put together. The reason for this is that Coda gives you the option to do this:

And not only is that super handy for putting multiple profiles on one page, I just think it’s really neat.

(You do not need an account to view docs on Coda, though as a fair warning, you won’t be able to access dark mode without one.)

I think that’s all the important things, and if it’s not, I’ll add whatever I potentially forgot later.

tl;dr this is the Better Fury wiki, have a nice day